Don’t fear death? Well it could be time to trade up the weights for a quick treadmill session to meet your maker. Researchers from Queen’s University have found that a short five minute treadmill test could determine when you die.
The study headed by researcher Louise de Lannoy can specify the risk of mortality independent of traditional factors such as weight, age, blood pressure, smoking status, diabetes, cholesterol and family genetics.
The procedure itself is known as a maximal fitness test which is performed on a treadmill with the maximum incline steadily increased to a point where the participant can no longer continue. The test which has received overwhelming evidence for its effectiveness in the past often gets overlooked in medical clinics because of its time-intensive set up which also causes patients to be uncomfortable.
The Queen’s University researcher took this maximal fitness concept and shortened it further to make it a submaximal fitness test which is equally as effective for determining premature death.
So what use is there for knowing how much more juice you’ve got left in the tank? A chance to cheat death, naturally.
“This study shows that the risk association with submaximal fitness is similar to that of maximal fitness, which suggests that the submaximal fitness test, which requires less than one-third the time of a maximal fitness test and does not require the patient to reach maximal exertion, is a pragmatic alternative to maximal fitness tests for assessing mortality risk in clinical settings,” says de Lannoy.
“Submaximal fitness predicted mortality risk above and beyond traditional risk factors, therefore this test provides information that influences and enhances patient management.”
The conclusion of this result took into account the data collected from 6,106 men and women. These subjects were tracked from 1974-2002 via their submaximal test performance over time in relation to death.
Things could be worse though. You could actually die from robot sex.