Those who can sit down and get up using only one hand – or no hands at all – are likely to live for longer, a study has found.
Brazilian clinic, Clinimex, used a 2,000 person sample of men and women aged between 50 and 80.
Both sexes were asked to perform the sitting to standing test and were then monitored for the next 6.3 years, leading up to October 2011, or until the day of their death.
During the two minute test individuals were told: “Without worrying about the speed of movement, try to sit and then to rise from the floor, using the minimum support that you believe is needed.”
Two tests were conducted and scored out of five, making a composite score of ten, with one point subtracted from five for each support used such as a hand or knee.
Researchers discovered that those who could rise easily had the “capacity to successfully perform a wide range of activities of daily living, such as bending over to pick up a newspaper or a pair of glasses from under a table."
During the period of study 159 participants passed away.
According to the study, only 2 out of 159 deaths occurred in participants with high scores. The majority of deaths occurred in instances where the person concerned had a low test score and therefore reduced flexibility.
Mr Araújo concluded: “If a middle-aged or older man or woman can sit and rise from the floor using just one hand- or even better without the help of a hand- they are not only in the higher quartile of musculo skeletal fitness but their survival prognosis is probably better than that of those unable to do so.”