Uncasville, Conn. ? It’s Friday at the Mohegan Sun casino, and most of the daytime gamblers are retirees like 73-year-old Mike Sanzo. He’s checking out the day’s races, while his wife hits the slots.

Sanzo says he gambles for fun and enjoys the friends he’s made among other regulars at the casino since leaving his job installing signs for the state highway department.

“I’m retired, and it exercises my brain,” he says.

He’s an example of what a surprising Yale University study found — older recreational gamblers seem to be healthier than non-gamblers.

The findings are not rock-solid. They’re based only on telephone interviews, but the results are the opposite of what researchers expected. The survey showed that recreational gamblers 65 and older reported being in better health than their peers who don’t gamble. The older gamblers also reported less alcoholism, depression, bankruptcy and imprisonment than younger recreational gamblers, Yale epidemiologist Rani Desai said.

Desai cautioned that more study is needed to conclude that gambling can be a healthy venture, and those who help gambling addicts are skeptical.

But the social aspects of gambling — whether it’s slot machines at a casino, poker games with friends or bingo at a church hall — may be an explanation for how the study turned out, Desai said.

“There’s this whole concept of healthy aging — that folks who continue to remain engaged in activity, especially in the community and in social activities, stay healthier longer, so I think this is a reflection of that. It’s not that gambling makes you healthy, it’s that gamblers are healthier,” Desai said.

Desai started the study with the idea that health problems already well documented among all gamblers might be more pronounced in gamblers over 65. Any losses would presumably hit older people harder, since most are on fixed incomes.

Two older women play the slot machines at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Ct. A new study suggests that older recreational gamblers seem to be healthier than non-gamblers.

Also, the gambling industry tries to attract older people with freebies and trips, and even provide needle disposals for diabetics in the restrooms and heart defibrillators on the casino floor.

The survey of 2,400 people relied on the participants to report their gambling habits, health and other personal information. A survey firm called all the participants, and Yale researchers crunched the numbers. The findings were published in the September issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.