Should a simple fitness check be part of your check-up? Smoking, obesity, and high blood pressure are not enough as an indicator of someone's risk of heart disease and early death. Also including a pure fitness, specifically, aerobic or cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) check during your check-up is highly recommended. According to the report from The New York Times, aerobic fitness is a measure of how well your body can deliver oxygen to tissues, in other words, "reflection of overall physiological health and function, especially of the cardiovascular system."
Past studies showed that relatively low aerobic fitness is linked with a significantly increased risk of heart disease and premature death. In fact, even being out of shape may represent a greater risk of developing heart disease than having a poor cholesterol profile, Type 2 diabetes, a history of smoking or a high body mass index.
In 2013, American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology released new guidelines for assessing someone's risk for heart disease but in the criteria, aerobic fitness is not included as a risk factor. The agencies were worried that the treadmill tests needed to measure aerobic fitness were complicated and costly. Then again, American Heart Association decided to research about all of the available studies about fitness, heart health and life spans and also looks into the question of whether eligibility could be determined accurately and cheaply, without everyone needing to undergo a treadmill test. From that, the advisory board was asked to decide whether aerobic fitness should become a new vital sign.
Professional Heart Daily delivered new statements saying that Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) reflects the body's ability to transport oxygen during sustained physical activity that can potentially improve CRF, it also predicts other health outcomes, including cancer, surgical risk, dementia and Alzheimer's disease, depression, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, it provides independent and additive morbidity and mortality data that, when considered with traditional risk factors, significantly improves CVD risk prediction.
Authors determined that newly developed equations and simple calculators could provide reliable, valid estimates of fitness. In some cases, Doctors could use a few keystrokes to determine someone's fitness, instead of ordering a treadmill test. From the resulting scientific statement, Steven Blair, a professor of exercise science and epidemiology at the University of South Carolina and co-chairman of the scientific committee said that the it "strongly supports" the use of cardiorespiratory fitness as a vital sign and "an important measure and predictor of health."
Even though the statement is only a recommendation and does not change the current formal heart disease risk calculations, it went through a peer-review and a separate review and endorsement by the standing scientific advisory board for the American Heart Association. Still, statement's authors are hoping that it will have an immediate and lingering impact.
Leonard Kaminsky, co-author of the statement, stated that "In general, I think that doctors understand that cardiorespiratory fitness is important." But many physicians "consider it to be relatively less important than other risk factors," he continues. "Hopefully this scientific statement will be a resource and give them confidence in the solid evidence base for cardiorespiratory fitness as a vital health measure."
Another statement co-author, Dr. Chip Lavie said that "It would be an excellent idea" for everyone to learn his or her current, estimated aerobic fitness level and how it compares to age-matched averages."
Authors are serious with their concern that they even recommended us to use an online fitness calculator developed by Dr. Kaminsky and others. Dr. Lavie suggested us to take the resulting estimate of your eligibility age to your next medical appointment and discussing it with your physician.
