How do you know if you are healthy?
While medical vital signs are helpful, they don’t give us the full picture of health. One problem is these vital signs are all lagging indicators of your health.
Let me explain: If you show up to see your doctor and have a fasting blood sugar level of 200 mg/DL, you are already diabetic. Just like if you were to go to your annual physical and were suddenly at a Body Mass Index of 35, you would already be obese.
We have leading indicators of health. We haven’t been taught to put them on our radar like we have things like blood pressure and BMI. These leading indicators are fitness markers. The problem is that you don’t know the vital fitness signs, like the medical vital signs in your doctor's office, because fitness, as we know it, is less about science and research and more about entertainment and accessibility.
Vital fitness signs predict poor health before it happens,
More importantly for us, these fitness vital fitness signs become a very clear path forward for chasing fitness.
The mile is a simple and easy way to assess cardiovascular health. Cardiovascular health is one of the big indicators that will affect health vital signs like blood pressure, cholesterol, and heart rate. Still, it is also closely linked to body fat percentage and body fat distribution. The faster you can cover a mile, the healthier your cardiovascular system is, and most likely, the better you will look… if that’s what you're going for.
The reason we can see your 1-mile time as a leading indicator of health is that if you have a Body Mass Index of 35, which is considered obese, we know, based on research and common sense, that your mile time is most likely below average compared to people of your same age and gender who are healthier. I am confident that those of you who can run close to these average mile times prescribed by the data I’ll show have a BMI in healthy ranges. It should be no surprise that the higher your body fat percentage, the lower your performance markers. One study shows that a higher body fat percentage in the lower body leads to poor lower body strength in a sit-to-stand test, which is basically a 1-minute test measuring how many times you can squat to a chair and stand back up. Those who score high in a sit-to-stand test for lower body strength have lower body fat percentages and overall show better health markers like blood sugar levels, bone density, and even cardiovascular health. The same correlation exists between lean upper body mass and upper body strength. Can you start to see how your fitness is your biggest tool to put a wedge between you and weight gain, disease, and other lagging indicators of poor health?
I’m here to be helpful!
See you in the gym,
Aaron Leventhal CSCS, PN1