Friday, May 22, 2009

Simple Walking Test-- Tell You Your Mortality Rate

I thought this was interesting….
A simple test of:
Exercise/ walking- measures your “cardiorespiratory fitness, or how well your heart, lungs, muscles, and blood vessels work together to use oxygen and produce energy.”During the test administered by ones physician one either walks or runs on a treadmill and the inclines change along with the speed of the treadmill. A doctor can then rate how well ones cardiovascular system is and how that can relate to your death.
This test then can determine if you are at higher risk of losing you life within the next couple of years compared with your age group. Cardiovascular fitness is now linked to most causes of illness/dying. Do you believe this? Can a simple walking test really tell me if I am going to die before the rest of people my age depending on the fitness of my cardiovascular system?

4 comments:

veronica fung said...

This just goes to show how advanced our medical world is becoming. This test is intended for the elderly, age 68 and up. For years, cardiorespiratory fitness has been a key factor in determining mortality risk. No matter how old you are it is important to exercise and eat right. Leading a healthy lifestyle is the best way to avoid heart disease or and other cardiovascular diseases in the future. In the end, however, there are always uncontrollable outside variables that can harm one's health regardless of their cardiovascular system.

Unknown said...

Yeah I think it could predict how healthy someone is, its crazy how we can do that though. Having a heatlthy cardio workout is always great too. Basically if you're able to do a better cardio workout then you must be in good shape and more healthier. It makes sense. Being healthier allows someone to live longer too. So this test is kind of common sense but it actually measures something. It is fascinating.

sam & jo said...

This is interesting. I think Cardiovascularness can determine mortality because lack of it is...very detrimental to one's health. You need at least some form of cardiovascular activity to keep you healthy, however, i'm not sure if a simple test will determine my death or not. It could and it could not, but I believe the health of my cardiovasular system plays a significant role in determining whether or not you're going to live longer or not. The more fit you are... the healthier you are...the longer you live.

Sandy de Sauvage said...

This looks like a useless invention and according to the article, it "probably" should be offered by physicians. "Probably" does not sound like a very convincing argument to me. Also, these did these people really have to conduct medical research to come to the conclusion that "more-fit people survive longer than the less-fit?" Doctors should tell patients to exercise and maintain a proper diet, but it is unnecessary to make people run on a treadmill and predict if they are going to have a premature death.