If You Can Pass This Simple 10-Second Test, You’ll Probably Outlive Your Peers
Being able to stand on one leg for at least 10 second means you’ll likely outlive the majority of your peers, according to a new study from Brazil published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine longitudinal study earlier this year.
The study found that if you are over the age of 50 and cannot perform this balance test, you could be at a higher risk of dying within a decade compared to your peers.
It found that the inability to balance on one leg for 10 seconds translated to an 84 percent higher risk of death from any cause for people ages 51 and above.
The researchers recruited 1,702 people between the ages of 51 and 75, all living in Brazil. They gave participants three chances to try to balance unsupported on one leg for 10 seconds during an initial checkup. They found that one in five failed to complete the task. Then, they followed up on the participants health over a period of seven years and found that 17.5 percent of those who had failed the test had died, while only 4.5 percent of those who had passed the test had died.
This study suggests that having good balance might be the secret sauce for survival (or is at least one of the main ingredients).
Typically, the average person experiences a decline in muscle strength after the age of 35 at a rate of 1 to 2 percent a year. The risk of sarcopenia, an age-related muscle-wasting disease, also increases drastically from the age ranges of 65 to 70 and 80 and older, from 14 percent to 53 percent respectively. Between the ages of 30 and 40, flexibility also diminishes, with men losing it faster than women. By comparison, balance on average tends to decline after a person’s mid-50s, according to the research.(The inability to complete the balance test became twice as difficult every five years among the participants).
“What’s the big deal?” then. Well, as we get older, there could come a time when we might lose your balance, fall, and break something. Claudio Gil Araújo, director of research and education at Exercise Medicine Clinic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who spearheaded this study, said “But to me, the most important reason for people falling is because they are unfit, physically speaking.
Thomas Buford, a professor at the University of Alabama and director for the Center for Exercise Medicine commented in an interview, “It is simplistic to think that poor test performance can cause these outcomes directly, but they are a good proxy for overall health. These outcomes can have utility, but one must be cautious at the individual level to overreact to a single performance on any one of the individual tasks,” Then he went on to say that encouraging and providing tools for older adults to maintain their physical function as much as possible as they age is essential.
So here is the major point. Three 10-minute workouts a week can do the trick, provided they are intense, says Araújo. Switching between legs for 20 seconds in total, 10 seconds per leg, is all you need for the day. If you struggle with balance, stand close to a wall, or some other way to get support if you need it.