People who can perform physical acts such as rising from a chair and balancing on one leg are more likely to live longer than those who cannot, British researchers reveal today.
Measures of physical capability, such as grip strength, walking speed, chair rising time and standing balance ability, can predict risk of death in older people living in the community, according to the British Medical Journal study.
The MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing examined 33 studies, five of which were unpublished, that looked at physical capabilities in people of any age living in the community and recorded subsequent mortality. Most of the studies involved older participants, but the link between grip strength and mortality was also found in younger populations.
"Objective measures of physical capability are predictors of all cause mortality in older community dwelling populations," they write. "Such measures may therefore provide useful tools for identifying older people at higher risk of death."
Although there was some variation between studies, there was consistent evidence of links between all four measures of physical capability and mortality. People who performed less well in these tests had a consistently higher risk of death, researchers found.
In 14 studies that looked at grip strength, which had a total of 53,476 participants, the death rate among the weakest people was 1.67 times greater than among the strongest, after taking age, sex, and body size into account.
Five studies into walking speed, with 14,692 participants, showed that the death rate among people who were slowest was 2.87 times greater than among the people who were fastest, after similar adjustments.
A further five studies involving 28,036 people showed that the death rate of those slowest to rise from their chair was almost twice the rate of people who were fastest.
The review’s authors have called for more work is needed on younger populations, in addition to more research that examines the associations between changes in capability with age and mortality.
A steep decline in physical capability may be a better predictor of mortality than is the absolute level at a single point in time, they say.
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