Treadmill Performance Predicts Mortality 134
An anonymous reader writes: Cardiologists from Johns Hopkins have published an analysis of exercise data that strongly links a patient's performance on a treadmill to their risk of dying. Using data from stress tests of over 58,000 people, they report: "[A]mong people of the same age and gender, fitness level as measured by METs and peak heart rate reached during exercise were the greatest indicators of death risk. Fitness level was the single most powerful predictor of death and survival, even after researchers accounted for other important variables such as diabetes and family history of premature death — a finding that underscores the profound importance of heart and lung fitness, the investigators say." The scoring system is from -200 to +200. People scoring between -100 and 0 face an 11% risk of dying in the next decade. People scoring between -200 and -100 face a 38% risk of death within the next decade. People scoring above zero face only a 3% chance or less.
Old news (Score:1)
The walking speed of the grim reaper was calculated in 2011
http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7679
and reviewed in this article
http://www.oandp.com/articles/2014-06_04.asp
Of course , it isn't as high tech as the American version, but walking speed was already known to predict mortality.
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I did not read your links because of lazyness, but can you tell me if the walking speed of the Grim Reaper is faster ir slower than that of Zombies?
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Depends on the zombie. World War Z (movie) zombies are faster than Death. Typical zombies are slower. Faster than 3 miles/hour and you can stay ahead of Death at least for the study period. 2 miles/hour and you are almost certain to be caught. Of course this was done with men in their 70s, but you can probably extrapolate and find something that matches your age at least with regards to outrunning Death. Note that Death does not need to stop walking ever, so this is most likely cumulative, and t
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That is exactly what I though when reading the summary.
"Fitness level was the single most powerful predictor of death and survival," during a Zombie apocalypse!
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The longest living person on earth was a French woman who died in 1994 or 1996 at age 126. She drank wine and smoked until the last day of her life.
I know a lot of seniors who are pretty healthy on a diet of french fries and diet coke.
Genes are everything as far as health and longevity goes, but nobody can sell you those (yet..). Thus you don't see any ads or research that puts a positive spin on genes
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Genes are a factor but not as great as you like them to be. The I have bad Genes argument is a copout towards working towards a better life. Your environment, has a major effect as well, and you have luck too. Changing your environment helps your odds.
Lets say everytime you smoke a cigarette you have a 1 in 500,000 chance of getting lung cancer. Lets say your genes make you more resistant so you may have 1 in 600,000 chance instead. So if you have good genes and you smoke a packs of cigarettes a day tha
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ADHD much?
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I lost about 95 lbs (in 4 months)
That's not remotely healthy and barely even possible. To lose 95 pounds of fat in 120 days, you would need to generate a daily caloric deficit of over 2700 calories, which is beyond a starvation diet. If your RMR was 2000 calories per day, you ran 5 miles per day and you ate a holodomor diet, for four months, you could maybe approach that assuming your organs didn't shut down in the meantime, but you would be shedding as much (or more) muscle as fat in that case, which is
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daily caloric deficit of over 2700 calories, which is beyond a starvation diet. If your RMR was 2000 calories per day
36 year old, 170 cm, 111 kg, male individual has an RMR of about 2000 calories per day.
Running "about 30 miles a week, swimming for about one hour and a half twice a week and doing all sort of exercise" raises his daily calorie needs to about 3800 calories per day. [wikipedia.org]
If he's also working a physical job, that's about 4200 calories per day.
That's a daily difference of 1800-2200 calories from exercise alone.
Diet-vise he could drop bread for one meal, or skip breakfast.
And that's without knowing how many calories
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You're somewhat delusional if you believe this was pure fat loss. I regard it as a disservice to give people the impression that this kind of fat loss is either possible or healthy.
At the level of exercise required to sustain a caloric balance of -2700 calories per day over four months, the body would become severely protein challenged. Even converting fat to energy increases protein demand, as those organelles burn hard and wear out.
What happens with formerly fit individuals who then become obese is that
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why did he quit and put all those pounds back on again? Could it be that his body figured out that the stress of the program was unreasonable to begin with?
Reading helps. Really. It does.
4 years ago, after a break up,I stopped doing exercise and I rapidly gained weight.
At the level of exercise required to sustain a caloric balance of -2700 calories per day over four months, the body would become severely protein challenged.
Did I hear someone say that he did it without eating protein? No?
OH... I get it! You are imagining some weird scenario in your head where he is eating grass or glass or something.
Whatever the case may be - protein gets ingested.
do not recall having ever read anything credible which suggests this level of weight loss can be achieved on a pure fat-burning basis.
Don't fret. You clearly don't remember reading the original post either.
Or you would realize that the whole "pure fat burning" thing exists only in YOUR head.
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Runnung on a treadmill?!
You say that, but someone already thought of that [adultswim.com].
So let's give a number scail so we can't self test (Score:2, Insightful)
What is with this -200 - 200 BS /age, length of time at a given heart rate. Just saying people who score over 100 are a strong indicator is meaningless unless we know how this number is calculated. I am sick of the media hiding science details and math from the public. No wonder why so many people do not trust science, the media covering it treats it like a magic box, that only special people with a PHD can get.
At least tell us how to get these numbers. Is it based in heart rate, O2 levels, speed
Re:So let's give a number scail so we can't self t (Score:5, Informative)
Just click on the link:
The FIT Treadmill Score, calculated as [percentage of maximum predicted heart rate + 12(metabolic equivalents of task) – 4(age) + 43 if female]
+43 if female (Score:2, Insightful)
So 1/5 of their scale is already offset-ted depending on gender. That makes me rise an eyebrow : it should be a factor, not an offset...
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oh ok, expert. thanks for clearing up that major and obvious flaw, random guy on the internet.
You are also a random guy on the internet, so I clearly can't choose the wineglass in front of me.
Re:+43 if female (Score:5, Funny)
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders: "never get involved in a flame war on Slashdot."
Re:+43 if female (Score:5, Funny)
Inconceivable!
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Re:it is a fitness scale (Score:4, Funny)
Don't we already know that female's are more likely to live longer with no clear identifiable cause beyond they are female?
This is unfair discrimination against males. If women can demand equal salaries, we should be able to demand equal lifespan.
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I really hate it when people don't use percentage as a decimal, but it still beets the IRS "Combine" algebraic operator.
I get 73 from a recent stress test. Who hoo, Still Alive! Wife still kicks my ass with a 130 though.
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I really hate it when people don't use percentage as a decimal, but it still beets the IRS "Combine" algebraic operator.
I get 73 from a recent stress test. Who hoo, Still Alive! Wife still kicks my ass with a 130 though.
For a guy who hates mistakes in number formats, you seem to have a very relaxed attitude towards spelling homonyms correctly.
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Didn't RTFA, but... Age is a pretty big part of this formula. If you're 50, thats a hit of -200 points, which is half of the entire scale. So basically we've discovered that old people are more likely than young people to die in the next decade?
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No, they knew that already and took it into account when they made their formula. Then they added some other predictors, e.g. being male (already known), being able to do a strenuous task, and your heart rate being able to clock up to a decent rate.
The latter two are the new ones.
Of course, this is slashdot, and if you incorporate any past knowledge into your new work, that work can't possibly be new or informative.
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It still seems awfully suspicious that their carefully constrained +/-200 range has an age multiplier of precisely 4. This smells like the use of BMI to gauge individuals when it was only ever meant to be an expedient way to measure populations.
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they are using an hp calculator which is based off an array of abacus, so it only has -200 beads to +200 beads.
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That -200 +200 is in there because 200 bpm is pretty much a humans maximum heart rate. So this is a test of how long it takes for you to reach your maximum heart rate and then based on age how close the rate is to your predicted rate.
Re:So let's give a number scail so we can't self t (Score:5, Informative)
Peer-reviews on everything I write below are greatly appreciated. I want to make sure I understand this equation.
io9 has a pretty down-to-earth [io9.com] explanation of the equation:
FIT Treadmill Score = %MPHR + 12(METS) - 4(age) + 43(if female)
You can get your MPHR for your age here [empr.com]. I found a chart of METS [brianmac.co.uk] here for various exercises.
So, if I'm understanding this correctly. If I reach a 160 heart rate out of 179.0 MPHR predicted for my 41 years of age while running 12 minute miles worth 8.5 METS. My score would be:
83.7 + 12(8.5) - 4(41) = 21.7
The same heart rate for my age running 8 minute miles:
83.7 + 12(8.5) - 4(41) = 69.7
If I am understanding this correctly, it really looks like you could easily improve your score with a few lifestyle choices (push yourself harder when you work out, eat healthier). This equation could be a great metric for people concerned about their health
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You are basically right,but to complie with the test correctly you would need to find you MET doing the following.
Calculating your own score.
So how exactly is it done? The test consists of three-minute segments that increase in speed and incline. In the study, people exercised until they were fatigued, felt chest discomfort, or until a clinician saw something suggesting lack of blood flow to the heart, says Ahmed. Below is an example of the stages of incline and speed from the Bruce Protocol:
Stage 1
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when does this chart end?
i'm literally going to the gym in like 3 mins to run 10 miles at a 9.0mph.
i have this ? about stress tests generally
to get it down in 3 minute increments they are going to have to max that machine.
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MPHR (Max Predicted Heart Rate) = 220 - age.
Daily Treadmill (Score:4, Funny)
Does the daily treadmill at the office also count?
Re:Daily Treadmill (Score:4, Insightful)
What counts is physical fitness. The treadmill is just used here as an instrument to quantify it.
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I wonder how well it can account for illnesses that might make running on a treadmill difficult. If this test is to be believed I'll probably keel over in the next year or two, but I doubt I'm that lucky and will have to keep on suffering through this for at least another 30 years.
Re:Daily Treadmill (Score:4, Informative)
You just need a way to test how many METs you can generate. An exercise bike could give you the same answer, if walking/running is not possible.
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I think it naturally does in that your ability to run on a treadmill for an extended period is quite indicative of your overall health (if the study is correct). I don't think that is really much of a surprise. Health and fitness are pretty tightly coupled.
I am in my early thirties. I do a fair bit of hiking and I can tell you there are lots of 60 years out there that I can't keep up without it being workout. Most of them look great and will tell you they feel great. Is it correlation or causation? I
Re:Daily Treadmill (Score:4, Informative)
Not everyone who can't run on a treadmill is unfit. Many people in wheelchairs have great health but running on a treadmill can be a tad difficult.
For most cases however, running on a treadmill is quite indicative.
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Well that group of people who are fit, have altered their workout to have cardio exercise without using their legs.
If you have legs that allow you to be mobile, then the best cardio exercise is moderately high intensity, low resistance, that gets your heart rate up for a long time. Humans have evolved to hunt prey not by running faster than them, but tiring them out. While that bison can run 20 mph vs our 10mph, if in decent condition we can maintain that speed for about 5 minutes, while the bison may be
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Double selection bias. People who are good at walking will tend to continue to do it for fun into older age. Meanwhile, while you're hiking, you tend to meet people who hike. Walking is of course great exercise, however. I have asthma and I'm a bit heavy but I'm a good walker, I can walk all day as long as the way isn't too steep.
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I'm active in a hiking club where the membership starts at about age 60, in a mountainous area with a lot of steep and rocky terrain. There are a lot of members still active in their eighties and edging into the nineties. This is a cohort of people who were always athletic in various ways
The geographic distribution of origins is interesting. I see a pronounced bias toward the upper Midwest. About half our membership of 400 seems to come from Wisconsin and Minnesota alone.
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"A bit heavy"? Does this means you're obese, but not morbidly obese?
It means I'm fat, kind of like you're a bit of a douchebag.
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If you appear fit and nothing can be found wrong yet minimal exercise causes pounding heart and shortness of breath -- get your thyroid checked. Hypothyroidism can cause low blood sugar that's only evident during exercise.
Re:heart rate on those things are bollocks (Score:4, Interesting)
I presume you mean 183.
The paper is paywalled but assuming they are using 220-age as MHR:
183 is 105% of MHR at 45.
Running on a treadmill has MET of 7-8 (Wikipedia)
105+8*12-4*45=21. i.e. your score is positive which puts you in the 3% chance of dying in the next decade group.
ECG and blood pressure monitoring needed! (Score:2)
In these fitness tests they monitor blood pressure and ECG and will stop you if your blood pressure gets too high or the ECG shows that your heart does not get enough oxygen anymore. For that reason persons can easily overestimate both maximum MET and maximum heart rate. People can reach higher running speeds and heart rates but will put their heart in danger by doing so.
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You are doing it wrong. The idea (with Bruce Protocol) is that it should take you 10 minutes to get up to your maximum; if you go longer that is better, shorter is worse.
prevention is better than a cure (Score:5, Funny)
strongly links a patient's performance on a treadmill to their risk of dying.
Sounds like the best way to prolong your life is to avoid treadmills
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Your risk of (just) dying equals 100%.
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Indeed [go.com]
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WFM
Treadmill score 200: 3% death risk in next 10y (Score:2)
Unless you were doing the treadmill dance of OK, GO [youtube.com].
Then it's 100% risk of death in the next 10 seconds.
We didn't know this? (Score:1, Funny)
I, for one, am shocked to find out that smoking is harmful to your health, and that high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and lack of exercise might lead to an early death.
They should win the goddamn Nobel prize.
So.... (Score:2)
But why a threadmill? This can also be measured by running, swimming, playing football or a persons ability to catch small horses.
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But why a threadmill?
It's a lot easier to get an accurate number from a treadmill than from a persons ability to catch small horses. A lot less poop to clean up, too.
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Fit people live longer? Wow, what a surprise.
That we knew already. The study says, however, it is the single most important predictor of your mortality. More important than, say, a genetic defect like diabetes.
And that IS new.
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--
JimFive
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The results are calculated following an official medical study called a Cardiac Stress Test. It consists of attaching an ECG machine to a patient and then having them exercise in a very precise, repeatable way. Typically, for patients who can walk or run to their personal maximum heart rate this is done on a treadmill. Some patients cannot run, but they can bike. In that case the test would be performed on a stationary bicycle. If the patient can neither run nor bike, an arm cycle (i.e. bicycle pedals
How your fitness is related to your heatlh (Score:2)
So this study only shows health and fitness are related.
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So this study only shows health and fitness are related.
Actually they say that "titness level was the single most powerful predictor of death and survival", so it's a bit stronger.
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So this study only shows health and fitness are related.
Actually they say that "titness level was the single most powerful predictor of death and survival", so it's a bit stronger.
Is that why you add 43 to the formula for being female?
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They took that as a given. The study is describing a method of quantifying the known relationship.
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You are correct that we already know that healthier people have a smaller chance of dying. How do you quantify "healthy", however? How do you go beyond, "He kind of ran on a treadmill for a while, so I guess he won't die soon?"
If this research proves correct, then it gives people a powerful new metric for interpreting the results of Cardiac Stress Tests. We already know that heart rate, METs, age and gender are individual predictors or heart health. This research, however, indicates that the relations
John Hutchinson knew it all along (Score:4, Informative)
Spriometry is used by respirologists to basically measure how much air you can suck in and then blow out (among other parameters like lung inflation, exhale velocity, etc.). It was essentially invented around 1846 by John Hutchinson [wikipedia.org] who believed its best use would be by the insurance industry as this volume was strongly correlated to premature death -- the less air you can blow out, the less time you have left! Hence the name for this quantity that we still use in medicine today: vital capacity.
"1846 The water spirometer measuring vital capacity was developed by a surgeon named John Hutchinson. He invented a calibrated bell, inverted in water, which was used to capture the volume of air exhaled by a person. John published his paper about his water spirometer and the measurements he had taken from over 4,000 subjects,[2] describing the direct relationship between vital capacity and height and inverse relationship between vital capacity with age. He also showed that vital capacity does not relate to weight at any given height. He also used his machine for the prediction of premature mortality. He coined the term vital capacity, which was claimed as a powerful prognosis for heart disease by Framingham study. He believed that his machine should be used as an acturial predictions for companies selling life insurances"
No Fair! You Changed the Outcome by Measuring! (Score:3)
Or does the Heisenberg principle not apply on treadmills?
Can too healthy be bad? (Score:3)
There is an old test known as the Schneider Index which was used by the US Navy for divers and pilots in the 1940s. An old movie called "Dive Bomber" shows details of how the test was done at the time. The test ended the flying careers for many pilots at the time if their score decreased much. It turns out that the guys who did best in the test were the ones most likely to pass out on dive bombing runs. The Schneider Index uses reclining heart rate, blood pressure with standing and then rapid activity for about 30 seconds and then factoring in increase in pulse, BP and the time to return to normal.
this, exactly (Score:2)
The study is much better, and the link much stronger, than the foolishness about how sitting increases your risk of death no matter whether or not you exercise.
Try My Treadmill Test (Score:2)
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But none of them actually died within their lifetime!
Running a treadmill, eh? (Score:2)
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Possible sampling bias (Score:3)
So it wasn't a random sample. It was people who had visited the doctor/hospital with complaints of chest pain, shortness of breath, fainting or dizziness. Well right there, you'd think the ones who were further along in a disease causing those symptoms when they first visited a doctor would score worse at the treadmill test. And they'd have a greater risk of death in the next few years since they were further along the illness.
Is it measuring result of exercise or ...? (Score:1)
From what I read, they looked at people who took a stress test, and the ones who did well tended to live longer. What I'm wondering is, were the ones who did well people who were exercising diligently to get there?
There's a presumption that the people who didn't do well, if they worked out and lived healthier lives generally so that they improved their scores, would automatically be as healthy as the ones who were already doing well. But were the ones who did well from the getgo doing well because they ha
Heart and lungs? (Score:2)
So you're saying that a human is more likely to die with a weak hearth and weak lungs, as compared to weak fingers. Interesting. I guess vital organs really are vital.
Proof: zero METS (Score:1)
The statistics are accurate. Dead people score zero METs.
Does it predict cancer? (Score:2)
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Oh, you are free to not do it, but unless you do the bank, the insurance company won't accept you as a customer. Also, since the HR department doesn't have good data on your health you are sketchy and you won't get a job.
Captian Obvious (Score:4, Funny)
Fitness level was the single most powerful predictor of death
Who'd a thunk?
Re:mandatory treadmill tests (Score:4, Interesting)
I assure you, in my line of work not only does HR not want care about your long term viability, it sure as hell doesn't want you taking time off work* to be at the gym. They'll happily juice your husk until it can no longer serve the shareholder and toss it out in the new Environmentally Friendly (TM) Compost Heap. Given the endless legions of unemployed and the opportunity to tap the limitless H1-B market, they're guaranteed to have employees!
*By time off work I mean any point in a 24 hour day.
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Luckily, the one-two punch of HIPAA and ACA ("Obamacare") made what you describe illegal in the US, so that's only an option in other countries unless one or both of those laws change. And HIPAA isn't under attack by butthurt Republicans.
HIPAA made it illegal. The ACA made it mandatory.
Re:mandatory treadmill tests (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of this research is probably to allow doctors to make better estimates as to when a patient might die.
Capitalism can be just as bad as communism if you don't regulate the economy. You need some of both.
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This bottle of snakeoilism will cure all your economic ills!
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As long as you can do better than a police officer, you're okay.
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Right, because capitalist insurance companies would never abuse this kind of info to deny coverage.
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3% of people scoring above zero have a risk of dying in the next decade. Not 3% of people score above zero, although that might be true among slashdotters.
Sexism! (Score:2)
The FIT Treadmill Score, calculated as [percentage of maximum predicted heart rate + 12(metabolic equivalents of task) – 4(age) + 43 if female], ranged from 200 to 200 across the cohort, was near normally distributed, and was found to be highly predictive of 10-year survival
I demand equal life expectancy for equal fitness!
Re: Tipping the scale (Score:4, Informative)
You don't understand statistics
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Not the A.C. you replied to, but here I go...
People scoring between -100 and 0 face an 11% risk of dying in the next decade. People scoring between -200 and -100 face a 38% risk of death within the next decade. People scoring above zero face only a 3% chance or less.
Maybe it should be...
People scoring between -100 and 0 face an 89% risk of living in the next decade. People scoring between -200 and -100 face a 62% risk of living within the next decade. People scoring above zero face only a 97% chance or less of living.
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A fit body is more ready for a nasty surprise. If you aren't very fit, you may end up as a freak heart attack statistic. No one may even know what really killed you.
It's all a mix of seemingly random events with the inclusion of at least one element that's under your control.
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This would be true if everyone died by getting T-boned. A lot of people die due to things like heart disease. In fact, a lot more people die of heart disease than traffic accidents.
So no, it's not futile at all.