Get a Grip on Your Health
Written by Dr. Edythe Heus
Rev6 Founder – Los Angeles
I like small muscles. I like training small muscles and the results when they work well. Everyone who has taken a Rev6 class, a course, or visited rev6.fit knows the emphasis I place on the importance of these small muscles as megaphones directing movement of the body as a whole.
I like to train the small muscles early in a sequence. The Rev6 hand and wrist series is vital to restoring the health of the arms, shoulders, upper spine, and neck.
As we age, our hands become weaker, stiff and many times deformed. I incorporate hand and wrist exercises in the Vitality class. This class includes more finger and hand exercises than any of our other classes because it was geared toward the senior population.
In my quest for understanding why our hands age the way they do and how to slow down, prevent, or reverse hand aging, I ran across this statement:
Grip strength was a more powerful predictor of cardiovascular mortality than systolic blood pressure.
(Research paper below you can download)
Wow, what a statement.
I had to find out more. I always knew the hands were important, the neurology of the hand muscles, fewer muscle fibers per nerve, and a large amount of real estate in the brain dedicated to the hands. You can imagine my excitement about the possibility of another feature of Rev6 contributing to health and longevity.
Grip strength has been proposed as a biomarker. Supporting this proposition, evidence is provided herein that shows grip strength is largely consistent as an explanator of concurrent overall strength, upper limb function, bone mineral density, fractures, falls, malnutrition, cognitive impairment, depression, sleep problems, diabetes, multimorbidity, and quality of life. Evidence is also provided for a predictive link between grip strength and all-cause and disease-specific mortality, future function, bone mineral density, fractures, cognition and depression, and problems associated with hospitalization. Consequently, the routine use of grip strength can be recommended as a stand-alone measurement or as a component of a small battery of measurements for identifying older adults at risk of poor health status.
My takeaway is that hand strength is critical to all of us regardless of age, and hand exercises must be essential to your Rev6 practice. We will support you by including hand exercises in all levels of our Rev6 classes.
Why not start measuring your grip strength and your clients’ now? You can purchase a grip testing device here and monitor the progress you are making with your Rev6 practice.
A Norwegian study indicates that a man’s grip strength increases his likelihood of marriage prospects. A woman may be drawn to a partner with strength and vigor represented by grip strength. In addition, research has linked grip strength with a person’s ability to cope independently and as a predictor of heart disease and death. If women who generally live longer than men partner with healthier men, they have a better chance of living longer independently.
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