Getting A Stress Test
From Doctor Chet Zelasko
Fitness is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Being fit means that you should have a certain level of muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, body fat, and cardiovascular endurance. Let’s define some of these terms:
- Muscular strength is an indication of how strong you are. In other words, how much weight can you lift?
- Muscular endurance is how long you can sustain a muscular effort. For example, shoveling snow or digging in a garden requires that you lift a weight repeatedly, so it combines strength and exertion over time.
- Flexibility is the range of motion in a joint. Touching your toes or not is an indication of lumbar flexibility, while trying to touch your hands behind your back (at shoulder level) is an indication of shoulder flexibility.
- Body fat is the amount of fat you store for energy on a rainy day-or a month or two. It’s no surprise that Americans carry far too much body fat and need to reduce it.
- Cardiovascular endurance is a measure of the fitness of your heart and blood vessels.
While every area is important, your heart is critical to all other areas-if it’s got a problem, your body has a problem. That’s why you need to have a stress test before you begin to exercise strenuously.
A stress test is a maximal-exertion graded-exercise test (GXT). This type of test is usually performed on a treadmill-sometimes a bike-and begins at an easy level and takes you to a maximal effort in 8-12 minutes. During the test, a cardiologist or internist will monitor your heart patterns on an electrocardiograph for any abnormalities. While there are certain limitations to the test, it’s the only way to test how your heart will perform at maximal levels and whether disease is present.
More than identifying whether you have heart disease, a recent study on men who were referred for a GXT demonstrated that the men who were the fittest lived longer than those who were not as fit. The higher the fitness level, the longer they lived-whether they had diagnosed heart disease or not (1).
Who should have a stress test? Anyone who is considering strenuous exercise, such as running a 5K or doing a triathlon. Most professional health organizations, including the American College of Sports Medicine, recommend a stress test performed by an internist or cardiologist if you are a male 40 years and older or a woman 50 years and older. In addition to checking your heart for any signs of disease, the GXT provides a baseline for comparison if problems develop in the future. How would your doctor know what is normal for you if you had never been evaluated?
Getting fit is important, but getting fit safely is even more so. Schedule an appointment with your healthcare professional to discuss when you should have your GXT. Fitness is not an option in this life. Make it a priority for you.
September 03 2008 01:30 pm | Fitness