What Getting Off The Floor Unassisted Says About Your Mortality
Did you know your ability to get yourself up and down off the floor unassisted is a good predictor of your mortality?
According to this study published in 2020, people who struggle to get themselves off the floor are more likely to die sooner than those who don’t.
Now, the study was looking at people aged between 51–80 years, but even if that’s not you, bear with me.
So they looked at over 2000 people and got them to sit on the floor and stand up, scoring them from 0 to 5, with one point being subtracted from 5 for every support used.
Then they did some maths to account for a bunch of different factors across the group and gave people scores out of 10 in four categories: 0–3; 3.5–5.5; 6–7.5; and 8–10.
They followed these people over a 6-year period, during which time 159 people died (7.9%).
They found the people with the lowest scores (0–3) were FIVE TIMES MORE LIKELY to die within the study period than those with the highest scores (8–10).
Five times.
And the thing is, this is a really simple test, right?
And it’s a simple skill most of us wanna hold on to for as long as possible.
