Staying balanced is a sign of good health, especially as we get older. According to recent research, if you’re over 50 and can balance on one leg for at least 30 seconds, you’re likely aging well, even if you sway a bit.
Balance Declines Faster Than Strength or Walking Speed with Age
A small new study shows that balance tends to decline faster than muscle strength or walking speed as people age. This insight highlights the importance of a simple balance test, which can serve as a valuable tool for tracking how well older adults are aging physically. The team behind the study believes this test could help seniors stay physically independent longer by improving their balance-focused training.
What is the One-Leg Balance Test?
This one-leg balance test, also called a unipedal test, is commonly used to measure neuromuscular health in older adults. Studies show that those who can’t balance on one leg for 5 seconds or more have twice the risk of falls in the future, a sign of potential physical frailty or neurological issues.
How Long Should You Be Able to Balance?
In this new study, researchers studied 40 healthy people aged 50 and up. They found that the average time someone could stand on their non-dominant leg dropped by about 2.2 seconds per decade of life. For the dominant leg, this time declined by 1.7 seconds per decade. Surprisingly, how much a person swayed during the one-leg test didn’t change with age.
This simple balance test showed a clearer link to aging than other measures like muscle strength or walking speed. For instance, the grip strength and knee extension of participants did not decline as much with age as balance did, and walking speed showed almost no significant changes.
Why This Balance Test Matters
The researchers emphasize that the balance test is straightforward to do. It doesn’t need special tools or complex techniques, meaning older adults could even try it at home. In the study, participants were asked to stand on both legs with their eyes open, then with their eyes closed. They then lifted their dominant leg and repeated the exercise with both eyes open and closed.
Using a pressure plate, researchers tracked each participant’s center of balance. They noticed that while all participants could balance with both legs, their body swayed more with age. But interestingly, swaying on one leg didn’t seem to indicate aging; it was normal. However, swaying on two legs was more common in older adults, suggesting this could be a warning sign of balance issues.
Balance Involves More Than Muscle Strength
Balance requires multiple systems in the body to work together—vision, the vestibular (inner ear) system, and sensory input from muscles and joints. “Balance is essential because poor balance increases your risk of falls,” says Dr. Kenton Kaufman, one of the study’s authors. Falls are a serious health risk as we age, so maintaining balance is critical to staying safe and active in later years.
The study was published in PLOS ONE.
