If the man in the street was to guess the best metric for healthy aging, they could say blood pressure, cholesterol levels, lean muscle mass, blood triglycerides or even the length of the telomeres if they closely follow aging.
But it turns out that one of the best is the strength of grip. This relatively underdeveloped packaging area is increasingly recognized as one of the most reliable markers of human health, according to Joshua Davis at the University of Derby, in the United Kingdom.
The grip force is associated with positive results for health, whether it is the measure of the risk of diabetes or depression, and you do not need expensive equipment to measure it. Davis recommends that you burst the top of a box of tennis balls.
“Being able to maintain maximum compression on something like a tennis ball for 15-30 seconds would be a good standard to seek,” said Davis said to the BBC.
This is not necessarily the case that being that of the house whose hands are the most capable of opening a pot of obstinate pickle means that you will live the longest, but rather that the strength of adhesion is an effective indicator for total muscle conditioning, which is itself a great indicator of global nutrition, physical activity and disease profiles. In other words, it is an indirect indicator of a proxy.
For example, the BBC report quotes A study that found The strength of adhesion to be an effective predictor of sarcopenia, the drop in muscle conditioning associated with aging which is strongly correlated with mortality. The correlation can be seen in Another study This revealed that among those of the ripe age who had their grip measurement measured in 1965, those who lived at 100 were 2.5 times more likely to have had a grip of adhesion, the most high third result.
The prognostic value of the strength of adhesion for human longevity was find In another article to exceed blood pressure – one of the vital signs controlled in any patient who visits a hospital.
This is certainly not the case that the development of the strength of adhesion will be protected alone against diseases and early mortality; As mentioned above, this is an indirect indicator of global muscle conditioning.
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There is an old saying in medicine: “Break your hip, die with pneumonia.”
Muscle mass is one of the best defenses against the ravages of age. It dampens the joints and bones and offers protection against falls and subsequent fractures that have given birth to this horrible adage. It also absorbs excess glucose into the blood to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance.
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The BBC also spoke with Mark Peterson, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Michigan, who conducted a study in 2022 which revealed that in our DNA, schemes of methylated molecules in those who had a low force of grip indicated that they were aging at an accelerated rate.
If you don’t have A handle dynamometer To measure exactly the amount of strength of your handshake, you can always do the tennis ball test.
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