Can you stand on one leg for 10 seconds? According to recent research, middle-aged people who cannot do this for 10 seconds are nearly twice as likely to die within a decade. Scientists in Brazil say a simple and safe balance test should become part of a routine health check for older adults.
Your stability declines rapidly after you reach the age of 50. So the test can be an indication of how quickly you are deteriorating physically.
The test has been part of a physical examination of healthy people that has been done since 1994.
As part of the control, participants had to stand on one leg for 10 seconds without any support. They had to put the sole of the free foot on the back of the opposite leg, keeping their arms at their sides and looking straight ahead. The researchers experimented with each person three times on both feet.
Notable result: the subjects who could not control died twice from various causes in the years after the experiment. Of these deaths, 32 percent were from cancer, 30 percent from cardiovascular disease, 9 percent from respiratory diseases, and seven percent from complications from the coronavirus.
Sources): study discovers