Your grip –the strength in your hand and forearm — as shown on a dynamometer like this shows how long you will live; pecking on your smartphone or desktop will not make it stronger. 😉
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THE SITE UNDERWENT A MASSIVE HACKING ATTACK today for four hours.
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….Spiritual reading for October 15
This need not be loud or brazen; all that is required is attention on your part, and the quiet honoring of your own knowing. Sometimes it is infinitely more difficult than it seems it should be. To know the right way is hard. To act on it is often harder. To learn to trust your own guidance is a process and needs practice.
We know that you are working hard to find the right way in so many situations, and we are so excited by what we see. Still, it is a time of great urgency, and we are here to hold your hands, to encourage you and exhort you to become the magnificent being you came here to be. The time is now, and every time you take a bold step forward, we are awed by your courage.
only to help you on your way, and it is a delight to be part of the unfolding of your individual and collective truths. So we say, “Have at it today!”
Try just a little harder to be true to yourself ; we will be there to bless your efforts.
Love and Blessings.
…..Grip and upper body strength as an indicator of physiological, muscoskeletal and hormonal health in young adult males. Intro to be followed by study in early 2024
By bypassing the medical and scientific establishment that has given us the gift of Covid (the vaxx and the virus), deems homosexuality an immutable characteristic, pushes the use of barbaric genital mutilation of children in the name of “human rights”, we felt it best we start funding our own research to get to the bottom of what REALLY is happening to western men.
If we left analysing the masculinity crisis afflicting the wider western world up to the CDC and left-wing academics, be certain they’d instruct us that increases in soy consumption and homosexual sex acts would result in better men. They’d certainly tell us that sexual deviance is a better cure of “toxic masculinity” than engaging in traditional lifestyle choices like marrying women, making babies and eating red meat.
Therefore, in an attempt to counter the prevailing evil narrative that men need to be further emasculated and weakened physically, we have commissioned one of the field’s leading experts (and friend of the site) on the importance of testosterone, bone density and upper body strength to human longevity to study the importance of improving upper body strength on men’s health.
This is the introduction to the study we are funding measuring testosterone and hand strength in modern males.
But before I go….
I am hopeful that more of my donors will help fund the remainder of this study. It is important to us as a people. So please, if you want to see me commission more work like this – make a financial pledge to our shared cause.
Although testing grip strength and testosterone level might not seem as impactful and titillating as, let’s say, exposing our enemies, or discussing a gory act of barbarity perpetrated by a Pharisee-backed negro street assassin; without studies like this, how will we understand the scientific importance of the specific qualities we have lost in the last few generations as white men?
How can we know what we need to do to reclaim our rightful place at the head of not only our households, but our nations if we haven’t identified what exactly has been taken from us?
And prove that these manufactured deficiencies are in fact making us susceptible to further pathology?
At present very few of us are good men, good citizens or good leaders.
Weakness has not only sapped our mental strength and decimated our mental health, but decimated us physically as well.
One can not overstate the importance of a healthy, formidable mind and a healthy, powerful body.
Just shake the hand of anyone under the age of 25 to know how ill our people are.
We are unwell as a people.
And the answer is not to get “roided up” (body dysmorphia) or hit the gym, but to reclaim our masculinity through the genuine pursuit of sound, sensible and natural male health.
So if you can afford to help us fund the remainder of this study, I ask that you to help.
Thank you
John
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Grip and upper body strength as an indicator of physiological, muscoskeletal and hormonal health in young adult males
GV
Grip strength is routinely proposed as a biomarker in the disciplines of gerontology and longevity science.
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It is generally accepted that hand and grip strength in both males and females is a good biomarker for overall physiological health, higher bone density, elevated testosterone levels in males and a good predictor of positive health outcomes in both adult males and females after onset of disease or injury.
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High bone density prevents fractures, prevents and mitigates damage resulting from falls, wards off cognitive impairment, depression, sleep problems, diabetes, multimorbidity, and improves overall quality of life.
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Elevated testosterone levels in adult males help maintain bone density, assist in fat distribution, improve muscle strength and mass, aid in erythrocyte production, increase sex drive and aid in affiliative behaviours during interactions with potential mates, increase sperm production etc.
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Supporting this thesis, evidence is provided demonstrating that grip, hand, glenohumeral and scapulothoracic, pectoral, core, what is colloquially known as upper body torque and compression strength is an explanator of concurrent overall power, bone mineral density and testosterone levels in both young adult males and older males.
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Of note, physical strength (higher power to body weight ratio) – not to be confounded with sheer muscle mass or “size” – is the best predictor of disease outcomes and better overall physical health in adult humans.
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As an example, “bodybuilders” can exhibit excessive muscoskeletal hypertrophy while concurrently having comparatively lower bone density and suffering from bone diseases like osteoporosis and pathologies like osteoarthritis (overuse of joint) and rheumatoid arthritis (autoimmune condition).
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“Bodybuilders” also often have reduced power to body weight ratios in comparison to generally athletic adults of the same age. As an example, “bodybuilders” often fail to do one chin-up or 50 press-ups when tested etc.
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This is also why “bodybuilders” often have such poor outcomes post surgery, and with their health. This should not solely be misattributed to their routine abuse of supplements, pharmaceuticals, PEDs, human growth hormone tubular bells and anabolic steroids or abuse of their muscoskeletal system.
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Generally speaking, adults of all ages with higher power to body weight ratios have better health outcomes later in life.
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Richard W. Bohannon, a leading physical therapist and clinician who serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Human Muscle Performance and the Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics posits that “the routine use of grip strength can be recommended as a stand-alone measurement or as a component of a small battery of measurements for identifying middle and older adults at risk of poor health status.” (1)
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This has been clearly shown in older subjects across an array of studies.
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In India, dynamometric measurements (minimum change in the force, which is measured in units of weight such as pounds or kilograms, offers hospitals insight into patient outcomes) are taken at Intensive Care Units (ICU) to evaluate whether a hospital inpatient is capable of returning to an outpatient facility or home as acquired hand and upper body weakness is seen as a common complication in critically ill patients that predicts prognosis.
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Nidhi R. Samosawala, the head of the Department of Physiotherapy and School of Allied Health Sciences at Manipal University posits in “Measurement of muscle strength with handheld dynamometer in Intensive Care Unit” that “handheld dynamometry is an objective method in detecting minimum muscle strength change, which has an impact on the physical function of ICU survivors.” (2)
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That prolonged stays in ICU have been shown to precipitate complications such as deep vein thrombosis, ventilator-associated pneumonia, ICU-acquired physiological weakness (ICUAW), blood stream infections, bedsores — also called pressure ulcers and decubitus ulcers — gastrointestinal bleeding, skeletal muscle dysfunction and, generally speaking, hamper the rehabilitation of ICU survivors has resulted in physicians encouraging patients to return home before they are fully recovered.
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Because of physical inactivity, hospitalised patients often suffer from significant loss of muscle mass and physical strength, which in the Samoswala study was recorded at between 1% to 5% per day in critically ill patients. .
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Clinicians look to reduce damage to physiological and muscoskeletal health that occurs during inpatient hospitalisation by releasing patients when the advantages of being hospitalised are less than the aforementioned disadvantages.
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The significant decrease in muscle strength during ICU stay is not only a predictive indicator of critical illness in ICU survivors but on prognostic outcomes post-release.
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Based on this research and the practicality of hand-grip dynamometry, the dynamometric measurement of grip strength has been widely adopted as a singular indicator of overall strength and most accurate predictor of patient outcome post-release.
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In younger subjects and athletes, grip strength alone is not the sole measurement needed to evaluate general physiological and muscoskeletal health, nor is there any evidence that it can it fully predict how well a subject may handle the onset of disease or the impact of critical injury.
This paper looks only to demonstrate that hand, grip and overall upper body strength is correlated with general physiological health, the ability to fend off disease and positive surgical outcomes.
There are also other measurements, like bench press and press-ups (push-ups) in men, used to evaluate upper body power and unweighted squats in women to demonstrate overall strength and fitness in women, but in this study we will be testing hand strength, measured by dynamometric analysis as well as upper body torque, pectoral, glenohumeral and scapulo-thoracic and pectoral strength using what is referred to as a “power twister” – a fitness tool that features a resistance mechanism in the center and two handlebars at the side that, when bent by the subject, exerts pressure on the wrists, arms, shoulders, chest and back.
Using it as an exercise mechanism develops one’s grip, builds strength in the fingers, wrists, general muscle strength of the upper body (upper body torque).
We will evaluate upper body torque and hand strength on the streets of a major Western City (such as Paris, Copenhagen, or Berlin, etc) and in everyday people in an attempt to show correlation between upper body strength, good overall health, testosterone levels .
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Existing grip strength studies
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Although grip strength has been associated with better health outcomes after accidents, onset of and recover from illness and during old age, few studies seek to amalgamate these associations, and draw conclusions that it also increases quality of life in young adult males as well.
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Bohannon writes,
“Use of grip strength as a biomarker of current health status is most directly supported by research showing a cross-sectional association between grip strength and the strength of other muscle actions of both healthy individuals and adults with pathology.”
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This spans adults of all ages.
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Although grip strength is not directly required for the performance of basic functional activities such as walking, it does distinguish between older adults on the basis of their mobility.
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Forrest et al noted “significantly lower grip strengths among older Americans who reported physical limitations” – including standing from a chair, walking, climbing steps, and “going out”. (3)
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Zhang et al demonstrated a significant relationship between grip strength and the distance walked during the 6-minute walking test.
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“Specific grip strength thresholds have been determined that identify older adults who are weak and likely to have walking limitations.” In 6 studies identifying walking as slow (< 0.80m/s), grip strength thresholds for men ranged from 23.2kg to 39.0kg. For women they ranged from 15.9kg to 22.0kg.18–23
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Sallinen found that thresholds of 37.0kg for men and 21.0kg for women identified older adults with difficulty walking 0.5km or climbing stairs. (4)
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As the pull of muscles on bones has a trophic [= growing,developing, enlarging] effect on the latter, it should not be surprising that muscle strength is related to bone mineral density.
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What is noteworthy is the consistent demonstration across race and ethnicity of a relationship between grip strength and bone mineral density/osteoporosis at different sites- not all involving bones attached to muscles involved in hand-grip (eg, calcaneus, spine and hip.)
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Of note, physical strength is a better explanator of bone mineral density/osteoporosis than muscle mass.
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As an example, body builders can exhibit excessive muscoskeletal hypertrophy while exhibiting comparatively lower bone density and suffering from bone diseases like osteoporosis. Therefore physical strength (higher power to weight ratio), not muscle mass or size is the best predictor of disease outcomes and better overall physical health.
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Potentially related to the concurrent association of grip strength with bone mineral density/osteoporosis is the relationship between grip strength and fractures. In a systematic review, Denk et al found that all of 11 included studies confirmed a relationship between decreased hand grip strength and the incidence of hip fractures. (5)
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Similarly, Kim et al found that hand grip strength along with bone mineral density was associated with an increased risk of fragility fractures.
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Of course, a key cause of fractures is falls. Therefore, the demonstration of an association between grip strength and falls might also be expected. Yang et al reported such an association; specifically, they noted a mean grip strength of 17.6 kg in a group that had recently fallen compared to 20.7 kg in a group that had not fallen. (6)
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Van Ancum et al determined that lower grip strength was present among males (but not females) with pre-hospitalization falls. (7)
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Grip strength has been studied as a potential biomarker of malnutrition among diverse patient groups – with varying results. Examining a sample of older Chinese inpatients tested at hospital admission, Zhang et al noted that those with lower grip strength had an increased risk of malnutrition measured using the Nutritional Risk Screening and Subjective Global Assessment. (8)
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For the Nutritional Risk Screening the best cut-points were 27.5kg for men 65–74 years, 21.0kg for men 75–90 years, 17.0kg for women 65–74 years, and 14.6kg for women 75–90 years. For the Subjective Global Assessment, the optimal cut-points were 24.9kg for men 65–74 years, 20.8kg for men 75–90 years, 15.2kg for women 65–74 years, and 13.5kg for women 75–90 years. Among patients on maintenance hemodialysis, Silva et al found low but significant inverse correlations (rs= −0.38 [men] and −0.36 [women]) between grip strength and the Malnutrition–Inflammation Score. (9)
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The correlation was present regardless of race, diabetic status, age, and gender. They calculated grip strength cut points of 28.3kg for men and 23.4kg for women. Ozorio et al classified patients with gastrointestinal cancer into 4 levels of cachexia. (10)
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Patients with the greatest degree of cachexia (refractory) [muscle shrinkage] had the lowest grip strength. They reported the most discriminating grip strength cut-off for refractory cachexia was 19.3 kg for men and 14.7 kg for women. Byrnes et al, who studied older adults admitted to general surgical wards, concluded that grip strength was not “suitable for screening older inpatients for malnutrition”. (11)
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Although finding a significant association between grip strength and nutritional status, McNicholl described grip strength as having “poor validity as a single nutrition indicator.” (12)
As more of the patients they tested completed a grip strength assessment (92%) than a 5 meter walking assessment (43%), they concluded that grip strength “is a more useful functional measure” than the 5 meter walk test. Weakness is a commonly observed impairment in the lower limbs of Individuals with diabetes, with weakness being greater in the presence of neuropathy.
Low grip strength is also related to multimorbidity whether or not diabetes is a component of the overall morbidity load;47–50 as the number of comorbidities rises the grip strength decreases. (14)
Up to this point, relationships between grip strength and variables of a physical nature have been addressed.
Additional studies evaluated by Richard W. Bohannon
Bohannon writes that “considerable research notes a covariance of grip strength with cognition, depression, and sleep as well. In a recent systematic review examining the relationship between grip strength and cognitive function in older adults, Kobayashi-Cuya et al reported that 6 of 7 studies documented significant relationships.
Vancampfort et al recently reported that among middle-aged and older adults, weak grip strength was associated with increased odds of having mild cognitive impairment. (15)
Using a cutpoint of less than 30kg for men and 20kg for women for weak grip, Ashdown-Franks et al found a prevalence of depression of 8.8% among adults classified as weak versus 3.8% among adults not classified as weak. (16)
Greater sleep impairment, lower sleep quality and longer sleep duration have been shown to be related to lower handgrip strength.
Finally, grip strength has been shown to relate concurrently to quality of life, a variable not limited specifically to physical or mental domains. These relationships have been documented using generic measures of quality of life in patients with liver disease and disease specific measures of quality of life in patients with cancer, chronic obstructive lung disease, or surgery for spinal stenosis.
Bhannon writes, “Grip strength is a predictor of numerous future outcomes. Mortality is probably the most widely studied outcome, with studies published as far back as the 1980s and at least 3 meta-analyses supporting the association of weak grip strength with all-cause mortality in the general population.
Studies calculated a pooled hazard ratio 1.16) per 5kg reduction in grip strength. In an even more recent meta-analysis García-Hermosa et al combined the results of 33 studies addressing all-cause mortality.
They determined a pooled hazard ratio for a reduced risk of mortality for higher versus lower levels of grip strength to be 0.69. In addition to these meta-analyses, several recent large-scale studies have further reinforced the value of grip strength as a predictor of mortality in community-dwelling populations.
These studies all involved over 1000 participants from each of several specific countries or regions: Japan; Russia; Denmark, the United Kingdom, Korea, Norway, the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Western Europe, and Taiwan.
In the last of these studies, “malnutrition synergistically increased the mortality risk” in keeping with low grip strength.
Grip strength is also supported as a predictor of disease and disease-specific mortality- with much of the literature focused on cardiovascular disease and cancer. Wu et al, in a summary of 12 studies, determined that a 5kg decrease in grip strength was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (overall hazard ratio 5.98). (17)
Other studies not included in their review provide additional qualified support for measuring grip strength. Prasitsiriphon and Pothisiri found that grip strength was a significant predictor of cardiovascular mortality for men and women but that change in grip strength was not. (18)
Yates et al determined that grip strength was associated with cardiovascular mortality but only in men (hazard ratio: 1.38). (19)
Gubelman et al noted a significant association of low grip strength and cardiovascular events, but the difference was annulled after accounting for baseline cardiovascular risk. (20)
Whitney and Peterson, who measured absolute grip strength as well as grip strength normalized against body mass and body mass index, found only the latter 2 measures to covary with cerebrovascular events. (21)
Perhaps most telling in regard to the relationship of grip strength and cardiovascular mortality, however, are the findings reported by Leong et al. (22)
They determined that grip strength was a more powerful predictor of cardiovascular mortality (hazard ratio 1.17) than systolic blood pressure. They also found grip strength to be associated with all-cause mortality (hazard ratio 1.16), myocardial infarction (hazard ratio 1.07), and stroke (hazard ratio 1.09).
In regard to cancer mortality, the value of grip strength as a predictive biomarker is uncertain. Based on a meta-analysis of 7 studies, Garcia-Hermoso et al calculated a hazard ratio of 0.97 and suggested that a “higher level of muscular strength is not statistically associate with a lower risk of cancer mortality“. (23)
Wu et al came to a similar conclusion following a meta-analysis of 10 studies (hazard ratio 1.10). (17)
In a more recently published study of more than 500,000 adults not included in these meta analyses, Celis-Morales et al found an association between lower grip strength and cancer mortality (all cause, colorectal, lung, and breast). (24)
Their findings did not extend to prostate cancer. For individuals who already have cancer, there is inconsistent evidence that low grip strength is a predictor of mortality. For older patients with cancer, Pamoukdjian et al and Versteeg et al both showed that higher grip strength was associated with prolonged survival. (25)
Chen et al demonstrated a significant difference (p=0.016) in the 6 month mortality of patients with grip strength < 25kg versus normal grip strength who underwent esophagectomy for esophageal cancer.94 Puts et al, on the other hand, did not find a significant relationship between grip strength and mortality in patients with cancer. (26)
Unlike Versteeg et al, however, Puts et al did find an association between grip strength and treatment toxicity. (27)
In addition to examining grip strength as a potential predictor of cardiovascular and cancer mortality, investigators have also shown the value of grip strength as a predictor of mortality in other pathologies. These pathologies include, but are not limited to, rheumatoid arthritis in women (relative risk 3.0), type 2 diabetes in men (hazard ratio 0.90), pneumonia (odds ratio 0.97),98 renal [kidney] disease (1.76 and 1.81),99 and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) (hazard ratio 1.80).[…]
[JdN: This is the end for now; I cut out more of the same.]
Below you will find what I’ll be using when I hit the streets of Paris.
Preq
18-45
Male
No disability
Self-reporting of good overall health (no cancer, heart disease, HIV etc)
Age ______
Height ______
Weight ______
Nationality ______
Race ______
Regular participant in sport or exercise routine ______
Any disability ______
To be performed in under 4 minutes
Grip strength attempt 1 ______
Grip strength attempt 2______
Power and upperbody torque twister front presses of 40kg attempt 1______
Power and upperbody torque twister front presses of 40kg attempt 2 ______
Power and upperbody torque twister front presses of 60kg attempt 1 ______
Power and upperbody torque twister front presses of 60kg attempt 2 ______
Number of press-ups 60 seconds
Number of chinups with one stop
Post test Questions:
Any major health issues Yes/No
If yes ______
Sexual dysfunction (ie impotence, premature, inability to get an erection) ______
Clinical observation of vocal pitch, testosterone biomarkers __________________ ____________________________________________________________________
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Testosterone level ______
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