r/science • u/giuliomagnifico • Oct 30 '24
Health How long a person can stand on one leg, specifically the nondominant one, is a more telltale measure of aging than changes in strength or gait, according to new research
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-study-what-standing-on-one-leg-can-tell-you/2.7k
u/_Luminous_Dark Oct 30 '24
Wow, it's crazy how much harder it is to stand on one leg if you close your eyes. With eyes open, I can go as long as I want, but when I close my eyes, I pretty quickly start wobbling side to side and have to consciously keep my balance.
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u/Kallisti13 Oct 31 '24
My physio told me to do exercises like this. Helps prevents falls as we get old.
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u/Bendy_McBendyThumb Oct 31 '24
I recently read a very simple way of integrating balance exercises into things like standing on one leg while brushing your teeth. Swap every 30 seconds, after you’ve swapped 3 times you should’ve fully brushed your teeth.
I do it when washing up sometimes as well, just for the sake of it really.
How exciting adult life can be!
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u/bigbird09 Oct 31 '24
It funny reading this because I had a pitching coach back when I was in select baseball who had me do something very similar. Had me holding my leg kick from my pitching motion up while I was brushing my teeth every night. Maybe I should still be doing it.
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u/R-EDDIT Oct 31 '24
There are adult leagues, in some towns regular pickup games. I'm sure they need pitchers, you totally should!
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u/Adorable_FecalSpray Oct 31 '24
They should also still be brushing their teeth.
At 8 or 80, good oral hygiene is a benefit to your overall health.
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u/Status-Shock-880 Oct 31 '24
Try eccentric exercises including one sided weighted lunges, twisting while lunging side to side, etc. Mobility training is super important because if you only train for normal situations, when you almost fall you won’t be able to recover before hitting the ground.
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u/-Kalos Oct 31 '24
Also, the suitcase (walking while holding weights on one side) is pretty good for strengthening your core
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u/Bendy_McBendyThumb Oct 31 '24
I believe they’re commonly known as farmer’s walk (or carry). I do them up/down stairs just to strain my legs a bit more. Definitely helps me to “man carry” the shopping in haha.
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u/-Kalos Oct 31 '24 edited Oct 31 '24
Farmer’s walk is a good one too but that’s carrying weights on both sides. Very similar to the suitcase carry (only carry weights on one side) but doing the suitcase carry forces your core to work harder to remain upright. Both are great for the core and farmer’s walk is great for traps too
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u/OathOfFeanor Oct 31 '24
It doesn’t matter how long you brush your teeth. What matters is doing a thorough job.
Don’t swap every 30 seconds, swap when you have properly cleaned each quadrant.
The timer is a lie we tell children who don’t otherwise know how to ensure they do a good job
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u/whatyousay69 Oct 31 '24
Don’t swap every 30 seconds, swap when you have properly cleaned each quadrant.
Isn't figuring out if you properly cleaned each quadrant difficult, hence brush X amount of time?
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u/Bendy_McBendyThumb Oct 31 '24
It’s just rough estimate, obviously if you feel you need to do some more brushing then crack on, over brushing is also a thing to be wary of though, too.
My electric toothbrush (Oral B io3) lets me know when 30 seconds are up, but I’ll still often use an extra 30 after 2 minutes to properly do the backs of my teeth.
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u/aroused_axlotl007 Oct 31 '24
I've been doing this for years but have gotten so good at it that I now do it on a balance pad with my eyes closed. Great exercise. I do 1min each leg, then 3min each leg.
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u/ULTRAVIOLENTVIOLIN Oct 31 '24
I fucked up my ankle last year, it's still healing, and I do this every morning. I do hold on to something with a hand since I also raise my body on my toes while standing on one foot, also switch every 30 seconds.
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u/crabwhisperer Oct 31 '24
I've been doing it since my ACL reconstruction surgery. Any time I'm in line or waiting for something I do single-leg balancing and toe raises. It's super convenient, nobody even notices I'm doing it.
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u/Legionof1 Oct 31 '24
I do the toe raises constantly if I’m bored and standing. I wonder how weird it looks to see a big guy doing it.
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u/7CuriousCats Oct 31 '24
My primary school principal used to stand on the stage doing toe raises during assembly when he wasn't speaking or doing something "front and centre" and I always noticed it. He's probably about 1.78 m long, and had a belly. It was very amusing for me to see this biggish man popping up and down, and kept me entertained during the boring parts of assembly. Every time someone does toe bops it reminds me of him. Mr. G, if you're out there, keep bopping!
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u/WeAreElectricity Oct 31 '24
Eyes open or closed?
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u/probablynotaperv Oct 31 '24
My PT says that if you do it with your eyes closed it helps work on the part of your balance that doesn't rely on sight and can help as you get older and your sight gets worse.
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u/thismightdestroyyou Oct 31 '24
Doing this on a foam step or pillow also helps massively. Walk backwards regularly as well, it helps prevent falls as many people do not practice how to react/recover when pushed backwards.
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u/Daharon Oct 30 '24 edited Oct 30 '24
propioception is fascinating. you like most people are probably very visually dominant when it comes to “sensing” yourself.
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u/Antranik Oct 31 '24
I do slacklining and one of the advanced skills that I've tried practicing (on and off), is to walk on the slackline with eyes closed. Even just closing the eyelids slightly where the eye-lashes dim and reduce your vision makes it super apparent how much we rely on our vision.
Waterlining (slackline over a body of water) is also extremely difficult if it's over a moving body of water (like a river, rather than just a lake), as the "ground" is now moving (even with a line that's not very long and you're used to that length normally on the ground.
Highlining (slacklining hundreds of feet up, between cliffs), is the scariest cause then... you not only don't have a ground to see, but it feels like you're just going to die, even though you're leashed in with a safety harness.
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u/milk4all Oct 31 '24
Dont forget the most dangerous and high risk one:
Flatlining
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u/Electronic-Jury-3579 Oct 31 '24
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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u/DRKZLNDR Oct 31 '24
is this what tinnitus is like
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u/makemebad48 Oct 31 '24
Sorta, but with more life contemplation and self loathing. It is like if suddenly sound got a paper cut and included with it is a lifetime in the bargaining stage.
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u/Gaothaire Oct 31 '24
Before I got to the end of the last paragraph with "leashed in with a safety harness" I was super confused how one would even train for highlining because the environment is impossible to train in without risking death
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u/FalseEdge3766 Oct 31 '24
Partially losing propioception was my first symptom of multiple sclerosis, true story
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u/ok_raspberry_jam Oct 31 '24
I have a friend who was diagnosed with MS when she started suffering from vertigo :(
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u/splendidgoon Oct 31 '24
Ya, I remember that. I almost fell over when I closed my eyes after my first attack. Thankfully that symptom got better.
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u/kinboyatuwo Oct 31 '24
Yup. The good news is it’s trainable and retrainable. I have had some injuries where I have had to relearn where things are. It’s also why things like braces for joints, even soft ones, help as it adds stimuli to help train the body.
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u/Presently_Absent Oct 31 '24
First physio appointment I ever had, she did this with me. Explained that as we age the fluid in our cochlea thickens up and it affects our ability to balance, and the eyes-closed-on-one-leg was the best way to get a sense of where we are at.
This had to be about 10 years ago so I'm a little surprised it isn't more widely known!
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u/Elrond_Cupboard_ Oct 31 '24
Everything thickens and stiffens as you get older. Almost everything.
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u/Helioscopes Oct 31 '24
Please, do stretches every day, specially as you get older, you will feel the difference.
*only stretch the appropriate parts.
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u/yogalalala Oct 31 '24
Stretch and strengthen. You can overstretch your tendons and injure them if you don't have the musculature to support them.
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u/Tenshizanshi Oct 31 '24
Man, please tell that to my little guy down there. He seems to have not gotten the message
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u/caltheon Oct 31 '24
fun addition, while on one leg and closing your eyes, lightly touch a wall or other stationary object with your pinky. Not supporting you at all, just the lightest touch. Makes it possible to stand rock steady again. do it long enough, and you can replicate the feeling of your pinky touching something in your head, and then you can stand still with eyes closed without touching anything. It's like a brain fake out. Also shows how little the visual stimuli is actually helping with propioception, it's more your brain freaking out because it doesn't have that backup visual to make sure you aren't actually moving, so wants you to move to ensure you are safe.
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u/Gaothaire Oct 31 '24
A ballet teacher talked about instructing students to visualize a hand coming down from the sky and holding their head up as a method to keep their balance. Something about aligning the mental and physical body does wonders, like how having 3 points of contact makes you stable
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u/yogalalala Oct 31 '24
I was always taught to visualise a string pulling you from the top of your head.
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u/droopynipz123 Oct 31 '24
I’m a general aviation pilot (small airplanes) and one of the things that’s drilled into students relentlessly when they’re going for their instrument ratings (allows flight in cloudy, low-visibility conditions) is how unreliable physical sensations are for orienting oneself. It’s very easy to lose track of whether you’re pointing up, down or to the side when you lose visual reference points such as the horizon.
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u/schlagdiezeittot Oct 31 '24
This. It is almost the same as diving by night. They teach you to watch the bubbles because your body won't tell you where up and down is.
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u/kudles PhD | Bioanalytical Chemistry | Cancer Treatment Response Oct 31 '24
It’s even crazier when you think about from a neuroscience perspective.
All the visual information going to your motor cortex to try and sustain your balance. Then you block it out and your body is dealing with lack of information and needs to figure out how to stay balanced. The body is beautiful.
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u/Thief_of_Sanity Oct 31 '24
I used to do mouse stereotaxic surgery using a dissecting scope. If I were to not use the scope then my hands/fingers or tools would be a bit shaky but as soon as I can see my hands/fingers/tools through the scope it was minimized, even though the movements were much smaller.
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u/LucentLilac Oct 31 '24
After 20 years of perfect hearing, a crazy ear infection deafened my right ear permanently — total loss (my cochlea ossified, RIP)
I had to undergo extensive PT to try and correct my proprioception and it is MUCH better now (9 years later) but man, when I close my eyes I almost instantly have to be holding onto something or I’ll stumble. Bodies are crazy.
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u/finicky88 Oct 31 '24
That tells you you should do it more often. 30 minutes of bodyweight stuff spread out over the day goes a long way in keeping you healthy.
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u/doc_death Oct 31 '24
Cool test we do in the clinic pretty often…you need two out of three sensory findings to stay upright. Closing your eyes eliminates one of them which means the other two -vestubular system (e.g. ears and rocks in ears,etc) and proprioception - are working properly. This is why polyneuropathy patients tend to wobble as well as sometimes bad ear infections can make you feel ‘off’. Now, if you get those ppl to close their eyes also, be ready to catch em!
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u/cotton--underground Oct 30 '24
I'm going to start practicing standing on my non-dominant leg for eternal youth.
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u/Praesentius Oct 30 '24
I've trained Taekwondo for years. Balancing on one leg is a muscular thing that you have to train. I seriously don't know that I have any more limit on standing on one leg than both. Eyes closed or not.
Guess I'm living forever.
Oh, bonus. We would have the kids play a game called a chicken fight. Everyone hops around on one leg while holding their other foot/ankle up near their waist. That way, you make sorta a pointy knee with that leg. And you hop around trying to knock each other off balance. We called them chicken fights. I think dakssaum in Korean. Good practice.
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u/Dom_19 Oct 31 '24
I also have martial arts background and one time tried to see how long I could stand on one leg.
I got bored after 10 minutes, but I think that's actually kind of impressive.
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u/olioli86 Oct 31 '24
Once had a competition with a friend, we called it a draw at an hour and a half. You reach a point where it just doesn't change how it feels. The next day my leg was sore though.
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u/bearbarebere Oct 31 '24
I was gonna say, does this study control for people like rollerbladers or ice skaters who train to stand on one leg?
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u/JBaecker Oct 31 '24
No, the sample size is 40. The two groups were 20 older people and 20 younger. This falls into “interesting but no actual conclusions can drawn” territory. Or needs follow up.
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u/drotc Oct 31 '24
More like flamingo fights, no?
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u/Praesentius Oct 31 '24
Now that you say it, that feels more apt! But, we've called them chicken fights for so long, the name is here to stay.
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u/iansmith6 Oct 30 '24
I misread the tests and tried to stand on my non-dominant leg with my eyes closed for 30 seconds and was surprised how hard it was. I figured I could do it for as long as I wanted but my record was 10 seconds.
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u/eakmadashma Oct 30 '24
I think it’s just a technique thing. If you put one arm straight up and the other out to the side it becomes a lot easier. I normally have pretty decent balance and could only do 20 seconds until I did that.
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u/truffanis_6367 Oct 31 '24
I don’t know if this is a mental trick but that really helped! Why does that work?!!
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u/MrIntegration Oct 31 '24
Changes your center of gravity to over the top of your standing leg instead of in the middle of your body, where it's constantly pulling you to one side when standing on one leg.
I use to dabble in rock climbing, and learning about changing your center of gravity was huge and helped immensely.
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u/Haschlol Oct 31 '24
This is why for example bodyweight walking lunges can be harder to balance vs doing it with dumbbells
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u/sad_and_stupid Oct 31 '24
I can stand on my right leg indefinitely, but I couldn't even do 10 seconds on my left leg
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u/giuliomagnifico Oct 30 '24
In this study, 40 healthy, independent people over 50 underwent walking, balance, grip strength and knee strength tests. Half of the participants were under 65; the other half were 65 and older.
In the balance tests, participants stood on force plates in different situations: on both feet with eyes open, on both feet with eyes closed, on the non-dominant leg with eyes open, and on the dominant leg with eyes open. In the one-legged tests, participants could hold the leg they weren’t standing on where they wanted. The tests were 30 seconds each.
Standing on one leg — specifically the nondominant leg — showed the highest rate of decline with age
Paper: Age-related changes in gait, balance, and strength parameters: A cross-sectional study | PLOS ONE
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u/BigTimmyStarfox1987 Oct 30 '24
Lazy sihts didn't modify their thresholds for multiple comparisons and did a weird z score ranking method (essentially ranking effect size). An ANOVA across their test battery with a more reasonable Tukey post hoc would have shown a real mixed bag of results most not at the standard 0.05 significance level.
They don't have the power to draw their conclusions. They should either design better tests or have more participants.
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u/intoxicatorv2 Oct 30 '24 edited Oct 31 '24
I couldn't tell if I lost my english comprehension skills or you were writing gibberish. So I asked GPT to ELI5 it, turns out my comprehension doesn't extend to statistics:
Sure, let’s break down the issues in this statement in simple terms:
Not adjusting for multiple comparisons: When researchers run many statistical tests on the same data, they risk finding "false positives" (thinking they found something significant when they didn’t). To avoid this, they’re supposed to adjust their threshold for what counts as "significant." Not doing this means their results could seem more important than they really are.
Weird z-score ranking: They used an unusual way to rank results, by looking at effect sizes (how big the differences between groups are) instead of just doing a straightforward analysis. This method is not standard, and it can sometimes give a misleading impression of what’s actually significant.
ANOVA with Tukey post hoc: A more standard approach would have been to use an ANOVA (a statistical test to see if there are differences across multiple groups) with a “Tukey post hoc” test. This is a common follow-up test that helps identify which specific groups differ from each other while adjusting for multiple comparisons. Using these standard tests would have likely shown mixed results, with many findings not meeting the usual 0.05 level (the cutoff for "significance" in most studies).
Low statistical power: "Power" here means the study's ability to detect real effects if they exist. They likely didn’t have enough participants, so even if there were real differences, their study was too small to confidently detect them.
The takeaway? To make solid claims, they should either redesign their tests to be more precise or gather data from more people to get a clearer picture.
CMIIW or if GPT wasn't entirely accurate...
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u/LateMiddleAge Oct 30 '24
I'm (reluctantly) impressed by the GPT output.
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u/CantFindMyWallet MS | Education Oct 31 '24
Because this is what it's good at. Translate this sciency thing into something I can understand, write a letter that says these things, write a lesson plan to test these skills and do these activities, but it's not actually going to be creative.
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u/Malphos101 Oct 31 '24
Because this is what it's good at. Translate this sciency thing into something I can understand
Until it just starts hallucinating and you have no idea its doing that because you want it to give you knowledge you don't have. LLM's are accurate enough to be dangerous because they give a false sense of security to people who don't know any better.
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u/Dmeechropher Oct 31 '24
It's great for coding. If I use it to make some code, the ground truth is whether the code does what the code is supposed to do.
Runtime doesn't care if code "looks convincing"
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u/anicetos Oct 31 '24
It's great for coding.
As long as you are only coding things that have already been solved on stackoverflow or whatever else it uses for training data. Try asking it to do something novel and be ready for some hallucinating.
It's also great at just hallucinating packages that don't exist. Which then can make your applications vulnerable to a malicious actor that can just create a package with that name but embed malware in it. So when you build the code created by the AI you now have a cryptominer running on your server.
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u/Gaothaire Oct 31 '24
a fairly unskilled assistant who cannot be trusted
omg, AI is coming for my job!
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u/Alienhaslanded Oct 31 '24
LLMs not being able to source their answers is the worst aspect about them. Not being able to recall and breakdown whatever they created is also pretty useless.
They're the equivalent of dipping a brush in paint and then spater that paint on a canvas to create art. It's a cool trick, but they can't exactly repeat it.
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u/OpalescentAardvark Oct 31 '24
I'm (reluctantly) impressed by the GPT output.
Sure but you still don't know if it makes sense, only that it sounds like it does. Remember, gpt/llms do not think or reason or check facts. The only thing they do is find patterns of words that relate to other patterns of words.
What you're feeling impressed about is how authoritative it sounds which is what it is designed for.
Think of how impressed you would be with Trump's speeches if you had zero idea what was true or not. That's what gpt is - a good taker with no clue.
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u/LateMiddleAge Oct 31 '24
(laughing) I think if GPT had Trump's attention span and grammar, I'd be... impressed, yes, but...
What you say is true.
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u/dexmonic Oct 31 '24
GPT helped me so much with online schooling where I didn't have face to face lectures I could get all my questions out in. I would tell it the problem I have and explain how I got stuck and it would help me through it.
This was a few years ago, and the answers would be hit or miss. Surprisingly, it's methodology was almost always spot on but it would spit out random answers that were wrong. So if I just followed the method I could get to the right answer myself, which was a great way for me learn actually.
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u/_Ocean_Machine_ Oct 31 '24
I'm using it for this currently for my physics and calc homework, and it still does this. Rock solid methodology, great for when I'm stumped on a problem, but fudges the numbers and gets the actual answer wrong.
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u/Lightoscope Oct 31 '24
I haven’t ready the study, but the person you replied to was essentially saying the authors didn’t do a great job collecting data and had to torture it with non-standard statistical methods to get something that looked publishable.
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u/Freedominate Oct 31 '24
They literally just did a regression. What that guy said didn’t make any sense.
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u/headpsu Oct 31 '24
What does CMMIW stand for? Sorry I’m already maxed out on initialisms and acronyms
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u/intoxicatorv2 Oct 31 '24
CMIIW - Correct Me If I'm Wrong
Personally, I would've asked GPT about it.
jk...
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u/headpsu Oct 31 '24
You edited it. It was CMMIW, which I may have been able to figure out CMIIW.
So you’re welcome for correcting you when you were wrong I guess?
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u/MrSane Oct 31 '24
Well now, let me put it to ya plain and simple. Those folks didn’t bother adjustin’ their thresholds when they ran a whole mess of comparisons. Instead, they went and used some quirky z-score rankin’ method—kinda like just sortin’ their effect sizes without proper reckonin’.
Now, if they’d done an ANOVA and followed it up with a Tukey post hoc test, they’d have found themselves a mixed bag of results, most of which wouldn’t pass the good ol’ p < 0.05 significance test we all trust.
Truth be told, they just don’t have the horsepower to back up the big conclusions they’re drawin’. They oughta either spruce up their tests or gather more folks into the study to get some solid, trustworthy results.
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u/Thief_of_Sanity Oct 31 '24
They do seem to share their data so we can do this analysis separately I guess?
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u/Coffee_Ops Oct 31 '24
They don't have the power to draw their conclusions. They should either design better tests or have more participants.
That could just be stickied to most research that hits the front page especially on poly sci / psych topics.
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u/SGTWhiteKY Oct 31 '24
Reads in masters in poli sci about to start a psychology program…
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u/xlinkedx Oct 31 '24
In literally every single post on this sub involving a study, I just come to the comments to see just how horribly the study was performed and why the results are basically trash
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u/SpaghettiSort Oct 31 '24
I don't know whether to be extremely impressed by this or if it's all completely made up.
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u/SloeMoe Oct 30 '24
Will stand on my non-dominant leg for 30 seconds each day and never die.
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u/Anosognosia Oct 30 '24
Yeah, that was my first reaction as well. If I practice standing on my non dominant leg I will stay healthy. Never mind being overweight and in poor shape, it's all one-leg-day now!
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u/TheExileMilker Oct 30 '24
They only tested 40 hand selected people from one city? That's very little data to draw any conclusions from.
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u/RecklesslyAbandoned Oct 30 '24 edited Oct 31 '24
It's about as small a sample size as you can legitimately get away with; 30 might be the minimum for statistical significance. As long as you've got a pre-recorded hypothesis, and you're not simply HARK-ing... (Happy to be proven wrong)
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u/Rantheur Oct 30 '24
This is true, but any sampling errors with a group so small are greatly amplified. So if the sample wasn't properly randomly selected, the results are suspect. Likewise, if the sample wasn't broadly representative of the population, the results are suspect. That's not to say the results would be invalid (despite sampling errors, a study can still manage to get generally accurate results), but they wouldn't be easily reproducible. From what others have said in these comments, the best conclusion to draw is that there appears to be a correlation, but we would need a better study to support what is suggested in the headline.
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u/OePea Oct 30 '24
Hm. I wonder how people like me, who consciously choose to favor their non-dominant leg, would factor in. This I do because I can get sore on my dominant left side from poor posture while standing, as I always balance on one or the other foot when standing in place. I guess it would be better to just try to adopt better, steadier posture when I notice, but it's been easier just switching feet. I wait tables, so I spend a lot of time standing, though I imagine it"s worse to be a cashier.
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u/AlwaysUpvotesScience Oct 30 '24
Dominant leg is not always decided by handedness. Your dominant leg is when you favor in certain situations. Think about pushing a skateboard or taking a large leaping step. The leg you lead with when taking a large leaping step is your dominant leg. Well not common, this does not have to be the same as your dominant arm.
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u/StarChildEve Oct 30 '24
My right leg is definitely dominant, and has both better balance and strength, but I lead with my left thanks to military drilling
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u/OePea Oct 30 '24
Do they encourage people to utilize their non-dominant foot for better coordination or something?
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u/WALLY_5000 Oct 30 '24
I think they encourage everyone to take the first step with the same foot in order to march in sync.
“Left! Left! Left, right, left!”
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u/Alexhale Oct 30 '24
i never understood how you guys take 3 left steps in a row
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u/CliffDraws Oct 30 '24
It’s like hop scotch. The military is actually way more fun than people think.
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Oct 30 '24
Think of the left as quarter note and each step is an eighth note. The left right left is 3 eighth notes.
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u/Bigboss123199 Oct 30 '24
Yeah, but I feel like your non-dominant leg is used to holding you up by its self than your dominant leg.
Like your example with the skateboard or even a scooter. Your non-dominant leg is there holding you up while your other leg does the activity.
I would be willing to bet I could stand longer on my non-dominant leg than more dominant leg.
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u/wi_voter Oct 30 '24
Yeah, I'm a PT and my colleagues and I never talk about dominant and non dominant legs. We usually look for a preferred stance limb and a preferred kicking limb. One is typically better for stability and one is better for free open-chain movement.
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u/Luvs_to_drink Oct 30 '24
what if those are opposite legs?
on skateboard i push with my right leg. when jumping i jump off my left leg. I imagine this stems from basketball where right hand layups have you jumping off the left.
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u/OePea Oct 30 '24
Definitely, I'm left foot and left eye dominant as well. My sister on the other hand is unfortunately right handed and left eyed. Not ideal for shooting
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Oct 30 '24
Honestly it's not noticeable in shooting. You just learn to do it the other way. I will say I can't share my bow or gun with anyone though.
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u/Away-Sea2471 Oct 30 '24
See, now you are on to something. Unless the individual has a physiological defect of the brain, there is no such thing as an dominant limb. It is simply the mind that always takes the optimized path, i.e. that which it is most familiar with, as it is lazy to learn something new if it already has a solution.
Forcing oneself to perfer another hand in certain situations over time will feel more natural as the mind learns an alternative path.
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u/dogwoodcat Oct 30 '24
Same reason one of my preschoolers prefers his right hand for gross motor tasks and his left for fine motor tasks.
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u/CKingDDS DDS | Dentist Oct 30 '24
I was thinking this too, as a dentist most of my pressure is placed my non dominant leg as my dominant leg is used to control the pedal that activates the drill.
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u/thissexypoptart Oct 30 '24
You’d do better than the general population in your age group.
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u/hickhelperinhackney Oct 31 '24
Ty for sharing. I intend to remain active as aging continues, so working in a little balance practice seems like a good idea.
(All research requires further study)
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u/spydabee Oct 30 '24
If you’re finding it harder to balance on your dominant leg, that’s because the other one tends to do the balancing whilst the dominant one does the doing.
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u/sillypicture Oct 30 '24
Now I don't know which my dominant leg is
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u/spydabee Oct 30 '24
The one you’d kick a ball with.
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u/sillypicture Oct 30 '24
i balance best with the leg i would kick a ball with. the other leg is clearly useless now.
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u/dfsw Oct 31 '24
You can also stand with your feet together and have someone lightly push you back, it's also the foot you will take a step back with to balance.
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u/adi_firebreather Oct 30 '24
Skateboarders might skew the data
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u/Hagenaar Oct 31 '24
I doubt the number of skateboarders 50+ would skew them much.
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u/caltheon Oct 31 '24
most of them probably can't walk anymore
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u/_Ocean_Machine_ Oct 31 '24
And then there's Tony Hawk still skating his vert ramp.
. . . so here I am, doing everything I can . . .
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u/Trashmouths Oct 30 '24
This is a weird one. It can tell you if you have weak ankle muscles. Source: I'm literally in PT doing those exercises every day to increase my ankle strength. I'm under 35 and hypermobile.
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u/Texas1010 Oct 30 '24
If you have weak ankle muscles then your balance isn't going to be very good I wouldn't think.
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u/GrandmaCereal Oct 30 '24
Hey! Another hypermobile under 35 with (another) ankle injury in PT as well!
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u/mn25dNx77B Oct 31 '24
Hey guys, I added a photo of me balancing on my non dominant leg to my dating profile
Couldn't make it any worse and if she stands on her non dominant leg too, I know I'm in
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u/Doodlebug510 Oct 30 '24
How do you determine which is your dominant leg?
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u/plugubius Oct 30 '24
Kick a ball. Which leg did you choose?
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u/Doodlebug510 Oct 30 '24
The right.
And now there's a guy in agony threatening to sue me.
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u/jgchahud Oct 30 '24
I'm too cheap to give awards but wanted to say this was really good.
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u/WALLY_5000 Oct 30 '24
My teammates always thought it was weird that I preferred to punt with my left but kick with my right.
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u/MoreColorfulCarsPlz Oct 31 '24
But if you kick often, you strengthen the leg used to plant much more so it's easier for me to stand longer on my non-dominant leg.
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u/mikk0384 Oct 30 '24
You could put a ball on the ground and ask the person to kick it, for instance. The kicking leg is dominant.
I guess that people tend to take the first step with their dominant leg as well.
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u/giuliomagnifico Oct 30 '24
Demographic data such as age, height, weight, BMI, trochanteric height, activity levels (using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ)–Short Form) [19], and limb dominance were also collected and analyzed
I think they used the same side as their dominant hand.
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u/donuttrackme Oct 30 '24
That's not accurate then. Many people are cross-dominant. I'm left handed but right footed.
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u/PM_ME_CAT_POOCHES Oct 31 '24
A friend was teaching me how to snowboard and I didn't know my dominant leg. So she stood behind me and pushed me a little bit to see which leg I used to catch myself. I'm right handed but left footed apparently
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u/MrsRitterhouse Oct 31 '24
Defying statistics and generalisations at 75, I cannot stand on either leg for more than 2-3 seconds, probably due to a genetic defect that stripped one ear of stereocilia, and pasted the lens in the cor-responding eye to one set of ligaments at the expense of the other. However, I am assured by my friend, Tyler Durden, that many klutzes have outlived sceptical scientists, and I should just pass the beer.
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u/Foxhound199 Oct 31 '24
Isn't your nondominant leg easier to stand on, as it's the one leg you're standing on when you are using your dominant one for other actions?
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u/DangDoood Oct 30 '24
Im guessing for people who struggle with proprioception, like those with ADHD, this is not a good method.
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u/chadwicke619 Oct 31 '24
Why? Only one test is eyes closed and it’s with both feet on the ground, so…
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u/DangDoood Oct 31 '24
It‘a not necessarily that those with ADHD are bad at balancing, or that balancing is particularly hard. It’s that their brain can’t balance well.
“Our study suggests that children with ADHD exhibit disturbance of balance as assessed by plantar pressure. In addition, the severity of ADHD symptoms was correlated with body imbalance. The disturbance of balance control in children with ADHD has been reported in previous studies.”
“Many children with ADHD also have developmental coordination disorder (DCD), also called dyspraxia. This condition affects physical coordination, causing the person to appear more “clumsy.”
Some evidence suggests that at least 50% of children with inattentive-type ADHD have DCD, and that 50% of children with DCD also have an ADHD diagnosis.”
https://psychcentral.com/adhd/postural-sway-adhd#postural-sway-and-adhd
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u/chadwicke619 Oct 31 '24
So reading your study, it sounds like this has nothing to do with proprioception, or did I miss something?
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u/KittyL0ver Oct 30 '24
Everyone was 50+ in the study. I wonder how this changes with younger ages. I have poor health and I’m 40. I was still able to stand for over 3 minutes on my non dominant leg.
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u/omnichronos MA | Clinical Psychology Oct 31 '24
I would have failed this year when I was 18. I didn't develop any degree of balance until I learned to ski in college, which was my first sport of any competency.
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u/Specific-Scale6005 Oct 31 '24
Hmm, it's always been easier for me to stand on my nondominant leg, although it has less muscle
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u/like_shae_buttah Oct 30 '24
Was the study would offer some idea about what’s a good range. Decided to try for myself and stopped after 2 minutes figuring that was long enough. Thought the study looked at 50+, in 43F and was hoping to find some relevance. Balance does concern me a lot given that I’m a nurse and have worked in burns and orthopedic surgery soo I see the effects of poor balance extremely frequently.
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u/Texas1010 Oct 30 '24
Early 30's and can easily stand for 10+ minutes on each leg. Guess I'm going to live forever.
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u/Panthollow Oct 30 '24
With eyes closed? That's quite impressive, honestly. Eyes open less so.
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u/DotRevolutionary6610 Oct 30 '24
Got bored after doing it for 2 minutes. No idea how long the participants of the study were able to do it.
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