Could push-ups foretell the future and the state of a person’s heart?

A new study in JAMA Network Open hints that this might be the case. It finds that men who can breeze through 40 push-ups in a single exercise session are substantially less likely to experience a heart attack or other cardiovascular problem in subsequent years than men who can complete 10 or fewer. The results suggest that push-up ability might be a simple, reliable and D.I.Y.-in-your-living-room method of assessing heart health, while at the same time helpfully strengthening the triceps and pectorals.

As almost all of us know, cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death globally. Heart attacks and strokes also lead to considerable disability, lost work time and otherwise circumscribed lives and abilities.

But avoiding or treating cardiovascular disease requires recognizing that it might have begun or is on the horizon. Many medical tests of heart health, however, such as treadmill exercise-stress testing or heart scans, are expensive and complicated and can be difficult to interpret.

Many of these tests also generally are designed to pick up heart disease after it has started, not to predict the likelihood that it might develop. Meanwhile, mathematical risk scores that evaluate information about a person’s weight, cholesterol profile, smoking history and other health data are predictive, but in a way that is broad, impersonal and abstract.