How health is reflected in a Donald Trump-style strong hand grip, and it’s linked to your resistance to disease
- Grip strength is a good indicator of general health, especially among the elderly
- Studies point to a link between lower grip strength and heart and lung disease and various types of cancer
But recent studies indicate that grip strength can reveal far more than your personality; it can serve as a window into how healthy – or unhealthy – you are. And as you age, experts say, your grip strength can be a measure of how likely you are to develop and survive diseases such as cancer, heart disease and more.
A 2016 systematic review of many studies involving people 60 and older found that grip strength “has a predictive validity for decline in cognition, mobility, functional status and mortality”.
Experts say that hand-grip strength works as a stand-in for measuring general body strength and muscle mass, which declines with age. The advantage of measuring grip strength as a marker of health, say researchers, is that it is affordable and convenient, key for rural and other populations that may not have easy access to medical care.
“It’s not a perfect measure of overall muscle strength, but a good one,” since loss of muscle mass is linked to many diseases, and as early as mid life, grip strength can be an indicator of disability later in life, says Stuart Gray, lecturer in exercise and metabolic health at the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences in Scotland who focuses on age-related loss of muscle mass.