Dr. Li Li of Georgia Southern University explains “movement span,” the often-overlooked third dimension of longevity alongside lifespan and healthspan. He discusses how strength, balance, mobility and regular activity can help reduce fall risk, preserve independence and improve quality of life as we age. Learn why movement should be treated as a lifelong priority rather than something addressed only after physical limitations appear.
Transcript:
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, Dr. Li, it’s a pleasure to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Hey, Jeff, it’s good to see you.
It’s great to see you, and I’m so excited to talk to you about this because so much of the research these days in terms of aging and longevity, excuse me, is focused on our lifespan and our healthspan. But you actually, through your research and writing, have taken it a step further.
There’s another dimension. Tell us your perspective.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Well, I’ve been researching biomechanics, mobility, posture control for a long time. And then we’ve been promoting physical activity for the benefit of wellness, fitness. And then what I find is when people study for looking at lifespan and healthspan, and then they’re missing a pretty important component is how well we move around within our environment.
So with that as a background, I have just two months ago, I think, published a paper, opinion paper, to suggest we’re looking into this concept I call it movement span. And the movement span, what I put together as of now is how well you move, how well you interact with the environment, and then how do you react to any kind of sudden perturbation thrown your way. So I think our adaptation and reactive to the environment, to any kind of event happen around us, is important indication for our health.
And then, so the phrase movement span have two different dimensions. One is in space, how well we move around in space. And then the other one is how long we have the capacity moving within the space.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I mean, it just, it makes sense to me. It’s very logical as a person who is not a scientist or someone who studies longevity. It would seem to me, and I wanna get your reaction to this, that as we age, for whatever reason, a lot of, I’m sitting in a chair right now, you’re sitting down, we tend to lose some of our suppleness and our flexibility, but we can take steps, doctor, to alter that, right?
I mean, that is not a foregone conclusion here.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Well, we, I’m a fellow of American College Sports Medicine. 20 years ago, we have a slogan, I like it, and then they changed it, I don’t know why. That slogan is called, we can’t add years to your life, but we can add life to your years.
So to address your question is, as we’re getting older, we can actively intervene people’s behavior to make sure your function degeneration, we all get old, we all degenerates, but we try to make sure that the degeneration curve is flattened, means you don’t degenerate too much compared to, for most people, naturally after you degenerates in a very steep slope, right? So we’re looking at this and this. So to flatten the degeneration slope.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So let’s talk about that a little bit. I know that’s kind of a little bit different than what you were talking about in terms of adding this third dimension, and I agree, I think it’s very important to add this to our research, but in terms of maintaining that flexibility and that ability and to smooth that curve out or to flatten that curve, what can we do? I mean, are there certain exercises or things, for example, should we all be going out and walking?
Do I need to lift weights every day? Do I need to all the above? Go ahead, sorry, doctor.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
No, no, I’m sorry. Principle wise, we all need to move more, physical activity, I mean, physically move. If you can stand up, that’s a good start.
If you can take your step, it’s even better, right? Beyond that, we get this question all the time, say, what kind of exercise, what kind of physical activity is best? Well, my answer, our answer is always the physical activity, the exercise, you can participate for long run, that’s the best, right?
If you like swim, go swim. Like bike, go bike. You like dance, go dance, right?
And if you like run, go run. You like to go to weight room, go to weight room. Whatever you like to do, just do something, it’s much better than doing nothing.
On top of that, the Marin College of Sports Medicine right now, the recommendation is you do aerobic activity for about 150 minutes a week, which means brisk walking, slow jogging, cycling, swimming, right? And then do two sections of strength training, go to weight room, or use your own body weight, push-ups, pull-ups, two sessions, each of them 30 minutes a week, right? So that’s the standard recommendation that can be adapted to everybody to their own personal situation and your own environment.
And the bottom line is get moving.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I’ve always heard the adage, if you don’t use it, you’re going to lose it, or you’ll at least lose that muscle tone, excuse me. Let me ask you about, you mentioned you can use body weight.
So it sounds like push-ups, dips, pull-ups, squats, lunges, maybe abs or planking, those are basic exercises anybody can do, doctor, with the exception of pull-up, you can’t do that everywhere, but you can do everything else, right? You can do everything else. You can do a pull-up on a chair, I guess.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Well, I got a pull-up bar in my house. You can buy one at 45 bucks, and it’s in your doorframe.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Oh, that’s true. So the point is that these are all things that anybody can do, and you’re not going to be training for the Olympics, right? You don’t have to exhaust yourself.
You’re not trying to put on muscle per se, but maybe maintain the muscle that you do have, doctor?
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Well, I think you will have to have another session talking about muscle. Okay. And the brief answer is muscle is important.
Muscle is not only the organ for strength, the organ to help us to move. Muscle actually is our largest metabolic organ, help us consume blood sugar to actually maintain our body weight. And then, so muscle is important, yes.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Okay, so muscle is important. You need muscle. Let’s talk a little bit, again, this is maybe outside of our topic, but the importance of moving, getting moving and doing whatever is comfortable for you as an individual, but also diet.
How much does diet play that as important a role as exercise itself? Oh, yes.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Oh, yes, right. So now you kind of changed the topic a little bit. Yeah, I did.
I did, sorry. So no, no, no. It’s important to put every, those concepts we’re talking about into a larger framework.
You know, exactly what we’re talking about. Right now, we’re talking about longevity. We’re talking about healthy aging, right?
And if you talk about healthy aging, the research shows diet and physical activity are all important. Also along with your psychological health, your social connections, all that, right? So diet is very important piece of it.
And then speaking of diet right now, I would suggest everybody looking at FDA’s diet recommendation. FDA, the federal government publish recommendations every year. Actually, it’s very, very simple.
It’s not that complicated. You know, it’s a lot simpler than all the fashionable diet out there, keto, you know, all that. It’s actually very simple.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Good recommendation. So I apologize for skewing a little bit off topic. Let me go back on topic because movement span, you actually came up with an assessment.
So let’s go back to how do we assess or how do practitioners or individuals assess their movement span?
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Well, in that paper, as the paper was published and I was just trying to organize my thought around this idea, the measurement part is not a very complete picture. And in there, what I have suggested, walking speed is important and walking speed in different environment is important. And then there is a measurement people have talked about a lot.
It’s what we call timed up and go. Essentially, you sit in the chair, the arm chair, and somebody measure how long it takes for you to finish a task. You sit in the chair and they said, one, two, three, go, they start the stopwatch.
And then you get up, you walk about three yards and you turn around, you come back, you sit down, right? And so that have a, your reaction to the command go and getting up, change your body posture and you walk and you turn around around the end point. So that have a few different components testing your strength, your gait variability, posture stability, how well you can turn around and sit down, right?
So that’s a multi-component test. A long time ago, somebody did a population-wide study just for the timed up and go. It says 13.5 seconds. It’s a very important threshold. If you cannot finish the task within 13.5 seconds, you might want to check out.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Okay, and that could be, you could have physical decline and you could probably also have some kind of cognitive decline, right? It’s all part together. One other thing, I was reading the piece, balance.
Let’s talk a little bit about balance because the old adage is that as you get older, you might fall down, you might lose your balance, you could have vertigo. But if you fall, that can be ultimately, can be deadly for older Americans. Well, not as Americans.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Well, yeah, but I mean, yeah, most people watching the show are American. It can be deadly for older people and especially for people in the older spectrum of the population we’re talking about. And there are statistics out there.
If you’re in the older population, a lot of times if you fall, break your hip and your one-year survival rates have plummets for about 50%. Right? And we all know as older people, not only when you fall, you break your hip, that hurts and you heal really, really slow.
And then if your hip doesn’t heal, you’ll be bedridden for a long time. And bedridden, it’s a recipe for a lot of different infections, different problems. And then, so the problem just start adding on compound itself.
And so, yeah, so balance and professional, we call that posture control, right? So how well you can control your posture, that is important.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
I wanna end on kind of the next steps with regards to your thought process. You said you were kind of trying to get the thoughts down on paper. I think movement span certainly is important based on what you and I are discussing and what I read.
What’s kind of the next step to getting practitioners to adopt some kind of assessment for their patients or for, you know, if someone’s going to physical therapy or someone’s going to see their regular primary care physician, what’s the next step in your research, doctor?
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Well, exactly what you said, trying to get people some executable measurements so we can actually measure it and we can measure in a population scale. And the time up and go, I said it’s good, but it does not fully reflect the our negotiations with the environment, does not fully reflect our reaction to something happens suddenly. For example, you go out, walk your dog and you hold a leash and a dog saw a squirrel and start getting off, pull at you, right?
Can you actually hold a dog, right? So that’s a reactive behavior. Can you actually hold a dog?
And then that is not just theoretical, I actually see people fall when the dog- Of all ages, of all ages too, doctor. They can be young, they can be mature. Exactly, just took off, right?
So can you react to those kinds of sudden event? So we’re right now working with different people, different practitioners trying to see, can we come up a comprehensive test that’s easy to execute within clinic and then trying to see, can we get a test which acceptable for the patient population and also the healthcare workforce?
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, well, maybe you’ll call that the Li Movement Span Test. I don’t know, I’m just trying to give you ideas. You can copyright it, put it on YouTube.
I’ll report back and if I find that one. Yeah, Dr. Li, thank you so much for making a few minutes. It’s a great piece, these are the types of things that we like to cover on the network.
It really shows that we’re doing a lot, we as a society and other societies are doing a lot to improve the aging of so many people. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, sir.
Li Li, PhD., Georgia Southern University
Sounds good, thank you, Jeff.
