One Simple Sitting Test May Reveal How Many Years You Have Left to Live

December 29, 2015

Want to know if you’re going to kick the bucket any time soon?

Brazilian physician Claudio Gil Araujo’s little test may help you. According to Discover Magazine, Araujo and a team of researchers have developed a simple test which can help determine how many years you have left to live just by performing some simple steps.

Araujo’s study, which was published in the European Journal of Cardiology, outlines a simple test that measures strength and flexibility. The challenge is simple: go from a standing position to a sitting position and then back to standing without using your hands or losing balance.

Araujo noticed that most of his older patients were having difficulty with simple tasks such as bending down and picking up something off the floor or getting up out of a chair. He then figured that a patient’s problem with flexibility, balance and strength could be used as a measure of life expectancy. This is due to the increased risk of falls, accidents and even cardiovascular health risk it poses.

This is how his very simple SRT, or the sitting-rise test, was conceptualized. Developed by Araujo and colleagues, the test requires no equipment and can be performed in just a few seconds.

Illustrations provided by Discover can get you started in no time. Be sure to have comfortable, loose clothes before you begin.

Follow these steps:

Stand in comfortable clothes in your bare feet, with clear space around you.
Without leaning on anything, lower yourself to a sitting position on the floor.
Now stand back up, trying not to use your hands, knees, forearms or sides of your legs.

The test is measured via a point system using scale between 1 and 10 (5 points for sitting and 5 points for standing back up). Whenever you use an arm or knee for help in balancing during the test, you lose 1 point. Each time you lose balance, or when you becomes clumsy, you lose half a point as well.

While the test seem pretty basic, Araujo found that it could predict life expectancy very accurately. He conducted the research with more than 2,000 of his patients as subjects ranging from age 51 to 80.

The study reveals that people who scored lower than 8 points on the test were twice as more likely to die within the next six years. The participants who scored three points or less were five times likely to die within that same six-year period. Overall, each point increase in the test score was associated with a 21% decrease in mortality from all causes.

While the study was only done on older patients, it doesn’t mean that the same benchmark can’t be used for your health. Having trouble with the test at a younger age should cause an alarm. Better get in shape younger before it’s too late.

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