A Hand Squeeze and a Chair Stand May Predict How Long You Live

Oil climbed on the Iran conflict. Wall Street barely moved. All eyes shifted to earnings.

The quick scan: Wednesday was a quiet, mixed session on the surface, with the real action saved for after the bell. The S&P 500 slipped fractionally as oil prices jumped again on the Iran conflict, while the Nasdaq fell harder on renewed AI-stock jitters. Philip Morris and AT&T both beat earnings expectations and rallied. But the bigger story landed after the closing bell: Alphabet and Tesla both reported second-quarter results that sent both stocks lower in extended trading, setting up a jumpy Thursday open.

S&P 500: -0.14% to 7,498.96 – Slipped from Tuesday's close as rising oil prices offset another round of solid earnings beats
Dow Jones: -0.01% to 52,218.58 – Essentially flat; Philip Morris and AT&T's earnings beats offset broader AI-related weakness elsewhere in the index
NASDAQ: -0.57% to 25,690.90 – Led the day's declines as AI stocks swung; Reddit fell 8% on a dispute over Alphabet's access to its content for AI training.

What's driving it: Brent crude touched its highest level in nearly six weeks as the US-Iran conflict continued, pushing energy costs higher just as investors had hoped inflation pressure was easing. Rising oil and rising Treasury yields together weighed on growth stocks more than on the broader market. Earnings season added its own cross-currents: legacy names like Philip Morris International and AT&T topped forecasts and rallied, while Reddit dropped sharply on reports it may restrict Alphabet's access to its data for AI training, seen as posturing ahead of a licensing negotiation. The session's real tension arrived after the close, when Alphabet and Tesla both reported. Alphabet posted 24% sales growth and 81% cloud growth but swung to negative free cash flow on $45 billion in quarterly capital spending. Tesla's revenue rose 26%, but adjusted profit missed expectations. Both stocks fell in after-hours trading.

Bottom line: A flat-to-down day driven by oil and geopolitics is easy to shrug off. What happens next is less certain: two of the market's biggest AI-era bets just posted results that beat on growth but missed or worried on profitability, and futures were already pointing lower into Thursday. For L-Plate Retirees, this is a reminder that a single day's index move tells you very little on its own, while a single earnings call from a mega-cap can move markets far more than a quiet Wednesday does.

Could Standing Up From a Chair Five Times Predict How Long You'll Live?

The scoop: Stand up from a chair five times in a row, as fast as you comfortably can, without using your hands. Now make a fist and squeeze as hard as you can, the way you would greet someone with a firm handshake. A large new study suggests those two ordinary, ten-second tests carry more information about your future health than most people would guess.

The research comes from Michael LaMonte, a research professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo's School of Public Health and Health Professions, and was published on 13 February in JAMA Network Open. The study followed more than 5,000 women between the ages of 63 and 99 over an eight-year period.

Why these two tests, specifically.

Grip strength and chair stands were not chosen at random. Both are already commonly used by clinicians to gauge strength levels in older patients, precisely because neither requires special equipment or a trained technician standing by with a stopwatch and a clipboard. That is part of what makes this research useful beyond the lab: the two tests behind the findings are ones you can try in your own living room in under a minute.

What the two tests found.

Women with higher grip strength, and women who completed the five chair stands in the fastest time, had significantly lower death risk over the follow-up period. Specifically, every additional 7 kilograms of grip strength was associated with roughly a 12% lower mortality rate on average. For the chair stands, each six-second improvement, moving from a slower time to a faster one, was associated with about a 4% lower mortality rate. Small, measurable differences in ordinary movement, in other words, tracked with a meaningfully different outlook over the following eight years.

This is a study about women, specifically, and that matters.

Worth stating plainly before going further: this study looked only at women, ages 63 to 99. The specific numbers above, the 12% and the 4%, come from that population and were not tested in men. If you are a man reading this, the two tests themselves are still simple and worth trying, and the underlying idea, that functional strength matters for healthy aging, is well supported elsewhere in the research literature. But the precise mortality figures in this particular study should not be assumed to apply identically outside the group it actually studied.

The finding held even after ruling out the obvious explanations.

LaMonte and his co-authors, from the National Cancer Institute, UC San Diego, Texas A&M, Brown, Stanford and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, adjusted their results for physical activity and sedentary behaviour measured by accelerometer, gait speed as a marker of cardiovascular fitness, and C-reactive protein, a blood marker of inflammation. The strength association with lower mortality held even after accounting for all of it. It also held after adjusting for body size and lean body mass, meaning this was not simply a case of larger women testing stronger. LaMonte notes this is the largest study to date evaluating muscle strength and longevity specifically in women over 60, and that most earlier large studies lacked these same accompanying measures, making it harder to isolate strength as its own factor.

Even women who were not meeting exercise guidelines still benefited.

Here is the finding LaMonte calls a major advancement for public health messaging: even among women who did not meet the standard guideline of 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week, those with higher muscular strength still had significantly lower mortality. In other words, strength appeared to matter on its own, not only as a byproduct of doing enough cardio. For anyone who has ever felt discouraged by falling short of a step count or a weekly exercise target, this is a meaningfully different message: the strength work itself carries its own separate benefit, not a consolation prize for missing the cardio goal.

Why this is becoming more urgent, not less.

Women aged 80 and older are the fastest-growing age group in the United States, LaMonte points out, which is part of why he argues that monitoring and maintaining muscular strength carries real public health weight for the coming decades, not just individual relevance.

You do not need a gym for any of this.

LaMonte is direct about this: a trip to the gym is not required. Free weights, dumbbells and machines all work, but so do bodyweight exercises such as modified push-ups, wall presses and knee bends. "Even using soup cans or books as a form of resistance provides stimulus to skeletal muscles," he says, and could be used by people for whom other options are not practical. His broader point ties back to something easy to overlook: walking is the most commonly reported recreational activity among US adults 65 and older, and walking itself depends on having enough strength to stand up and move against gravity in the first place. "When we no longer can get out of the chair and move around, we are in trouble," LaMonte says. Strength is not a separate goal from staying active. It is what makes staying active possible.

The study's authors do add one caution worth repeating here: older adults should talk with a healthcare provider about the safety of starting muscle-strengthening exercise, and anyone unfamiliar with resistance work should consider consulting a physical therapist or exercise specialist to build both safety and an appropriate target into the plan.

Actionable Takeaways for L-Plate Retirees:

• Try both tests this week, but treat them as information, not a diagnosis. This is population-level research, not an individual medical test. A slow result on one attempt does not predict your personal future, and a fast one is not a guarantee either. Use it as a starting point for noticing, not a verdict.

• Men, the tests are still worth trying, with the caveat intact. The specific percentages in this study came from women aged 63 to 99. If you are a man, the two tests are still a reasonable, no-cost way to check in on your own functional strength, just hold the exact numbers loosely.

• You do not need equipment to start. Bodyweight moves like modified push-ups, wall presses and knee bends, or household items like soup cans and books used as light resistance, were specifically named in the research as legitimate ways to stimulate muscle, not compromises.

• Talk to your doctor before starting if you are new to resistance work. The researchers explicitly recommend this step, along with considering a physical therapist or exercise specialist if you want help building both safety and the right target into a plan.

• Remember that strength supports the activity you already value. If walking is part of your routine, as it is for most older adults, this research is a reminder that the ability to stand up and move against gravity is the quiet foundation underneath it. Strength training is not a competing priority to your cardio goals, it is what keeps them reachable.

Your Turn: 
How did the five chair stands actually feel when you tried them just now – easier or harder than you expected? 
Does knowing this study looked specifically at women change how you would apply it to your own life? 
If soup cans and bodyweight exercises count as legitimate resistance training, what has been stopping you from starting?

👉 Hit reply and share your story – your insights could inspire fellow readers in future issues.

If this issue got you to actually try the two ten-second tests instead of just reading about them, consider supporting L-Plate Retiree on Ko-fi. Your support keeps these research-backed, no-equipment check-ins coming.