Boston - Turns out, your walking speed may predict how long you'll live. That's according to a new study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The University of Pittsburgh researchers looked at data from nine studies involving nearly 35,000 seniors and found that only 19 percent of the slowest walking 75-year-old men lived for 10 more years compared to 87 percent of the fastest walking ones. Only 35 percent of the slowest walking 75-year-old women made it to their 85th birthday compared to 91 percent of the fastest walkers. "This paper is a monumental effort in data analysis to come up with exact numbers and predictors in terms of the relationship between gait speed and survival," says Dr. Farzaneh Sorond, a stroke neurologist at Brigham and Women’s hospital who studies gait speed in the elderly but wasn't involved in this study. "If they fall into the fast super-performer group, I can tell them they have a pretty good chance of outliving their peers," she says. On the flip side, those who walk the slowest might need more aggressive interventions to treat underlying medical conditions that cause gait to slacken through the years.
Great news for anyone who’s ever wanted to punch a slow walker in the back of the head for slowing you down, there’s now a silver lining to your impatientness, despite the increased blood pressure you feel on a daily basis, you’ll probably outlive all the slow pokes, fat asses, and geriatrics who infuriate you on a daily basis.
This is especially good news for me as I fit the stereotype about to a T. I absolutely abhor walking behind people. Can’t stand it. I have no idea why, I don’t know if it’s a clinical phobia or what, but I’m absolutely on a mission in life never to trail someone for more than 5 steps. Anything more than that and I literally begin fantasizing about different objects I could bash your slow walking head in with. And for god sakes, if you feel me beating down your back, just move the hell out of the way…don’t pretend you don’t know I’m there, don’t make me to the awkward try to swoop out to the left and pass before the next person walking towards us collides with me, just get the fuck out of the way, for the health of both of us it’s the right thing to do.
PS: the other plus to this condition of mine, I’ve basically developed the crowd walking skill equivalent of Barry Sanders. I break more ankles per crowd than anyone in history, I once made it from the right field grandstand at Fenway to the Kenmore T-station in under 9 minutes. True, I rode that train alone, everyone else I was with was left in the dust, but its easily one of my top 3 achievements in life. And I’m not even depressed about that, like it’s a legit achievement that I dare anyone to challenge. You can’t do it, you can’t do it quicker than that. Plus, I'm going to live longer than everyone else, so there's that.
