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If You Can’t Walk on a Treadmill, Your Risk of a Cardiac Death is Higher
Your chances for heart disease are significantly increased if your doctor orders a chemical rather than a walking stress test.
A new study says that if you can’t walk on a treadmill for a cardiac stress test, your future risk of cardiac death is higher. The most remarkable thing about this study is that it is not new. I have known this for decades, and although I retired from private practice ten years ago, I recall this data from the 1990s.
If your doctor suspects you might have blocked heart arteries, known as coronary heart or artery disease (CHD, CAD), they will often order a treadmill stress test. This test places you on a treadmill to see how far you can walk and what happens to your symptoms, heart rate, electrocardiogram, and blood pressure. It may be done by itself, or combined with a small safe injection of radioactive material to follow blood flow to the heart.
Let me cut to the chase. If you can’t walk on a slowly moving treadmill, you are significantly unconditioned, and that places you at a higher risk of dying of heart disease. A sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for heart problems. Thus, an inability to walk on a treadmill alone is valuable information. There are other…
