We’re all trying to make the most out of our time on Earth. We watch our diets, exercise, and have our doctors test us in various ways in order to maximize our potential lifespans. However, there is one consistently accurate gauge that could determine whether you’re going to live to see 100: grip strength.
That’s right, in a day and age in which people spend small fortunes to test blood, submit to imaging scans, and use state-of-the-art technology to measure and extend their lifespan, one of the best metrics is to just hold and squeeze a tennis ball as hard as you can for as long as you can. In a 44-year-long study, the participants had their grip strength measured initially at ages 56 through 68 years old at the start, and had their grip strength measured routinely throughout the study. The participants who reached the 100-year age mark were 2.5 times likely to have the highest third grip strength measured in the overall study.
@peterattiaclips Via the High Performance Podcast: Podcast title: World’s # 1 longevity expert: How to live longer in 4 simple steps
It might sound silly, but a strong and consistent grip is a good layman’s measurement of health. As we age, we lose muscle and bone mass, so maintaining a strong grip helps indicate how much weaker a person has become over time. If there is something interfering with your stamina and blood flow, such as high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes, a person could find maintaining a strong grip more difficult than a person who is healthier.
Dr. Guillaume Paréa, professor of medicine at McMaster University, believes a simple handshake from his patient can tell him a lot about his health. "Weaker handshakes where fingers struggle to close completely around my hand, or where hand muscles are emaciated, are red flags," he said to the BBC.
Joshua Davidson, a researcher of strength and conditioning at the University of Derby in England, believes that a simple at-home test with a tennis ball could be a good marker to gauge your health. "All you need is any object that you can grasp and can be deformed without causing pain or discomfort," he told the BBC. "Simply squeeze it for as long as you can before your grip fatigues. Being able to maintain a maximal squeeze on something like a tennis ball for 15 to 30 seconds would be a good standard to strive for."
It should be stressed that this is just one of several tests of a person’s health. A person could have an iron-clad grip but still have an underlying, unnoticed health issue that could be picked up by a more technologically advanced test. The purpose of the tennis ball test is just a day-to-day measurement, and to alert yourself to schedule a doctor’s visit if something appears to be off.
But if you do try to squeeze a tennis ball and you can’t keep a steady squeeze on it for 15 seconds, it might be a sign that something needs to be addressed. It could be as simple as exercising more regularly or making changes to your diet. However, all of that should be determined through more thorough testing and in consultation with your doctor.
A weaker grip isn’t just an indicator of vitality in physical health either. The National Library of Medicine has a study that suggests that a weaker grip can also be a red flag for depression and anxiety. If you’re experiencing a weak grip and you’re physically healthy, it might be worth checking to see if you have other depressive symptoms and get the appropriate support.
This tells us that the phrase “get a grip” means more than handling a situation; it also means handling your overall health for longevity’s sake.
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
Gif of Robin Williams via 
A woman conducts a online color testCanva
A selection of color swatchesCanva
A young boy takes a color examCanva 
Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.