Is doing 40 push-ups really good for your heart?
The study behind that headline followed 1,104 male firefighters for ten years. Those managing more than 40 push-ups had far fewer cardiovascular events than those managing ten or fewer, and the figure quoted as a 96 percent reduction comes from that comparison.
It is much thinner than it sounds. There were 37 events in the whole cohort, the analysis adjusted only for age and body mass index rather than smoking, blood pressure or cholesterol, and the middle groups did not line up in a clean gradient. The authors wrote plainly that their results do not establish push-up capacity as an independent predictor of risk.
So 40 is not a clinical threshold, and since the cohort was middle-aged, occupationally active men, it says nothing about women or people over sixty. Being able to do a lot of push-ups is a reasonable sign that the rest of you is in decent shape. That is the honest claim.
Try the push-up norms2 min, free, nothing to installWhat your count means for your age and sex, and what the study everybody quotes actually found.
Answered by the AskDoc Medical Team · Medically reviewed under our Medical Director, MBBS · How we review
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