Weak Handshake Grip Shows Poor Health, Heart Problems & Mortality Says Study

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A firm grip is a quality indicator when it comes to demonstrating the proper handshake etiquette. A new study has shown that it may be more than just that.

The study, which was published in the journal Lancet last Wednesday, found that the firmness of your handshake could be used to measure muscular strength, a method that is better at predicting mortality and cardiovascular diseases.

"Grip strength could be an easy and inexpensive test to assess an individual's risk of death and cardiovascular disease," according to Dr. Darryl Leong, assistant professor of medicine of McMaster's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, via Eureka Alert.

He added, "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."

The study looked into the data of about 140,000 participants between the ages 35 and 70 for four years in 17 countries, according to CBC Hamilton. It was conducted by the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences.

The participants who took part in the Institute's Prospective Urban-Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study were asked to squeeze a handgrip dynamometer as hard as they could to measure their muscle strength.

The results show that for every five kilogram decline in grip strength, the odds of dying from heart disease, stroke, or non-cardiovascular disease was 17 percent higher and death from any cause is increased by one in six.

The researchers also accounted for the varying factors that could affect the study via surveys including tobacco and age, sex, alcohol use, education level, physical activity, BMI, diet, country's wealth, employment status, and diseases such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, COPD, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke.

"These results suggest that low muscle strength might not play a major causal part in the occurrence of cancer, falls, fractures, or the need for hospital admission for respiratory illnesses, but that low muscle strength predisposes to a fatal outcome if these non-cardiovascular diseases develop," Leong said via International Business Times.

On the plus side, this test is considered to be affordable and can be used in poorer countries. However, further research is still needed to understand how muscle strength is associated to diseases or whether other factors related to muscle strength are the cause.

"So increasing the strength just by training alone may not make a large amount of difference," Leong told CBC Hamilton. "We just don't know the answer."