Grip Strength: Standards and Exercises

A study published last month in Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle, investigated the relationship between muscle function and dementia.Use of data from Perth Longitudinal Study on Aging in Womenresearchers examined more than 1,000 women with an average age of 75.

Researchers, working with the University of Western Australia, measured grip strength in women and performed a timed up-and-go test, also known as the TUG test. Please sit down.

Five years later, researchers repeated the test to measure performance. Over 15 years, researchers found that nearly 17% of the women who participated in the study had a dementia-related hospitalization or death.

Relationship between grip strength and cognitive decline

People with weak grip strength were thought to be “more than twice as likely to be late in life” dementia Events than the strongest individuals, according to research. Similarly, those who performed slower on the TUG test were found to be more than twice as likely to have dementia than the fastest participants.

The team concluded that poor grip strength and slow TUG testing “are significant risk factors for developing dementia, independent of genetic risk and lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity levels.” I decided.

“The range of potential similarities makes grip strength a surrogate measure of cardiovascular disease, inflammation and frailty, known risk factors for dementia,” said Mark Sim, one of the principal investigators, in a press release. may also exist,” he said. About research.

As such, he recommended grip strength and the TUG test as inexpensive screening tools that should be added to clinical practice for early identification of dementia risk in patients.

“Incorporating muscle function testing as part of dementia screening may benefit from primary prevention programs aimed at preventing the development of conditions such as a healthy diet and a physically active lifestyle. “It could help identify certain high-risk individuals,” Shim said. It suggests that if we can stop this decline, we may be able to prevent late-life dementia. However, more research is needed in this area.”

Why Grip Strength Matters

Grip strength usually starts to decline around the age of 50, but some studies show it can start as early as the late 40s. Essentially, grip strength is an indicator of muscle tissue being replaced by adipose tissue, explains Dr. Ardeshir Hashmi. Cleveland Clinic Geriatric Centerwas not part of the study.

“Grip strength is one of the easiest metrics to measure,” he says. “What you’re essentially measuring is the replacement of muscle tissue with fat tissue, which reduces your grip strength. The same reason you walk slower. [as we age] likewise. “

Grip strength as an indicator of cognitive health

It should come as no surprise to anyone that physical health is also linked to cognitive health. People who are active for at least 10 minutes each day Mentally sharper than an inactive person. According to Hashmi, this is largely due to his two theories. One theory is that people who are active have better cardiovascular health than those who are not.

“We know physical activity is good for the heart. It strengthens the heart, lowers blood pressure, and improves cardiac output,” he says. “So the heart can pump blood more easily. If the heart is in good shape, the blood supply to the brain is also optimized.”

The second theory is related to brain oxygenation.

“When you exercise, you get more oxygen into your lungs. Oxygenation is important for all tissues, but brain tissue is very sensitive to this in a positive way,” says Hashmi. “So the more oxygen you have, the sharper you are. Depriving the brain of its oxygen and blood supply not only causes brain tissue to shrink, but there are areas that die, especially in memory areas.”

How to Improve Your Grip Strength (and Support Brain Health)

To combat this cognitive decline and improve your grip strength, Hashmi recommends the following exercises.

• Combine light weights with aerobic activity for at least 10 minutes a day. “It’s about a combination of both,” Hashmi says. “And it doesn’t even have to be free weights. You can use resistance bands. But it has to be something you can do every day.
• Squeeze the stress ball (well resistant). Proper consistency is typically found in racquetball or squash balls. A tennis ball can do more damage than it does, and if the ball is too mushy, you won’t get the benefits of exercise. There’s no defined number of sets you must do, but Hashmi recommends people repeat this exercise every day, or twice a day if possible.

“Even things that might not be directly linked to physical frailty, such as memory impairment and cognitive impairment, actually get worse in frail people,” says Hashmi. “If you look at the spectrum of frailty, from robust to extremely frail, you can see that it’s exactly consistent with the progression of dementia,” Hashmi says. “So he can go from mild cognitive impairment or mild memory impairment to moderate to severe dementia. These two things he tends to go in parallel.”