how old are you? Stand on one leg and I'll tell you

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

welcome to impact factora weekly commentary on new medical research. I'm Dr. F. Perry Wilson of the Yale School of Medicine.

So I was lying in bed last night trying to look at my phone and started complaining to my wife about how my eyesight keeps getting worse, how stiff I wake up in the morning, and about my recent injury. It took too long to heal, so she said, “It’s taking too long to heal. You are 44 years old. Then things start going downhill. ”

So I said: “44 years old? That seems very specific. I thought it was 50 years old that people would complain about.” And she said, “No, that's a problem, 44 years old and 60 years old. There is a drop-off area.”

And you know what? She was right.

the study, “Nonlinear dynamics of multi-omics profiles in human aging”” was published. natural aging In August 2024, I analyzed a large amount of proteins and metabolites in people of different ages and together they showed that there are significant changes in body chemistry over time, with changes peaking at ages 44 and 60. It was discovered that it reached . I should have known better than to doubt my excellent spouse.

But deep down, I believe in the cliché that age is just a number. I don't particularly care about being 44 or turning 50 or 60. I'm concerned about how my body and brain age. If I reach my full potential and reach the age of 80, happy and healthy, I will consider that a huge victory, no matter what the calendar says.

Therefore, I am always interested in how to quantify the aging of my body, regardless of how many birthdays have passed. And according to new research, there's actually a very easy way to do this. Just stand on one leg.

amazing thing result This comes from Age-related changes in gait, balance, and muscle strength parameters: a cross-sectional study. Pro Swan, The study analyzed 40 individuals (half under the age of 65 and half over the age of 65) across various domains of muscle strength, balance and gait. Research conceit? We all know that things like strength and balance deteriorate over time, but what deteriorates fastest? The best indicator of how our bodies are aging What is it?

To that end, there are different correlations between different indicators and calendar years.

Grip strength decreases with age. Men (inexplicably pink) have higher grip strength overall, while women (confusingly blue) have lower grip strength. A weaker correlation was found for knee strength.

How's the balance?

To assess this, the researchers had participants stand on a pressure plate. In one scenario we did this with our eyes open and in the next with our eyes closed. They then measured how much the pressure changed near the person's center on the plate, meaning how much the person swayed while standing there.

As I got older, the swings got bigger. The shaking was a little louder with my eyes closed than with my eyes open.

However, the strongest correlation between these measures and age was simple: “How long can you stand on one leg?”

Especially for the non-dominant leg, what we see here is a pretty dramatic drop in balance time around the age of 65, with younger people easily doing 10 seconds, but some older people doing 2 seconds. can be achieved at last.

Of course, I had to try this out for myself. And when I stood on one leg, I could see it clearly. why This may be a good indicator. It really integrates balance and strength in a way that no other test can. It's obviously balanced because it has to stay vertical on a relatively small base. But power is needed as well. Because one leg supports the rest of the body. You feel it after a while.

So this indicator passes the smell test for me, at least as a potential surrogate for age-related physical decline.

However, it should be noted that this is a cross-sectional study. Researchers looked at how these things change as we age, not in the same people, but in different people of different ages.

Also, using the correlation coefficient on a graph like this one shows that there is a constant linear relationship between age and time spent standing on one leg. The raw data, i.e. the points on this graph, don't look very linear to me. As mentioned above, it looks like we could see a bit of a sharp decline somewhere in the mid-60s. This means that it may not be able to be used as a sensitive test for aging, which changes slowly as the body ages. Basically, you may be able to stand on one leg as long as you like, but someday you may no longer be able to do so. Therefore, there are fewer warnings and fewer actions to take.

And finally, we don't know whether changing this metric will change your health for the better. A good physical therapist or physiotherapist will be able to develop exercises to increase the amount of time you can stand on one leg. And with practice, you can definitely increase your numbers even further. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy. It's like “teaching to the test.” You may have gotten a good score on the common test, but you haven't actually learned the content.

Therefore, I have not added standing on one leg to my daily exercise routine. But I'm not going to lie, sometimes, on my 60th birthday of course, you might find me standing there like a flamingo with a stopwatch in my hand.

F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE, is an associate professor of medicine and public health and director of the Clinical and Translational Research Accelerator at Yale University. His science communication work can be found on the Huffington Post, NPR, and here at Medscape. He posts at @fperrywilsonand his book, How drugs work and when they don't work, currently available.