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Treadmill Performance Predicts Mortality

An anonymous reader writes: Cardiologists from Johns Hopkins have published an analysis of exercise data that strongly links a patient's performance on a treadmill to their risk of dying. Using data from stress tests of over 58,000 people, they report: "[A]mong people of the same age and gender, fitness level as measured by METs and peak heart rate reached during exercise were the greatest indicators of death risk. Fitness level was the single most powerful predictor of death and survival, even after researchers accounted for other important variables such as diabetes and family history of premature death — a finding that underscores the profound importance of heart and lung fitness, the investigators say." The scoring system is from -200 to +200. People scoring between -100 and 0 face an 11% risk of dying in the next decade. People scoring between -200 and -100 face a 38% risk of death within the next decade. People scoring above zero face only a 3% chance or less.

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:heart rate on those things are bollocks by locofungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I presume you mean 183.

    The paper is paywalled but assuming they are using 220-age as MHR:

    183 is 105% of MHR at 45.
    Running on a treadmill has MET of 7-8 (Wikipedia)

    105+8*12-4*45=21. i.e. your score is positive which puts you in the 3% chance of dying in the next decade group.

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  2. Re:I'm healthy... by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Genes are a factor but not as great as you like them to be. The I have bad Genes argument is a copout towards working towards a better life. Your environment, has a major effect as well, and you have luck too. Changing your environment helps your odds.

    Lets say everytime you smoke a cigarette you have a 1 in 500,000 chance of getting lung cancer. Lets say your genes make you more resistant so you may have 1 in 600,000 chance instead. So if you have good genes and you smoke a packs of cigarettes a day that is 20 chances in that 1 in 600,000 a day. If you have the average genes, and you don't smoke then you may get 1 chance every week from second hand smoke.

    The evidence of the person who lived a long life despite having a risk factors may be due to just dumb luck, combined with other positive lifestyle choices not mentioned to get the overall odds up.

    Also what you may call a bad Gene isn't necessarily a bad gene, but they are designed for a life style that we are not living.
    There are people who keep on eating junk food and stay skinny, their body has a high metabolism. With our culture that seems like a good thing, however for these people if they are late for their meal or cannot eat, they merely go into a panic, their body had used up more energy then they took in, and they just used that energy for silly things, such as shaking their leg while sitting, or creating more body heat. Then you have someone with a slower metabolism, that means they will be tend to be heavier, and store extra fat, this extra fat can cause health issues. However if they are unable to eat for a while they are not in such a shock. Now if you have a slow metabolism, and you need to manage the risks of being fat, then you need to exercise, to force your metabolism to go up for while and burn fat, and/or adjust your diet to insure you are just taking in the amount your body needs.

    That Gym membership doesn't change your Genes, but if you use that Gym membership, it will help you work with what your genes had evolved you to do.

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  3. Re:mandatory treadmill tests by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I assure you, in my line of work not only does HR not want care about your long term viability, it sure as hell doesn't want you taking time off work* to be at the gym. They'll happily juice your husk until it can no longer serve the shareholder and toss it out in the new Environmentally Friendly (TM) Compost Heap. Given the endless legions of unemployed and the opportunity to tap the limitless H1-B market, they're guaranteed to have employees!

    *By time off work I mean any point in a 24 hour day.