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Doctor explains how to do a simple physical test that can predict your longevity

People who fail are more likely to die in six years.

via Pexels

A woman sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat

Everyone wants to know how long they will live and there are many indicators that can show whether someone is thriving or on the decline. But people have yet to develop a magic formula to determine exactly how long someone should expect to live.

However, a doctor recently featured on the "Today" show says a straightforward test can reveal the likelihood that someone aged 51 to 80 will die in the near future.

NBC News medical contributor Dr. Natalie Azar was on the "Today" show on March 8 and demonstrated how to perform the simple “sit to stand test” (aka sit-rising test or SRT) that can help determine the longevity of someone between 51 to 80.

The test is pretty simple. Go from standing to sitting cross-legged, and then go back to standing without using any parts of your body besides your legs and core to help you get up and down. The test measures multiple longevity factors, including heart health, balance, agility, core and leg strength and flexibility.

You begin the test with a score of 10 and subtract points on your way up and down for doing the following:

Hand used for support: -1 point

Knee used for support: -1 point

Forearm used for support: -1 point

One hand on knee or thigh: -1 point

Side of leg used for support: -1 point

A 2012 study published by the European Society of Cardiology found a correlation between the SRT score and how long people live. The study was conducted on 2002 people, 68% of whom were men, who performed the SRT test and were followed by researchers in the coming years. The study found that “Musculoskeletal fitness, as assessed by SRT, was a significant predictor of mortality in 51–80-year-old subjects.”

Those who scored in the lowest range, 0 to 3, had up to a 6 times greater chance of dying than those in the highest scores (8 to 10). About 40% of those in the 0 to 3 range died within 11 years of the study.

Azar distilled the study on "Today," saying: "The study found that the lower the score, you were seven times more likely to die in the next six years.”

"Eight points or higher is what you want," Azar said. "As we get older, we spend time talking cardiovascular health and aerobic fitness, but balance, flexibility and agility are also really important," she stressed.

One should note that the people who scored lowest on the test were the oldest, giving them an elevated risk of death.

Dr. Greg Hartley, Board Certified Geriatric Clinical Specialist and associate professor at the University of Miami, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that we should take the study with a grain of salt. “Frailty, strength, muscle mass, physical performance—those things are all correlated to mortality, but I would caution everybody that correlation doesn’t mean causation,” he said.

And of course, the test doesn't take into account injuries or disabilities that may make doing the test impossible. But one of the study's authors says that the study is a call to take our mobility seriously.

“The more active we are the better we can accommodate stressors, the more likely we are to handle something bad that happens down the road,” Dr. Claudio Gil Araujo, told USA Today.


This article originally appeared on 3.10.23

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Health

Give up dinner? Landmark study shows daytime eating could be the new fountain of youth.

Breakfast people are happy.

via Unsplash

Eating less could lead to a longer life.

Ever since Clive McCay published his landmark 1935 study that showed mice with severely restricted diets lived 33% longer, many have wondered whether caloric restriction could extend the human life span, too.

It makes for an interesting philosophical question: Would you trade the joy of eating for a longer life?

There are a few reasons why some say this type of caloric restriction could work to extend human life spans. First, larger animals tend to live longer than smaller ones because they have slower metabolic rates. When we consume fewer calories, we have less to metabolize.

Second, it’s speculated that caloric restriction reduces free radical damage in the body, slowing the aging process.

A new study out of UT Southwestern on mice has found that caloric restriction increases longevity, which isn’t exactly front-page news. However, the intriguing part is that this study found that the time of day the mice were fed had a big effect on their life spans.

Researchers found that restricting the calories mice ate by 30 to 40% increased their longevity by 10%. But mice that were fed the restrictive diet only while active at night lived 35% longer than those that ate whatever they wanted whenever they chose.

If this type of diet were adapted for a human’s biological rhythms, we’d eat low-calorie diets during the daytime. So if you’re the type that prefers breakfast over dinner, a long life could be in the cards. But if you love a four-course dinner, it may be hard to make the adjustment.

Bottom line: If the diet is found to work the same way in humans as it does for mice, when we eat will become almost as important as what we eat. It could also lead to changing the times we wake up and go to sleep. Who wants to stop eating at 3 p.m. and then go to bed hungry at 11 p.m.?

“It’s pretty clear that the timing of eating is important to get the most bang for your buck with calorie restriction,” Dr. Joseph Takahashi, Ph.D, one of the lead researchers on the study, said in a news release.

“We have discovered a new facet to caloric restriction that dramatically extends life span in our lab animals,” said Dr. Takahashi, the Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience. “If these findings hold true in people, we might want to rethink whether we really want that midnight snack.”

The study also makes the interesting case that low body weight isn’t necessarily tied to longevity.

“This shows that at low body weight, this popular yardstick of health (body weight) is not a predictor of life span,” said Dr. Carla Green, Distinguished Scholar in Neuroscience at UT Southwestern.

Obviously, this study was performed on mice and there’s a long way to go before we can be sure that this type of drastic dieting will expand human life or doesn’t come with any dangerous side effects. But it is compelling to imagine that by simply adjusting what and when we eat we could live up to 35% longer.

That would push the life span of the average American male from 75 to 103 and female from 81 to 109.

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Well Being

108-year-old woman credits her longevity to one thing: champagne

via Facebook / Bupa UK

Dorothy Flowers recently celebrated her 108th birthday at the Southlands Care Home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in England.

When Flowers was born back in 1911, humans had just learned to fly, the first World War was on the horizon, and nobody would know what a selfie was for at least 90 years.

It feels nearly impossible to imagine the changes that Flowers has seen over the years. She's lived through two world wars, the invention of radio, television, and the Internet.

But it seems that she made it this far because she knew how to take it easy every once in a while.

She credits her longevity to drinking a glass of champagne occasionally. So cheers to you, Dorothy Flowers!

RELATED: A server accidentally served a $5,750 bottle of wine and her manager told the world about it on Twitter

To celebrate Flowers's 108th, the care home put out a call for birthday cards, and Flowers received 650 of them.

via Facebook / Bupa UK

Flowers may not be too far off the mark by crediting her longevity to drinking champagne. A recent study published in Wine Spectator shows that moderate, daily wine drinkers live longer than those who do not.

The 90+ Study, an ongoing project by the University of California at Irvine Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, looked at a variety of lifestyle habits to see how they impact longevity.

RELATED: What happens after drinking 1, 2, and 3 glasses of wine? 19 viral photos tell all.

The study found that those who drank two glasses of wine or beer a day had an 18% reduced risk of premature death over those who abstained.

Researchers haven't provided any specific reasons as to why those who drink on a daily basis live longer. But we should take their word for it.

In an email to Wine Spectator, Dana Greenia, a co-investigator of the 90+ Study said, "Simply, people who drank moderate amounts of alcohol or coffee lived longer than those who abstained."

One of the oldest people on Earth and a team of scientists all agree that boozing it up a little every day can help you live longer. Pop a cork on a bottle champs tonight and if anyone judges you, tell them you're only doing it for your health. We're sure Dorothy Flowers would approve.

Cheers.

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If you love being single, you'll love Emma Morano, once the oldest person on Earth.

Emma Morano spent the vast majority of her 117 years single as can be, and she was perfectly OK with that.

Emma Morano had eaten about 100,000 raw eggs, give or take.

For most of her 117 years on this Earth*, Morano ate three eggs every day (nowadays, though, The New York Times reports, she's down to two). She picked up the habit about a century ago, when her doctor recommended the diet to ward off anemia.

But it wasn't raw eggs she craved on Nov. 29, 2016, with friends and family — and members of international media — huddled around her dusty, two-bedroom apartment in northern Italy. It was birthday cake.

"Hey, isn’t there anything to eat here?" she asked before diving in.

At 117 years young, Morano is, at this time, the oldest known person on the planet.

One of her best pieces of advice to living a long, healthy life? Cherish the single life.

She separated from her husband nearly eight decades ago — when doing so wasn't such a popular move — and hasn't looked back since.

As The New York Times reported (emphasis added):

"She is also convinced that being single for most of her life, after an unhappy marriage that ended in 1938 following the death of an infant son, has kept her kicking. Separation was rare then, and divorce became legal in Italy only in 1970. She said she had plenty of suitors after that, but never chose another partner. 'I didn’t want to be dominated by anyone,' she said."

Photo by Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images.

That's right. If you'd asked Morano, singlehood kept her going for nearly 12 decades (along with that healthy diet of raw eggs, of course).

The science is on Morano's side here, believe it or not.

Although you might assume that people in relationships live longer, what with all the ways society is constantly urging us to find our soulmates and settle down ASAP, research suggests single women are just as likely to live long, fulfilling lives as married ones (men may be different).

Living the heck out of a solo life may make certain people happier than settling down with a partner, too. Research out of the University of Auckland's School of Psychology suggests that, depending on what types of factors motivate our decision-making, staying single might be the way to go for some of us.

So yes — "All the Single Ladies" that Beyoncé knows have science on their side.

Morano, who was "very, very happy" celebrating the big 1-1-7, doesn't need a scientific study to tell her what she already knows all too well.

Photo by Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images.

“115 years are a lot," Morano told The New York Times. When you've lived your life like hers, though, it's time well-spent.

Morano was 12 when the Titanic sunk. She watched the world evolve from using telegraphs to relying on smartphones. And she lived through some dark times in postwar Italy.

But if you ask her, global affairs and technological advances are far less memorable than the relationships she's had — the non-romantic ones, of course.

“My sisters and I loved to dance," she recalled to The New York Times.

Congrats, Emma — 117 never looked so good.

* Update 11/30/2017: Morano died April 15, 2017, still aged 117. Minor changes to this story were made to reflect her passing.

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