Sit/Stand Longevity Test

I subscribe to a couple of health oriented newsletters and my favorite by far is Dr Mercola's Peak Fitness.  He discusses diet and exercise and he also sells several products.  Due to the selling aspect I do use a little skepticism when reading his advice.  However, just because he is selling something doesn't necessarily mean the advice or products are suspect.  A recent article he posted was about something I had never heard of before and I thought it was pretty neat.  It discusses how some Brazilian researchers had made a connection between a simple sitting/standing test and longevity.  He is not vouching for it but did say it was interesting and a pretty good way to gauge fitness and overall health.  The test was for 6 years so I assume it was conducted 6 years ago and the statistics are from then until now. The test begins by simply standing in front or even on a small mat in an open area of floor.  Try to sit down and then stand back up without using your hands, knees or elbows etc for assistance.  You deduct a point for each area that you use for assistance.  For instance, a hand to the floor during the sitting phase and then a hand on the floor plus a hand on a knee during the standing phase would results in a loss of 3 points or a score of 7.  You lose an additional half point for an unsteady execution during either the sitting or standing phase.  I have no idea how many participated but here are the results they observed.

• Those who scored 0-3 were 6.5 times more likely to die during the study than those who scored 8-10
• Those who scored 3.5 to 5.5 were 3.8 times more likely to die
• Those who scored 6 to 7.5 were 1.8 times more likely to die

I took the test myself and scored a 7.5, at least that's the score I think I got. I deducted 2 points for a hand to the floor during both sitting and standing and a half point due to being a little unbalanced as I stood back up.  I have the video of my test uploaded above but you can view it in HD by clicking here.   You can decide for yourself if I gave myself a fair score.  Oh and BTW...there are no point deduction for grunting.  A niece and 2 nephews were visiting and of course they wanted to star in my video.  In order of appearance they were 9, 7 and 5 (almost 6).  I'm proud of them but also a little jealous that all 3 got a perfect score of 10.  I am also proud of my wife who also took the test but refused to be filmed.  She scored higher than I did with a 9.  She sat down with ease but did have to place one hand to the floor to get back up.