Quick home health tests: Check your reaction times

Your reaction times can reveal an incredible amount of what’s going on inside your body, from your brain health to the risk of early death.

Over the course of our lifetime, our reaction times slowly fade. That’s one reason why athletic performance tends to decline 30s and up.

Scientists have discovered that being able to maintain average response rates can be an important indicator that our brains are still functioning normally, even after decades. But that’s not all they can reveal. From your mental health to you Overall risk of early deathYour reaction time can provide a window into the internal mechanisms of the body.

“We’ve seen a lot of people who have a lot of trouble with their brains and cognitive aging,” said Simon Cox, professor of brain and cognitive aging at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “However, the reduction in reaction times probably indicates an accumulation of age-associated degradation, a marker that tells a lot about the combined function of so many biological systems.”

But how can you assess your reaction time in the comfort of your home?

•Sit in a chair, place your arms on the table, with your thumb and ancestors facing up, with your wrists hanging from the edges.

• Ask your partner to hold the ruler vertically above your hand with “zero” where the numbers are shown, “zero” aligned with your thumb.

• Without warning, the partner should drop the ruler while the partner tries to catch it as soon as possible.

•The distance the ruler drops before being arrested is an evaluation of your reaction time.

Roughly speaking, Excellent performance is comparable To catch a ruler at a distance of less than 7.5cm, the average is 7.5-15.9cm and the average is 15.9-20.4cm, but below the average is over 20.4cm, and the poor are over 28cm.

Population studies have noticed a correlation with the rate of reduction in reaction times and risk Multiple age-related illnesses. In addition to the overall risk of death for a person, one study found an important link between a person’s reaction time and the likelihood of death from it. All major causes – There is also a strong relationship between this metric and the risk of death from certain conditions. This includes Coronary artery disease, stroke and respiratory disease.

However, according to Cox, a single reaction time measurement is not so clear because reaction rates occur. It’s quite different From one person to another depending on factors ranging from gender to genetics, physical fitness, lifestyle habits, and even personality type. What’s more likely to be more important is how your reaction rate changes when comparing performance over time in the same test, for example, how it changes annually over a decade, and whether it starts to decrease significantly, how your reaction rate changes.

As Cox points out, our ability to respond I’m dependent Networks of interconnected sensory systems: can see, hear, smell a particular stimulus, process information the brain receives from the eyes and ears and issue signals accordingly, and finally how quickly the brain can generate what the brain is directing. “All these pieces of jigsawpa can be affected by aging, but not necessarily to the same extent in all people,” says Cox.

There are two components in the response to ruler drop tests. It is the ability to make a quick assessment of the brain being removed and the speed at which the body acts on the brain’s instructions.

Researcher i got you The first component of this network, beginning in middle age, is its physical ability to act on brain signals. So, our brains may find that the ruler has been let go within milliseconds, but it will still take some time for our bodies to catch up.

Ara Ahmed, professor of biomedicine at the University of Colorado Boulder University I discovered it As we age, our reaction times can depend more on our overall physical health than our brains. She says this may be because it’s like a fast muscle fiber that allows our physical abilities to respond quickly. It’s declinedor our mitochondria – the components within the cells that produce energy – It’s not working wellwhich means we are not efficient to move quickly.

“Making faster movements is primarily relying on responding faster because it is more costly for older people,” Ahmed says.

At the same time, if we do relatively well, our brains and central nervous system can function strongly in our later years. Scientists evaluated this, according to Matthew Payne, a professor of biomechanics at Loughborough University in the UK Measure “Amazing reflexes” at the ankles of healthy elderly adults in response to loud sounds. The results showed that the brain tends to respond to sounds and send “moving” signals to the ankles tend to remain relatively intact.

“Raw nervous system hardware for healthy elderly people [people] it’s not [much] What’s worse, pain says. “Based on purely a surprise reflex, they could still respond quickly enough to be disqualified at the Olympics due to a false start, but they can’t get out of the block very quickly.”

Similar to the ruler test, the reaction time is Human benchmark reaction time test This involves waiting for the red box to turn green and then clicking as quickly as possible. The sudden deterioration of performance over time reflects a combination of breaking sensory systems, as well as slowing down brain decisions. One study from last year Loss of visual sensitivity when viewing patterns and responding is found to be one of the earliest signs of dementia, which begins more than a decade before symptoms begin.

“As you age, nerve fibers in the white matter of the brain begin to decrease signal efficiency and slow information processing,” Cox says. “When a decision is made to respond, the nerves that connect the brain to the muscles must also be in good condition to send that message quickly. These ages are also necessary.”

But there are things we can do to slow or prevent this decline from happening. For pain, we recommend so-called dual-task training. This includes simultaneous movement and cognitive training activities to coordinate both the brain and body. Examples include walking with your head around and sides, balancing one foot while reciting the alphabet, and throwing the ball while tying words verbally.

Even things like taking a fitness class via a TV screen or tablet can help your reaction time. “This improves your ability to perceive [a stimulus] And respond with meaningful, coordinated movements,” Pain says.

Cox says many of the activities that are often linked to healthy aging, such as continuing to play sports in later life, learning instruments at retirement, and continuing to engage in intellectual pursuits such as board games, can bring knock-on benefits to our reaction times.

“Sports performance drills that require fast response Increases reaction time By strengthening both the brain and body, Cox says. “And there is evidence that maintaining more social intelligence in general is associated with slower cognitive aging across complex aspects of thinking.”

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