A simple, though not necessarily easy, test may help predict how many years a person has left, according to exercise researchers who have been tracking thousands of middle-aged and older people for more than a decade.
The sitting-to-rising test requires enough balance, muscle strength and flexibility to be able to sit down on the floor without using arms, hands or knees and then to stand up again just as unaided. The movement is a way to determine non-aerobic fitness and reveals potential problems that might be otherwise missed, according to the new report published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology on Wednesday.
The team at the Exercise Medicine Clinic in Rio de Janeiro recruited 4,282 adults, mostly men, ages 46 to 75. After evaluating the participants’ health, the researchers presented them with the test.
Using a zero to five point system, participants got a perfect score if they were able to go from standing upright to sitting on the floor without touching anything on the way down.
Each body part, say a hand or an elbow or a knee, that was used to guide or help balance resulted in a subtraction of one point from the total. People also lost half a point for being wobbly. On the way back up, points were subtracted if extremities touched anything.
Twelve years later, the researchers followed up with the participants. By that time, there had been 665 deaths overall due to “natural causes,” the researchers found.
The vast majority of perfect scorers were still alive at follow-up, as compared to a little more than 9 in 10 of those who had lost two points and, dramatically, just under half of those with scores between 0 and 4.
Among participants initially diagnosed with heart disease, those with low scores on the test were more likely to have died by the 12-year mark.
Aerobic fitness is important but muscle strength, a healthy body mass index, or BMI, balance and flexibility are also vital for healthy aging, said Dr. Claudio Gil Araújo, director of research and education at the clinic and the study’s lead author. People can improve on their deficits and then score better on the test.
While the study doesn’t directly link a perfect score to longevity, “it is quite reasonable to expect this,” Araújo said.
The new findings are part of a growing field of longevity. Other recent research includes a balance test: People who couldn’t stand for 10 seconds on one foot were nearly twice as likely to die within the following 10 years as those who could manage the balance.
Keith Diaz, a professor of behavioral medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center, said the new test can be a conversation starter for doctors to get patients thinking about what it takes for healthy aging.
If someone scores poorly, “you might be able to get them to start working on their flexibility and balance,” Diaz said. “If the patient is struggling to get off the floor, it could be a red flag for their overall health.”
Dr. Joseph Herrera, chair of the department of rehabilitation and human performance for the Mount Sinai Health System, cautioned that for someone who can’t successfully stand up and sit down without help, there are ways to improve.
Weight training, balance training and improving flexibility can help.
Other tests that have become popular, Herrera said, include the six-minute walk, where the point is to see how far the person can travel in six minutes; and the sit-to-stand-sit test, in which the patient is asked to sit in a chair, then rise out of a chair and then sit down again five times in 30 seconds.
“We should be looking at the results of these tests as pieces of a puzzle,” he said.
