Fast home health tests: check your reaction times

Your reaction times can reveal a surprising quantity about what is happening inside your body, from your brain health to your risk of early death.

During our lives, our reaction times will slowly decline. This is one of the reasons why sports performance tends to fall from the thirties.

Scientists find that maintaining an average reaction speed can be a key indicator that our brain is still in good working order, even in our last decades. But that’s not all they can reveal. From your heart to heart to your Overall risk of early deathYour reaction times can provide a window on the internal functioning of the body.

“Some people tend to be faster than others, even before the effects of aging,” explains Simon Cox, brain teacher and cognitive aging at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “But a drop in reaction times probably indicates an accumulation of age -related degradation. It is a marker that tells us about the combined functioning of many biological systems.”

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

• Sit on a chair, putting your arm on a table so that your wrist is suspended, with your thumb and your inappropers turned upwards.

• Ask your partner to hold a rule vertically, above your hand, with “zero”, where the figures start, aligned with your thumb.

• Without warning, your partner must drop the sovereign, while you try to catch it as quickly as possible.

• The distance that the sovereign falls before being captured is an assessment of your reaction time.

In general, Excellent performance is equivalent To catch the rule at a distance below 7.5 cm, the account greater than the average of 7.5 to 5.9 cm, the average is 15.9-20.4 cm, while the average is greater than 20.4 cm and the poor are greater than 28 cm.

Population studies have noticed a correlation between the speed of decline in reaction times and the risk of Several age -related diseases. In addition to the overall risk of a person’s death – a study revealed that there was a significant link between a person’s reaction times and the probability of death of All main causes – There is also a strong relationship between this metric and the risk of death of specific conditions. This includes coronary disease, stroke and respiratory disease.

However, according to Cox, a single measurement time measurement does not reveal as much, as the reaction speeds vary considerably From one person to another due to factors ranging from gender to genetics, physical form, lifestyle habits and even personality type. COX notes that what is probably more important is how your reaction speed varies if you compare your performance on the same test over time – for example, at annual intervals during a decade – and if it starts to refuse significantly.

As Cox points out, our ability to react rest on A network of interconnected sensory systems: to what extent we see, hear or even feel a given stimulus, at what speed our brain can process the information it receives from our eyes or ears and emit a signal in response, and finally at what speed our nervous fibers, our muscles and our tendons can promulgate what the brain tells them to do. “All these parts of the jigting saw can be affected by aging, and not necessarily to the same extent in all people,” explains Cox.

There are two components to a reaction to the rules of rules – the capacity of the brain to make a rapid evaluation that it has been lowered and the speed at which the body can act on brain instructions to catch it.

Researchers be found The first component of this network which tends to decompose, from the forties, is our physical capacity to act on the signals of the brain. Thus, our brain could notice that the sovereign was released in a few milliseconds – but it takes a while for the body to catch up.

At the University of Colorado Boulder, Biomedical Professor Alaa Ahmed found that by aging, our reaction times can depend more on our global body health than our brain. She says it can be because things like rapid contraction muscle fibers that allow our physical capacity to respond quickly, have declinedor because our mitochondria – the components of our cells that generate energy – work less wellThis means that we are less effective in moving quickly.

“Making a faster movement is more expensive for the elderly, so they mainly count on the reaction faster,” said Ahmed.

At the same time, if we remain relatively well, our brain and our central nervous system can always work strongly in our last years. According to Matthew Pain, professor of biomechanics at the University of Lughborough in the United Kingdom, the scientists evaluated it by measuring The “burst reflex” in elderly healthy adults in response to a strong sound. The results have shown that their brain’s ability to respond to sound and send a “movement” signal to ankle tends to remain relatively intact.

“The material of the gross nervous system in healthy elderly people (people) is not so (a lot) worse,” explains Pain. “Purely on the basis of the start reflex, they could still react quickly quickly to be disqualified at the Olympic Games for a false departure. They could not get out of the blocks very quickly.”

In addition to the rule test, reaction times can be assessed through simple computer games such as the Human reference reaction time test This implies waiting for a red box to become green, then click on it as quickly as possible. Net performance deterioration over time can reflect a combination of decomposition of sensory systems, as well as slowdown in the decision of the brain. A study last year have found that the loss of visual sensitivity to see and respond to the models can be one of the first signs of dementia, starting more than a decade before the start of the symptoms.

“With age, nerve fibers of the white substance of the brain can start to communicate less effectively signals, which causes slower information,” said Cox. “Once the decision has been made to react, the nerves that connect your brain to your muscles must also be in good condition to transmit this message quickly, and this age too.”

But there are things we can all do to slow down or prevent this drop from happening. The pain recommends a so -called double task formation, which involves simultaneous movements and cognitive training activities to adjust both the brain and the body. The examples include walking while turning the head from one side to the other, balancing a leg while reciting the alphabet or launching a bullet while verbally combining the words.

Even things like participation in fitness lessons via a television screen or a tablet can help you with your reaction times. “This improves the ability to perceive (a stimulus) and respond with significant coordinated movements,” explains Pain.

COX says that many of the activities that are often linked to healthy aging, such as continuing to practice a sport in life later, learning a retired music instrument or simply engaging in intellectual activities such as board games can have Knock-On advantages for our reaction times.

“Sports performance exercises that require rapid responses could Boost reaction times By improving both the brain and the body, “explains Cox.” And there is evidence that the maintenance generally of more socio-intellectually engaged is linked to slower cognitive aging through the aspects of complex thinking. “”

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