What to know if you’re aging in a healthy way? Try standing on one leg

The simple act of standing on one leg can reveal how well you are aging, according to a new study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. In fact, the study found that how long you can do it is a more accurate measure than strength or gait, since balance declines more rapidly with age than these other indicators.

The study involved 40 healthy people over the age of 50 — half of them under 65, half 65 and older — who underwent walking, balance, grip strength and knee strength tests.

For the balance tests, the participants held several poses each for up to 30 seconds at a time: bilateral stance (on both feet) with eyes open, bilateral stance with eyes closed, as well as dominant leg and non-dominant leg unilateral stance with eyes open.

The researchers found that gait walking was not significantly affected by age in the participants they studied, and knee strength and grip strength both declined over each decade of age, though by a relatively small amount.

The biggest change they observed was in the one-legged stance. “The duration of unipedal balance showed the most significant change per decade,” they wrote in their report, Age-Related Changes in Gait, Balance, and Strength Parameters: A Cross-Sectional Study. They added: “Sex differences were observed exclusively in strength parameters, with no discernible impact on the decline in balance parameters.”

The researchers noted that sway when balancing on one leg was not related to age or sex, so swaying is not a good predictor of aging. However, one-legged standing time declined at the rate of 2.2 seconds per decade in the non-dominant side and 1.7 seconds per decade in the dominant side. “Hence, the duration the subjects could balance on one leg deteriorated with age.”

They added: “The importance of balance, especially in unipedal stance, arises from the fact that it requires multiple sensory inputs and neuromuscular control, in addition to adequate muscle strength. This is why balance on one leg … undergoes the fastest decline in our healthy cohort, reflecting age-related declines in muscle strength similar to prior studies, and in the rapid coordination and integration of data by the central nervous system. To the best of our knowledge, such a comparison is the first of its kind within the elderly population.”

The importance of good balance when one ages is vital, they noted. “Balance impairments can lead to falls, both while stationary and while moving,” they wrote. “Elderly individuals are at an increased risk of bone fractures with serious consequences due to osteoporosis, making falls a severe health risk.”

They also noted the intricate interplay of bodily functions at play in such a seemingly simple task: “Balance is a complex activity that integrates information from vision, the vestibular system, and the somatosensory system to sense positions, velocities, and accelerations … Static balance is necessary for maintaining postural control during standing and some physical activities and dynamic balance is crucial to control the body’s centre of mass during mobility.”

According to Canada’s National Initiative for Care of the Elderly, falls are the leading cause of injury-related hospitalizations and injury deaths among Canadians aged 65 or older.

The group notes that falls cause an estimated 80 per cent of seniors’ injury-related hospitalizations, 90 per cent of hip fractures, and $2 billion dollars a year in direct healthcare costs, with more than a third of seniors admitted to long-term care following hospitalization for a fall.

In 2021, BBC journalist Michael Mosley devoted an episode of his podcast Just One Thing to the topic of the health benefits of standing on one leg.

Speaking to the website SciTechDaily, Kenton Kaufman, PhD, senior author of the study and director of the Motion Analysis Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic, said people can take steps to train their balance. For example, by standing on one leg, you can train yourself to coordinate your muscle and vestibular responses to maintain correct balance. If you can stand on one leg for 30 seconds, you are doing well.

“If you don’t use it, you lose it. If you use it, you maintain it,” Kaufman said. “It’s easy to do. It doesn’t require special equipment, and you can do it every day.”

The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

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