Singledom & Healthy Longevity

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Statistically, those who live longest, do so in happy, fulfilling, committed relationships.

Note: happy, fulfilling, committed relationships. Less than that won’t do. Your insurance company might care about your marital status for its own sake, but your actual health doesn’t—it’s about the emotional safety and security that a good, healthy, happy, fulfilling relationship offers.

We wrote about this here:

Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!

But that’s not the full story

For a start, while being in a happy fulfilling committed relationship statistically adds healthy life years, being in a relationship that falls short of those adjectives certainly does not. See also:

Relationships: When To Stick It Out & When To Call It Quits

But also, life satisfaction steadily improves with age, for single people (the results are more complicated for partnered people—probably because of the range of difference in quality of relationships). At least, this held true in this large (n=6,188) study of people aged 40–85 years:

❝With advancing age, partnership status became less predictive of loneliness and the satisfaction with being single increased. Among later-born cohorts, the association between partnership status and loneliness was less strong than among earlier-born cohorts. Later-born single people were more satisfied with being single than their earlier-born counterparts.❞

Source: The Changing Relationship Between Partnership Status and Loneliness: Effects Related to Aging and Historical Time

Note that this does mean that while life satisfaction indeed improves with age for single people, that’s a generalized trend, and the greatest life satisfaction within this set of singles comes hand-in-hand with being single by choice rather than by perceived obligation, i.e., those who are “single and not looking” will generally be the most content, and this contentedness will improve with age, but for those who are “single and looking”, in that case it’s the younger people who have it better, likely due to a greater sense of having plenty of time.

For that matter, gender plays a role; this large survey of singles found that (despite the popular old pop-up ads advising that “older women in your area are looking to date”), in reality older single women were the least likely to actively look for a partner:

See: A Profile Of Single Americans

…which also shows that about half of single Americans are “not looking”, and of those who are, about half are open to a serious relationship, though this is more common under the age of 40, while being over the age of 40 sees more people looking only for something casual.

Take-away from this section: being single only decreases life satisfaction if one doesn’t enjoy being single, and even then, and increases it if one does enjoy being single.

But that’s about life satisfaction, not longevity

We found no studies specifically into longevity of singledom, only the implications that may be drawn from the longevity of partnered people.

However, there is a lot of research that shows it’s not being single that kills, it’s being socially isolated. It’s a function of neurodegeneration from a lack of conversation, and it’s a function of what happens when someone slips in the shower and is found a week later. Things like that.

For example: Is Living Alone “Aging Alone”? Solitary Living, Network Types, and Well-Being

What if you are alone and don’t want to be?

We’ve not, at time of writing, written dating advice in our Psychology Sunday section, but this writer’s advice is:don’t even try.

That’s not nihilism or even cynicism, by the way; it’s actually a kind of optimism. The trick is just to let them come to you.

(sample size of one here, but this writer has never looked for a relationship in her life, they’ve always just found me, and now that I’m widowed and intend to remain single, I still get offers—and no, I’m not a supermodel, nor rich, nor anything like that)

Simply: instead of trying to find a partner, just work on expanding your social relationships in general (which is much easier, because the process is something you can control, whereas the outcome of trying to find a suitable partner is not), and if someone who’s right for you comes along, great! If not, then well, at least you have a flock of friends now, and who knows what new unexpected romance may lie around the corner.

As for how to do that,

How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

Take care!

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  • ‘I keep away from people’ – combined vision and hearing loss is isolating more and more older Australians

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    Our ageing population brings a growing crisis: people over 65 are at greater risk of dual sensory impairment (also known as “deafblindness” or combined vision and hearing loss).

    Some 66% of people over 60 have hearing loss and 33% of older Australians have low vision. Estimates suggest more than a quarter of Australians over 80 are living with dual sensory impairment.

    Combined vision and hearing loss describes any degree of sight and hearing loss, so neither sense can compensate for the other. Dual sensory impairment can occur at any point in life but is increasingly common as people get older.

    The experience can make older people feel isolated and unable to participate in important conversations, including about their health.

    bricolage/Shutterstock

    Causes and conditions

    Conditions related to hearing and vision impairment often increase as we age – but many of these changes are subtle.

    Hearing loss can start as early as our 50s and often accompany other age-related visual changes, such as age-related macular degeneration.

    Other age-related conditions are frequently prioritised by patients, doctors or carers, such as diabetes or heart disease. Vision and hearing changes can be easy to overlook or accept as a normal aspect of ageing. As an older person we interviewed for our research told us

    I don’t see too good or hear too well. It’s just part of old age.

    An invisible disability

    Dual sensory impairment has a significant and negative impact in all aspects of a person’s life. It reduces access to information, mobility and orientation, impacts social activities and communication, making it difficult for older adults to manage.

    It is underdiagnosed, underrecognised and sometimes misattributed (for example, to cognitive impairment or decline). However, there is also growing evidence of links between dementia and dual sensory loss. If left untreated or without appropriate support, dual sensory impairment diminishes the capacity of older people to live independently, feel happy and be safe.

    A dearth of specific resources to educate and support older Australians with their dual sensory impairment means when older people do raise the issue, their GP or health professional may not understand its significance or where to refer them. One older person told us:

    There’s another thing too about the GP, the sort of mentality ‘well what do you expect? You’re 95.’ Hearing and vision loss in old age is not seen as a disability, it’s seen as something else.

    Isolated yet more dependent on others

    Global trends show a worrying conundrum. Older people with dual sensory impairment become more socially isolated, which impacts their mental health and wellbeing. At the same time they can become increasingly dependent on other people to help them navigate and manage day-to-day activities with limited sight and hearing.

    One aspect of this is how effectively they can comprehend and communicate in a health-care setting. Recent research shows doctors and nurses in hospitals aren’t making themselves understood to most of their patients with dual sensory impairment. Good communication in the health context is about more than just “knowing what is going on”, researchers note. It facilitates:

    • shorter hospital stays
    • fewer re-admissions
    • reduced emergency room visits
    • better treatment adherence and medical follow up
    • less unnecessary diagnostic testing
    • improved health-care outcomes.

    ‘Too hard’

    Globally, there is a better understanding of how important it is to maintain active social lives as people age. But this is difficult for older adults with dual sensory loss. One person told us

    I don’t particularly want to mix with people. Too hard, because they can’t understand. I can no longer now walk into that room, see nothing, find my seat and not recognise [or hear] people.

    Again, these experiences increase reliance on family. But caring in this context is tough and largely hidden. Family members describe being the “eyes and ears” for their loved one. It’s a 24/7 role which can bring frustration, social isolation and depression for carers too. One spouse told us:

    He doesn’t talk anymore much, because he doesn’t know whether [people are] talking to him, unless they use his name, he’s unaware they’re speaking to him, so he might ignore people and so on. And in the end, I noticed people weren’t even bothering him to talk, so now I refuse to go. Because I don’t think it’s fair.

    older woman looks down at table while carer looks on
    Dual sensory loss can be isolating for older people and carers. Synthex/Shutterstock

    So, what can we do?

    Dual sensory impairment is a growing problem with potentially devastating impacts.

    It should be considered a unique and distinct disability in all relevant protections and policies. This includes the right to dedicated diagnosis and support, accessibility provisions and specialised skill development for health and social professionals and carers.

    We need to develop resources to help people with dual sensory impairment and their families and carers understand the condition, what it means and how everyone can be supported. This could include communication adaptation, such as social haptics (communicating using touch) and specialised support for older adults to navigate health care.

    Increasing awareness and understanding of dual sensory impairment will also help those impacted with everyday engagement with the world around them – rather than the isolation many feel now.

    Moira Dunsmore, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Nursing School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, University of Sydney; Annmaree Watharow, Lived Experience Research Fellow, Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney, and Emily Kecman, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Stimulant Users Are Caught in Fatal ‘Fourth Wave’ of Opioid Epidemic

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    In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, near a storefront advertising “free” cellphones, J.R. sat in an empty back stairwell and showed a reporter how he tries to avoid overdosing when he smokes crack cocaine. KFF Health News is identifying him by his initials because he fears being arrested for using illegal drugs.

    It had been several hours since his last hit, and the chatty, middle-aged man’s hands moved quickly. In one hand, he held a glass pipe. In the other, a lentil-size crumb of cocaine.

    Or at least J.R. hoped it was cocaine, pure cocaine — uncontaminated by fentanyl, a potent opioid that was linked to about 75% of all overdose deaths in Rhode Island in 2022. He flicked his lighter to “test” his supply. He believed that if it had a “cigar-like sweet smell,” he said, it would mean that the cocaine was laced with fentanyl. He put the pipe to his lips and took a tentative puff. “No sweet,” he said, reassured.

    But this method offers only false and dangerous reassurance. A mistake can be fatal.

    It is impossible to tell whether a drug contains fentanyl by the taste or smell. “Somebody can believe that they can smell it or taste it, or see it … but that’s not a scientific test,” said Josiah “Jody” Rich, an addiction specialist and researcher who teaches at Brown University. “People are going to die today because they buy some cocaine that they don’t know has fentanyl in it.”

    The first wave of the long-running and devastating opioid epidemic began in the United States with the abuse of prescription painkillers in the early 2000s. The second wave involved an increase in heroin use, starting around 2010. The third wave began when powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl started appearing in the supply around 2015. Now experts are observing a fourth phase of the deadly epidemic.

    The mix of stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamines with fentanyl — a synthetic opioid 50 times as powerful as heroin — is driving what experts call the opioid epidemic’s “fourth wave.” The mixture of stimulants and fentanyl presents powerful challenges to efforts to reduce overdoses because many users of stimulants don’t know they are at risk of ingesting opioids, so they don’t take overdose precautions.

    The only way to know whether cocaine or other stimulants contain fentanyl is to use drug-checking tools such as fentanyl test strips — a best practice for what’s known as “harm reduction,” now embraced by federal health officials in combating drug overdose deaths. Fentanyl test strips cost as little as $2 for a two-pack online, but many front-line organizations also give them out free.

    Nationwide, illicit stimulants mixed with fentanyl were the most common drugs found in fentanyl-related overdoses, according to a study published in 2023 in the scientific journal Addiction. The stimulant in the fatal mixture tends to be cocaine in the Northeast, and methamphetamine in the West and much of the Midwest and South.

    “The No. 1 thing that people in the U.S. are dying from in terms of drug overdoses is the combination of fentanyl and a stimulant,’’ said Joseph Friedman, a researcher at UCLA and the study’s lead author. “Black and African Americans are disproportionately affected by this crisis to a large magnitude, especially in the Northeast.”

    Friedman was also the lead author of another new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, that shows the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic is driving up the mortality rate among older Black Americans (ages 55-64) and, more recently, Hispanic people. Friedman said part of the reason street fentanyl is so deadly is that there’s no way to tell how potent it is. Hospitals have safely used medical-grade fentanyl for surgical pain because the potency is strictly regulated, but “the potency fluctuates wildly in the illicit market” Friedman said.

    Studies of street drugs, he said, show that in illicit drugs the potency can vary from 1% to 70% fentanyl.

    “Imagine ordering a mixed drink in a bar and it contains one to 70 shots,” Friedman said, “and the only way you know is to start drinking it. … There would be a huge number of alcohol overdose deaths.”

    Drug-checking technology can provide a rough estimate of fentanyl concentration, he said, but to get a precise measure requires sending drugs to a laboratory.

    It’s not clear how much of the latest trend in polydrug use — in which users mix substances, such as cocaine and fentanyl, for example — is accidental versus intentional. It can vary for individual users: a recent study from Millennium Health found that most people who use fentanyl do so at times intentionally and other times unintentionally.

    People often use stimulants to power through the rapid withdrawal from fentanyl, Friedman said. And the high-risk practice of using cocaine or meth with heroin, known as “speedballing,” has been around for decades. Other factors include manufacturers’ adding the cheap synthetic opioid to a stimulant to stretch their supply, or dealers mixing up bags.

    Researchers say many people still think they are using unadulterated cocaine or crack — a misconception that can be deadly. “Folks who are using stimulants, and not intentionally using opioids, are unprepared to respond to an opioid overdose,” said Brown University epidemiologist Jaclyn White Hughto, “because they don’t perceive themselves to be at risk.” Hughto is a principal investigator in a new, unpublished study called “Preventing Overdoses Involving Stimulants.”

    Hughto and the team surveyed more than 260 people in Rhode Island and Massachusetts who use drugs, including some who manufacture and distribute stimulants such as cocaine. More than 60% of the people they interviewed in Rhode Island had bought or used stimulants that they later found out had fentanyl in them. And many of the people interviewed in the study also use drugs alone. That means that if they do overdose, they may not be found until it’s too late.

    In 2022, Rhode Island had the fourth-highest rate of overdose deaths involving cocaine in 2022, after Washington, D.C., Delaware, and Vermont, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The fourth wave is also hitting stimulant users who choose pills over what they perceive as more dangerous drugs such as cocaine in an effort to avoid fentanyl. That’s what happened to Jennifer Dubois’ son Cliffton.

    Dubois was a single mother raising two Black sons. The older son, Cliffton, had been struggling with addiction since he was 14, she said. Cliffton also had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and a mood disorder.

    In March 2020, Cliffton had checked into a rehab program as the pandemic ramped up, Dubois said. Because of the lockdown at rehab, Cliffton was upset about not being able to visit with his mother. “He said, ‘If I can’t see my mom, I can’t do treatment,’” Dubois recalled. “And I begged him” to stay in treatment.

    But soon after, Cliffton left the rehab program. He showed up at her door. “And I just cried,” she said.

    Dubois’ younger son was living at home. She didn’t want Cliffton doing drugs around his younger brother. So she gave Cliffton an ultimatum: “If you want to stay home, you have to stay drug-free.”

    Cliffton went to stay with family friends, first in Atlanta and later in Woonsocket, an old mill city that has Rhode Island’s highest rate of drug overdose deaths.

    In August 2020, Cliffton overdosed but was revived. Cliffton later confided that he’d been snorting cocaine in a car with a friend, Dubois said. Hospital records show he tested positive for fentanyl.

    “He was really scared,” Dubois said. After the overdose, he tried to “leave the cocaine and the hard drugs alone,” she said. “But he was taking pills.” Eight months later, on April 17, 2021, Cliffton was found unresponsive in the bedroom of a family member’s home.

    The night before, Cliffton had bought counterfeit Adderall, according to the police report. What he didn’t know was that the Adderall pill was laced with fentanyl. “He thought by staying away from the street drugs and just taking pills, he was doing better,” Dubois said.

    A fentanyl test strip could have saved his life.

    This article is from a partnership that includes The Public’s Radio, NPR, and KFF Health News.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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    This story can be republished for free (details).

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    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • When Age Is A Flexible Number

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    Aging, Counterclockwise!

    In the late 1970s, Dr. Ellen Langer hypothesized that physical markers of aging could be affected by psychosomatic means.

    Note: psychosomatic does not mean “it’s all in your head”.

    Psychosomatic means “your body does what your brain tells it to do, for better or for worse”

    She set about testing that, in what has been referred to since as…

    The Counterclockwise Study

    A small (n=16) sample of men in their late 70s and early 80s were recruited in what they were told was a study about reminiscing.

    Back in the 1970s, it was still standard practice in the field of psychology to outright lie to participants (who in those days were called “subjects”), so this slight obfuscation was a much smaller ethical aberration than in some famous studies of the same era and earlier (cough cough Zimbardo cough Milgram cough).

    Anyway, the participants were treated to a week in a 1950s-themed retreat, specifically 1959, a date twenty years prior to the experiment’s date in 1979. The environment was decorated and furnished authentically to the date, down to the food and the available magazines and TV/radio shows; period-typical clothing was also provided, and so forth.

    • The control group were told to spend the time reminiscing about 1959
    • The experimental group were told to pretend (and maintain the pretense, for the duration) that it really was 1959

    The results? On many measures of aging, the experimental group participants became quantifiably younger:

    ❝The experimental group showed greater improvement in joint flexibility, finger length (their arthritis diminished and they were able to straighten their fingers more), and manual dexterity.

    On intelligence tests, 63 percent of the experimental group improved their scores, compared with only 44 percent of the control group. There were also improvements in height, weight, gait, and posture.

    Finally, we asked people unaware of the study’s purpose to compare photos taken of the participants at the end of the week with those submitted at the beginning of the study. These objective observers judged that all of the experimental participants looked noticeably younger at the end of the study.❞

    ~ Dr. Ellen Langer

    Remember, this was after one week.

    Her famous study was completed in 1979, and/but not published until eleven years later in 1990, with the innocuous title:

    Higher stages of human development: Perspectives on adult growth

    You can read about it much more accessibly, and in much more detail, in her book:

    Counterclockwise: A Proven Way to Think Yourself Younger and Healthier – by Dr. Ellen Langer

    We haven’t reviewed that particular book yet, so here’s Linda Graham’s review, that noted:

    ❝Langer cites other research that has made similar findings.

    In one study, for instance, 650 people were surveyed about their attitudes on aging. Twenty years later, those with a positive attitude with regard to aging had lived seven years longer on average than those with a negative attitude to aging.

    (By comparison, researchers estimate that we extend our lives by four years if we lower our blood pressure and reduce our cholesterol.)

    In another study, participants read a list of negative words about aging; within 15 minutes, they were walking more slowly than they had before.❞

    ~ Linda Graham

    Read the review in full:

    Aging in Reverse: A Review of Counterclockwise

    The Counterclockwise study has been repeated since, and/but we are still waiting for the latest (exciting, much larger sample, 90 participants this time) study to be published. The research proposal describes the method in great detail, and you can read that with one click over on PubMed:

    PubMed | Ageing as a mindset: a study protocol to rejuvenate older adults with a counterclockwise psychological intervention

    It was approved, and has now been completed (as of 2020), but the results have not been published yet; you can see the timeline of how that’s progressing over on ClinicalTrials.gov:

    Clinical Trials | Ageing as a Mindset: A Counterclockwise Experiment to Rejuvenate Older Adults

    Hopefully it’ll take less time than the eleven years it took for the original study, but in the meantime, there seems to be nothing to lose in doing a little “Citizen Science” for ourselves.

    Maybe a week in a 20 years-ago themed resort (writer’s note: wow, that would only be 2004; that doesn’t feel right; it should surely be at least the 90s!) isn’t a viable option for you, but we’re willing to bet it’s possible to “microdose” on this method. Given that the original study lasted only a week, even just a themed date-night on a regular recurring basis seems like a great option to explore (if you’re not partnered then well, indulge yourself how best you see fit, in accord with the same premise; a date-night can be with yourself too!).

    Just remember the most important take-away though:

    Don’t accidentally put yourself in your own control group!

    In other words, it’s critically important that for the duration of the exercise, you act and even think as though it is the appropriate date.

    If you instead spend your time thinking “wow, I miss the [decade that does it for you]”, you will dodge the benefits, and potentially even make yourself feel (and thus, potentially, if the inverse hypothesis holds true, become) older.

    This latter is not just our hypothesis by the way, there is an established potential for nocebo effect.

    For example, the following study looked at how instructions given in clinical tests can be worded in a way that make people feel differently about their age, and impact the results of the mental and/or physical tests then administered:

    ❝Our results seem to suggest how manipulations by instructions appeared to be more largely used and capable of producing more clear performance variations on cognitive, memory, and physical tasks.

    Age-related stereotypes showed potentially stronger effects when they are negative, implicit, and temporally closer to the test of performance. ❞

    ~ Dr. Francesco Pagnini

    Read more: Age-based stereotype threat: a scoping review of stereotype priming techniques and their effects on the aging process

    (and yes, that’s the same Dr. Francesco Pagnini whose name you saw atop the other study we cited above, with the 90 participants recreating the Counterclockwise study)

    Want to know more about [the hard science of] psychosomatic health?

    Check out Dr. Langer’s other book, which we reviewed recently:

    The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health – by Dr. Ellen Langer

    Enjoy!

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Related Posts

  • The Science Of New Year’s Pre-Resolutions
  • Nobody’s Sleeping – by Dr. Bijoy John

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Firstly, let’s mention: yes, for the sake of being methodical and comprehensive this book does give the same baseline advice as every other sleep book out there. However, it gives something else, too:

    It goes beyond that baseline, to a) give more personalized advice for various demographics (e.g. per age, sex, health conditions, etc) and b) give direction for further personalizing one’s own sleep improvement journey, by troubleshooting and fixing things that may pertain to you very specifically and not to most people.

    This means, that if you’re doing “all the right things” but still having sleep-related problems, there is hope and there are more approaches to try.

    The style in which this is delivered is very readable, which is good, because if one hasn’t been sleeping well, then chances are that an intellectual challenge would be about as welcome as a physical challenge—that is to say: not at all.

    Bottom line: if sleep is not your strength and you would like it to be and all the usual things haven’t yet worked, this book may well help you to overcome the hurdles between you and a good night’s sleep each night.

    Click here to check out Nobody’s Sleeping, and refute that title!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Staying Alive – by Dr. Jenny Goodman

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    A lot of “healthy long life” books are science-heavy to the point of being quite challenging to read—they become excellent reference sources, but not exactly “curl up in the armchair” books.

    Dr. Goodman writes in a much more reader-friendly fashion, casual yet clear.

    She kicks off with season-specific advice. What does that mean? Basically, our bodies need different things at different times of year, and we face different challenges to good health. We may ignore such at our peril!

    After a chapter for each of the four seasons (assuming a temperate Northern Hemisphere climate), she goes on to cover the seasons of our life. Once again, our bodies need different things at different times in our life, and we again face different challenges to good health!

    There’s plenty of “advice for all seasons”, too. Nutritional dos and don’t, and perennial health hazards to avoid.

    As a caveat, she does also hold some unscientific views that may be skipped over. These range from “plant-based diets aren’t sustainable” to “this detox will get rid of heavy metals”. However, the value contained in the rest of the book is more than sufficient to persuade us to overlook those personal quirks.

    In particular, she offers very good advice on overcoming cravings (and distinguishing them from genuine nutritional cravings), and taking care of our “trillions of tiny companions” (beneficial gut microbiota) without nurturing Candida and other less helpful gut flora and fauna.

    In short, a fine lot of information in a very readable format.

    Order your copy of “Staying Alive” from Amazon today!

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  • Test For Whether You Will Be Able To Achieve The Splits

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    Some people stretch for years without being able to do the splits; others do it easily after a short while. Are there people for whom it is impossible, and is there a way to know in advance whether our efforts will be fruitful? Liv (of “LivInLeggings” fame) has the answer:

    One side of the story

    There are several factors that affect whether we can do the splits, including:

    • arrangement of the joint itself
    • length of tendons and muscles
    • “stretchiness” of tendons and muscles

    The latter two things, we can readily train to improve. Yes, even the basic length can be changed over time, because the body adapts.

    The former thing, however (arrangement of the joint itself) is near-impossible, because skeletal changes happen more slowly than any other changes in the body. In a battle of muscle vs bone, muscle will always win eventually, and even the bone itself can be rebuilt (as the body fixes itself, or in the case of some diseases, messes itself up). However, changing the arrangement of your joint itself is far beyond the auspices of “do some stretches each day”. So, for practical purposes, without making it the single most important thing in your life, it’s impossible.

    How do we know if the arrangement of our hip joint will accommodate the splits? We can test it, one side at a time. Liv uses the middle splits, also called the side splits or box splits, as an example, but the same science and the same method goes for the front splits.

    Stand next to a stable elevated-to-hip-height surface. You want to be able to raise your near-side leg laterally, and rest it on the surface, such that your raised leg is now perfectly perpendicular to your body.

    There’s a catch: not only do you need to still be stood straight while your leg is elevated 90° to the side, but also, your hips still need to remain parallel to the floor—not tilted up to one side.

    If you can do this (on both sides, even if not both simultaneously right now), then your hip joint itself definitely has the range of motion to allow you to do the side splits; you just need to work up to it. Technically, you could do it right now: if you can do this on both sides, then since there’s no tendon or similar running between your two legs to make it impossible to do both at once, you could do that. But, without training, your nerves will stop you; it’s an in-built self-defense mechanism that’s just firing unnecessarily in this case, and needs training to get past.

    If you can’t do this, then there are two main possibilities:

    • Your joint is not arranged in a way that facilitates this range of motion, and you will not achieve this without devoting your life to it and still taking a very long time.
    • Your tendons and muscles are simply too tight at the moment to allow you even the half-split, so you are getting a false negative.

    This means that, despite the slightly clickbaity title on YouTube, this test cannot actually confirm that you can never do the middle splits; it can only confirm that you can. In other words, this test gives two possible results:

    • “Yes, you can do it!”
    • “We don’t know whether you can do it”

    For more on the anatomy of this plus a visual demonstration of the test, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Stretching Scientifically – by Thomas Kurz ← this is our review of the book she’s working from in this video; this book has this test!

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