Long-term Change in Cardiorespiratory Fitness and All-Cause Mortality: A Population-Based Follow-up Study.
Plain-language summary
This study asked whether the direction a man's fitness moves over years, rather than his fitness at one moment, relates to how long he lives. It measured maximal oxygen uptake by respiratory gas exchange in 579 men aged 42 to 60, measured it again eleven years later, and then followed deaths for a further fifteen years. Fitness fell on average over the eleven years. Men whose fitness fell furthest were the most likely to die, and that held after adjusting for age, starting fitness, blood pressure, smoking, cholesterol, inflammation, body weight, alcohol, activity, income, diabetes and heart disease. This study comes from a long-running population cohort that several other studies in this library also draw on, including the sauna studies, and it shares authors with them, so they are not independent evidence.
Key findings
- A 1 mL/min*kg higher increase in VO2max was linked to a 9% lower risk of dying from any cause.
- The average decline in VO2max over 11 years was 5.2 mL/min*kg.
- 123 deaths (21.2%) occurred during a median follow-up of 13.3 years.
How to analyze the study yourself
- Study type
- Cohort studies follow a group over time to see how changes in one factor (like fitness) relate to outcomes (like death), but they cannot prove cause and effect because other factors may play a role.
- Population
- Middle-aged men aged 42 to 60 years at baseline.
- Funding
- Not reported
- Takeaway
- This study found that men whose fitness dropped the most across eleven years were the most likely to die in the years afterwards, even after accounting for a long list of other risks. The number worth watching is the direction rather than any single reading. If you are in your forties or fifties, it may be worth keeping enough hard aerobic work in your week to hold your fitness where it is instead of letting it drift down.