Pushups can determine a person's CVD risk

Chennai: Physical fitness and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are closely associated but simple exercise such as pushups can determine a person’s CVD risk, finds a new study. A new study done at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health states that physically active men who can do more than 40 pushups may have a lower CVD risk than those who can do few.

Researchers state that the cohort study provides evidence that pushup capacity could be a no cost method to help assess CVD risk. The study was done using the health analysis on 1,104 male firefighters aged average of 39.6 years over a period of ten years and mean BMI of 28.7 who had visited outpatient
clinic for the push-up test.

Usually, the cardiovascular risk assessment and physical fitness association is tested through cardiac exercise test or exercise tolerance test.

However, these methods are time consuming and costly. The current study published in JAMA Network Open analyzed the data of the push-up test that includes doing push-ups at a rate equal to a metronome at a rate of 80 beats per minute. To complete test, the firefighter has to  complete 80 pushups. The medical records were checked if the fire fighters were diagnosed with any
cardiovascular disease, sudden heart attack or other heart disease for the period of 10 years.  The researchers determined the association between the results of push-up tests of firefighters and the cardiovascular outcomes, if any.

The results indicated that physically active men who are able to do more than 40 pushups had a lower CVD risk than those who can complete fewer pushups. The participants who completed at least 40 pushups had a 96 percent lower cardiovascular risk than men who had completed 10 or fewer pushups.

The author of the study Justin Yang said, “Our findings provide evidence that pushup capacity could be an easy, no-cost method to help assess
cardiovascular disease risk in almost any setting.” Interestingly, it was found that the pushup capacity was more strongly associated with cardiovascular disease risk than the results of conventional exercise tolerance tests.

However, it is important to note that the study was done on a specific group of firefighters- active men in their 30s and 40s. Therefore, the findings may not apply to women, or to men who are older, younger, or less physically active than those who are part of the study.