In addition to regularly moving , reducing stress , and eating nutritious, whole foods , there’s another essential element to aging well: Flexibility. A recent long-term study found that being more flexible was associated with living longer, even when factoring in age and health status. The study, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports this week, used the Flexitest, which assesses flexibility across seven joints and 20 body movements.
Researchers tested the flexibility of over 3,000 men and women aged 46 to 65 and followed up to see mortality rates after 13 years. While flexibility was associated with living longer for both sexes, it had an even more dramatic influence on women than men. Women who scored the lowest and were the least flexible were five times more likely to die prematurely compared to women who scored the highest; Men who scored the lowest were two times more likely to die prematurely.
“Our findings support the significance of flexibility as an integral component of health-related physical fitness,” the authors conclude. The study’s results underscore that the association becomes more pronounced at the extremes: The more flexible you are, the more you may reduce your risk of dying early. Why is flexibility a contributor to healthy living? Flexibility is the joints’ ability to move through a full range of motion pain-free.
It begins to decline as soon as someone is a toddler and throughout middle age as joint stiffness b.