Every so often I see a video that talks about “longevity correlations”. For example, good oral hygiene and high levels of grip strength are correlated with longer life spans.
The wrong conclusion to come to would be to (1) brush your teeth more, and (2) buy grip strength trainers for those long meetings.
It’s more likely that good oral health and grip strength are leading indicators for a concert of health and wellness behaviours that compound over time.
If you eat mostly vegetables and avoid high sugar foods, your oral health is likely to be excellent. If you’re regularly strength training, a by-product of that training is likely to be improved grip strength. And when you put together these behaviours of a health diet and exercise, you start to see populations that are living healthier for longer.
Don’t get lost in leading indicators. They’re more useful as signals that the rest of the system is working well.