THE LINK BETWEEN LONGEVITY AND BRAIN POWER?
CLIMBING!
OR:
GRIP STRENGTH AS A SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE BIOMARKER.
A strong pressure with the hand...
...not only reveals something about the personality
In our culture, shaking hands is a common greeting. If you search the internet, you will come across a number of articles, recommendations and even tutorials on what the perfect handshake looks like (or should be like).
It is pointed out that the handshake can tell you something about the personality of the person shaking hands:
According to this, a strong pressure with the hand should signal, for example, "This person knows what they want!".
So far so good. But now comes something that will probably seem strange to you:
The grip strength in medical research
In the following, I would like to present a few striking quotes from studies on a wide variety of topics:
Biological age
There are various ways of determining biological age: The most common is the measurement of the so-called telomeres. But other "biological clocks" are also known, such as DNA methylation. And it is precisely this that also appears to correlate with grip strength :
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcsm.13110
Life expectancy, risk of disease and mortality
Handgrip strength (HGS) is often used as an indicator of overall muscle strength in older adults, and low HGS is associated with a variety of poor health outcomes, including chronic disease, functional disability and all-cause mortality.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29943230/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31631989/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25982160/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30072137/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29739772/
Myocardial infarction and stroke risk
Our results demonstrate that HGS can be used as an independent predictor of stroke in European, American, and Chinese middle-aged and elderly populations.
This study suggests that measuring grip strength is a simple, cost-effective method of risk assessment for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular death and cardiovascular disease.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37142986/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25982160/
Brain performance, memory and emotions
These findings suggest that HGS is associated with measures of neurocognitive brain health in men and women, and they add to a growing body of research indicating that interventions to increase muscle strength, particularly in middle-aged adults, may hold promise for maintaining neurocognitive brain health.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31390821/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38876580/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35737388/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36076200/
Metabolic syndrome, diabetes, fatty liver
Most studies included in this systematic review found a significant association between reduced HGS and metabolic syndrome or some of its components, particularly abdominal obesity and insulin resistance. We conclude that lower than average HGS may be associated with metabolic syndrome in older adults.
What is normal?
Since there have been many studies on the correlation between grip strength and illness or life expectancy, a lot of data is available.
A British study has compiled this data and comes to the conclusion that the average maximum strength is usually reached by the end of the 20s.
It is therefore 51kg for men and 31kg for women:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25474696/
Does training improve these values?
Or does it work the other way around?
Although there are far fewer studies on the extent to which targeted training of grip strength has a positive effect on life expectancy, it seems that there are also correlations here.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34455171/
Do you know your grip strength?
There are said to be people who specifically train their grip strength with rubber balls. You can - but you don't have to.
I think there is an activity that is much more fun. And every child knows that fun has a positive correlation with the biomarkers mentioned:
Even as a (hobby) climber who rarely gets to enjoy climbing, my grip strength is usually off the recommended scales...
So maybe there is a connection between climbing and health?
In any case, to ensure that longevity also works, you shouldn't neglect your belay technique.
Because: right after all the well-known metabolic and degenerative diseases (commonly known as "widespread diseases") comes trauma, i.e. violent (accidental) death in the statistics...
Take good care of yourself!
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