Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Eating more salt won’t make your blood pressure stay high over time if you’re otherwise healthy — your body adjusts and keeps things in balance.
Causal
As your hand grip gets weaker — up to about 56 kg — your risk of dying or having heart problems goes up in a straight line, with no sudden jumps or plateaus.
Correlational
Even when you remove people who already had heart disease or cancer, weak grip still predicts higher risk of dying or having heart problems — so it’s not just because they’re already sick.
Hand strength doesn't seem to have anything to do with whether someone gets cancer — people with weak or strong grips had about the same risk.
The weaker your hand grip, the higher your risk of dying or having a heart problem — and the weaker it gets, the higher the risk goes up steadily.
People who can't squeeze as hard with their hands are more likely to die sooner or have heart problems, even if they don't have heart disease or cancer yet.
Even when doctors account for age, weight, and other illnesses, weak hand grip still predicts who is more likely to die — it adds unique information about health risk.
People with weak bones and weak hands often also have diabetes, heart problems, or high blood pressure — their whole body is less healthy.
For people with weak bones and heart disease, having weak hands is even more dangerous than for those with just weak bones — their risk of dying is much higher.
The stronger your hand grip, the lower your chance of dying early — even small increases in grip strength are linked to better survival in people with weak bones.
Both men and women with stronger hand grips live longer—this link works just as well for women as it does for men.
Whether you're in your 50s or 70s, having stronger hands is linked to living longer—this holds true for both younger seniors and the oldest adults.
For people with three or more long-term illnesses, having stronger hands relative to their body weight is linked to a much lower chance of dying over time.
When you adjust for body size, people with stronger hands relative to their weight are much less likely to die over time than those with weaker hands for their size.
People who can squeeze harder with their hands tend to live longer, even when you account for how old they are, whether they smoke, or if they have other health problems.
People with weak hands and weak bones are more likely to be older, poorer, less educated, and have diabetes — their grip strength reflects their overall life circumstances and health challenges.
For people with weak bones, how strong their hands are matters more for their survival than how weak their bones are — grip strength is a better death risk clue than bone scans.
People with weak hands and weak bones are much more likely to also have heart disease, stroke, or other serious illnesses — their grip strength seems to be a sign of overall poor health.
For people with weak bones and heart disease, having weak hands is even more dangerous than for those with only weak bones — their risk of dying goes up much more.
People with weak hand grip and weak bones are much more likely to die sooner than those with stronger hands, even after accounting for other health problems.
When healthy young men eat a lot of salt, their daytime blood pressure goes up a tiny bit — but their nighttime pressure stays the same, meaning their body mostly handles the salt fine, just with a small daytime bump.
When healthy young men eat very little salt, their kidneys rely more on a specific sodium pump (ENaC) in the last part of the kidney to hold onto sodium — but when they eat a lot of salt, that pump becomes less important.
Mechanistic
When healthy young men eat a lot of salt, their kidneys use the DCT part more to reabsorb sodium — even though the sodium pump in that area is less active — because more sodium is being filtered, so the kidney works harder there.
When healthy young men eat a lot more salt, their kidneys filter blood faster — but their blood pressure doesn’t go up much, showing their kidneys can handle extra salt without straining.