Push-ups May Reduce Risk Of Heart Disease: 5 Foods That Can Help Too!

Doing pushups is no easy feat and one that only comes with some practice and perseverance, but the results of doing pushups are endlessly rewarding. It helps tone the arm and back muscles and even helps in building a lean torso. But a recent study has pointed towards some other benefits of pushups. According to the study by Harvard University researchers, active middle-aged men who can pull off 40 pushups at a time, have a significantly lower risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes, as compared to men who could perform less than 10 pushups. The results of the study were published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The study showed that men who were able to do over 40 pushups had as much as 96 per cent lesser risk of CVD events, as compared to their counterparts who could do less than 10 pushups. Moreover, the capacity to do pushups was more associated with reduced risk of CVD events than aerobic capacity, as was estimated by a submaximal treadmill exercise test. The sample size for the study consisted of 1,104 male firefighters with the average age of 39.6 years. The study results were collated after analyzing the health data collected from all the participants. The researchers followed the participants for a period of 10 years, during which a total of 37 CVD outcomes were reported.

Talking about the study's findings, lead author Justin Yang at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said, "Our findings provide evidence that push-up capacity could be an easy, no-cost method to help assess cardiovascular disease risk in almost any setting." However, the researchers said that the results could not be generalised to women, or men of other ages who were less active. Diet also plays an important role in bringing down risks of cardiovascular diseases.