Pushup capacity may be inexpensive way to assess cardiovascular disease risk
Active, middle-aged men able to complete more than 40 pushups had a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes — including diagnoses of coronary artery disease and major events such as heart failure — during 10 years of follow-up compared with those who were able to do fewer than 10 pushups during the baseline exam. “Our findings provide evidence that pushup capacity could be an easy, no-cost method to help assess cardiovascular disease risk in almost any setting. Surprisingly, pushup capacity was more strongly associated with cardiovascular disease risk than the results of submaximal treadmill tests,” said first author Justin Yang, occupational medicine resident in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This study was published today in JAMA Network Open. Objective assessments of physical fitness are considered strong predictors of health status; however, most current tools, such as treadmill tests, are too expensive and time-consuming to use during...