What’s Your Fitness Age?
You already know your chronological age, but do you know your fitness age?
A new study of fitness
and lifespan suggests that a person’s so-called fitness age –
determined primarily by a measure of cardiovascular endurance – is a
better predictor of longevity than chronological age.
The good news is
that unlike your actual age, your fitness age can decrease.
The concept of fitness
age has been developed by researchers at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology in Trondheim, who have studied fitness and how
it relates to wellness for years.
Fitness age is
determined primarily by your VO2max, which is a measure of your body’s
ability to take in and utilize oxygen. VO2max indicates your current
cardiovascular endurance.
It also can be used to
compare your fitness with that of other people of the same age,
providing you, in the process, with a personal fitness age. If your
VO2max is below average for your age group, then your fitness age is
older than your actual age. But if you compare well, you can actually
turn back the clock to a younger fitness age. That means a 50-year-old
man conceivably could have a fitness age between 30 and 75, depending on
his VO2max.
Knowing your fitness
age could be instructive and perhaps sobering, but it also necessitates
knowing your VO2max first, which few of us do. Precise measurement of
aerobic capacity requires high-tech treadmill testing.
To work around that
problem, the Norwegian scientists decided several years ago to develop
an easy method for estimating VO2max. They recruited almost 5,000
Norwegians between the ages of 20 and 90, measured their aerobic
capacity with treadmill testing and also checked a variety of health
parameters, including waist circumference, heart rate and exercise
habits.
They then determined
that those parameters could, if plugged into an algorithm, provide a
very close approximation of someone’s VO2max.
But while fitness age
may give you bragging rights about your youthful vigor, the real
question is whether it is a meaningful measurement in terms of
longevity. Will having a younger fitness age add years to your life?
Does an advanced fitness age mean you will die sooner?
The original Norwegian data did not show any direct correlation between fitness age and a longer life.
But in a new study,
which was published in June in Medicine & Science in Sports &
Exercise, the scientists turned to a large trove of data about more than
55,000 Norwegian adults who had completed extensive health
questionnaires beginning in the 1980s. The scientists used the
volunteers’ answers to estimate each person’s VO2max and fitness age.
Then they checked death records.
It turned out that
people whose calculated VO2max was 85 percent or more below the average
for their age — meaning that their fitness age was significantly above
their chronological years — had an 82 percent higher risk of dying
prematurely than those whose fitness age was the same as or more
youthful than their actual age. According to the study’s authors, the
results suggest that fitness age may predict a person’s risk of early
death better than some traditional risk factors like being overweight,
having high cholesterol levels or blood pressure, and smoking.
Of perhaps even
greater immediate interest, the scientists used the data from this new
study to refine and expand an online calculator for determining fitness
age. An updated version went live this month. it asks only a few simple questions,
including your age, gender, waist size and exercise routine, before
providing you with your current fitness age. (I discovered my own
fitness age is 15 years younger than my chronological age — a good
number but still not as low as I could wish.)
Thankfully, fitness
age can be altered, said Ulrik Wisloff, professor at the K.G. Jebsen
Center for Exercise in Medicine at The Norwegian University of Science
and Technology, who led the study. His advice if your fitness age
exceeds your chronological years or is not as low as you would like?
“Just exercise.”
Dr. Wisloff and his colleagues offer free exercise suggestions on their website.
But he said almost any type and amount of exercise should help to
increase your VO2max and lower your fitness age, potentially increasing
your lifespan.
In upcoming studies,
he added, he and his colleagues will directly compare how well fitness
age stacks up against other, more established measures of mortality
risk, like the Framingham Risk Calculator
(which does not include exercise habits among its variables). They also
hope to expand their studies to include more types of participants,
since adult Norwegians may not be representative of all of the world’s
population.
But even in advance of
this additional data, there is no harm in learning and lowering your
fitness age, Dr. Wisloff advised. “There is a huge benefit,” he said,
“larger than any known medical treatment, in improving your fitness
level to what is expected for your age group or, even better, to above
it.”
