The results of an immense study were just published in JAMA-Open but be warned, it contains lots and lots of statistical jargon and tables. The link is here to confirm what this Health Tip is all about.
Just understand, if you’re female in your late forties or fifties, then by 2050, 24 years from now, you’ll be in the largest age and gender group in the U.S. If you’re really healthy then, great (!), I imagine you’ll want to keep going, staying healthy until you prance into the three-digit club.
The JAMA study followed over 5,400 women between the ages of 63 and 99, keeping tabs on enrollees’ health, fitness, grip strength, and lifespans. By analyzing all this data, they hoped to tease out the importance of muscular strength for healthy aging. The result surprised the researchers: Strength turned out to be the key — and singular key — contributor to longer lives, reducing the risk for early death by a third or more, even more than other factors like aerobic fitness, overall health, age and exercise habits.
Previous studies have shown that lack of physical strength measured as weakgrip strength equated to an increased risk of early death. Similarly, a 2016 review of past research concluded that muscular weakness reliably predicted upcoming concerns with “cognition, mobility, functional status and mortality.”
But these earlier studies had problems. They couldn’t distinguish between the benefits of being strong and those of being active and fit. Strength may have been contributing to longer lives primarily by enabling people to move more and improve endurance. In that case, it could be the extra exercise and aerobic fitness that improved people’s longevity, not strength, per se.
Researchers dissected out two key determinants of strength, and strength alone, namely Grip Strength, using a readily available handheld (dynamometer) <LINK> measuring device, and the five time sit-to-stand from a chair test. Good numbers, long life. Bad numbers, uh-uh. Grip strength matters!!!
A reasonable question: how do I go about getting stronger? The Washington Post ran this story a couple of years ago and the advice still stands: if you’re a member of a health club, use the machines and the free weights, doing ‘reps’ and progressively increasing both weight and number of reps. If you can afford to hire a personal trainer at the club for a few sessions, then do so.
Okay, now you know how to live longer—
Be well,
David Edelberg, MD