Ikigai Daily
Menu
StillnessHealth fact

In a 2022 study of adults aged 51 to 75, those who could not stand on one leg for ten seconds had an 84% higher risk of dying over about seven years than those who could, even after allowing for age, sex, weight and existing illness.

British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2022

HealthScience

The story behind the card

The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, followed 1,702 people in Brazil from 2009 to 2020. About one in five could not complete the test, which was done barefoot, with the free foot resting on the back of the other leg and arms at the sides, in up to three tries. Over the follow-up, 17.5% of those who failed died, against 4.6% of those who passed. Balance draws on leg strength, the inner ear, vision and the brain's coordination of all three, so failing can reveal several problems at once. The study shows an association, not proof that balance training extends life, but the test is quick, free and easy to add to check-ups.

Türkçe oku
Tek ayak üstünde on saniye duramayan orta yaşlı ve yaşlı yetişkinlerin ölüm riski belirgin biçimde yüksek. 51–75 yaş arası kişilerle yapılan 2022 tarihli bir çalışmada testi geçemeyenlerin yaklaşık yedi yıl içinde ölme riski, yaş, cinsiyet, kilo ve mevcut hastalıklar hesaba katıldığında bile geçenlerinkinden yüzde 84 fazlaydı.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2022

British Journal of Sports Medicine'de yayımlanan çalışma, Brezilya'da 1.702 kişiyi 2009'dan 2020'ye kadar izledi. Katılımcıların yaklaşık beşte biri testi tamamlayamadı. Test çıplak ayakla yapılıyor; havadaki ayak öbür bacağın arkasına dayanıyor, kollar yanda duruyor ve üç deneme hakkı veriliyordu. İzleme süresince testi geçemeyenlerin yüzde 17,5'i, geçenlerin ise yüzde 4,6'sı öldü. Denge; bacak gücüne, iç kulağa, görmeye ve beynin bunları uyum içinde yönetmesine dayanır, bu yüzden testte zorlanmak birkaç sorunu birden ele verebilir. Çalışma bir ilişki gösteriyor, denge çalışmanın ömrü uzattığını kanıtlamıyor. Ama test hızlı, masrafsız ve rutin kontrollere kolayca eklenebilir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Balance (ability)
Get the mobile appAbout our cards

Related cards

These cards share a subject or reading mode with the card above.

StillnessHealth

Living for years with loud road, rail or aircraft noise can harm health. It is linked to broken sleep, poorer learning in children and a higher risk of heart disease, and the body keeps reacting even after people stop noticing the sound.

In 2020 the European Environment Agency estimated that at least 113 million people in Europe live with long-term road traffic noise of 55 decibels or more, averaged over day and night; that is the level the European Union uses to report harmful noise, and the World Health Organization recommends keeping road noise below 53. Studies link such exposure to disturbed sleep, raised stress hormones, poorer reading and memory in children near airports and busy roads, and more high blood pressure and heart disease. People do get used to a sound in the sense that they notice it less, but sleep studies show that heart rate still jumps when a lorry or plane passes at night.

WHO / European Environment AgencyRead card
DriveHealth

Oral rehydration solution, clean water with measured amounts of salts and sugar, treats the dangerous dehydration caused by diarrhoea. This simple drink has saved millions of lives, most of them children's.

It works because glucose and sodium are absorbed together in the small intestine, and water follows them into the body even during severe diarrhoea. The Indian physician Hemendra Nath Chatterjee reported treating mild cholera this way in The Lancet in 1953. In 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War, intravenous fluid ran out in refugee camps in India; the physician Dilip Mahalanabis had families give an oral solution instead, and 3.6 per cent of those patients died, against about 30 per cent of those on drips. In 1978 The Lancet called the discovery behind it potentially the most important medical advance of the century, and in 1980 the WHO began a global programme to spread it. The mix must be measured, since too much salt can be harmful.

World Health Organization / UNICEFRead card
DriveHealth

When Jonas Salk was asked on television who owned the patent on his polio vaccine, he said there was no patent, that it belonged to the people, and asked, ‘Could you patent the sun?’ Polio had been paralysing tens of thousands of children a year.

The exchange was with the broadcaster Edward R. Murrow on 12 April 1955, the day results from a nationwide field trial showed the vaccine was safe and effective. Salk's vaccine used a killed, inactivated form of the poliovirus, unlike the oral vaccine with live, weakened virus that Albert Sabin developed later. Lawyers for the vaccine's funder, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known as the March of Dimes, had already looked into a patent and concluded that it would probably fail, because the vaccine relied on methods other scientists had already published. Polio cases have since fallen by more than 99% worldwide. Salk spent his last years working, without success, on a vaccine against HIV.

Medical historyRead card
DriveHealth

Muscles and stamina grow stronger mainly in the recovery after exercise, not during the workout itself: training is the signal, and rest, food and sleep give the body time to rebuild a little stronger.

Coaches describe this with a simplified model called supercompensation. A hard session briefly lowers the body's capacity; during recovery it not only returns to its old level but for a while rises above it, and ideally the next session comes at that point. Behind the gain are several processes: new protein built into muscle fibres, a nervous system that learns to use muscles more efficiently, and refilled fuel stores. Tiny muscle damage can occur but is not needed for every useful change. Too little rest between hard sessions can leave people tired and weaker rather than fitter. Sleep helps recovery, but adaptation goes on throughout the recovery period, not only at night.

Exercise physiologyRead card
DriveBiography

Filipino paediatrician Fe del Mundo opened the Philippines' first children's hospital in Quezon City in 1957, paying for it by selling her house and taking out a large loan. She also took child healthcare out to the villages, designing a bamboo incubator for places without electricity.

Born in Manila in 1911, del Mundo qualified as a doctor at the University of the Philippines in 1933 and trained further in children's medicine at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital. She came home in 1941, just before the Japanese occupation, and cared for children held in the Santo Tomas internment camp, where she became known as “the Angel of Santo Tomas”. Her Children's Medical Center opened in 1957. She sent teams into the countryside to teach breastfeeding and child care, pressed for village midwives to be brought into the health service, and wrote a Textbook of Pediatrics long used in Philippine medical schools. In 1980 she became the first woman named a National Scientist of the Philippines. She died in 2011, aged 99.

Fe del MundoRead card
Next card in the archiveMorning light is one of the main signals that sets the body's internal 24-hour clock, known as the circadian clock. Bright outdoor daylight is usually a far stronger signal than ordinary indoor lighting.Read next →