Keeping Up with Life (Part 1): Four Everyday Measures That Help You Age Well
We often think about health as something revealed through blood work, scans, or numbers on a medical chart. Yet some of the clearest signs of how well we're functioning reveal themselves in much quieter moments: getting off the floor, catching our balance, carrying groceries, crossing the street before the light changes, or simply moving through the world with confidence.
In this first installment of Keeping Up with Life, Dr. Wendy Bazilian begins with a family story that has stayed with her for years. It's a story about her grandfather, resilience, resourcefulness, and a moment that became a lasting reminder that our everyday independence rests on physical abilities we rarely notice until they're challenged.
From there, Wendy explores four remarkably simple measures that researchers have associated with function, healthy aging, and longevity: the ability to sit down on the floor and stand back up, balance on one leg, grip strength, and walking speed. None requires expensive equipment or a sophisticated laboratory. Together, they offer a practical window into how strength, mobility, balance, coordination, and physical reserve quietly support the lives we want to keep living.
Along the way, you'll hear the stories behind several landmark studies, why these measures have captured the attention of researchers around the world, and why they're best viewed as opportunities for curiosity rather than scores to judge. Rather than asking us to pass or fail, these measures invite us to become more aware of what our bodies can do today and where there is room to build greater strength, confidence, and reserve. They're about understanding where we are today and recognizing that many of these capacities can be strengthened over time.
Perhaps most importantly, this conversation shifts the focus from simply living longer to continuing to participate fully in life. Whether it's playing with grandchildren on the floor, gardening, traveling, exploring a new city, recovering from an unexpected stumble, or confidently saying yes to experiences that matter, our physical abilities quietly shape the experiences we can say yes to.
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. In the next episode, Wendy moves from the "why" to the "how," sharing practical, evidence-based ways to strengthen these capacities and weave them naturally into everyday life.
Our bodies are constantly preparing us for the unexpected. This episode is an invitation to notice. The abilities that help us keep up with life are often the ones we notice least until we need them most.
WE DISCUSS
(0:00) Keeping Up with Life - Part 1
(1:11) A Story About Pop, Independence, and the Kitchen Floor
(6:08) The Abilities We Rarely Think About
(6:50) Getting Down...and Back Up Again
(10:46) What the Sit-to-Rise Studies Revealed
(20:00) Balance: The Conversation Happening Behind Every Step
(25:18) Standing on One Leg and What It May Reveal
(32:01) Grip Strength and Your Physical Reserve
(41:10) Walking Speed and Keeping Up with Life
(48:18) What Does It Mean to Keep Up with Life?
CONNECT WITH WENDY
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Thank you for tuning in to 1,000 Waking Minutes and being part of this journey together. A huge thank you to our amazing collaborators including our production and marketing teams and Gabriela Escalante in particular. To the ultra-talented Beza for my theme music, my lifelong friend and artist Pearl Preis Photography and Design, to Danielle Ballantyne, Jen Nguyen, Joanna Powell, and of course, my family and everyone working tirelessly behind the scenes.
HEALTH DISCLAIMER
The information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered individual medical or health advice. Always consult with your trusted healthcare provider before making any changes to your diet, exercise, or medical treatment.
Transcript
We tend to think of health as something that shows up in lab results, scans and medical charts,
Speaker:but sometimes it reveals itself in much simpler ways, like getting up from the floor,
Speaker:standing on one leg, hearing what life asks of us, and moving into the world with confidence.
Speaker:We experience 1,000 waking minutes on average every day.
Speaker:How are you spending yours?
Speaker:I'm Dr. Wendy Bazilian, and you're listening to 1,000 Waking Minutes.
Speaker:I can't wait to connect with you here with practical ways to eat well, move daily, and be healthy,
Speaker:to optimize every waking minute you live for a happier, healthier life.
Speaker:Thank you for sharing some of your waking minutes with me today.
Speaker:Let's get started.
Speaker:Hello, I'm Dr. Wendy Bazilian, and thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker:Before we begin, I want to tell you a story about my grandfather.
Speaker:We called him Pop.
Speaker:Well, Pop was living independently into his 90s, but within a larger assisted living sort of ecosystem.
Speaker:Some of those communities that exist now that are so wonderful with transition all the way through your senior years, if you choose.
Speaker:Well, one Sunday morning, he had a fall.
Speaker:Thankfully, he wasn't seriously injured, but he found himself in a situation many older adults fear.
Speaker:He couldn't get back up.
Speaker:What happened next became the talk.
Speaker:It became basically family legend.
Speaker:As a World War II bombardier, Pop had certain resources in his mind that he always called into action when he was in a situation.
Speaker:And he was very industrious, shall we say, and always optimistic.
Speaker:Well, this day he had fallen in his kitchen on the kitchen carpet.
Speaker:And underneath his stove, he had a drawer where he housed some pans.
Speaker:Well, he reached for a pan.
Speaker:And when he fell, he was taking his dishes back from his breakfast in the morning.
Speaker:And he had a butter knife in his hand, and that had fallen on the floor as well.
Speaker:Well, he grabbed his butter knife from his breakfast place setting, and he grabbed that pan.
Speaker:And you know what he did?
Speaker:Of course, he began to tap SOS in Morse code for hours.
Speaker:I have to pause because it just gives me the giggles.
Speaker:Rest in peace, Pop.
Speaker:How this came to pass, and him recounting the story, by the way.
Speaker:I'm just sort of bringing it to life here today.
Speaker:Well, eventually, after hours of tapping SOS in Morse code, the most logical thing at the moment for this man to do,
Speaker:a very smart man, well, he shifted and turned on his voice, so to speak.
Speaker:It was Sunday.
Speaker:People had been in, like, different services and breakfast and brunch at chapel.
Speaker:So he started yelling out.
Speaker:In and around, I believe, 11 a.m.
Speaker:And I won't tell you when this fall happened, but I mentioned hours.
Speaker:Someone heard him calling out and came to help.
Speaker:He was fine.
Speaker:He was a little bruised.
Speaker:He was observed.
Speaker:He was undoubtedly a bit ruffled, probably frustrated.
Speaker:And later, later, after all this had transpired, we were all a little bit, quite a bit, maybe, amused at the whole thing.
Speaker:And if we're not laughing at this moment, and we assured him, and it was always this way because he was laughing, too.
Speaker:We always, it wasn't laughing at him.
Speaker:It was laughing with him, I assure you.
Speaker:This story became, in my life, family legend.
Speaker:Morse code.
Speaker:You can't make that up.
Speaker:And a small P.S. to my pop, my pop was also fluent in shorthand, the writing skill.
Speaker:And he would often impress us with his, like, fast note-taking.
Speaker:Like, tell me anything you want me to write.
Speaker:And he'd write it out for us his entire life as my grandfather, as I know him well into my adulthood.
Speaker:And, you know, as well beyond.
Speaker:And this incident, this occasion, this fall, with his solution that turned out happily in his circumstance, sits in my mind for a number of reasons.
Speaker:My pop was one of my all-time favorite people on this planet, ever.
Speaker:But this story served and still does as a reminder that so much of our lives, our daily ins and outs, we sort of take for granted.
Speaker:Our ability to, for example, clear your table after you eat.
Speaker:We take it for granted that we're going to get from point A to point B.
Speaker:And this incident is a reminder, as we take for granted some of our daily life, and we're bound to,
Speaker:it's built on physical abilities that we rarely think about until they're challenged.
Speaker:Like getting down and getting back up.
Speaker:About maintaining balance.
Speaker:Or having enough strength reserve when we need it.
Speaker:And while he didn't have strength to get up, he did have strength of fortitude to get himself help eventually through his various methods.
Speaker:Moving comfortably through and around the world that we live in is something that we rely on our body, our physical and our mental ability and our coordination, our balance to do.
Speaker:And if you've lived long enough, I imagine you have a few stories of your own, either from yourself or from family members or friends.
Speaker:And in fact, most of us don't think about these abilities until life gives us a reason to.
Speaker:So today we're going to explore four surprisingly simple measures that researchers have linked to health, function and longevity.
Speaker:None of these require expensive equipment.
Speaker:I hope this is going to be fun for you.
Speaker:You're going to test yourself.
Speaker:None of them requires a laboratory, even though the research I'll share, they did it in laboratory and controlled environments.
Speaker:Yet each of these offers sort of a window into how our bodies are supporting the lives that we want to live.
Speaker:So let's begin with the first.
Speaker:Let's begin where pop landed.
Speaker:And that is on the floor.
Speaker:There are certain movements that we perform so routinely when we're children that they almost become invisible.
Speaker:And sitting on the floor is one of them.
Speaker:Children drop to the floor without planning to.
Speaker:They build things there.
Speaker:They play games there.
Speaker:They spread out books and toys there.
Speaker:The floor is simply another place to be.
Speaker:In elementary school, they're brought into the circle or the square or onto the floor to meet and to come before the teacher.
Speaker:Crisscross applesauce, our teacher says, and they all kind of find their spot on the floor with their legs crossed.
Speaker:But at some point, often so gradually that we don't notice it happening, many adults begin sort of negotiating with the floor.
Speaker:Sort of like we look for the armrest before we sit down or we think about if we go down how we're going to go and get back up.
Speaker:We may choose a chair instead.
Speaker:And guess what?
Speaker:That floor hasn't changed a bit.
Speaker:But our relationship with it has.
Speaker:And this is one reason that I've thought about and I come back to and I check different papers and with the research, you know, sort of reconfirms, I guess, over some studies.
Speaker:And I want to share with you a couple of studies from Brazil that examined a incredibly simple movement that isn't so simple when we exercise it, but has real impact on our sort of life, longevity and adaptation and our ability to live well and reduce risk of dying early.
Speaker:So this is another important place to be really registering with this.
Speaker:And this research and this movement is actually sitting on the floor and getting back up, rising back up.
Speaker:So the researchers in the studies I'm going to share, they weren't measuring speed.
Speaker:They were interested in how people could complete the task, the movement, and how much support they needed along the way.
Speaker:They evaluated, like, did a hand come down when they were trying to get down?
Speaker:So they were given sort of a method that they were asked to perform, but not to do anything that was risky.
Speaker:They wanted to evaluate people's natural ability to get down onto the floor and get back up.
Speaker:It was on a scoring system.
Speaker:And so what was needed in order to get down and to get back up?
Speaker:And the scoring system sort of took points away from a perfect score of 10 if maybe you needed a hand to go down or if you needed a knee to get back up.
Speaker:Did your balance waver?
Speaker:And the scoring reflected these details.
Speaker:So a perfect score was 10, and it represented the ability to sit and rise without any support or loss of balance.
Speaker:Now, you could press pause, but I'll tell you a safe way to do it in a minute.
Speaker:But you're probably curious, can I do that if you haven't tried it recently?
Speaker:And points were deducted when hands and knees, forearms, or noticeable instability.
Speaker:I mean, a little waver may not deduct a point, but if it really took, you know, some shimmying and swaying to do it.
Speaker:And interestingly, if you think of this in a context, two people, you know, could arrive at the same destination, the floor, and get back up again.
Speaker:But they could demonstrate very different levels of their mobility and strength, their flexibility, their balance, their coordination, and their confidence all in that moment.
Speaker:Again, it wasn't speed, it was just your ability to get down and get back up.
Speaker:So the first study followed just over 2,000 adults between the ages of 51 and 80 for six years.
Speaker:And lower scores, here's the reported finding, lower scores were associated with higher risk of death during the follow-up period to six years.
Speaker:And each one-point increase in score, so less use of supports and whatnot, each one-point increase was associated with a 21% improvement in survival.
Speaker:Sort of how can that be? And we'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker:More than a decade later, the same research group revisited the question with double the group of individuals, 4,200 adults.
Speaker:And a median, so the high point of follow-up of 12 years, so double the follow-up.
Speaker:And the findings were remarkably similar. Individuals with the highest scores experienced substantially lower rates of cardiovascular and natural cause mortality.
Speaker:And those with the lowest scores had increases in that area.
Speaker:So what makes this research so interesting, I think, is not the suggestion that the floor itself predicts longevity, or just simply your ability to get down and get back up.
Speaker:But if you think about it, this movement, getting down and getting back up, and thinking, you know, how that plays out in our real life, but it asks several physiological systems to support and to, you know, come on duty at the same moment.
Speaker:And I mentioned some of them, but again, strength, balance, flexibility, our mobility, our body awareness, our body composition affects it.
Speaker:And the lead investigator, Dr. Araujo, described the test as capturing aspects of fitness that are not aerobic.
Speaker:One simple test like this, capturing all these aspects of fitness that are not aerobic, so this is not a traditional, like, what's your cardiovascular aerobic strength, or even what is your pure strength, but an integrated combination of many of the others that sort of support our day-to-day.
Speaker:And I think that's a useful way to look at it.
Speaker:Walking and cycling and swimming and other aerobic activities are enormously important to our health, as we know.
Speaker:But much of our daily life between the minutes depends on qualities that are, like, harder to measure and sort of easier to overlook until they begin to fade or show up as a critical moment and a challenge.
Speaker:So think about things like getting up and going and playing with a child, and the child drops down to play, like, let's play a game on the floor.
Speaker:And you say, yes, I want to, and then the next question is, you know, can I get down to the floor, can I get back up?
Speaker:How about getting down to retrieve something that you dropped?
Speaker:Of course, there are some really cool gadgets that can help us retrieve from standing, and thank goodness those gadgets exist, because this is a very real issue as we age to contend with.
Speaker:But getting down to reach down to retrieve something and engaging those different body systems.
Speaker:Think about gardening and how it takes you to different levels and how your mobility and balance and coordination all come to play at the same time.
Speaker:Or recovering from a stumble, something we all do.
Speaker:A little trip here, you catch your shoe, you catch the rug, you don't see the little edge of a step.
Speaker:And then, of course, getting up after a fall.
Speaker:My grandmother, so I told you about my pop, my grandmother actually could still get down onto the floor well into her 70s, and I think pretty close to her 80s as well.
Speaker:She could get down to the floor and back up.
Speaker:She didn't know about this test.
Speaker:I don't think this research was even, no, it wouldn't have been published yet, but she probably could get down and get back up.
Speaker:And for years, she volunteered in the school system with my aunt in the elementary school, and she went in a daily basis.
Speaker:She volunteered so much that she was awarded volunteer for over 1,000 hours in a year after retirement, after she had had a wonderful career.
Speaker:She was active in her community.
Speaker:She continued participating in the world around here.
Speaker:She didn't achieve a certain score.
Speaker:She would have had a 10 because she got down and got back up.
Speaker:Actually, I can't picture exactly if she used any support at all.
Speaker:That part maybe doesn't even matter.
Speaker:But she could do it.
Speaker:She could do it.
Speaker:And we all marveled that grandma could do that.
Speaker:But the floor was, I guess, simply one expression of that larger capacity, and we sort of were aware of it then.
Speaker:But I want you to be aware of how important this is.
Speaker:For some people, flexibility may be a limiting factor here, and others, balance.
Speaker:So this isn't a test that, you know, is the bottom line on anyone.
Speaker:You know, for some people, strength or mobility or confidence after an injury may come to play.
Speaker:So this is something that tests generally, you know, individuals are healthy enough to get down and get back up.
Speaker:But this is where, like, a physical therapist or a clinical exercise specialist, a personal trainer is certified,
Speaker:or other qualified movement professionals can be enormously helpful if you do have some limitations
Speaker:and you want to work toward the getting back up if you get down on the ground.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be a fall that prompts your need to do this.
Speaker:In fact, I would encourage you to not have that be the case.
Speaker:And that's one of the reasons for today's episode that got me thinking about sort of assessing and putting these together.
Speaker:The score itself is certainly less important than understanding what contributed to the score.
Speaker:And not everyone is going to find the floor the most useful place to begin.
Speaker:You know, if you, again, have significant arthritis, for example, or joint replacements or pain or balance concerns,
Speaker:you know, there can be limitations that will prevent you or making getting down to the floor difficult
Speaker:for reasons that have little to do with overall fitness or long-term health.
Speaker:I just want to be clear about that.
Speaker:But in those situations, there are other assessments that can provide more useful information.
Speaker:And one is the Center for Disease Control has something called the 30-Second Chair Stand Test.
Speaker:And this test is a really cool one because it measures how many times a person can rise from a chair
Speaker:and sit back down in 30 seconds without using their hands.
Speaker:So like the Floor Rise Test (aka Sit-Rise Test), it sort of offers a glimpse into the qualities, the abilities that support independence,
Speaker:including those strength and mobility and the ability to move confidently throughout our daily life.
Speaker:What I find so interesting about this research, again, is what movement like this can reveal for us.
Speaker:Sitting down on the floor and rising again engages that remarkable number, you know,
Speaker:sort of that sphere of systems in our body that are sort of operating all behind the scenes.
Speaker:You can train them, but they're operating behind the scenes all day long.
Speaker:And they also call on us, you know, doing this calls on our body awareness, you know,
Speaker:becoming attuned with like, what parts are moving? What does this require?
Speaker:And these are qualities that often, you know, like I said, operate quietly,
Speaker:sort of in the background of our day until we absolutely need them and we're like, oh, where did those go?
Speaker:Or, oh, thank goodness I got up because that was or that could have been worse if you stumble.
Speaker:And so this is just one example of how a simple movement can maybe tell us so much.
Speaker:And the goal isn't just getting off the floor, even though that's not a terrible goal when you fall, of course.
Speaker:And it's not some sort of party trick, though. I've seen it happen after we talk about it.
Speaker:It becomes sort of like that, but it does reflect a collection of physical activities that show up in our everyday life.
Speaker:And I think that that's really important for us to think about the score.
Speaker:Not so important, but being aware, you know, do you put a hand on the ground?
Speaker:Do you wobble during your your your rise up? You use a knee for support.
Speaker:Those aren't failures. Those are your mechanisms of support to help you do it.
Speaker:Can you strengthen those? Can you help identify what abilities have changed and can you build it up and retrain it?
Speaker:So this really makes us look closer at that.
Speaker:And I think it's really good because it tells us something important on its own.
Speaker:The next area. So we just are practicing, you know, getting down and getting back up.
Speaker:The next one is balance. And for something so fundamental, balance doesn't get much attention when it is in our physical space until it starts causing problems again.
Speaker:I mean, think about balance in general. We sort of talk about it constantly.
Speaker:We want balance in our schedules, in our relationships.
Speaker:We want to balance the checkbook if people do that or if you let your your your computer do that for you.
Speaker:Our finances. We want to balance our life, our work life balance.
Speaker:We admire people who appear to be balanced in their living.
Speaker:We imagine balance is sort of a calm and centered ideal.
Speaker:But I'm talking about literal balance today, physical balance.
Speaker:And is there a way to test it? Yes, there is.
Speaker:Can you do it? How good is it? What does it even tell you?
Speaker:And most importantly, is it something you can improve?
Speaker:And you've probably seen I hope you have. And if you haven't now, you know, there are there is balance training you can do.
Speaker:And we'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker:Most of us spend far more time thinking about cardiovascular fitness or strength training, resistance training.
Speaker:And that's really good. That's really important. Flexibility gets, you know, its moment in the spotlight,
Speaker:especially as we age, how important it is to be stretching and warming up and being flexible.
Speaker:But balance sort of enters into the conversation, you know,
Speaker:after we stumble, we start talking about it or after a fall or a near fall or when something happens
Speaker:and we go to the doctor and they're like, we need to work on balance.
Speaker:But balance is involved in hundreds of ordinary movements every day.
Speaker:So standing on one foot while stepping into a pair of pants is a good example of balance.
Speaker:Maybe you've graduated to sitting down before you step into your pants or leaning an elbow against the wall.
Speaker:However you do it, you recognize if I say it, yes, that does require balance.
Speaker:Or the times when you've, you know, sort of stumbled forward and caught it,
Speaker:or you do the little hop, hop place of one foot into the pants so that you can get two feet on the floor again quickly.
Speaker:When you reach for something on a high shelf, it requires balance.
Speaker:Think you're sort of shifting your weight and you need to balance.
Speaker:You have more weight on one leg than another.
Speaker:And you might have to be grabbing something that has a different weight and you have to bring it into your space and not lose your balance.
Speaker:When you step off a curb carrying groceries, there's a swing and there's a motion.
Speaker:You've got to catch yourself, got to leave the step.
Speaker:Even walking across uneven ground, which by the way, and we can come back to either today or on another episode,
Speaker:about the idea of walking on grass or surfaces that are slightly uneven and the power of proprioception,
Speaker:which is like the muscular and sensory and nervous system engagement with our balance system,
Speaker:that then interacts with our ears that have a balance system and then our eyes that have it as well.
Speaker:The idea of uneven ground being a great training field, so to speak, for balance, safe, uneven ground.
Speaker:Even getting out of the shower. Think of the shower.
Speaker:Usually there's a ledge. Usually there's a slip potential.
Speaker:Usually you're shifting from one surface to another, from absorbent towel, from a wet tile surface and lots of things.
Speaker:How about when someone calls your name and you turn real quick? Requires balance.
Speaker:Sorry, all these examples are coming to mind because balance really operates in ways that we have control over it,
Speaker:but in many unexpected ways where we just expect it to happen.
Speaker:And none of those feel like balance exercises, but every single one of them depends on balance.
Speaker:So that's what makes balance, I think, so fascinating.
Speaker:It isn't a single skill and it doesn't involve or belong to a single part of the body or body part.
Speaker:It's the result, again, of multiple systems working together in tandem, continuously in sync.
Speaker:Your muscles, your joints, your eyes are involved.
Speaker:Everything contributes, including your inner ear.
Speaker:Your nervous system is collecting information, interpreting it and making tiny adjustments to keep you upright and moving through the world with obstacles in the way I like to think of it.
Speaker:So most of this happens seamlessly. You don't even notice it. You just go.
Speaker:But again, like we were talking about before with the fall potential, until we challenge it.
Speaker:And one of the simplest ways to challenge it in a productive training type of way is to stand on one leg.
Speaker:Suddenly, all of those systems sort of reveal themselves and how they're working together.
Speaker:So a 2022 study that was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine,
Speaker:Researchers followed more than 1,700 adults between the age of 51 and 75 and asked them to perform what seems like a remarkably simple task.
Speaker:Stand on one leg for 10 seconds.
Speaker:Participants who were unable to do this had an approximately 84 percent higher risk of death during the follow up period than those who successfully completed the test.
Speaker:One test, stand on one leg for 10 seconds.
Speaker:And the findings in this study were that those who could not achieve that without holding, without touching, without losing their balance had an approximately 84 percent higher risk of death during the follow up period.
Speaker:That association. So as with the floor-rise (Sit-Rise) research I shared before, the finding is not that standing like a flamingo extends your life expectancy.
Speaker:The value is in what the test may reveal.
Speaker:Even though it is sort of, you know, I love sort of watching people who are very proficient at yoga who can stand in, that's not a flamingo pose, I can't remember the official name, but stand on one leg with their other foot sort of adjacent and attached above their knee and stand in that wonderful pose and just stand it seems like indefinitely.
Speaker:But for us, the single leg stance draws on strength, coordination, proprioception that I mentioned before is sort of the nervous system communication back to the brain.
Speaker:Our reaction time, think about that.
Speaker:And all these multiple systems communicating effectively.
Speaker:They're not all like working on high demand, they're working where they need to.
Speaker:And balance is one of the first places we can see it.
Speaker:And the idea even becomes more compelling when more research stacks on it, right?
Speaker:So a recent Mayo Clinic study looked at age related changes in gait, strength and balance and found that the one leg balance again appeared to decline more rapidly with age than either grip or gait measures.
Speaker:Gait is how you walk and move across space.
Speaker:And we're going to get to those in a couple minutes, but balance declined more rapidly.
Speaker:So balance may be one of the earliest indicators that something is changing.
Speaker:And that's why it's very important to pay attention to and why I want to spend some time on it.
Speaker:This mortality finding is certainly what attracts attention when people go, wow, that's shocking.
Speaker:But it isn't really what I find most interesting.
Speaker:It really is that it's a sort of predictive marker in decline.
Speaker:And it is also important to, you know, how quickly this challenge can reveal something about the body's ability.
Speaker:Maybe that's what I find very intriguing.
Speaker:And our body's ability to adapt and respond to environment.
Speaker:10 seconds can feel surprisingly long when you're standing on one leg.
Speaker:And you're probably about to try it right now.
Speaker:You're hitting pause and let me try it or you're thinking about it.
Speaker:If you find yourself when you're trying it, waving an arm, reaching for a countertop, negotiating with your gravity halfway through, that's just fine.
Speaker:And when we go through how to do it, in fact, I'm going to encourage you to absolutely be right next to that countertop, the back of a chair against a wall.
Speaker:But that provides you some information about balance.
Speaker:It's one of those abilities that tends to hide right there in plain sight.
Speaker:And a bunch of these today, we don't think about it when it's working well.
Speaker:We sure think about it when it fails us.
Speaker:And the cool thing is balance is highly trainable.
Speaker:The brain can learn. Your nervous system can relearn.
Speaker:Your muscles can become not only stronger, but more responsive.
Speaker:Your confidence can grow as you take on space and you feel that you're training it.
Speaker:And the improvements can happen far more quickly than people expect.
Speaker:So maybe that's why I think balance is one of the sort of fun ones when we talk about moving daily.
Speaker:It feels a little playful.
Speaker:Children challenge it constantly.
Speaker:They're hopping.
Speaker:I mean, sometimes I even ask my daughter, I'm like, what made you think that, you know, the walk to the sink today required, you know, a twirl, a step up?
Speaker:Why every time do we see logs or curbs or things to step up onto and walk across like a balance beam?
Speaker:Why do we need to, you know, what's compelling your brain to do that?
Speaker:Because it fascinates me.
Speaker:They turn every painted line into a tightrope.
Speaker:But somewhere along the way, many of us adults stop doing those things.
Speaker:And maybe we don't need to.
Speaker:We sort of learn our space.
Speaker:We just walk on.
Speaker:Maybe we get, you know, consumed with other important things in our mind and our brain.
Speaker:But balance isn't something you need to train at the gym unless you want to.
Speaker:You can do it with a physical therapist.
Speaker:You do it with an exercise trainer.
Speaker:And it's a great thing to do.
Speaker:You don't even need, you know, dedicated workouts for it.
Speaker:You can practice it just as children do.
Speaker:It can be practice in the margins and on the lines and the curbs of every day.
Speaker:Don't jump on the curb today if your balance is a little off.
Speaker:But you know what I mean.
Speaker:You can even do it while you're brushing your teeth.
Speaker:You can stand on one leg at the counter while you're brushing your teeth.
Speaker:It is a way to engage when other things are happening.
Speaker:Talking on the telephone, for example.
Speaker:Choosing an uneven trail when you get outside instead of the smoothest path and the flat path.
Speaker:So when you challenge your system and you repeat this over time,
Speaker:you can keep the conversation in the body happening, the connections.
Speaker:And that's what I really love because connection is what I hope that we get to do together.
Speaker:There's a lot of connection and conversation happening in your body.
Speaker:So standing on one leg for 10 seconds may not sound like much,
Speaker:but it offers an invitation to become curious, curious about what your body can do today,
Speaker:what it might be able to do in a few weeks from now and beyond.
Speaker:And in a couple moments, we'll explore these briefly.
Speaker:And I probably should dedicate a whole episode and maybe do some YouTube videos,
Speaker:maybe with a friend to show some of them on how we can assess it and talk about those practical ways.
Speaker:So if the Floor-Rise Test showed us several physical capacities coming together,
Speaker:balance asks us a slightly different question.
Speaker:How well are those systems communicating with one another?
Speaker:Right. So it turns out to be surprisingly revealing.
Speaker:And in just a simple 10 seconds per leg.
Speaker:So next, I'm going to talk about grip strength.
Speaker:I don't spend much time thinking about my strength.
Speaker:I mean, except in terms of strength training or doing the exercise that keeps your muscles active.
Speaker:But like how much strength to me anyway is not something I am consumed with all the time or think about.
Speaker:Some people think about it more.
Speaker:But strength actually shows up throughout our day and supports us day to day as well.
Speaker:And it's another one that can sort of be invisible until we need it.
Speaker:So I'm not talking about, you know, grab the dumbbell and see how much you can lift.
Speaker:But most days actually don't require dramatic amounts of like physical capacity where we are showing how much muscle we have.
Speaker:But it requires our strength within the day.
Speaker:We move through our routines without giving it much thought, whether we're strong enough.
Speaker:We see the bag, we pick it up, you know.
Speaker:Then something interrupts that whole illusion that it exists in the gym and not in our real life.
Speaker:Maybe, and I found myself like this, you go to lift a suitcase and you think you know what it's going to weigh and it's heavier or even lighter.
Speaker:Lighter in reverse can actually surprise the brain more.
Speaker:But you go to pick it with what you think is the amount of strength you need and you can't lift it.
Speaker:And all of a sudden you feel like back muscles engage.
Speaker:You feel your neck tense up because the muscles that you were bringing to the party weren't the muscles required for the job.
Speaker:And the opposite is true if you like overcompensate.
Speaker:You go to grab something that's light and you expect it to be heavy.
Speaker:You may fly yourself back.
Speaker:That's when balance would come in handy.
Speaker:You might fly back.
Speaker:If you're carrying a case of sparkling water, you know, for example, from the car and wonder, you know, if it got heavier since the last time you carried it.
Speaker:Carrying around bags of potting soil which are, you know, a little funny to carry because they're not like, they're not solid.
Speaker:They can bend and move and require different muscles to sort of keep on task and keep engaged as you're moving it from one place to another.
Speaker:And they're a little unruly sometimes because of the size and how you have to pick them up.
Speaker:They don't have nice little handles.
Speaker:Sometimes things that used to be a single trip from the car, your grocery carrying, now become two.
Speaker:You realize that, you know, I need to take two trips in.
Speaker:And then you start noticing that things have changed.
Speaker:And these are easy to dismiss on the day-to-day.
Speaker:Oh, it takes two trips.
Speaker:You know, I want to do that.
Speaker:But they're mostly familiar to all of us.
Speaker:And what makes them interesting is not about the object or the weight of the object or your strength, but they're about your reserve, what strength you have in your tank, in your body.
Speaker:Because most of the time, life only requires a tiny bit, a fraction of our physical capacity through our day.
Speaker:But the reserve is what remains available when life asks for more, more than usual.
Speaker:So researchers have become increasingly interested, and I think you'll find this interesting, in grip strength, our hand, grip strength, for a similar reason, to be an indicator about reserve.
Speaker:And at first thought, in first glance, you know, thinking about, you know, how hard can someone squeeze a handle seems sort of oddly specific.
Speaker:Yet the hand may be telling us something about the broader reserve of our whole body.
Speaker:So in a 2024 analysis of nearly 10,000 U.S. adults that were participating in the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) it's called, lower grip strength, so reduced grip strength, was associated with higher risk of death from all causes.
Speaker:Even after accounting for other factors that influence health, lower grip strength associated with higher risk of death from all causes.
Speaker:Odd? Well, not so much. That finding doesn't exist alone.
Speaker:Researchers have been analyzing data on this very same thing in other papers and studies and laboratories.
Speaker:One research group analyzed data from more than 107,000 adults over the age of 50 across 28 countries and found that even relatively small differences in strength between your two hands, difference between your two hands, was associated with higher risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality.
Speaker:That's due to cardiovascular health issues.
Speaker:And while that study examined grip strength asymmetry, like between your two hands rather than grip strength itself, it adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that the strength we carry through our daily life, our reserve, may be telling us more than we once realized.
Speaker:And again, just like with balance or the floor, researchers aren't particularly interested in the hand itself.
Speaker:They're interested in what this test or what the hand may reveal about the body's larger reserve.
Speaker:And grip strength is one of the things I never gave much thought to until I started noticing how many people intentionally train it in certain areas.
Speaker:Musicians, my spouse, a drummer, he engages his grip strength with fitness gadgets that he engages just sort of as like, not like an active fitness plan, but just, you know, when he's doing in between things.
Speaker:Climbers do this, mechanics, athletes, they train grip strength.
Speaker:People who rely on their hands for performance or precision often seem to understand instinctively that their grip is connected to something larger.
Speaker:Of course, they need it for a focused reason, but it represents something bigger.
Speaker:And it turns out they may have been paying attention to something that the research community is now saying we need to be interested in as well.
Speaker:So really, grip strength? Yes.
Speaker:And it's really important.
Speaker:And through the analysis, hand grip strength is not only a simple measure of hand strength, as I mentioned, it reflects overall skeletal muscle strength of the whole body.
Speaker:And while the research is, again, the hand was one, you know, sort of the marker of the skeletal muscle health, it did represent and increasingly is said to represent the body's larger reserve.
Speaker:So it starts to make a little more sense if we bring it back to how strength plays out in our real life.
Speaker:Strength helps us carry and lift and push, stabilize things to recover from things and to respond.
Speaker:Part of getting up off the floor requires strength, of course.
Speaker:And it's part of what allows us to navigate the expected demands of life and occasionally rise to the unexpected ones, the challenges.
Speaker:So groceries, I think of luggage, lifting it into that overhead bin.
Speaker:I think gardening again, opening those stubborn jars, you know, in the kitchen, picking up a child, you know, who may be wiggling.
Speaker:Or recovering quickly when something happens, they all draw on our reserve.
Speaker:And it allows us to engage in the choices that we make about trying things as well.
Speaker:So the nice thing, again, is that strength remains really responsive throughout our life.
Speaker:It can be trained.
Speaker:Muscles can adapt.
Speaker:And that's even been shown well into our 80s and even 90s.
Speaker:They really can.
Speaker:We used to think you got them and then they're going to be declining.
Speaker:You know, you got what you got.
Speaker:But capacity can grow.
Speaker:Reserve can be rebuilt.
Speaker:So we'll put that practice, you know, put that into practice later, I should say.
Speaker:But for now, just remember that grip strength is a useful reminder of some of the most important measures of health that are found in these simple things we're talking about today.
Speaker:It gives us the reserve.
Speaker:And the last one of the four I'm going to talk about is walking.
Speaker:That shows us what happens when we put our reserve to work.
Speaker:So I'm going to talk about our gait and our gait speed, our walking.
Speaker:Years ago, and this is what actually started this whole episode for me to talk about two things.
Speaker:One was the floor sit.
Speaker:And this was, these studies came back into my mind because of something that was happening outside in the real world.
Speaker:But years ago, I came across research that was looking at something I'd never really thought about, but makes completely sense.
Speaker:You know, when you hear something one time, it sort of sticks with you.
Speaker:Once in a while, you'll hear something like, forevermore, that's going to stick with me.
Speaker:And this was one of those moments.
Speaker:And the thing that I hadn't considered before was how important it was whether people could cross the street before the light changed.
Speaker:And I heard about research that looked at that, whether people could cross the street before the light changed.
Speaker:I thought, oh my gosh, how practical and how smart and how important is that?
Speaker:The moment I heard it, I literally couldn't stop thinking about it.
Speaker:It was a lot on my mind at the time.
Speaker:Now, it's not always on my mind.
Speaker:But when I am crossing streets, I often am looking at the light.
Speaker:And I think of this.
Speaker:So I had never really worried about crossing the street, frankly.
Speaker:You know, when you're younger, quite the opposite.
Speaker:You learn the rules.
Speaker:I've spent my life mostly moving quickly.
Speaker:I have a pretty fast pace when I'm walking on my own.
Speaker:I can meander.
Speaker:But I have a faster pace when I walk.
Speaker:And it never occurred to me to question that, crossing the street.
Speaker:The walk signal changed.
Speaker:You crossed.
Speaker:Life moved on.
Speaker:You know, end of story.
Speaker:That's your day.
Speaker:But once the question was planted, I started seeing it everywhere.
Speaker:And I bet you will, too.
Speaker:I began noticing also how many ordinary parts of daily life depend on our ability to keep moving through the world comfortably and confidently.
Speaker:You know, that there's a pace that we're running on.
Speaker:Whether you're running between airport gates during a very tight connection.
Speaker:Something many of us have done maybe a few too many times.
Speaker:Making it across that busy intersection before the countdown reaches zero.
Speaker:And now the modern ones have like the countdown and the sounds blaring at you.
Speaker:And you're sort of like intentionally picking up your pace.
Speaker:Keeping up with your friends who are avid walkers or athletes that may have a pace that exceeds yours.
Speaker:You know, on a walking tour or just taking a walk and talk.
Speaker:Or even explorations that you do yourself in a city without wondering as much how much energy you have.
Speaker:When you'll have to turn around.
Speaker:When you'll get back.
Speaker:So these are things that I think about.
Speaker:And maybe you can see some and many more, too.
Speaker:I'd love to hear.
Speaker:But the research that first captured my attention wasn't about longevity per se.
Speaker:But it was in the late 1990s, I remember.
Speaker:And I looked it up.
Speaker:And the principal investigator, Langelis.
Speaker:I apologize if I've messed up your name and you happen to be listening.
Speaker:But Langelis and colleagues examined whether older pedestrians could cross signalized intersections in the time allotted by traffic engineers.
Speaker:I just absolutely love that hypothesis, that question, that research question.
Speaker:They found that many adults walk more slowly than the speed assumed the pedestrian signals were timed.
Speaker:Meaning that a substantial portion would not have enough time to cross safely before the signal changed.
Speaker:I feel like that's big news.
Speaker:Big news.
Speaker:And I remember thinking how remarkable it was that such an ordinary moment could reveal something so meaningful about health and fitness.
Speaker:And function.
Speaker:I guess I should say function even more than fitness.
Speaker:And it wasn't whether they could achieve some ideal pace or complete a fitness test.
Speaker:It was whether the design that the engineering had done of everyday life matched the realities of people living in it.
Speaker:Are you going to become a casualty of a Frogger video game?
Speaker:Or are you going to simply go on with your day when you get across that street?
Speaker:And what are the implications on your mind if you've done it once and know that it's a close call of you thinking about entering?
Speaker:That signal in the first place.
Speaker:Well, more than a decade after that first study, another group of researchers approached the issue from a different angle.
Speaker:In a 2011, it was a landmark paper in JAMA, Dr. Studensky and colleagues.
Speaker:They pulled data involving more than 34,000 adults age 65 and older.
Speaker:And they found that usual walking speed was strongly associated with survival.
Speaker:That usual walking speed strongly associated with survival.
Speaker:I mean, we're animals, but we're not like animals out in the wild.
Speaker:But maybe we are when we're crossing some of those streets.
Speaker:And in fact, gait speed predicted outcomes surprisingly well compared with far more complicated assessments.
Speaker:So the question proved relatable enough that it eventually found its way into popular culture.
Speaker:And I was doing a little, maybe not binge watching, but I've been watching periodically.
Speaker:The Netflix hit Grace and Frankie, Frankie and Grace, with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Speaker:And there was a storyline.
Speaker:One of the storylines involved a crossing walk timing and older adults trying to make it safely across the street and advocacy for changing the stoplight.
Speaker:The episode was hilarious, but it totally worked because it's so familiar.
Speaker:Most of us immediately understand when we see something like that, what's at stake there.
Speaker:And when you put the comedy angle to it, you realize it really is an important consideration in real life.
Speaker:So taken together, I mean, pop culture aside, but the studies really do suggest something important.
Speaker:So walking speed really isn't merely about speed.
Speaker:Now we know, but it's really a reflection of our function and how we function.
Speaker:So the ability to move through the world requires all of these things, as we've been talking about.
Speaker:Strength and balance, coordination, mobility, endurance, awareness, and of course, confidence.
Speaker:And we've spent this entire episode so far looking at these abilities through four directions or four exercises or tests.
Speaker:The Floor-Rise Rests revealed the combination of them, really.
Speaker:Balance challenges them.
Speaker:Grip strength sort of hints at the reserve that's behind them.
Speaker:And if we put walking in that, walking asks us to bring them together, to bring them all together in real life, in real space.
Speaker:Are we maintaining the physical abilities and skills that allow us to say, yes, I'm saying yes to better days,
Speaker:to allow us to keep saying yes to people, places, and experience that make up our full and well-lived life?
Speaker:And the encouraging news here is that many of these are trainable.
Speaker:We can actually improve our walking speed.
Speaker:We can improve our strength.
Speaker:We can improve our balance.
Speaker:We can improve these things.
Speaker:And maybe that's why the image of the crosswalk has stayed with me so clearly over the years.
Speaker:It's in that ordinary stretch of a road that every one of us has imprinted in our mind.
Speaker:And it asks an incredibly important question.
Speaker:Can we move through the world?
Speaker:And can we continue to move through it confidently in a way that matters to us?
Speaker:So I think with that, I'm going to let you ponder that this week.
Speaker:And we're going to put it into practice for our next episode.
Speaker:I want to think about how we consider these measures.
Speaker:And I will get the next episode out.
Speaker:But you can also look around.
Speaker:And I'll put some posts up about a preview, maybe, of the practices.
Speaker:Because it's really important, these four separate measures.
Speaker:Getting off the floor and figuring out ways.
Speaker:Or that Sit-Rise Test I talked about with you from a chair.
Speaker:Standing on one leg and practicing your balance there.
Speaker:The grip strength.
Speaker:Our walking speed.
Speaker:I want you to really notice.
Speaker:So maybe we start to train it.
Speaker:But maybe right now we start to notice.
Speaker:Do things safely.
Speaker:If you have limitations that these different ways of testing these areas would test those limitations.
Speaker:Don't do it. Don't do that.
Speaker:But think about it.
Speaker:Bring awareness to those instances where we are tested on that.
Speaker:What would happen if you fell?
Speaker:Can you reach and balance?
Speaker:Or what are those instances and occasions where you need your balance?
Speaker:Where is your grip strength being called on?
Speaker:And remembering that it is a marker of our reserve.
Speaker:Of our skeletal muscular system.
Speaker:And when are you crossing roads?
Speaker:Or when are you called on to have a speed determined experience with the world?
Speaker:Because when I went deeper into this research.
Speaker:They all seemed to ask the same question from different directions.
Speaker:How do we participate in life?
Speaker:Navigate the world?
Speaker:Be ready and available to respond when we need it?
Speaker:And how do we keep up?
Speaker:Keep up with life.
Speaker:And the encouraging part is these are trainable.
Speaker:So I'll give you some tips on that in our next episode.
Speaker:And the more that we ask of them, the more they tend to respond to our attention.
Speaker:So it's really cool to think about how the connection between our body.
Speaker:And all the parts of our body is like a relationship within ourselves.
Speaker:It's like the relationship within ourselves that we need to foster.
Speaker:So it's the conversation and connections that are happening between all our body systems.
Speaker:That help allow us to live the lives that we want to live.
Speaker:So I encourage you to stay curious.
Speaker:Be aware. Be excited.
Speaker:Laugh a little at yourself.
Speaker:We don't want to fall.
Speaker:But laugh when you're calling on your balance.
Speaker:And you realize, wow, I could really stand to practice that.
Speaker:And train that a little bit.
Speaker:And I want to thank you for sharing some of your waking minutes with me today.
Speaker:I'm Wendy Bazilian, your host and friend here at 1,000 Waking Minutes.
Speaker:And until next time, be well.
Speaker:Thank you for tuning in to 1,000 Waking Minutes.
Speaker:A huge thank you to our amazing collaborators, including our production and marketing teams.
Speaker:And Gabriela Escalante in particular.
Speaker:To the ultra talented Beza for my theme music.
Speaker:My lifelong friend and artist, Pearl Preis Photography and Design.
Speaker:To Danielle Ballantyne, Jen Nguyen, Joanna Powell, and of course my family.
Speaker:And everyone working tirelessly behind the scenes.
Speaker:And to you, our valued listeners.
Speaker:I so appreciate your support.
Speaker:If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider leaving a comment, writing a review,
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Speaker:Your support helps us grow and bring you more great content.
Speaker:Until next time, find some simple opportunities to optimize those 1,000 Waking Minutes each day.
Speaker:I'm on my way, yes, it's gonna be okay, yeah.
Speaker:I'm saying yes, to better days, yes.
Speaker:I'm on my way, yes, it's gonna be okay, yeah.
