Coming to grips with aging is hard and gets harder as we get older. If you’ve crossed certain numerical thresholds, you know this all too well. If you’ve got a lot of time left on the clock this is worth reading to put yourself in position to dictate the quality of life you experience in later days. There are so many metrics that you can keep track of, and at some point, it’s too much for all but the most stringent scientists to digest. But there is one metric that we are all aware of and use to some extent every day. It’s easy to monitor and improve, and there’s never going to be a time that you wish you had less of it. That magical measure is hand grip strength!
Hand grip strength is something you know when you have, and you know when you’re lacking. But the transition from one status to the other can be insidious. The key to grip strength is it highly correlates with overall physical function and fitness. If your hands are strong there’s a good chance the rest of you is too. The opposite is also true. In this way you can easily see how a decrease in grip strength and tie in with increased fall risk, increased healthcare utilization, and increased dependence on external care.
There are various levels of research support for different conditions CVD, diabetes, osteoporosis, multi-morbidity, etc. Higher hand grip at baseline is associated with a reduction in mortality in the general population. Beyond that there was also a decrease in the overall incidence of disability and foreshadows chair rise ( leg power) limitations.
These changes are likely attributable to strength directly relating to muscle mass, and muscle mass being used as an emergency protein reserve in trauma or debility situations. If you’ve been in a physically demanding career, odds are favorable that your grip is where it needs to be. Outside of that you don’t know what you don’t know. A simple screening for grip strength can be done in a matter of minutes and is one of the more fun screenings you can do. Challenge, your friends, co-workers, family to see who pound for pound is the strongest. And most importantly, get to know yourself, and challenge yourself to be.
Grip scoring and strengthening products are readily available. At Invoke Therapy we truly value what we can do with accurate data. This being the case we utilize the Dynamo dynamometer/inclinometer. We can This is an offer available at any of our treatment sessions, and any of our community outreach events. correlate this data with what we find utilizing the force decks system to better assess your whole-body wellness. Come see us at our clinic or have us come out to you and figure out where you are, so you can get where you need to be.
