Want to Boost Longevity? You Might Want to Focus on Joint Mobility, According to a New Study

Joint mobility—the ability to move a joint through its full range of motion—is a key part of feeling good and moving well. It’s also an important part of aging in a healthy way, and according to a new study published today in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, it might even add years to your life. The study included more than 3,000 people between the ages of 45 and 65 and looked at how their joint mobility corresponded to their lifespan, ultimately finding a correlation between better mobility and a longer life.

The researchers used the participants’ scores from a test called the Flexindex, which measures range of motion for 20 different movements across the body. The people with the highest scores were also the people with the lowest level of mortality.

(Quick note that below we’ll use the terms mobility and flexibility somewhat interchangeably, in line with the study language. But keep in mind that what we’re really talking about is the ability of joints to move through their full range of motion, which is most accurately defined as mobility.)

“I have always thought that flexibility was an important aspect of good health and have routinely incorporated its assessment since my first years of medical practice,” Claudio Gil Araújo, MD, PhD, dean of research of the exercise medicine clinic CLINIMEX in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the lead researcher on the study, told Well+Good.

A deeper look at the study

The Flexindex test, created by Dr. Araújo more than 30 years ago, assesses your flexibility and mobility across your entire body and adds up to a total score, from 0 to 80 (both extremes are rare and most people fall somewhere in the middle). For the new study, the people with scores of 49 or above (for men) and 56 and above (for women) had very low probability of mortality in 13 years.

Though the study shows only a correlation between flexibility, mobility, and longevity, the differences are pretty significant—particularly for women, who overall had better scores than men.

And while it’s difficult to take these findings and apply them to other people beyond those in the study, Dr. Araújo believes in the importance of flexibility at all life stages.

“Flexibility has been undervalued, rarely assessed, commonly unprescribed, and often neglected by exercisers and athletes,” he says. “[But] our study provides the best current evidence to confirm that flexibility is a health-related physical fitness attribute [because] it is related to the strongest possible health indicator or outcome—natural mortality.”

So if you’ve been neglecting your flexibility and mobility as part of your exercise plan, now is a great time to change that.

“I would say that thinking in lifespan and healthspan, it is a good time to start paying more attention to the range of motion of [your] main joint movements,” Dr. Araújo says.

“Flexibility has been undervalued, rarely assessed, commonly unprescribed, and often neglected by exercisers and athletes.” —Claudio Gil Araújo, MD, PhD

How to improve your mobility and flexibility

Dr. Araújo recommends getting your flexibility and mobility assessed (you can even do the Flexitest yourself) and then building a stretching and mobility plan from there.

“Flexibility is trainable, and it can be improved at any age, but it is easier to start a stretching routine of training before flexibility levels [go] dramatically low,” he says.

Mobility if one of those things that if you don’t use it, you lose it as you age. “Please do not neglect to include flexibility exercises in your exercise plan at all ages, since we start to lose flexibility already in the very first years of life,” says Dr. Araújo. “People [with healthy] levels of flexibility will not only tend to live longer but they will likely have more autonomy, an important issue when you get older.”

You can also try incorporating more mobility, yoga, and stretching moves into your day-to-day for areas that you can feel need help (tight hips, anyone?). These are some of our favorites:

Neck and back tightness

5 Yoga Poses for Neck Pain
Short Stretch Routine for Your Neck and Shoulders
6 Mobility Exercises for Posture

Shoulder mobility

6 Rotator Cuff Stretches From a PT
4 Shoulder Mobility Exercises From a PT to Stop the Pops

Hip mobility

Quick Hip Mobility Exercises
11-Minute Hip Mobility Routine

Ankle mobility

6 Stretches for Improving Poor Ankle Mobility
8-Minute Ankle Stretch

Full-body stretching and mobility

5-Minute Radio Taiso Mobility Routine 
9 Full-Body Stretches to Relax Every Muscle
15-Minute Full-Body Yoga Flow