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Middle-Age Men Who Can Do 40+ Push-Ups Have Lower Heart Disease Risk, Study Finds (cbslocal.com)
A new study finds that active middle aged men who can do more than 40 push-ups at a time have a significantly lower risk of heart disease. From a report: Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health followed more than 1,100 middle-aged male firefighters over a decade. They looked at two specific measures: how many push-ups they could do and their exercise tolerance on a treadmill. They found that men who could do more than 40 push-ups had a 96-percent lower risk of heart disease than those who could do no more than 10 and their ability to do push-ups was a better predictor of cardiovascular disease than their stamina on a treadmill test.
Soooo...people who are healthier have less diseases. Well done!
ohh, noonish. Maybe mid-afternoon bagel if I don't exert myself.
a year. Does that count?
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Asking for a friend ...
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Pushups And Heart Attacks: The Usual Harvard Nonsense
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
"People who are somewhat physically fit are healthier than fatty ding dongs"
This is sure to trigger the Healthy At Any SIze crowd.
Wouldn't this just be a proxy for obesity? It's generally much easier for small guys to do more pushups.
I'm pretty sure the fact that a man in the 1300s could do push ups has little to do with my health?
There are two factors here:
I have a feeling most men reading this will focus on the first part, but I have a feeling the second part is the more important. If you are overweight, it becomes much harder to do a push up, regardless of how strong your arms and chest are. The correlation between obesity and heart disease is well documented. So this isn't really anything new.
Bike riding is leg pushups so you are fine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
40 unbroken, consecutive, full-range (chest touches the floor) pushups is really a fairly high bar athletically, probably on the order of top ~1% of the total population
The study indicates this corresponds to the top ~10% of firefighters, a group who on a whole are already known to be in vastly better shape than most of the population. This corresponds with my own anecdotal observations -- at my local crossfit gym, we test for max pushups once a year or so, mostly for fun. 40+ unbroken pushups easily corresponds to the top ~5% of that self-selected high fitness crowd as well.
^^^^^
Somebody mod this up.
Yes, the firefighters who could do the fewest push-ups were older (average age 48.4, compared to 35.1 for the ones who could do 41+ pushups) and were more likely to be smokers.
At the end of the 10 year study period, the firefighters who could to 41 or more pushups were still younger than the ones who could do less than 10 had been at the start of the study.
Older people have more cardiovascular events.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Middle aged men who don't feel the need to check if they can do 40+ push ups have better mental health
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Also, from the article:
The results do not support push-up capacity as an independent predictor of CVD risk
25mph average speed over 100 miles, solo? Ha. A top-tier Pro road racer (Tour de France level, that is) at their peak level of fitness for the year would have a hard time pulling that off as a solo rider, even on a totally flat-as-a-board course (before you say it: the peloton travels faster than any solo rider). An averagely-talented amateur might be able to average 25mph in a 10 to 25 mile time-trial (assuming they have a TT bike and stay 'aero' the whole time). I take it from your comment you're not a road racer who trains all year 'round? Sorry but you couldn't do 100 miles in 4 hours. The first full Century I did, about 10 years ago, I did in somewhere between 6 and 7 hours. A few years ago I and a couple teammates did a local Century, and we did it in between 5 and 6 hours, and that's trading off drafting each other.
"..proud of yourself."
LOL I'll be 'proud of myself' when I actually earn a spot on the podium at a road race. But that doesn't mean I don't have a strong, healthy heart, regardless of how many pushups I can't do.
It is nice to see more confirmation in this direction. Almost all research in the past decades was focussed on the health benefits of endurance training, however strength seems to be a better indicator for health than endurance, e.g. as noted in this longterm study, even when equating for lifestyle choices like smoking (so it's not that stronger people just make better decisions).
Grip strength seems also to be a good (and easy to measure) indicator. Also the stand-sit test which has become common practice in geriatry is practically a measure of strength.
Why muscle and strength (of course one has to exclude enhanced athletes with supraphysiological amounts of muscle) is so healthy is still not totally clear, but there are already two factors standing out, which cannot be replicated by endurance type of training: The first benefit is better mobility and protection against injury, in particular in high age. Second, when you are hit with a wasting disease, or just stop eating like you used to and get into a protein deficit, your body can take those aminos from your muscle instead from your precious vital organs. In particular atrophy in the heart is very hard to reverse (a struggle many recovered anorexics have).
No, all it shows is that older people have more cardiovascular events than younger ones.
No, it shows that the ability to do push-ups was a better predictor of cardiovascular disease than their stamina on a treadmill test.
No. It shows that ability to do push-ups is a good predictor of... age.
That's what the article says, and the table you linked to does nothing to contradict it. Age is the easiest thing in the world to control for.
Age is very hard to correct for in cardiovascular studies, and when you "correct" two groups that are pretty much non overlapping (the difference in means is larger than the standard deviations), it is effectively impossible. Cardiovascular events are very highly nonlinear with age, and the age they happen to use here is one where the many-push-ups groups is of an age where cardiovascular events are very very rare. Most of the events you're going to find are going to be with the population that is a standard deviation older than the mean.
And in any case, since this "adjustment" of the data is critical to the results they give, they should have documented how they did that adjustment.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com