Your grip helps you cook, work, drive, exercise, and catch yourself during a stumble. But it can also offer doctors a surprisingly insightful glimpse into your overall health, how well your body is aging and even how long you may live. Grip strength is a key indicator of overall muscular and systemic health.
What is grip strength? How is it measured?
Grip strength is the amount of force your hand can produce when your fingers and thumb close around an object. While most of that force comes from muscles in the hand and forearm, a strong grip also depends on support from your wrist, elbow and shoulders. "And if the extensors of your wrist are not strong enough to keep the wrist stable, the flexors of your fingers will pull your wrist forward," Nick Maroldi, a doctor of physical therapy at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, explains.
Your grip can also reveal something about muscles in other parts of your body. Because it depends partly on overall muscle strength and nervous system function, "grip strength correlates with the strength of your leg and many upper-body muscles as well," says Keith Baar, a professor of molecular exercise physiology at the University of California, Davis. That is one reason researchers often use it as a convenient stand-in for overall muscular strength.
He explains that clinicians measure grip strength using a handheld device called a dynamometer, which records force in pounds or kilograms. To use it, you simply squeeze as hard as possible, usually several times with each hand. But because arm position, handle size, posture and even the instructions given during the test can affect the score, standardized testing is important when comparing results.
Because scores also differ by age, sex, body size and dominant hand, Maroldi says clinicians are also taught to interpret them in the proper context rather than apply a single standard to everyone.
How does grip strength relate to overall health?
While grip strength itself does not extend life, it does reflect many of the things that influence health, including physical activity, muscle quality, nutrition, illness, coordination and how well the nervous system is functioning, Baar explains.
The association between grip strength and overall health is striking. For example, a 2024 study that followed more than 9,300 adults ages 45 and older for an average of about three years found that every 5-kilogram, or 11-pound, increase in grip strength was associated with a nearly 8% lower risk of developing heart disease.
Another study involving nearly 140,000 adults across 17 countries found that every 5-kilogram decrease in grip strength was also associated with a 16% higher risk of death from any cause. In that study, grip strength was an even stronger predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality than blood pressure. In short, grip strength is "a biomarker for overall musculoskeletal and systemic health," Maroldi says.
But this is also where Baar says grip strength is often misunderstood. While improving your whole-body health and strength can improve your grip, strengthening your hands alone will not necessarily change the underlying health conditions your grip.
For information about why grip strength decreases as we age, and what you can do to increase yours, read the full article here.
The best approach is to focus on strengthening your entire body. There are specific exercises that can strengthen muscles and positively impact grip strength. So can everyday activities like gardening, carrying groceries and lifting laundry baskets. If you’ve noticed a decrease in your grip strength, or never realized how important it is to your overall health, now is the time to pay attention to this key indicator.