For many people exercise isn’t a regular habit–but this could motivate them to do it more often.
According to a new report, John Hopkins researchers say they’ve developed a formula that calculates a person’s risk of dying over the next decade based on how well they perform on a treadmill.
Not surprisingly, the worse you perform, the more likely you’ll die.
“The FIT Treadmill Score is easy to calculate and costs nothing beyond the cost of the treadmill test itself,” says Michael Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., who serves as the director of clinical research at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease. “We hope the score will become a mainstay in cardiologists and primary clinicians’ offices as a meaningful way to illustrate risk among those who undergo cardiac stress testing and propel people with poor results to become more physically active.”
According to a recent report, the FIT Treadmill Score is a new algorithm developed by Johns Hopkins researchers to determine a person’s longevity over a 10 year period, primarily using data from treadmill running. Scores are given to the amount of energy the body expends during activities on the treadmill, with scores rising for more difficult activities, such as running. The test is stopped once a person is unable to tolerate it.
For this study, researchers tested this algorithm on 58,020 people between the ages of 19 to 96 who took exercise stress tests due to reports of chest pain, fainting, dizziness or shortness of breath. Researchers scored them based on the results of these tests, rating them on a scale of negative 200 (the worst score) to positive 200 (the best score). They also examined how many of them eventually died over a 10 year period.
Although all of the participants reported some health problems, what made the biggest difference, according to their findings, was having a high FIT Treadmill Score. Those who scored above 100, for example, were 2 percent more likely to die over the next decade. However, scoring below negative 100 increased their death risk significantly–by 38 percent.
Oddly enough, a family history or other genetic predispositions to certain diseases didn’t play a big factor in their death risk, say researchers.
“Stress test results are currently interpreted as ‘either/or’ but we know that heart disease is a spectrum disorder,” says Haitham Ahmed, M.D., M.P.H., a John Hopkins University School of Medicine cardiology fellow. “We believe that our FIT score reflects the complex nature of cardiovascular health and can offer important insights to both clinicians and patients.”
What This Means For You
While chances are you won’t undergo this test, these findings illustrate a serious point: The less active you are, the more likely you’ll die. So if you haven’t already, start exercising–it could literally save your life.
Readers: How do you like to exercise?
Sources:
Treadmill Performance Predicts Mortality – ScienceDaily.com
Maximal Exercise Testing Variables and 10-Year Survival (Study) – MayoClinicProceedings.org
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