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Stronger hands lengthen your life

igouy 5y ago
"Correlation does not imply causation."
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  But it does get lots of views. ;)
mancerayder 5y ago
The correlation is probably between strong wrist muscles and general fitness, i.e. exercise or strength training, and longevity.
mmcdermott 5y ago
This article has a bad "pop science" feel to it. The correlation between grip and survival is probably solid enough, but it's hard to avoid the nagging feeling that people who have a strong grip are probably stronger and healthier overall as well. The article goes on to recommend grip strengthener and I strongly suspect that better skeletal-muscular health in general should be the goal. "Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general." --Mark Rippetoe.
- ec109685 5y ago
  Yes, real science takes a random group and has some strengthen hands and others do something else and see who has better outcome.
  - andreareina 5y ago
    Which is fairly impractical over those timespans and so we mostly have to make do with observational studies and RCTs looking at proxies for the actual outcome of interest and mechanistic reasoning.
- redmen 5y ago
  Yes I believe you are correct here. So often in medicine we want to just treat the symptoms. It's amazing how hard it is to find doctors who don't end up thinking like this. Personally I haven't been able to figure it out. They're definitely not stupid, but why do so many research papers look at the body in such a way that leads to such prescriptions? Is it because researchers lack the clinical experience to overcome this mistake? Definitely the advice of increasing one's grip strength is poor on multiple levels. Even if increasing your grip strength leads to a higher-quality life, simply training only the forearm without addressing the entire arm and shoulder and neck all together is not going to be good for ones overall muscular (and nerves, etc) balance.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    No way man, the entire medical industry is well aware about the differences between correlation and causation. Trials to validate medicine heavily involve tactics to check for causation. What you're reading here is just some journal that identified a correlation and the author of the popular science article can't tell the difference between that and causation.
    - taeric 5y ago
      I think it is probably fair to say that the industry is aware, but most of the practitioners that make up the industry can still be susceptible to the mistake. This is largely true of science, as well. Note that I don't mean that many practitioners are ignorant of the idea. I mean that they could know it, and still fall to it. "Value based judgements" are still a large thing, after all.
      - deltaonefour 5y ago
        Practitioners just regurgitate the results of said science. They use standard treatments and well-documented techniques without the need to understand the science around the development of those techniques.
- mise_en_place 5y ago
  I definitely agree with this. When I was a beginner weightlifter, I'd actually grip the bar too tightly. This led to bicep activation when doing bench press, so I had to learn to lighten my grip and focus on activation of my deltoids, pectoral muscle, lats, etc. Even some tricep activation helped too
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  I generally love Axios, but this does feel more life hacking newsletter than hard news. But the article does talk about risk of falling too which. seems like a fair logical causation jump that stronger hands = less risk of falling injury. They don't cite that though.... I think they should have used the line from the harvard link they put "these findings highlight the importance of doing regular exercise to maintain strong muscles as you age. "
- kleene_op 5y ago
  Yes. The correct take from this article is to change your lifestyle until you have strong hands if you want to live longer, but don't focus on getting strong hands specifically.
  - madaxe_again 5y ago
    Yup. The right lifestyle leads to all sorts of beneficial side effects. I moved off grid about two years ago, and since, have become leaner and fitter than I have been in my entire life, with zero deliberate exercise. I hadn’t considered my hand strength until just now, but it just occurred to me that I’ve had no carpal tunnel symptoms in at least a year, although I still do plenty of typing and fine manual work. I also do a lot of heavy carrying and lifting and digging and all the rest. Prior to this I was a desk jockey, living off processed crap - now, barely a day passes when I don’t find myself doing some kind of manual labour out of necessity. Honestly, it feels great to live like a human is built to live. We just aren’t made for the sedentary lifestyles we typically live in developed countries, and it’s killing us - and advice like “use a hand exerciser” is the absolute epitome of treating the symptom, not the disease.
brimble 5y ago
OK, maybe there's something to being able to catch yourself when falling, or prevent the fall in the first place through grip strength. But this: > It's not just bracing yourself. Scientists have linked stronger hands to healthier hearts. > One study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that higher grip strength was correlated to lower blood pressure, lower blood sugar and higher good cholesterol levels. Has to just be grip strength correlating with activity level and general health, not grip strength causing any of that.
- deleted 5y ago
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- scythe 5y ago
  Well, it doesn't have to be that abstract. Muscles in the peripheral limbs, particularly the lower leg but also the forearm, are important in returning venous blood to the heart. In fact, the gastrocnemius (calf muscle) has been referred to as the "second heart": https://veinatlanta.com/your-second-heart/ https://veinatlanta.com/your-second-heart/
- robocat 5y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/almost_all_men_are_stronger_than_almost_all_women/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/alm... Submitter said: “EDIT 2: Some of the very low values are individuals with disabilities”, “EDIT 4: Grip strength is a decent proxy for upper and lower limb strength, and is also correlated with other indices of strength.”
- FredPret 5y ago
  I wonder if grip strength could indicate nervous system health, which might have heart effects. I'm not a doctor but I am deeply sceptical of any study involving extracting statistical insights from (very complex) humans.
DrPhish 5y ago
That would definitely explain the large numbers of feisty old Judoka I meet around the world. Anecdotally, there seems to be a higher percentage of healthy older individuals doing Judo than the general population, but I guess the unhealthy ones wouldn't still be at it, so it self selects for that trait. Judo practitioners might be a good population to study for this effect, if you could find the individuals that started and track them all, including the dropouts. It would have common traits of strong grip AND muscle memory of how to fall properly, which could be a confounding factor.
avalys 5y ago
I am going to bookmark this article as a classic example of reporting so ill-informed that it confuses cause and effect, as described by Michael Crichton in characterizing “Gell-Mann Amnesia.” https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...
credit_guy 5y ago
Also, playing golf adds 5 years to your life expectancy [1]. I kid you not. Start playing today, and you’ll live years longer. This has nothing to do with the fact that most golf players are really wealthy, and so they have access to way better healthcare, nutrition, and lifestyle than the rest of us. Said differently, correlation does not imply causation. [1] https://www.golfandhealth.org/news/golfers-longevity/?amp_markup=1 https://www.golfandhealth.org/news/golfers-longevity/?amp_ma...
- baal80spam 5y ago
  Love it!
- treeman79 5y ago
  Decided to take up golf. Now I can’t feel my leg.
- cperciva 5y ago
  They claim that was adjusted for socioeconomic status. Rather than being a matter of better access to health care etc, I suspect a reverse causation -- people who are in poor health are less likely to go out to the golf course. The same applies to Vitamin D, taking international flights, and reading books, all of which are correlated with reduced death rates.
- qiskit 5y ago
  Thank you. They always make it sound like X helps you lenghten your life. But it's always the case the X is a symptom of a healthy life, not the cause of it. Strong hands is probably a result of exercise and leading a healthy life which leads to higher life expectancy. Meaning exercise and leading a healthy life is the cause of strong hands and higher life expectancy. Golf industry says golf lengthens your life. Hand grip industry says strong hands lengthen life. Can't help but be a little bit cynical the older I get.
  - m463 5y ago
    I would imagine few people with a strong grip have everything else in their body weak. So a strong grip might correlate with strong everything else. By the way, strong hands are controlled by strings and pulleys - it's really just strong forearm muscles. It would be interesting if the study was for people with JUST a strong grip, like folks who were always in a chair. I remember reading of another study where people who were pear-shaped were healthier than people who were round. Turns out that people put on weight at the waist first, and as they put on more weight, it moves to the chest and shoulders, so...
elliottkember 5y ago
Yep, you read this as being a correlation-causation fallacy. You are being nerd-sniped, and it worked. Don't let that put you off doing arm and hand exercises. I recommend kettlebells.
POiNTx 5y ago
No, people with strong hands tend to live longer.
dugditches 5y ago
While the website seems very fluff, the concept of hand health can't be overstressed. Keep care of your hands and wrists. If you feel pain or discomfort, stiffness etc figure out why and fix it. Whether it's keyboard/desk etc change. Or taking breaks and stretching. Those suffering later stages of hand/wrist strain or wear... look into: wrist straps, wax baths, heated 'wax gloves'
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that, in late and just post college, my wrist pain was so bad that I used to have to ice my wrists at night and take ibuprofen to be able to sleep. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I needed to do anything about it. Eventually a colleague noticed and took me aside and gave my a clue-by-four to the head. 30 years later, pain-free and still in the industry, due in no small part to a Kinesis keyboard.
  - JohnnyMarcone 5y ago
    I credit the Kinesis keyboard for saving my career. I still have wrist and hand issues but nothing as bad as the years before Kinesis.
agumonkey 5y ago
Let's have a worldwide day of workout, grip hanging, slow dead lift, taichi. And enjoy 8 Billion man hours of calmer cardiovascular systems.
cooervo 5y ago
/r/hailcorporate this guys are just promoting some products backed with pseudo science BS
tj-teej 5y ago
Bob: "You know I used to think correlation implied causation, but I took this Statistics class but know I know that's not true." Jeff: "Wow it sounds like that class really helped you" Bob: "Maybe!" Credit goes to XKCD
- xpe 5y ago
  Haha... Attending the statistics class is the most likely explanation for the mental change.
- mkl 5y ago
  https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/, https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/552:_Correlation https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/552:_Correlation
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  The XKCD article is a misnomer. Causation is actually verified. 1. You measure a population about whether they know about a fact. You find most people don't know it. 2. You introduce a statistics class to that population that teaches said fact. 3. You measure the population after the class and you find most now people know about said fact. That is literally proving Causation. But you'll see there's a trick in my wording. If I didn't deliberately introduce that class to a population, and I simply observed an existing population that took that class... well, then in that case I cannot prove causation. However the character that was asked the question in the XKCD comic, deliberately introduced the statistics class on himself. This deliberate act changes the experiment. HE himself is the experimenter and he controls the parameters and thus he has the knowledge needed to verify causation. The person who asked the question cannot verify causation, but the person the question was asked too, CAN verify it. I get the humor behind the comic. But it is technically wrong. Causation is verified. All causative experiments are run this way.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
gurjeet 5y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30716390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30716390
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yawnxyz 5y ago
This is probably true among free soloists (rock climbing without a rope)
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  Regular mountain/rock climbing is probably a great way to improve your grip strength. Of course, regular outdoor climbing (even with a rope) may not reduce your lifetime risk of death from falling.
redmen 5y ago
It's an old study, but correlation doesn't prove causation. It turns out that people who have pore hand/grip strength are more likely to fall, or have a type of life that leads to higher chance of death. This is a very complicated cause/effect to figure out, even for top-class physical therapists. Also possible that if you have good grip strength then you have good muscular balance and innervation, vascularity, and motor neuron balance (extensor/flexor), which possibly leads to better overall health, including heart health. Honestly, I have no idea. But that's the point. Neither do experts who spend decades in this field. It's far too complex to study through these types of lenses. This is often why clinical practice still does better than science in this field. It's complicated as hell and many traditional scientists think they can study the musculoskeletal system this way, when the top doctors learn most of their skills through clinical trial-and-error. Still in 2022.
- redmen 5y ago
  Just to attempt to be thorough, and reiterate that honestly I don't know the answer, but good grip strength may be something comes from good overall muscular and nervous system health, not the other way around. It interests me how far we have come in technology, but how little we know how to apply it to certain kinds of medicine. Just as an anecdote, I have been spending thousands of hours in physical therapy, and have visited doctors all over. One thing I have learned is that many great doctors used to read tonnes of research papers early in their career, but over time gravitated more towards their clinical experience in building their tree of knowledge. From what I have heard, the science is just too vague and difficult in this field and so as tempting as it is to want to apply the scientific framework around this field (I'm talking specifically about physical therapy here, not necessarily other areas of medicine where I know far less about), it ends up being more effective to build up ones intuition off of a strong clinical practice and then to look at the science afterwards in order to calibrate and filter through those experiences. A bit of a tangent, but something I also find to be interesting is how poor the feedback mechanisms are in a lot of medicine. Most patients don't follow their prescribed homework, and many surgeons don't even get to see the long-term outcomes of their patients' surgery. Or when they do they are measuring some variables that don't give enough of an overall view of the person's body or overall health. Anyways, I'm done rambling for now :P. I hope we can curtail the upcoming health crisis we are going to have with our and our childrens' postures and poor body mechanics.
BubbleRings 5y ago
Guys guys, the whole article was written just to feed traffic to the website selling the hand exercise devices, including the scam powerball thing, which was a cool product when it came out, but for years has had such poor quality control that the devices always stop working after about two hours of use.
- deleted 5y ago
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odyssey7 5y ago
Anecdata: the older pianists and organists who I know are doing well, and it isn't because they are better at catching themselves when they fall.
- forum_ghost 5y ago
  what do you think is the causative factor?
nanochad 5y ago
For cavemen or office workers?
ekianjo 5y ago
> Scientists have linked stronger hands to healthier hearts. Erm, correlation is not causation, it's probably BECAUSE you have a healthy heart that you have a good grip on your hands. I can't believe it's not obvious to the author.
cassonmars 5y ago
I had a friend who worked in assisted living centers, and saw a number of deaths related to falling. The one thing he noticed about those that fell most frequently was that they still drank alcohol. Anecdata from someone in the field, but it was a stark reminder that people who get to an infirm stage in life are still just people, with all the same vices as before.
malkia 5y ago
I dunno. I can squeeze Iron Mind #3 - but I don't consider myself that healthy, it's just a habit I've had. (Oh, I can squeeze it only with my right hand, my left is 2.5, almost to 3).
snowwrestler 5y ago
It’s hard to work your hands for strength without working other significant muscle groups at the same time—like hanging from things or picking things up. Likewise, it’s hard to work on muscular strength without also increasing your hand strength. To lift weights, your hands have to grip the weight. So, there is a pretty strong correlation with overall health. The one thing I’ll say is that hand strength is hard to get back if you let it fade. The muscles don’t grow very fast or very much, and you need strong tendons (which grow even more slowly) to transmit the strength to your actual fingers. So again, if you’re able to increase hand strength, you’ve probably got some other positive correlations like “works out regularly” and “cares about functional health.”
begueradj 5y ago
Basically whatever body part you strengthen, is beneficial for your lifespan. The title is a click bait.
tinyhouse 5y ago
That's a strange title. Regarding falling. One of the most important things is to sit or lay down immediately when you feel bad, like nausea for example. I understand the fall can be sudden. But sometimes people have a couple of seconds to react and they look for a something nearby to hold on. But then they pass out and fall.
_huayra_ 5y ago
This reminds me that whole thing where some study showed a comparison of average daily alcohol consumption and showed that "moderate" drinkers actually had lower mortality than those who don't drink (obviously heavy drinkers had _much_ higher mortality). Little did anyone seem to realize that people who don't drink may be abstaining for health reasons and thus may be more likely to die / get sick regardless. But it was sure great for the booze industry. https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2022/01/31/no-amount-of-alcohol-safe-for-heart-report-says/ https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2022/01/31/no-amount-of...
- busymom0 5y ago
  Didn’t it also have to do with how people who can afford frequent wines were wealthier and thus less stress and other problems?
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  The sugar industry has almost killed more…
- HellsMaddy 5y ago
  Not only that those who abstain do so for health reasons, but many teetotalers were in the past alcoholics. Those who have never had a drinking problem tend to have few qualms with a glass of wine here or there, and so could be classified as light/occasional drinkers.
- bkjelden 5y ago
  The other explanation is that being a 'moderate' drinker correlates with being able to do things in moderation in general, which is predictive of longevity.
- gpsx 5y ago
  Maybe all that drinking increased their grip strength. /s
eth0up 5y ago
https://www.ironmind.com/product-info/ironmind-grippers/captains-of-crush-grippers/ https://www.ironmind.com/product-info/ironmind-grippers/capt... I own the No.2 model[1] and have been squeezing it for a year. It's fun, mostly for handing it to tough guys and presenting it as The Pansy Test. Out of over a dozen grown men, none have closed it yet. Inevitably they eventually ask me if I can, to which I humbly reply "I think so." and do it several times. They always want to try again, some get mad. I'm small and insubstantial. That can be amusing. But I've never perceived any benefit from using it. Squats are where it's at, I think. I see a change in my overall form more dramatic than any other activity, except maybe hard labor. Edit: 1. Captains of Crush grip trainer
- borroka 5y ago
  CoC grip trainers, a trip down the memory lane. I got certified for the #3 almost 20 year ago. I could do probably 8-10 complete reps at the time. The #4 felt like squeezing a brick, I am wondering whether with a couple of years of training I'd been able to close it, back in the day probably just 2 or 3 people had been able to: Joe Kinney and one or two of those guys from Wales. I also had a welder build some specific grip training equipment for me.
  - eth0up 5y ago
    I doubt I'd ever be able to close the #3. I've never done more than 4 reps on the #2. But I don't push myself. I seem to get much more out of pullups and other grip exercises. They're still great to have around and my favorite is their Zenith, which is softer than the #1.5, smooth-handled and fatter. If you can close a #3, you could close the Zenith telekinetically.
    - malkia 5y ago
      It took me long time to get to 3, but did if after all (but just with right hand, left hand still on 2.5). That to be said, grippers may not be accurate, each one a bit off - there was a company (can't remember the name) where you can send your gripper to be measured, and returned back.
deleted 5y ago
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dghughes 5y ago
If true fishermen should live to 200. Grabbing ans hailing in lines, traps, gear for hours at a time. If you meet a fisherman check out their hands and arms. A bit of advice never arm wrestle a fisherman especially they're middle-aged or older even if his arms look thin. Edit: the reason, from what I've heard it's due to tendon strength. It takes a long time to develop strong tendons.
imnotlost 5y ago
My friend is an electrician with a monster grip - he still had a heart attack! Sounds like a correlation that misses the point, general health prolongs life, couch-potatoes die sooner and have worse quality of life their last 30 years or so. And setting up for good health in advanced age starts decades earlier. Try comparing someone who does grip-strength training only vs someone who does heavy dead-lifts, both into their 80s. My money will be on the dead-lift guy, not just having a better quality of life until his last day, but also living longer.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Your monster grip friend having a heart attack is more of an anecdote too! So is everything else you posted
nostromo 5y ago
This is facepalm level “science.” Longer life is correlated with general health. General health is correlated with strength. And strength is correlated with grip.
- tesrx 5y ago
  Sure, but I found the article incredibly insightful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bluishgreen 5y ago
Hand strength is correlated with exercise. Legs tend to be strong in general for modern people because in the end we still walk and the legs have to carry the whole weight of the body - which tends to be significant. But hands will be strong only if you voluntarily exercise. Even physically demanding labour tends to have many tools to make hand oriented tasks(hand jobs?!) considerably easier. So if you can't/didn't control for this correlation, there is no news here.
drpgq 5y ago
Reminds me of this Razib Khan post about the difference in grip strength between males and females: http://www.razib.com/wordpress/2017/05/04/in-grip-strength-a-woman-in-the-90th-percentile-would-be-at-the-10th-percentile-for-men/ http://www.razib.com/wordpress/2017/05/04/in-grip-strength-a...
sneakpdx 5y ago
If you're trying to avoid death by falling, then strong hands won't save you if you don't know how to fall properly. As someone who grew up skateboarding, I had to learn how to fall properly to avoid constantly injuring myself. There's a reason a lot of older skaters can still skate and I can tell you it's not because of their athleticism or healthy habits for which both are usually lacking.
deltaonefour 5y ago
Everyone knows correlation does not equal causation. But no one knows the nature of the statistical experiment that is needed to prove causation. Ask yourself this before you post a new flavor of the "correlation does not imply causation" post that is already all over this thread. So we know correlating hand strength with lifespan doesn't prove causation. What sort of experiment or what different parameters must be changed in order to verify causation? If you don't know the answer to this, then that means you don't completely understand the dichotomy between correlation and causation.
- trendoid 5y ago
  Find (or create) lots of obese people or smokers or alcoholics focusing only on hand strength exercises. Then see how their life expectancy changes compared to obese people, smokers or alcoholics that didn't do those hand strength exercises.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    >Find (or create) lots of obese people or smokers or alcoholics focusing only on hand strength exercises. It's clear you don't see it. You don't have to focus on smokers or alcoholics that's irrelevant. But let's modify your statement to not include the fluff. >Find (or create) lots of people who focus only on hand strength exercises. Even when you remove the fluff the statement above still shows how you don't understand the dichotomy between correlation and causation. The experiment in the article can in fact be summarized by this statement: >Find lots of people who focus only on hand strength exercises. This statement cannot prove hand strength causes longer lifespan, you are right. However to test for causality is trivial. you simply need to do do this: >(Create) lots of people who focus only on hand strength exercises. It is the act of creation that forms the causative proof. Think about it. If I took a random population and made them train for grip strength. Then I compared that groups lifespan to the overall lifespan of people I didn't make train for grip strength and I find that there is a correlation with longer life span for people who trained for grip strength... Well I've just verified causation. There is literally no other conclusion. Try to come up with a scenario where the two factors are not connected causally. You can't. By having the experimenters hand controlling the causative factor, you can prove correlation. If you are simply observing things with no control over experimental parameters, correlation is then impossible to verify. It is the act of creation or controlling the experiment that allows for causation to be verified.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
r/gripstrength
kotxig 5y ago
If people in science really do understand that correlation is not causation, why are they publishing papers in journals that show meaningless correlations without doing the actual work of uncovering patterns of causation? If you really understood this point you would be embarrassed to publish a paper on it. These results should be confined to a searchable database in the same way data sets in lab experiments are.
martin-adams 5y ago
In a book (about the brain) I read. It made the case for using softer shoes or bare feet as we get older. The reasoning is that if you use hard shoes to navigate stairs, you lose the sensation of what you’re walking in making it more likely to have an accident. The most common cause of death in my family is the secondary effects of a fall.
jamesrom 5y ago
People pointing out correlation != causation are missing the point. CORRELATION AN IMPORTANT FACTOR HERE. Say you are caring for a population of elderly people and you need to triage who to give more stability support (say carers, walking aids, etc). Do a grip strength test! The correlation is important, it doesn't matter if the correlation is causal in nature. I challenge you dear reader, the next time there's a science article presented, to think about something more interesting to say than "correlation != causation". I challenge you to find useful ways that correlations can be harnessed.
- funklute 5y ago
  On the other hand, people repeating "correlation != causation" ad nauseam is, in my opinion, one of the great success stories of science communication. Proving causation is the singular most difficult general problem across many scientific disciplines, and at the same time our brains are hardwired to conflate correlation with causation. I think that it's simply awesome that so many people are aware of this issue nowadays.
  - nathias 5y ago
    People mindlessly parroting anything is not a great success of anything, especially not of science communication. There is also no hardwired conflation of correlation with causation, it's just a general jumping to conclusions error.
    - cornel_io 5y ago
      Social science, health, and psychological research is 90% bad because of the correlation = causation fallacy, especially articles that claim to have "controlled for" X, Y, and Z. Even after controlling most of these studies still incorrectly suggest causation. So by default, people are correct to mindlessly parrot this, even if they don't understand when they're wrong or misapplying the maxim.
      - nathias 5y ago
blenderdt 5y ago
The more I read articles like these the more I believe these are the real things that lengthen your life: - Not overeating and eating varied food. - Hygiene - Lack of stress / enjoying life / feeling whole - Moving (exercise is overrated) - Medical procedures All other things are related to these points.
playpause 5y ago
Hacker News’ automatic removal of “How” from article titles can really change the meaning. The modified title looks like a strong, scientific claim. So we end up with lots of obvious ‘Science 101’ comments about correlation vs causation etc. With “How” in the title, it comes across as what it is: a light popsci/lifestyle piece that should be taken with a grain of salt, but might still contain interesting food for thought/discussion.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  If the poster thinks the How is really required they can edit the title and add it back in. I've done it a few times. on edit: changed author to poster although confusion would be surprising in this case.
- lopis 5y ago
  I think it's made to avoid click baity titles, but instead, it increases the feeling of being click baited.
- tgv 5y ago
  OTOH, there is just correlation in an otherwise minimal article. The only support, two very similar articles, is pure correlation, and both are based on all adults, not just elderly. The jump to "it lengthens your life" is made on a single quote.
  - playpause 5y ago
    But there isn't just a correlation. There's also a fascinating idea: better grip strength might help prevent a common cause of death in old age: falls. I've never made that connection before, but it seems very reasonable now I think of it, and compelling in its implications. That's good enough for me to want to discuss it, maybe even to motivate me to work on my grip strength. If someone ever brings me evidence that having stronger grip does not help you avoid falls, then (a) that would be surprising and interesting, and (b) I wouldn't feel like a fool for having improved my grip strength anyway. Empirically proving causation is often difficult or impossible. It's irrational to expect every potentially useful idea to meet that high bar before taking it into consideration. If someone is trying to sell me something, or if the idea goes against common sense, I'll demand proof, but that's not the case here.
Jyaif 5y ago
You can definitely feel the impact of PG's tweet [1] in this thread. I've never seen so much hate about "correlation =/> causation"! [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1503500234777047042?s=20&t=izAR545Ie9Q2l2oeiyhVIQ https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1503500234777047042?s=20&t=...
Markoff 5y ago
TLDR healthy people live longer than sick weak ones, what a revelation reminds of that recent study about Viagra users living longer, same nonsense
amai 5y ago
And people with glasses are more intelligent: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04362-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04362-x But correlation is not causation.

"Correlation does not imply causation."

kayodelycaon 5y ago
But it does get lots of views. ;)

The correlation is probably between strong wrist muscles and general fitness, i.e. exercise or strength training, and longevity.

mmcdermott 5y ago

This article has a bad "pop science" feel to it. The correlation between grip and survival is probably solid enough, but it's hard to avoid the nagging feeling that people who have a strong grip are probably stronger and healthier overall as well. The article goes on to recommend grip strengthener and I strongly suspect that better skeletal-muscular health in general should be the goal. "Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general." --Mark Rippetoe.

ec109685 5y ago
Yes, real science takes a random group and has some strengthen hands and others do something else and see who has better outcome.
- andreareina 5y ago
  Which is fairly impractical over those timespans and so we mostly have to make do with observational studies and RCTs looking at proxies for the actual outcome of interest and mechanistic reasoning.
redmen 5y ago
Yes I believe you are correct here. So often in medicine we want to just treat the symptoms. It's amazing how hard it is to find doctors who don't end up thinking like this. Personally I haven't been able to figure it out. They're definitely not stupid, but why do so many research papers look at the body in such a way that leads to such prescriptions? Is it because researchers lack the clinical experience to overcome this mistake? Definitely the advice of increasing one's grip strength is poor on multiple levels. Even if increasing your grip strength leads to a higher-quality life, simply training only the forearm without addressing the entire arm and shoulder and neck all together is not going to be good for ones overall muscular (and nerves, etc) balance.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  No way man, the entire medical industry is well aware about the differences between correlation and causation. Trials to validate medicine heavily involve tactics to check for causation. What you're reading here is just some journal that identified a correlation and the author of the popular science article can't tell the difference between that and causation.
  - taeric 5y ago
    I think it is probably fair to say that the industry is aware, but most of the practitioners that make up the industry can still be susceptible to the mistake. This is largely true of science, as well. Note that I don't mean that many practitioners are ignorant of the idea. I mean that they could know it, and still fall to it. "Value based judgements" are still a large thing, after all.
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      Practitioners just regurgitate the results of said science. They use standard treatments and well-documented techniques without the need to understand the science around the development of those techniques.
mise_en_place 5y ago
I definitely agree with this. When I was a beginner weightlifter, I'd actually grip the bar too tightly. This led to bicep activation when doing bench press, so I had to learn to lighten my grip and focus on activation of my deltoids, pectoral muscle, lats, etc. Even some tricep activation helped too
dillondoyle 5y ago
I generally love Axios, but this does feel more life hacking newsletter than hard news. But the article does talk about risk of falling too which. seems like a fair logical causation jump that stronger hands = less risk of falling injury. They don't cite that though.... I think they should have used the line from the harvard link they put "these findings highlight the importance of doing regular exercise to maintain strong muscles as you age. "
kleene_op 5y ago
Yes. The correct take from this article is to change your lifestyle until you have strong hands if you want to live longer, but don't focus on getting strong hands specifically.
- madaxe_again 5y ago
  Yup. The right lifestyle leads to all sorts of beneficial side effects. I moved off grid about two years ago, and since, have become leaner and fitter than I have been in my entire life, with zero deliberate exercise. I hadn’t considered my hand strength until just now, but it just occurred to me that I’ve had no carpal tunnel symptoms in at least a year, although I still do plenty of typing and fine manual work. I also do a lot of heavy carrying and lifting and digging and all the rest. Prior to this I was a desk jockey, living off processed crap - now, barely a day passes when I don’t find myself doing some kind of manual labour out of necessity. Honestly, it feels great to live like a human is built to live. We just aren’t made for the sedentary lifestyles we typically live in developed countries, and it’s killing us - and advice like “use a hand exerciser” is the absolute epitome of treating the symptom, not the disease.

brimble 5y ago

OK, maybe there's something to being able to catch yourself when falling, or prevent the fall in the first place through grip strength. But this: > It's not just bracing yourself. Scientists have linked stronger hands to healthier hearts. > One study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that higher grip strength was correlated to lower blood pressure, lower blood sugar and higher good cholesterol levels. Has to just be grip strength correlating with activity level and general health, not grip strength causing any of that.

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scythe 5y ago
Well, it doesn't have to be that abstract. Muscles in the peripheral limbs, particularly the lower leg but also the forearm, are important in returning venous blood to the heart. In fact, the gastrocnemius (calf muscle) has been referred to as the "second heart": https://veinatlanta.com/your-second-heart/ https://veinatlanta.com/your-second-heart/
robocat 5y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/almost_all_men_are_stronger_than_almost_all_women/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4vcxd0/alm... Submitter said: “EDIT 2: Some of the very low values are individuals with disabilities”, “EDIT 4: Grip strength is a decent proxy for upper and lower limb strength, and is also correlated with other indices of strength.”
FredPret 5y ago
I wonder if grip strength could indicate nervous system health, which might have heart effects. I'm not a doctor but I am deeply sceptical of any study involving extracting statistical insights from (very complex) humans.

DrPhish 5y ago

That would definitely explain the large numbers of feisty old Judoka I meet around the world. Anecdotally, there seems to be a higher percentage of healthy older individuals doing Judo than the general population, but I guess the unhealthy ones wouldn't still be at it, so it self selects for that trait. Judo practitioners might be a good population to study for this effect, if you could find the individuals that started and track them all, including the dropouts. It would have common traits of strong grip AND muscle memory of how to fall properly, which could be a confounding factor.

avalys 5y ago

I am going to bookmark this article as a classic example of reporting so ill-informed that it confuses cause and effect, as described by Michael Crichton in characterizing “Gell-Mann Amnesia.” https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...

credit_guy 5y ago

Also, playing golf adds 5 years to your life expectancy [1]. I kid you not. Start playing today, and you’ll live years longer. This has nothing to do with the fact that most golf players are really wealthy, and so they have access to way better healthcare, nutrition, and lifestyle than the rest of us. Said differently, correlation does not imply causation. [1] https://www.golfandhealth.org/news/golfers-longevity/?amp_markup=1 https://www.golfandhealth.org/news/golfers-longevity/?amp_ma...

baal80spam 5y ago
Love it!
treeman79 5y ago
Decided to take up golf. Now I can’t feel my leg.
cperciva 5y ago
They claim that was adjusted for socioeconomic status. Rather than being a matter of better access to health care etc, I suspect a reverse causation -- people who are in poor health are less likely to go out to the golf course. The same applies to Vitamin D, taking international flights, and reading books, all of which are correlated with reduced death rates.
qiskit 5y ago
Thank you. They always make it sound like X helps you lenghten your life. But it's always the case the X is a symptom of a healthy life, not the cause of it. Strong hands is probably a result of exercise and leading a healthy life which leads to higher life expectancy. Meaning exercise and leading a healthy life is the cause of strong hands and higher life expectancy. Golf industry says golf lengthens your life. Hand grip industry says strong hands lengthen life. Can't help but be a little bit cynical the older I get.
- m463 5y ago
  I would imagine few people with a strong grip have everything else in their body weak. So a strong grip might correlate with strong everything else. By the way, strong hands are controlled by strings and pulleys - it's really just strong forearm muscles. It would be interesting if the study was for people with JUST a strong grip, like folks who were always in a chair. I remember reading of another study where people who were pear-shaped were healthier than people who were round. Turns out that people put on weight at the waist first, and as they put on more weight, it moves to the chest and shoulders, so...

elliottkember 5y ago

Yep, you read this as being a correlation-causation fallacy. You are being nerd-sniped, and it worked. Don't let that put you off doing arm and hand exercises. I recommend kettlebells.

POiNTx 5y ago

No, people with strong hands tend to live longer.

dugditches 5y ago

While the website seems very fluff, the concept of hand health can't be overstressed. Keep care of your hands and wrists. If you feel pain or discomfort, stiffness etc figure out why and fix it. Whether it's keyboard/desk etc change. Or taking breaks and stretching. Those suffering later stages of hand/wrist strain or wear... look into: wrist straps, wax baths, heated 'wax gloves'

sokoloff 5y ago
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that, in late and just post college, my wrist pain was so bad that I used to have to ice my wrists at night and take ibuprofen to be able to sleep. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I needed to do anything about it. Eventually a colleague noticed and took me aside and gave my a clue-by-four to the head. 30 years later, pain-free and still in the industry, due in no small part to a Kinesis keyboard.
- JohnnyMarcone 5y ago
  I credit the Kinesis keyboard for saving my career. I still have wrist and hand issues but nothing as bad as the years before Kinesis.

agumonkey 5y ago

Let's have a worldwide day of workout, grip hanging, slow dead lift, taichi. And enjoy 8 Billion man hours of calmer cardiovascular systems.

cooervo 5y ago

/r/hailcorporate this guys are just promoting some products backed with pseudo science BS

tj-teej 5y ago

Bob: "You know I used to think correlation implied causation, but I took this Statistics class but know I know that's not true." Jeff: "Wow it sounds like that class really helped you" Bob: "Maybe!" Credit goes to XKCD

xpe 5y ago
Haha... Attending the statistics class is the most likely explanation for the mental change.
mkl 5y ago
https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/, https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/552:_Correlation https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/552:_Correlation
deltaonefour 5y ago
The XKCD article is a misnomer. Causation is actually verified. 1. You measure a population about whether they know about a fact. You find most people don't know it. 2. You introduce a statistics class to that population that teaches said fact. 3. You measure the population after the class and you find most now people know about said fact. That is literally proving Causation. But you'll see there's a trick in my wording. If I didn't deliberately introduce that class to a population, and I simply observed an existing population that took that class... well, then in that case I cannot prove causation. However the character that was asked the question in the XKCD comic, deliberately introduced the statistics class on himself. This deliberate act changes the experiment. HE himself is the experimenter and he controls the parameters and thus he has the knowledge needed to verify causation. The person who asked the question cannot verify causation, but the person the question was asked too, CAN verify it. I get the humor behind the comic. But it is technically wrong. Causation is verified. All causative experiments are run this way.
- deleted 5y ago
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gurjeet 5y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30716390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30716390

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yawnxyz 5y ago

This is probably true among free soloists (rock climbing without a rope)

pcthrowaway 5y ago
Regular mountain/rock climbing is probably a great way to improve your grip strength. Of course, regular outdoor climbing (even with a rope) may not reduce your lifetime risk of death from falling.

redmen 5y ago

It's an old study, but correlation doesn't prove causation. It turns out that people who have pore hand/grip strength are more likely to fall, or have a type of life that leads to higher chance of death. This is a very complicated cause/effect to figure out, even for top-class physical therapists. Also possible that if you have good grip strength then you have good muscular balance and innervation, vascularity, and motor neuron balance (extensor/flexor), which possibly leads to better overall health, including heart health. Honestly, I have no idea. But that's the point. Neither do experts who spend decades in this field. It's far too complex to study through these types of lenses. This is often why clinical practice still does better than science in this field. It's complicated as hell and many traditional scientists think they can study the musculoskeletal system this way, when the top doctors learn most of their skills through clinical trial-and-error. Still in 2022.

redmen 5y ago
Just to attempt to be thorough, and reiterate that honestly I don't know the answer, but good grip strength may be something comes from good overall muscular and nervous system health, not the other way around. It interests me how far we have come in technology, but how little we know how to apply it to certain kinds of medicine. Just as an anecdote, I have been spending thousands of hours in physical therapy, and have visited doctors all over. One thing I have learned is that many great doctors used to read tonnes of research papers early in their career, but over time gravitated more towards their clinical experience in building their tree of knowledge. From what I have heard, the science is just too vague and difficult in this field and so as tempting as it is to want to apply the scientific framework around this field (I'm talking specifically about physical therapy here, not necessarily other areas of medicine where I know far less about), it ends up being more effective to build up ones intuition off of a strong clinical practice and then to look at the science afterwards in order to calibrate and filter through those experiences. A bit of a tangent, but something I also find to be interesting is how poor the feedback mechanisms are in a lot of medicine. Most patients don't follow their prescribed homework, and many surgeons don't even get to see the long-term outcomes of their patients' surgery. Or when they do they are measuring some variables that don't give enough of an overall view of the person's body or overall health. Anyways, I'm done rambling for now :P. I hope we can curtail the upcoming health crisis we are going to have with our and our childrens' postures and poor body mechanics.

BubbleRings 5y ago

Guys guys, the whole article was written just to feed traffic to the website selling the hand exercise devices, including the scam powerball thing, which was a cool product when it came out, but for years has had such poor quality control that the devices always stop working after about two hours of use.

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odyssey7 5y ago

Anecdata: the older pianists and organists who I know are doing well, and it isn't because they are better at catching themselves when they fall.

forum_ghost 5y ago
what do you think is the causative factor?

nanochad 5y ago

For cavemen or office workers?

ekianjo 5y ago

> Scientists have linked stronger hands to healthier hearts. Erm, correlation is not causation, it's probably BECAUSE you have a healthy heart that you have a good grip on your hands. I can't believe it's not obvious to the author.

cassonmars 5y ago

I had a friend who worked in assisted living centers, and saw a number of deaths related to falling. The one thing he noticed about those that fell most frequently was that they still drank alcohol. Anecdata from someone in the field, but it was a stark reminder that people who get to an infirm stage in life are still just people, with all the same vices as before.

malkia 5y ago

I dunno. I can squeeze Iron Mind #3 - but I don't consider myself that healthy, it's just a habit I've had. (Oh, I can squeeze it only with my right hand, my left is 2.5, almost to 3).

snowwrestler 5y ago

It’s hard to work your hands for strength without working other significant muscle groups at the same time—like hanging from things or picking things up. Likewise, it’s hard to work on muscular strength without also increasing your hand strength. To lift weights, your hands have to grip the weight. So, there is a pretty strong correlation with overall health. The one thing I’ll say is that hand strength is hard to get back if you let it fade. The muscles don’t grow very fast or very much, and you need strong tendons (which grow even more slowly) to transmit the strength to your actual fingers. So again, if you’re able to increase hand strength, you’ve probably got some other positive correlations like “works out regularly” and “cares about functional health.”

begueradj 5y ago

Basically whatever body part you strengthen, is beneficial for your lifespan. The title is a click bait.

tinyhouse 5y ago

That's a strange title. Regarding falling. One of the most important things is to sit or lay down immediately when you feel bad, like nausea for example. I understand the fall can be sudden. But sometimes people have a couple of seconds to react and they look for a something nearby to hold on. But then they pass out and fall.

_huayra_ 5y ago

This reminds me that whole thing where some study showed a comparison of average daily alcohol consumption and showed that "moderate" drinkers actually had lower mortality than those who don't drink (obviously heavy drinkers had _much_ higher mortality). Little did anyone seem to realize that people who don't drink may be abstaining for health reasons and thus may be more likely to die / get sick regardless. But it was sure great for the booze industry. https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2022/01/31/no-amount-of-alcohol-safe-for-heart-report-says/ https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2022/01/31/no-amount-of...

busymom0 5y ago
Didn’t it also have to do with how people who can afford frequent wines were wealthier and thus less stress and other problems?
mensetmanusman 5y ago
The sugar industry has almost killed more…
HellsMaddy 5y ago
Not only that those who abstain do so for health reasons, but many teetotalers were in the past alcoholics. Those who have never had a drinking problem tend to have few qualms with a glass of wine here or there, and so could be classified as light/occasional drinkers.
bkjelden 5y ago
The other explanation is that being a 'moderate' drinker correlates with being able to do things in moderation in general, which is predictive of longevity.
gpsx 5y ago
Maybe all that drinking increased their grip strength. /s

eth0up 5y ago

https://www.ironmind.com/product-info/ironmind-grippers/captains-of-crush-grippers/ https://www.ironmind.com/product-info/ironmind-grippers/capt... I own the No.2 model[1] and have been squeezing it for a year. It's fun, mostly for handing it to tough guys and presenting it as The Pansy Test. Out of over a dozen grown men, none have closed it yet. Inevitably they eventually ask me if I can, to which I humbly reply "I think so." and do it several times. They always want to try again, some get mad. I'm small and insubstantial. That can be amusing. But I've never perceived any benefit from using it. Squats are where it's at, I think. I see a change in my overall form more dramatic than any other activity, except maybe hard labor. Edit: 1. Captains of Crush grip trainer

borroka 5y ago
CoC grip trainers, a trip down the memory lane. I got certified for the #3 almost 20 year ago. I could do probably 8-10 complete reps at the time. The #4 felt like squeezing a brick, I am wondering whether with a couple of years of training I'd been able to close it, back in the day probably just 2 or 3 people had been able to: Joe Kinney and one or two of those guys from Wales. I also had a welder build some specific grip training equipment for me.
- eth0up 5y ago
  I doubt I'd ever be able to close the #3. I've never done more than 4 reps on the #2. But I don't push myself. I seem to get much more out of pullups and other grip exercises. They're still great to have around and my favorite is their Zenith, which is softer than the #1.5, smooth-handled and fatter. If you can close a #3, you could close the Zenith telekinetically.
  - malkia 5y ago
    It took me long time to get to 3, but did if after all (but just with right hand, left hand still on 2.5). That to be said, grippers may not be accurate, each one a bit off - there was a company (can't remember the name) where you can send your gripper to be measured, and returned back.

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dghughes 5y ago

If true fishermen should live to 200. Grabbing ans hailing in lines, traps, gear for hours at a time. If you meet a fisherman check out their hands and arms. A bit of advice never arm wrestle a fisherman especially they're middle-aged or older even if his arms look thin. Edit: the reason, from what I've heard it's due to tendon strength. It takes a long time to develop strong tendons.

imnotlost 5y ago

My friend is an electrician with a monster grip - he still had a heart attack! Sounds like a correlation that misses the point, general health prolongs life, couch-potatoes die sooner and have worse quality of life their last 30 years or so. And setting up for good health in advanced age starts decades earlier. Try comparing someone who does grip-strength training only vs someone who does heavy dead-lifts, both into their 80s. My money will be on the dead-lift guy, not just having a better quality of life until his last day, but also living longer.

hackernewds 5y ago
Your monster grip friend having a heart attack is more of an anecdote too! So is everything else you posted

nostromo 5y ago

This is facepalm level “science.” Longer life is correlated with general health. General health is correlated with strength. And strength is correlated with grip.

tesrx 5y ago
Sure, but I found the article incredibly insightful.
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bluishgreen 5y ago

Hand strength is correlated with exercise. Legs tend to be strong in general for modern people because in the end we still walk and the legs have to carry the whole weight of the body - which tends to be significant. But hands will be strong only if you voluntarily exercise. Even physically demanding labour tends to have many tools to make hand oriented tasks(hand jobs?!) considerably easier. So if you can't/didn't control for this correlation, there is no news here.

drpgq 5y ago

Reminds me of this Razib Khan post about the difference in grip strength between males and females: http://www.razib.com/wordpress/2017/05/04/in-grip-strength-a-woman-in-the-90th-percentile-would-be-at-the-10th-percentile-for-men/ http://www.razib.com/wordpress/2017/05/04/in-grip-strength-a...

sneakpdx 5y ago

If you're trying to avoid death by falling, then strong hands won't save you if you don't know how to fall properly. As someone who grew up skateboarding, I had to learn how to fall properly to avoid constantly injuring myself. There's a reason a lot of older skaters can still skate and I can tell you it's not because of their athleticism or healthy habits for which both are usually lacking.

deltaonefour 5y ago

Everyone knows correlation does not equal causation. But no one knows the nature of the statistical experiment that is needed to prove causation. Ask yourself this before you post a new flavor of the "correlation does not imply causation" post that is already all over this thread. So we know correlating hand strength with lifespan doesn't prove causation. What sort of experiment or what different parameters must be changed in order to verify causation? If you don't know the answer to this, then that means you don't completely understand the dichotomy between correlation and causation.

trendoid 5y ago
Find (or create) lots of obese people or smokers or alcoholics focusing only on hand strength exercises. Then see how their life expectancy changes compared to obese people, smokers or alcoholics that didn't do those hand strength exercises.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  >Find (or create) lots of obese people or smokers or alcoholics focusing only on hand strength exercises. It's clear you don't see it. You don't have to focus on smokers or alcoholics that's irrelevant. But let's modify your statement to not include the fluff. >Find (or create) lots of people who focus only on hand strength exercises. Even when you remove the fluff the statement above still shows how you don't understand the dichotomy between correlation and causation. The experiment in the article can in fact be summarized by this statement: >Find lots of people who focus only on hand strength exercises. This statement cannot prove hand strength causes longer lifespan, you are right. However to test for causality is trivial. you simply need to do do this: >(Create) lots of people who focus only on hand strength exercises. It is the act of creation that forms the causative proof. Think about it. If I took a random population and made them train for grip strength. Then I compared that groups lifespan to the overall lifespan of people I didn't make train for grip strength and I find that there is a correlation with longer life span for people who trained for grip strength... Well I've just verified causation. There is literally no other conclusion. Try to come up with a scenario where the two factors are not connected causally. You can't. By having the experimenters hand controlling the causative factor, you can prove correlation. If you are simply observing things with no control over experimental parameters, correlation is then impossible to verify. It is the act of creation or controlling the experiment that allows for causation to be verified.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

r/gripstrength

kotxig 5y ago

If people in science really do understand that correlation is not causation, why are they publishing papers in journals that show meaningless correlations without doing the actual work of uncovering patterns of causation? If you really understood this point you would be embarrassed to publish a paper on it. These results should be confined to a searchable database in the same way data sets in lab experiments are.

martin-adams 5y ago

In a book (about the brain) I read. It made the case for using softer shoes or bare feet as we get older. The reasoning is that if you use hard shoes to navigate stairs, you lose the sensation of what you’re walking in making it more likely to have an accident. The most common cause of death in my family is the secondary effects of a fall.

jamesrom 5y ago

People pointing out correlation != causation are missing the point. CORRELATION AN IMPORTANT FACTOR HERE. Say you are caring for a population of elderly people and you need to triage who to give more stability support (say carers, walking aids, etc). Do a grip strength test! The correlation is important, it doesn't matter if the correlation is causal in nature. I challenge you dear reader, the next time there's a science article presented, to think about something more interesting to say than "correlation != causation". I challenge you to find useful ways that correlations can be harnessed.

funklute 5y ago
On the other hand, people repeating "correlation != causation" ad nauseam is, in my opinion, one of the great success stories of science communication. Proving causation is the singular most difficult general problem across many scientific disciplines, and at the same time our brains are hardwired to conflate correlation with causation. I think that it's simply awesome that so many people are aware of this issue nowadays.
- nathias 5y ago
  People mindlessly parroting anything is not a great success of anything, especially not of science communication. There is also no hardwired conflation of correlation with causation, it's just a general jumping to conclusions error.
  - cornel_io 5y ago
    Social science, health, and psychological research is 90% bad because of the correlation = causation fallacy, especially articles that claim to have "controlled for" X, Y, and Z. Even after controlling most of these studies still incorrectly suggest causation. So by default, people are correct to mindlessly parrot this, even if they don't understand when they're wrong or misapplying the maxim.
    - nathias 5y ago

blenderdt 5y ago

The more I read articles like these the more I believe these are the real things that lengthen your life: - Not overeating and eating varied food. - Hygiene - Lack of stress / enjoying life / feeling whole - Moving (exercise is overrated) - Medical procedures All other things are related to these points.

playpause 5y ago

Hacker News’ automatic removal of “How” from article titles can really change the meaning. The modified title looks like a strong, scientific claim. So we end up with lots of obvious ‘Science 101’ comments about correlation vs causation etc. With “How” in the title, it comes across as what it is: a light popsci/lifestyle piece that should be taken with a grain of salt, but might still contain interesting food for thought/discussion.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
If the poster thinks the How is really required they can edit the title and add it back in. I've done it a few times. on edit: changed author to poster although confusion would be surprising in this case.
lopis 5y ago
I think it's made to avoid click baity titles, but instead, it increases the feeling of being click baited.
tgv 5y ago
OTOH, there is just correlation in an otherwise minimal article. The only support, two very similar articles, is pure correlation, and both are based on all adults, not just elderly. The jump to "it lengthens your life" is made on a single quote.
- playpause 5y ago
  But there isn't just a correlation. There's also a fascinating idea: better grip strength might help prevent a common cause of death in old age: falls. I've never made that connection before, but it seems very reasonable now I think of it, and compelling in its implications. That's good enough for me to want to discuss it, maybe even to motivate me to work on my grip strength. If someone ever brings me evidence that having stronger grip does not help you avoid falls, then (a) that would be surprising and interesting, and (b) I wouldn't feel like a fool for having improved my grip strength anyway. Empirically proving causation is often difficult or impossible. It's irrational to expect every potentially useful idea to meet that high bar before taking it into consideration. If someone is trying to sell me something, or if the idea goes against common sense, I'll demand proof, but that's not the case here.

Jyaif 5y ago

You can definitely feel the impact of PG's tweet [1] in this thread. I've never seen so much hate about "correlation =/> causation"! [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1503500234777047042?s=20&t=izAR545Ie9Q2l2oeiyhVIQ https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1503500234777047042?s=20&t=...

Markoff 5y ago

TLDR healthy people live longer than sick weak ones, what a revelation reminds of that recent study about Viagra users living longer, same nonsense

amai 5y ago

And people with glasses are more intelligent: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04362-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04362-x But correlation is not causation.