I think everyone has a favourite fact (or is that just me?).
Mine is that grip strength can be a better indicator of longevity among older adults than even blood pressure, proving just how important staying active and trying to maintain muscle is as we get older.
And now, scientists have found that one pose is a remarkably consistent indicator of a person’s age.
A paper named Age-Related Changes in Gait, Balance, and Strength Parameters: A Cross-sectional Study, published in PLOS One, sought to find out how time affects our gait, balance, and strength.
And?
The researchers looked at 40 healthy people over 50 (half of which were over, and half of which were under, the age of 65).
They got the participants to stand on a plate and measured how much they swayed with both open and closed eyes; this changed a little with age.
They also found that grip strength does go down over time, as (to a lesser extent) does knee strength.
“Gait parameters did not change with age,” they add.
However, the amount of time participants could stand on one leg correlated most to age ― suggesting that the strength and balance involved in the pose is among the first to go.
There was a pretty sharp drop-off over the age of 65, with younger participants able to hold the position for nearly 10 seconds and some older participants struggling to make it over two seconds.
“These findings suggest that the duration of unipedal stance [standing on one leg] can serve as a reliable and gender-independent measure of neuromuscular aging for both elderly male and female subjects,” the study concluded.
What does that mean in practice?
The researchers write that how long an older person can stand on one leg “is a valid measure of frailty, independence, and fall status and proves to be a useful tool in identifying patients with peripheral neuropathy.”
That may be because it puts so many strength, balance, and control jigsaw pieces together, they say, speculating that this may be why the move “undergoes the fastest decline in our healthy cohort.”
But they add that standing on one leg isn’t really researched enough, despite the health marker’s “significance.”
Here’s hoping (or hopping) for more studies into the topic...