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Do You Shake Hands Firmly? You Must Be Younger

By Kamal Nayan | Update Date: May 09, 2014 09:55 AM EDT

A simple handshake would reveal the true age of a person, according to a new study. 

The study asserted that hand-grip strength is correlated with known markers of aging, disability, mental decline, recovery time after hospital treatment and even death and that in near future a 'handshake test' could by used as a viable test for determining biological age. 

"Hand-grip strength is easily measured and data on hand-grip strength now can be found in many of the most important surveys on aging worldwide," said Dr Warren Sanderson, one of the authors of the study, according to Daily Mail. 

The study found that higher grip strength corresponded with indicators of younger biological age in different population groups. 

"We found that based on this survey, a 65-year-old white woman who had not completed secondary education has the same hand-grip strength as a 69-year-old white woman who had completed secondary education," said Co-author Dr Serguei Scherbov, according to Daily Mail.

"This suggests that according to hand-grip strength characteristic their ages are equivalent and the 65 year-old woman ages four years faster due to lower education attainment."

In past, researchers proved that simply measuring the number of years people have lived doesn't account for an accurate picture of biologically how old they are. 

"Our goal is to measure how fast different groups in a society age," added Dr Scherbov.

"If some group is getting older faster than another, we can ask why that might be and see whether there are any policies that could help the faster aging group."

The research has been published in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE.

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