If you’re over 40 and can sit on the floor, reach your toes and roll your fingers over them, new research suggests this is a sign that your arteries and veins are flexible.
It’s an unusual suggestion – how flexible you are on the outside as a way of knowing how flexible you are on the inside – but this is precisely what the Japanese research team discovered.
Arteries are known to naturally harden as we age, long recognized as a precursor to dangerous cardiovascular disease.
“Our findings have potentially important clinical implications because trunk flexibility can be easily assessed,” says study co-author Kenta Yamamoto, of the University of North Texas and the Japan National Institute of Health and Nutrition. “This simple test could help prevent age-related arterial stiffness.”
In the study, 526 adults, non-smokers who were not considered obese, between the ages of 20 and 83, participated in the sit-and-stretch test described above. The team measured how far each of the subjects could go, classifying them as low or high flexibility.
Blood pressure readings were taken, as well as other health measures, and participants were tested for cardiorespiratory cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, and endurance. The participants were divided, by age, into young, medium and older groups.
The team found that trunk flexibility seemed to be a good predictor of artery stiffness for the middle-aged and older age group, but not for the young. Systolic blood pressure (top number, when the heart beats) was higher in subjects with little flexibility.
It is not clear if there is a direct cause and effect relationship between being more flexible and having less stiffness in the arteries. The researchers cite another recent study that found that regular stretching exercises in midlife and adulthood significantly improved the flexibility of the carotids, the main arteries found in the neck.
Healthy blood vessels are supposed to be elastic, flexible, and therefore help moderate blood pressure. Previous research has shown that staying physically fit as you age can prevent age-related arterial stiffness, though how this works remains a mystery.
One theory to explain why flexibility would be related to the stiffness of the arteries is that stretching exercises can trigger physical reactions that slow down the natural stiffness of the arteries, so typical of aging.
“Together with our results, these findings suggest the possibility that improving flexibility induced by stretching exercise may modify age-related arterial stiffness in middle-aged and older adults,” says Dr. Yamamoto. “We believe that flexibility exercise, such as stretching, yoga and Pilates, should be integrated as a new recommendation into the known cardiovascular benefits of regular exercise.”
The findings appear in the October issue of the American Journal of Physiology – Heart and Circulatory Physiology. Future work will be needed to confirm that there may be a cause and effect relationship between the flexibility and stiffness of the arteries and veins. Until we know more, consider the benefits of adding stretching, yoga, or Pilates exercises to your exercise routine (with your doctor’s approval, of course) and see how you feel. It can’t hurt, and it can help more than you think.