How long you can stand on one leg tells about your health

How long you can balance on one leg may be an important indicator of your health and how well you age, a new study shows.
Researchers have found that how long a person can stand on one leg is a better measure of aging than changes in strength or gait.
Experts explain how balance has to do with biological age and how to test to find out yours.

Sure, yoga can be great low impact exercise to enhance overall health. But it turns out that one position in particular can show more than just your flexibility. How long you can stand on one leg may be an important indicator of your health and how well you age, according to new research.

A small Mayo Clinic study published in PLOS One looked at 40 healthy, independent people over 50, half of whom were under 65; the other half were 65 and older. The researchers used the following tests to assess age-related decline as well as gender differences.

Grip strength: A hand-held device was used to measure upper body strength.
Knee Strength: Knee extension exercises assessed lower body strength.
Walking: Participants walked at their own pace along a designated path while a motion analysis system captured their movements.
Balance: Participants sat on boards that measured balance during four different scenarios: on both legs with eyes open, eyes closed, and dominant and non-dominant leg with eyes open. Participants could keep the leg they were not standing on wherever they wanted.

Of the four tests, the researchers found that how long someone maintained their balance while standing on one leg showed “the greatest rate of decline with age,” according to the Mayo Clinic. In other words, the results showed that the time a person could stand on one dominant and non-dominant leg decreased significantly with age and had a greater decline than walking and muscle strength.

More specifically, the researchers determined that the length of time a person can stand on one leg decreased at a rate of 2.2 seconds per decade in the non-dominant leg, while doing the same at a rate of 1.7 seconds per decade in the dominant leg. The researchers noted that these findings held true for all genders.

“Balance is an important measurement because, in addition to muscle strength, it requires input from vision, the vestibular system (a sensory system in the inner ear that helps maintain balance), and the somatosensory systems (part of the nervous system that allows people to perceive sensations in the body, such as (such as touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and movement),” said Kenton Kaufman, Ph.D., lead study author and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Movement Analysis Laboratory, in a statement. “The balance changes are worth noting. If you have poor balance, you are in danger of falling, whether you are moving or not. Falls are a severe health risk with serious consequences.”

The statement emphasized that the main cause of injuries among adults over 65 is the unintentional fall – and most falls among older adults are the result of a loss of balance.

The bottom line

This research shows how balance can be used as a measure of age, but it is not the first study to do so. A Study June 2022 stated that balance ability is linked to longer life, finding that those who were unable to stand on one leg for a period 10 second balance test were associated with an 84% increased risk of death over the next seven years.

The good news is that you can take steps to prevent this balance exercises. “For example, by standing on one leg, you can train yourself to coordinate your muscle and vestibular responses to maintain proper balance. If you can stand on one leg for 30 seconds, you’re doing well,” Dr. Kaufman said in the Mayo Clinic statement.

“If you don’t use it, you lose it. If you use it, you maintain it,” Dr. Kaufman continued. “It’s easy to do. It requires no special equipment and you can do it every day.”