'Handshake' a New Tool to Measure Aging

Researchers reveal that a person's hand-grip strength can be used as a tool to measure aging.

For years, people have used handshakes as a tool for gauging personality. Handshake, a common gesture, reveals not just a person's personality but also mood, health, confidence and other psychological insights.

Researchers at the Stony Brook University offer scientific evidence that the strength of grasp may also help measure the person's true age.

Led by Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) researcher Warren Sanderson, Professor of Economics, in collaboration with Serguei Scherbov, the study claims that the hand-grip corresponds with several other markers linked with aging. These include mortality, disability, cognitive decline and ability to recover from hospital stay.

The findings were based on the analysis of 50 published studies that looked at people around the world of different ages.  The data was easily available for researchers as the measure was a common factor used in the studies.

"Hand-grip strength is easily measured and data on hand-grip strength now can be found in many of the most important surveys on aging worldwide," says Sanderson.

To demonstrate how handshake can be used to measure aging among different groups, the researchers worked on the data retrieved from the United States Health and Retirement Survey (HRS).

Scherbov says, "We found that based on this survey, a 65-year-old white women who had not completed secondary education has the same handgrip strength as a 69-year-old white women who had completed secondary education. This suggests that according to a handgrip strength characteristic their ages are equivalent and 65 year-old women ages 4 years faster due to lower education attainment."

The measure of aging is again based on the person's longevity, health, disability status and other demographic factors.

In a study conducted earlier by the same researchers, they demonstrated how the variations in the aging process cannot be measured based on how many years the person has lived.

The main aim of the researchers was to measure the rate at which various groups in a society age.

An earlier study by Beckman Institute researchers revealed that  "a handshake preceding social interaction enhanced the positive impact of approach and diminished the negative impact of avoidance behavior on the evaluation of social interaction."

The study was documented in the journal PLOS One.