Unlock the Secret: How Flexibility Can Add Years to Your Life

Staying flexible isn’t just about stretching your muscles—it's about potentially extending your lifespan! A fascinating study published in August 2024 by the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports found a notable connection between physical flexibility and a lower risk of mortality from natural causes (excluding COVID-19) in middle-aged individuals.

This study highlights flexibility—which, for the sake of their findings, the authors also refer to as “mobility,” despite these terms having slightly different meanings—as the ability of our joints to move freely through various ranges of motion. While the observational nature of this research doesn't definitively prove that flexibility guarantees longevity, lead author, Dr. Claudio Gil S. Araújo, MD, PhD, shared with Health that the findings are certainly intriguing. “We already know that improving aerobic fitness prolongs survival,” he explained, “and perhaps flexibility plays a similar role.”

So, what does this study really tell us about our health? Let’s dig deeper into the potential implications of poor flexibility on increased mortality risk and explore simple yet effective ways to enhance your flexibility for better health.

According to Dr. Araújo, flexibility has long been recognized as an indicator of physical fitness, but its impact on longevity hasn't been thoroughly examined. “I realized that flexibility was not merely about sports performance—it’s also a crucial factor for health,” he noted. To investigate this connection, Dr. Araújo and his team gathered data from 3,139 individuals aged 46 to 65 years. They assessed participants using a test called the Flexitest, which Dr. Araújo devised in the 1970s.

This comprehensive test assesses the flexibility of seven different joints through 20 distinct movements, evaluating actions such as knee extension, hip flexion, and shoulder mobility. Each movement is scored on a scale from 0 to 4, leading to a total potential score ranging from 0 to 80. The researchers then compared these scores against participant mortality rates over an average follow-up period of 13 years. Notably, during this timeframe, men exhibited a higher overall death rate (10%) compared to women (7%). Interestingly, women also