Patriot Health Digest
If you don’t die in some accident before turning 44, you are most likely to die from a cardiovascular disease later in life. This means a whole range of problems involving your blood vessels and heart. The type of diseases that take out more people than cancer.
Can you measure how likely YOU are to die of such heart-related issues within the next decade?
Well, yes, new research has given us a way to measure our odds. Here’s the test.
The Heart-Death Test
Do as many uninterrupted push-ups as you can with good posture. Going all the way to the floor each time. When you fail to do even one more FULL rep, the test is over. This is the case even if you have to take a “small” 2 second break.
The Results
If you are a male and get 40 or more, you will probably NOT die of heart diseases within the next ten years.
If you only get 10 or less, well… damn. You could be a goner.
The Science
You might be skeptical about how a simple test like this can be used to assess the connection between fitness and cardiovascular risks. Well, here’s the science:
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health were searching for a fast heart health test that could be done anywhere. They decided to try push-ups.
They got more than 1100 male firefighters (average age nearly 40) to take part in this 10-year research. They were given the normal treadmill tolerance test and also told to do as many push-ups as they could.
Researchers used a timer to force the firefighters to do the push ups using a certain rhythm and time. If they took less than 3 seconds for a rep, then the test was over.
What It All Means
37 of those men had heart issues in the next 10-years. And here’s the key: 36 of those same guys had failed to do 40 push-ups.
Researchers took note: “Men who were able to do over 40 push-ups had 96% less heart issues compared to men who could only do under 10 push-ups. This research shows the link between fitness, especially muscular strength, with heart-related outcomes.”
But wait, what about that treadmill? “Surprisingly, push-ups were even more strongly linked with cardiovascular risks than the treadmill tests,” said one scientist.
The study also highlighted that muscular strength was shown to have a “protective effect” for all forms of mortality.
What if you got between 10 and 40? Well, the scientists didn’t get into that much detail, but it is pretty simple to estimate. The closer you are to 40 reps, the better. The lower your reps, the higher your cardio risks.
Author: Scott Dowdy
