How Doing Pushups Will Lower Your Health Risk.
QHHL 
Feb 28 2019
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0 QHHL
If you’re looking to assess or improve your heart health, there’s now a simple, straightforward way to do it. And it will only take 5 minutes out of your day.
You know that your cardiovascular health is central to your overall health. Protecting and improving your cardiovascular health is probably one of the most important things you can do to lower your health risk. Most of the time, doing this is easy. You need to avoid things like smoking and poor dietary habits and include more exercise and vegetables in your diet. And now, there is new evidence about a simple way to assess and improve your heart health.
Cardiovascular disease is probably the biggest health threat in the world. It’s the number one cause of death in the US and it’s also becoming more common with time. There are several health risk factors that increase your chances of suffering from cardiovascular disease. These include:
Some of these health risk factors you can change and some of them you can’t. However, there is now a new way to assess your cardiovascular health. This is important because current methods are costly and take time. But this new procedure is quick and simple. And it may also indicate a way to keep your heart healthy over the long term.
A recent study has made a connection between push-ups and health risk. The study showed that the more push-ups a man could complete, the lower his cardiovascular risk was. 1,104 active male firefighters with a mean age of 39.6 took part in the study. They had an average BMI of 28.7 and were tested over a period of 10 years.
The participants push-up capacity and treadmill exercise tolerance were measured at the start of the study. The rest of the data was collected through questionnaires and as part of yearly exams. During the testing period there were 37 events related to cardiovascular disease among the participants. Significantly, all but one of them occurred in the participants who could do 40 or few push-ups at the start of the study. These results led the researchers to a startling conclusion. The data showed that that participants who could do more than 40 push-ups to begin with had a 96 percent lower cardiovascular risk than men who could only complete 10 or less.
Even more interesting, push up capacity was more strongly associated with cardiovascular risk then the results of treadmill tests. This is extremely significant because the treadmill test is the most commonly used heart health assessment today.
There is no real explanation for this connection between push-up capacity and cardiovascular risk. In fact, it may be as simple as the group who could do more push-ups being more active generally. But even if this was true, it still holds important implications for your health.
Obviously, this new insight doesn’t mean you should just do push-ups and neglect every other health risk factor. However, it does indicate a new way to evaluate cardiovascular risk without expensive or invasive tests. And because this test may be more accurate, it could improve diagnosis when it comes to cardiovascular disease. This is important for your health monitoring at home too. Performing this test in conjunction with other tests such as weight and pulse rate, you could get a more accurate idea of your heart health.
This study also has implications for your daily exercise routine. By adding these exercises to your routine and increasing the number of push-ups you can do, you will improve your physical fitness and your cardiac health at the same time.
If you’re concerned about a health risk, try using HomeLab to keep track of your condition and any preventative measures you take. And if you see signs of a significant problem, you should check with your doctor as soon as possible.
Tags: Health risk, cardiovascular