The Fit Treadmill test claims to predict a person’s risk of dying over a ten year period simply by assessing how they run on a treadmill
We're all fully aware of the link between exercise and good health but scientists from John Hopkins University have devised a new test which can determine someones risk of death by merely measuring their current fitness level. Not an entirely new concept, where the new Fit Treadmill Score test stands out is its ability to look at risk over a significantly longer period of time than previous exercise based tests.
Lead investigator Haitham Ahmed, a cardiologist fellow at John Hopkins University, explained “We wanted to quantify that risk precisely by age, gender and fitness level, and do so with an elegantly simple equation that requires no additional fancy testing beyond the standard stress test.” The cardiologists developed the formula by analysing data from 58,000 heart stress tests completed by people aged 18 to 96 between 1991 and 2009 with researchers then tracking how many of them at each fitness level died from any cause over the next decade.
The results showed that among people of the same age and gender, fitness was the most powerful indicator of death risk. Michael Blaha, director of clinical research at John Hopkins, said: “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.”
A healthy reminder that keeping fit is about much more than just getting a bikini body…