You could get a leg up on healthy aging with a simple balancing act, Mayo Clinic researchers say.
How long you can stand on one leg tells more about how you’re aging than changes in your strength or how you walk, concludes a recent study of 40 healthy, independent people over age 50.
Researchers put participants — half under age 65, half aged 65 and over — through walking, balance, grip-strength and knee-strength tests. For the balance tests, lasting 30 seconds each, the subjects stood on both feet with eyes open, on both feet with eyes closed, on just their non-dominant leg with eyes open and on just their dominant leg with eyes open.
The ability to stand on one leg, especially the nondominant leg, showed the highest rate of decline with age, researchers found. There were no significant differences between men and women.
Importance of balance
Balance requires muscle strength and all your body systems, including your inner ears sending signals to your brain, to work together, Dr. Kenton Kaufman, senior study author and director of the Mayo Clinic Motion Analysis Laboratory, told the Mayo Clinic News Network.
“If you have poor balance, you’re at risk of falling, whether or not you’re moving,” he says. Most older adults fall from losing balance.
If you can stand on one leg for 30 seconds, you are doing well, Kaufman says. People over age 65 in the study averaged 11 seconds, Kaufman says in an Everyday Health article. If you can only stand on one leg for 5 seconds or less, you’re at risk of falling.
Doctors don’t need any special tools or equipment to measure your one-legged balance, and you don’t need any to train and maintain balance yourself, he says.
How to train for one-legged balance
Start balance training when you’re young and maintain it as you age, Kaufman says. “If you don’t use it, you lose it. If you use it, you maintain it.”
The Mayo Clinic offers these tips to boost your one-legged balance:
- Stand with your feet hip-width apart, weight equally spread over both legs. With hands on your hips, lift your left leg off the floor and bend it back at the knee. If this is too hard at first, hold onto a table or desk.
- Hold the position as long as you can, up to 30 seconds.
- Return to the starting position and repeat with your right leg.
- Repeat the exercise as your balance improves.
In the Mayo Clinic study’s one-legged tests, participants could hold the leg they weren’t standing on wherever they wanted.
You might like to know that in a standardized police-administered field sobriety test, you’d be asked to raise one leg 6 inches up, keep your foot parallel to the ground and your hands and arms at your side as you stare at your raised foot for up to 30 seconds.
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