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Stronger hands lengthen your life

145 points| HiroProtagonist | 4 years ago |axios.com | reply

130 comments

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[+] mmcdermott|4 years ago|reply
This article has a bad "pop science" feel to it. The correlation between grip and survival is probably solid enough, but it's hard to avoid the nagging feeling that people who have a strong grip are probably stronger and healthier overall as well.

The article goes on to recommend grip strengthener and I strongly suspect that better skeletal-muscular health in general should be the goal.

"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general." --Mark Rippetoe.

[+] kleene_op|4 years ago|reply
Yes. The correct take from this article is to change your lifestyle until you have strong hands if you want to live longer, but don't focus on getting strong hands specifically.
[+] dillondoyle|4 years ago|reply
I generally love Axios, but this does feel more life hacking newsletter than hard news.

But the article does talk about risk of falling too which. seems like a fair logical causation jump that stronger hands = less risk of falling injury. They don't cite that though....

I think they should have used the line from the harvard link they put "these findings highlight the importance of doing regular exercise to maintain strong muscles as you age. "

[+] ec109685|4 years ago|reply
Yes, real science takes a random group and has some strengthen hands and others do something else and see who has better outcome.
[+] mise_en_place|4 years ago|reply
I definitely agree with this. When I was a beginner weightlifter, I'd actually grip the bar too tightly. This led to bicep activation when doing bench press, so I had to learn to lighten my grip and focus on activation of my deltoids, pectoral muscle, lats, etc. Even some tricep activation helped too
[+] redmen|4 years ago|reply
Yes I believe you are correct here. So often in medicine we want to just treat the symptoms. It's amazing how hard it is to find doctors who don't end up thinking like this. Personally I haven't been able to figure it out. They're definitely not stupid, but why do so many research papers look at the body in such a way that leads to such prescriptions? Is it because researchers lack the clinical experience to overcome this mistake?

Definitely the advice of increasing one's grip strength is poor on multiple levels. Even if increasing your grip strength leads to a higher-quality life, simply training only the forearm without addressing the entire arm and shoulder and neck all together is not going to be good for ones overall muscular (and nerves, etc) balance.

[+] playpause|4 years ago|reply
Hacker News’ automatic removal of “How” from article titles can really change the meaning. The modified title looks like a strong, scientific claim. So we end up with lots of obvious ‘Science 101’ comments about correlation vs causation etc.

With “How” in the title, it comes across as what it is: a light popsci/lifestyle piece that should be taken with a grain of salt, but might still contain interesting food for thought/discussion.

[+] tgv|4 years ago|reply
OTOH, there is just correlation in an otherwise minimal article. The only support, two very similar articles, is pure correlation, and both are based on all adults, not just elderly. The jump to "it lengthens your life" is made on a single quote.
[+] lopis|4 years ago|reply
I think it's made to avoid click baity titles, but instead, it increases the feeling of being click baited.
[+] bryanrasmussen|4 years ago|reply
If the poster thinks the How is really required they can edit the title and add it back in. I've done it a few times.

on edit: changed author to poster although confusion would be surprising in this case.

[+] whiddershins|4 years ago|reply
Maybe more of these articles should be flagged then.
[+] redmen|4 years ago|reply
It's an old study, but correlation doesn't prove causation. It turns out that people who have pore hand/grip strength are more likely to fall, or have a type of life that leads to higher chance of death.

This is a very complicated cause/effect to figure out, even for top-class physical therapists.

Also possible that if you have good grip strength then you have good muscular balance and innervation, vascularity, and motor neuron balance (extensor/flexor), which possibly leads to better overall health, including heart health.

Honestly, I have no idea. But that's the point. Neither do experts who spend decades in this field. It's far too complex to study through these types of lenses. This is often why clinical practice still does better than science in this field. It's complicated as hell and many traditional scientists think they can study the musculoskeletal system this way, when the top doctors learn most of their skills through clinical trial-and-error. Still in 2022.

[+] redmen|4 years ago|reply
Just to attempt to be thorough, and reiterate that honestly I don't know the answer, but good grip strength may be something comes from good overall muscular and nervous system health, not the other way around.

It interests me how far we have come in technology, but how little we know how to apply it to certain kinds of medicine.

Just as an anecdote, I have been spending thousands of hours in physical therapy, and have visited doctors all over. One thing I have learned is that many great doctors used to read tonnes of research papers early in their career, but over time gravitated more towards their clinical experience in building their tree of knowledge. From what I have heard, the science is just too vague and difficult in this field and so as tempting as it is to want to apply the scientific framework around this field (I'm talking specifically about physical therapy here, not necessarily other areas of medicine where I know far less about), it ends up being more effective to build up ones intuition off of a strong clinical practice and then to look at the science afterwards in order to calibrate and filter through those experiences.

A bit of a tangent, but something I also find to be interesting is how poor the feedback mechanisms are in a lot of medicine. Most patients don't follow their prescribed homework, and many surgeons don't even get to see the long-term outcomes of their patients' surgery. Or when they do they are measuring some variables that don't give enough of an overall view of the person's body or overall health.

Anyways, I'm done rambling for now :P. I hope we can curtail the upcoming health crisis we are going to have with our and our childrens' postures and poor body mechanics.

[+] deltaonefour|4 years ago|reply
>This is a very complicated cause/effect to figure out, even for top-class physical therapists.

Have you ever wondered what kind of experiment is needed to be run in order to verify causation?

I see people say "correlation does not equal causation." And they never wonder, well what exactly is causation and how can science attempt to verify it at all? One person even told me that causation is impossible to verify. He's right on a technical level. If you want to be very pedantic science cannot prove anything to be true. But pedantry aside experimental methods to "prove" causation are very real and used extensively in the medical industry. All the medicine you put in your body (including the covid vaccine) is verified to be effective from a causative standpoint.

That being said the experiment to test for whether or not hand/grip and strength causatively effects life span is quite trivial in terms of planning out what has to be done. The study could take a while but we've done other studies that have lasted longer and are far more complicated.

Simply select a random group of people and put half of them on a daily plan to increase grip strength. If the half that was put on a daily plan generally lives longer than the other half of people who weren't put on a plan you have verified causation. The key to proving causation is to have the experimenters hand controlling the causative factor rather than observing it.

This technique can (and often is) used to produce raw science directly from clinical practice. The term for this is called "clinical trials"

[+] _huayra_|4 years ago|reply
This reminds me that whole thing where some study showed a comparison of average daily alcohol consumption and showed that "moderate" drinkers actually had lower mortality than those who don't drink (obviously heavy drinkers had _much_ higher mortality).

Little did anyone seem to realize that people who don't drink may be abstaining for health reasons and thus may be more likely to die / get sick regardless.

But it was sure great for the booze industry.

https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2022/01/31/no-amount-of...

[+] HellsMaddy|4 years ago|reply
Not only that those who abstain do so for health reasons, but many teetotalers were in the past alcoholics. Those who have never had a drinking problem tend to have few qualms with a glass of wine here or there, and so could be classified as light/occasional drinkers.
[+] busymom0|4 years ago|reply
Didn’t it also have to do with how people who can afford frequent wines were wealthier and thus less stress and other problems?
[+] bkjelden|4 years ago|reply
The other explanation is that being a 'moderate' drinker correlates with being able to do things in moderation in general, which is predictive of longevity.
[+] gpsx|4 years ago|reply
Maybe all that drinking increased their grip strength. /s
[+] brimble|4 years ago|reply
OK, maybe there's something to being able to catch yourself when falling, or prevent the fall in the first place through grip strength. But this:

> It's not just bracing yourself. Scientists have linked stronger hands to healthier hearts.

> One study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that higher grip strength was correlated to lower blood pressure, lower blood sugar and higher good cholesterol levels.

Has to just be grip strength correlating with activity level and general health, not grip strength causing any of that.

[+] jamesrom|4 years ago|reply
People pointing out correlation != causation are missing the point.

CORRELATION AN IMPORTANT FACTOR HERE.

Say you are caring for a population of elderly people and you need to triage who to give more stability support (say carers, walking aids, etc). Do a grip strength test! The correlation is important, it doesn't matter if the correlation is causal in nature.

I challenge you dear reader, the next time there's a science article presented, to think about something more interesting to say than "correlation != causation". I challenge you to find useful ways that correlations can be harnessed.

[+] bluishgreen|4 years ago|reply
Hand strength is correlated with exercise. Legs tend to be strong in general for modern people because in the end we still walk and the legs have to carry the whole weight of the body - which tends to be significant. But hands will be strong only if you voluntarily exercise. Even physically demanding labour tends to have many tools to make hand oriented tasks(hand jobs?!) considerably easier. So if you can't/didn't control for this correlation, there is no news here.
[+] credit_guy|4 years ago|reply
Also, playing golf adds 5 years to your life expectancy [1]. I kid you not. Start playing today, and you’ll live years longer. This has nothing to do with the fact that most golf players are really wealthy, and so they have access to way better healthcare, nutrition, and lifestyle than the rest of us.

Said differently, correlation does not imply causation.

[1] https://www.golfandhealth.org/news/golfers-longevity/?amp_ma...

[+] vharuck|4 years ago|reply
Similarly, a diagnosis of in situ prostate cancer means you'll have less risk of dying[1] over the next ten years compared to the rest of your age and race group. Totally not because men who catch these cancers early have good health insurance, regularly see their doctor, and keep up with screening procedures, plus all the other behaviors associated with those personality types.

[1] If you look at the U.S. national statistics, net cancer survival rates top out at 100%. That's because their algorithm doesn't allow any negative values for risk. I think that's enforcing a belief on the data, so I've always calculated it differently. People diagnosed with in situ prostate cancer, in situ testicle cancer, and (IIRC) in situ melanoma all have better survival chances than their peers. Unsurprisingly, all are screenable and easily treated if caught early.

[+] rufus_foreman|4 years ago|reply
Here's a metastudy of 26 studies of the results of handgrip training on systolic blood pressure: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6292032/.

The results were that handgrip training for at least 4 weeks reduced blood pressure by around 5 mmHg. Which yes, could lengthen some lives.

Assuming that correlations are spurious is as poor an approach as assuming they are not.

[+] cperciva|4 years ago|reply
They claim that was adjusted for socioeconomic status.

Rather than being a matter of better access to health care etc, I suspect a reverse causation -- people who are in poor health are less likely to go out to the golf course. The same applies to Vitamin D, taking international flights, and reading books, all of which are correlated with reduced death rates.

[+] qiskit|4 years ago|reply
Thank you. They always make it sound like X helps you lenghten your life. But it's always the case the X is a symptom of a healthy life, not the cause of it.

Strong hands is probably a result of exercise and leading a healthy life which leads to higher life expectancy. Meaning exercise and leading a healthy life is the cause of strong hands and higher life expectancy.

Golf industry says golf lengthens your life. Hand grip industry says strong hands lengthen life. Can't help but be a little bit cynical the older I get.

[+] IncRnd|4 years ago|reply
The page you linked should but doesn't reference the actual study. The mortality reduction from non-golfers changed according to golf handicap not just according to playing golf.

"Golf: a game of life and death – reduced mortality in Swedish golf players" by B. Farahmand, G. Broman, U. De Faire, D. Vågerö, A. Ahlbom.

"Golfers with the lowest handicap (the most skilled players) had the lowest mortality; SMR=0.53 (95% CI: 0.41–0.67) compared with 0.68 (95% CI: 0.61–0.75) for those with the highest handicap. While we cannot conclude with certainty that all the 40% decreased mortality rates are explained by the physical activity associated with playing golf, we conclude that most likely this is part of the explanation. To put the observed mortality reduction in context, it may be noted that a 40% reduction of mortality rates corresponds to an increase in life expectancy of about 5 years." [1]

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1600-0838...

[+] robbedpeter|4 years ago|reply
Eating caviar frequently is also strongly correlated with increased personal wealth - start eating as much as you can to get rich!
[+] groby_b|4 years ago|reply
Even worse, you'll likely have spent these five years on the golf course.
[+] tehnub|4 years ago|reply
They hypothesize two reasonable mechanisms for increasing health:

>Stronger hands grip tighter to prevent falls — and brace stronger when you tumble.

>Grip strength is especially important for those older adults who use canes, walkers or handrails or need assistance getting out of chairs, says David Bellar, a kinesiologist at UNC Charlotte.

Care to say anything about that?

[+] swader999|4 years ago|reply
Might be just from the social aspects of it.
[+] treeman79|4 years ago|reply
Decided to take up golf. Now I can’t feel my leg.
[+] eth0up|4 years ago|reply
https://www.ironmind.com/product-info/ironmind-grippers/capt...

I own the No.2 model[1] and have been squeezing it for a year. It's fun, mostly for handing it to tough guys and presenting it as The Pansy Test. Out of over a dozen grown men, none have closed it yet. Inevitably they eventually ask me if I can, to which I humbly reply "I think so." and do it several times. They always want to try again, some get mad. I'm small and insubstantial. That can be amusing.

But I've never perceived any benefit from using it.

Squats are where it's at, I think. I see a change in my overall form more dramatic than any other activity, except maybe hard labor.

Edit: 1. Captains of Crush grip trainer

[+] borroka|4 years ago|reply
CoC grip trainers, a trip down the memory lane. I got certified for the #3 almost 20 year ago. I could do probably 8-10 complete reps at the time. The #4 felt like squeezing a brick, I am wondering whether with a couple of years of training I'd been able to close it, back in the day probably just 2 or 3 people had been able to: Joe Kinney and one or two of those guys from Wales. I also had a welder build some specific grip training equipment for me.
[+] snowwrestler|4 years ago|reply
It’s hard to work your hands for strength without working other significant muscle groups at the same time—like hanging from things or picking things up.

Likewise, it’s hard to work on muscular strength without also increasing your hand strength. To lift weights, your hands have to grip the weight.

So, there is a pretty strong correlation with overall health.

The one thing I’ll say is that hand strength is hard to get back if you let it fade. The muscles don’t grow very fast or very much, and you need strong tendons (which grow even more slowly) to transmit the strength to your actual fingers. So again, if you’re able to increase hand strength, you’ve probably got some other positive correlations like “works out regularly” and “cares about functional health.”

[+] elliottkember|4 years ago|reply
Yep, you read this as being a correlation-causation fallacy. You are being nerd-sniped, and it worked. Don't let that put you off doing arm and hand exercises. I recommend kettlebells.
[+] deltaonefour|4 years ago|reply
Everyone knows correlation does not equal causation.

But no one knows the nature of the statistical experiment that is needed to prove causation. Ask yourself this before you post a new flavor of the "correlation does not imply causation" post that is already all over this thread.

So we know correlating hand strength with lifespan doesn't prove causation. What sort of experiment or what different parameters must be changed in order to verify causation? If you don't know the answer to this, then that means you don't completely understand the dichotomy between correlation and causation.

[+] DrPhish|4 years ago|reply
That would definitely explain the large numbers of feisty old Judoka I meet around the world. Anecdotally, there seems to be a higher percentage of healthy older individuals doing Judo than the general population, but I guess the unhealthy ones wouldn't still be at it, so it self selects for that trait.

Judo practitioners might be a good population to study for this effect, if you could find the individuals that started and track them all, including the dropouts. It would have common traits of strong grip AND muscle memory of how to fall properly, which could be a confounding factor.

[+] imnotlost|4 years ago|reply
My friend is an electrician with a monster grip - he still had a heart attack!

Sounds like a correlation that misses the point, general health prolongs life, couch-potatoes die sooner and have worse quality of life their last 30 years or so. And setting up for good health in advanced age starts decades earlier.

Try comparing someone who does grip-strength training only vs someone who does heavy dead-lifts, both into their 80s.

My money will be on the dead-lift guy, not just having a better quality of life until his last day, but also living longer.

[+] dugditches|4 years ago|reply
While the website seems very fluff, the concept of hand health can't be overstressed.

Keep care of your hands and wrists. If you feel pain or discomfort, stiffness etc figure out why and fix it. Whether it's keyboard/desk etc change. Or taking breaks and stretching.

Those suffering later stages of hand/wrist strain or wear... look into: wrist straps, wax baths, heated 'wax gloves'

[+] dghughes|4 years ago|reply
If true fishermen should live to 200. Grabbing ans hailing in lines, traps, gear for hours at a time.

If you meet a fisherman check out their hands and arms.

A bit of advice never arm wrestle a fisherman especially they're middle-aged or older even if his arms look thin.

Edit: the reason, from what I've heard it's due to tendon strength. It takes a long time to develop strong tendons.

[+] yawnxyz|4 years ago|reply
This is probably true among free soloists (rock climbing without a rope)
[+] pcthrowaway|4 years ago|reply
Regular mountain/rock climbing is probably a great way to improve your grip strength. Of course, regular outdoor climbing (even with a rope) may not reduce your lifetime risk of death from falling.
[+] kotxig|4 years ago|reply
If people in science really do understand that correlation is not causation, why are they publishing papers in journals that show meaningless correlations without doing the actual work of uncovering patterns of causation? If you really understood this point you would be embarrassed to publish a paper on it. These results should be confined to a searchable database in the same way data sets in lab experiments are.
[+] sneakpdx|4 years ago|reply
If you're trying to avoid death by falling, then strong hands won't save you if you don't know how to fall properly. As someone who grew up skateboarding, I had to learn how to fall properly to avoid constantly injuring myself.

There's a reason a lot of older skaters can still skate and I can tell you it's not because of their athleticism or healthy habits for which both are usually lacking.