This 33 -foot light test can predict how long you will live

You’re walking but is it right in the grave?

A growing research body suggests that daily movement can find out how fast your body and brain are getting old – and may even be able to predict how long you have left.

Good news: There is an easy home test that can show how you gather. All you need is a stopwatch, a mass of tape and your natural step.

Doctors are increasingly treating the speed of walking – how fast you walk – as an essential vital sign, similar to blood pressure, pulse and body temperature.

“It tells me how well people work, how well their muscles are moving and working together,” Dr. Sara Bonnes, medical director of the May Health Life Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, for Business Insider.

“We can do complex tests to measure how well the people’s physical fitness level is, but this is a smaller, easier version that still tells me: Is you moving well and going well for your age?” she added.

Walking speed can help doctors evaluate functional independence, or your ability to manage daily tasks such as cooking, buying, bath and driving. This becomes an essential marker as you grow old.

Also a powerful predictor of future health, from chronic illness to mortality.

“When the normal rhythm of a person’s walking falls, it is often associated with the fundamental decline in health,” BBC told Dr. Christina Dieli-Conwright, a medical professor at the Harvard Medical School.

For example, fast walks tend to have healthier hearts. One study found that women aged 50 to 79 who walked at a faster pace had a 34% lower risk of heart failure compared to slow carriages.

In older adults, the slowest speed of walking has been associated with health decline, reduction of mobility, a higher risk of decrease and early death.

But you do not need to be on the hill to gather knowledge from your walking speed.

Research shows that a slow step in middle life can also find out how fast you are aging, both physically and mentally.

A 2019 study found that 45-year-olds with a slow walk had weaker lungs, compromised immune systems and higher aging markers-high blood pressure and cholesterol-compared with their fastest peers.

Slow also Walkers scored lower in IQ tests and fought more with memory, reasoning and processing tasks. Brain scans confirmed that cognitive decline was related to true physical changes in their brain.

Another study linked the decline in walking speed with an increased risk of developing dementia, compared to those who maintained their pace year after year.

“It doesn’t matter why the walk has slowed down. Almost always means a decrease in overall health,” Dr. Amit Sachdev, medical director at the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University for Women’s Health.

Walk this way

Want to see how you measure it? Here’s the proof.

1. Go out and find a flat stretch of Earth. Measure 16.5 feet (5 meters), then 33 more feet (10 meters) beyond that.
2. Use the first 16.5 feet as a heat. When you hit the 33 -foot mark, start your stopwatch and walk at your normal rhythm.
3. Time for how long it takes to walk with 33 full legs. Then divide 33 with the number of seconds it took. This is your walking speed per second.

The average walking speeds vary by age and sex, with men who generally exceed women. Here is a quick photo to see how you pile:

• Age 20–29: Men – 4.46 ft/s | Women – 4.4 ft/s
• Age 30–39: Men – 4.69 ft/s | Women – 4.4 ft/s
• Age 40–49: men – 4.7 ft/s | Women – 4.6 ft/s
• Age 50–59: men – 4.7 ft/s | Women – 4.3 ft/s
• Age 60-29: men-4.7 ft/s | Women – 4.1 ft/s
• Ages 70–79: men – 4.16 ft/s | Women – 3.7 ft/s
• Age 80–89: men – 3.2 ft/s | Women – 3.1 ft/s