Could The Firmness Of Your Handshake Say Something About Your Health?

New findings published in the journal Lancet show that a handshake's strength or weakness could also potentially show your level of health.

Researchers at McMaster University found that people with a weak handshake were at a higher risk of disability or illness than others. 

"Grip strength could be an easy and inexpensive test to assess an individual's risk of death and cardiovascular disease," said principal investigator Darryl Leong, an assistant professor of medicine of McMaster's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and cardiologist for the hospital, in a news release. "Doctors or other healthcare professionals can measure grip strength to identify patients with major illnesses such as heart failure or stoke who are at particularly high risk of dying from their illness."

For the study, researchers looked at 140,000 adults between the ages of 35 and 70 from 17 countries, measuring the participants' grip strength while using a handgrip dynamometer. They found that for every five kilogram decline in grip strength, there was a one in six increased risk of death from any cause. Furthermore, risk of death from heart disease or stroke, as well as non-cardiovascular conditions increased by 17 percent.

In the future, the researchers hope to further investigate the link between grip strength and health, and whether or not improving muscle strength could help reduce these risks.