Geschatte leestijd: 3 minuten
Push-ups or push-ups have been an enormously well-known exercise for ages. You can do the exercise anywhere and anytime, even without gyms. But did you know that the number of push-ups you can do is an indication of your possible heart problems? Middle-aged men who can do more than 40 push-ups have a 96% lower risk of heart disease. That’s the outcome of a study by Harvard.
Push-ups and heart disease?
My father died of heart problems at the age of 45. So, I’ve always kept in mind that I have a higher chance of heart disease. The year I turned 40, that symbolic age of 45 suddenly felt very close.
That year, however, I was in Las Vegas for the Mr. Olympia, and at the expo there, I participated in a push-up contest. I managed to do 83 push-ups in a minute. Without that time limit, I did 100 push-ups for a promotion a year earlier. That may seem off-topic when you talk about heart disease. According to a new study by Harvard, however, I can conclude from this that I don’t have to worry as much about not being here in three years.
Push-ups as a better indication of the risk of heart disease
According to the study, middle-aged men who can do more than 40 push-ups have a 96% lower risk of heart disease than men who can do less than 10 push-ups [1]. Moreover, the number of push-ups you can do appears to be a better indicator of your risk of heart disease than performance on a treadmill. Since I’m not exactly the world’s biggest fan of cardio, I also welcome that news with open arms.
Our findings suggest that push-up capacity could be an easy, no-cost method to help assess cardiovascular disease risk in almost any setting. Surprisingly, push-up capacity was more strongly associated with cardiovascular disease risk than the results of submaximal treadmill tests.
Dr. Justin Yang, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Cardiorespiratory fitness
Cardiorespiratory fitness (no Dutch word for it, I think) is the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to the muscles. According to the researcher, there is increasing evidence that this objectively determined cardiorespiratory fitness is an important indicator of the risk of heart disease. However, according to the Harvard researchers, science has not paid enough attention to this. The most common evaluation of physical fitness is the patient’s self-description of their health and lifestyle based on questionnaires.
However, the senior author of the Harvard study, Professor Stefanos Kales, explains that this is not a good indicator. Objectively determined cardiorespiratory fitness often turns out to be lower than that based on the patient’s described physical activity.
When this is objectively determined, it is often done, for example, through tests on a treadmill measuring training tolerance (endurance). A negative relationship has also been shown between this tolerance and the risk of heart disease, so as a measure, it is useful. However, these types of studies are expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, they often require professional facilities and trained personnel to conduct the test. Therefore, they are often only carried out with specific groups of patients.
Push-ups, the measure of your health
No one had investigated whether that simple push-up might offer an easier and cheaper alternative as a test. The Harvard researchers did. They compared the results with those of a submaximal treadmill test performed by the same people.
For this, they used data from 1,104 firefighters in the state of Indiana. The men were on average just under 40 years old (21 to 66 years) and had an average BMI of 28.7. Although the men were on average overweight in terms of their BMI, they came from an active target group.
The data was collected between 2000 and 2010. At the start and during periodic tests, the ability to do push-ups and performance on the treadmill were measured. The men were followed for 10 years.
During those ten years, 37 of the 1,104 firefighters experienced heart problems. Only one of them was able to do more than 40 push-ups during the test at the start of the study. Participants who could do more than 11 push-ups also had a lower chance of being among the men with heart problems.
References
- jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2724778
