Get a grip on your life expectancy (SMH)

Research confirms those who are physically competent, in such areas as balancing on one leg, rising from a seated position, live longer.

"Scientists at the Medical Research Council analysed the results of 33 studies into the link between ability to carry out simple physical tasks and age of death.

They found people who performed better at tasks including:

1) gripping

2) walking

3) rising from a chair and

4) balancing on one leg

... tended to live to a riper age.

Tens of thousands of men and women across the globe took part in the studies, some of which followed participants for 43 years.

Of the 14 studies dealing with grip strength, it was found that those with the strongest hand grasps tended to live longer than those with feeble ones."

But as one commentator observed:

If you have lived under bridges, battled the bottle and been in and out of hospital and employment you may not have a spring in your step or a confident handshake. I would have thought it was the years of hardliving and deprivation that shortens your life more than you shuffle.

Which ties in with Michael Marmot's work that the number determinant of a long life and good health is favourable 'psycho-social' circumstances.