The firmer your handshake the healthier your heart, new study finds
There's nothing worse than being on the end of a damp squib of a handshake – whether it's sweaty palms, a limp wrist or an overly long hand holding – but now, a weak handshake could even be a sign of early death.
The firmness of your handshake has been linked to how healthy your heart is, and could be a more accurate indicator even than the tried and tested way of measuring blood pressure levels.
The test of muscle strength through a handshake could be an easy and low-cost way of identifying heart disease, the researchers behind a new study have found.
Those with a weak handshake were found to live less long and be at greater risk of suffering heart attacks, a study published in the Lancet found.
"Grip strength could be an easy and inexpensive test to assess an individual's risk of death and cardiovascular disease. Doctors or other healthcare professionals can measure grip strength to identify patients with major illnesses such as heart failure who are at particularly high risk of dying from their illness," said assistant professor of medicine at McMaster University in Canada, Darryl Leong, who led the study.
If you have firm grasp then you're not only making a good impression with the people you meet, you can shake on the fact your heart is likely to be in pretty good shape.