A straightforward balance test may signal heightened risks of disease and early mortality. Research involving over 1,700 participants revealed a starkly higher death rate among those unable to stand on one leg for 10 seconds. This simple assessment could soon integrate into routine midlife health screenings.
Aging naturally brings gradual losses in fitness, muscle strength, flexibility, and balance. Obesity combined with poor balance and flexibility significantly harms health, increasing frailty, falls, and severe medical complications. Globally, falls rank as the second leading cause of injury-related deaths.
Balance, unlike aerobic capacity, strength, or flexibility, holds steady into the mid-50s before declining sharply. Yet, routine clinical assessments for middle-aged and older adults rarely include it. A recent study underscores why it should.
Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers from the University of Bristol examined if standing on one leg for 10 seconds links to all-cause mortality.
The study enrolled 1,702 individuals (68% men, 32% women) aged 51 to 75 from 2008 to 2020. Survival models adjusted for factors like weight, waist size, and medical history compared death risks based on test performance. Participants got three tries per foot; 348 (about one in five) failed.
Failure rates rose with age: around 5% for ages 51-55, 8% for 56-60, nearly 18% for 61-65, under 37% for 66-70, and over 50% beyond that.
Over a median seven-year follow-up, 7% of participants (123 people) died from causes like cancer, cardiovascular disease, COVID-19, or others.
No direct ties linked test scores to specific causes or lifespan, but failures faced a 17.5% death rate versus 4.5% for passers. Failures often had higher obesity, heart disease, and hypertension rates.
Adjusting for these, inability to balance for 10 seconds correlated with an 84% higher 10-year all-cause mortality risk.
The researchers propose this quick, non-invasive test as a valuable routine tool, akin to blood pressure or glucose checks.
