"New research leaves little doubt about it Fitness is powerful. A new study shows its also a powerful predictor of whether an individual will live or die in the next decade. Put a person on a standardissue treadmill crank up the speed and the incline measure the maximum metabolic equivalents of task she achieves and the percentage of maximum predicted heart rate she can endure and you have two key bases on which to predict a patients year survival prospects says a study published Monday http in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The resulting FIT Treadmill score say researchers from Johns Hopkins University is easily attainable from any standardized exercise test and translates basic treadmill performance measures into a fitnessrelated mortality risk score. The predictor also takes into account a patients age and sex. Once computed the FIT Treadmill score was not improved by taking into account a wide range of measures often used to assess risk including blood pressure obesity cholesterol readings family history medication use and the Framingham Risk Score. The study plumbed the records of  patients in the Detroit area who were referred for a stress test because they reported chest pain shortness of breath palpitations or dizziness among other things. Researchers checked the medical records for a median of  years after each stress test to see if a death  of any cause  was recorded. A total of  of these patients who ranged in age from  to  died. Looking back at the treadmill performance of those who lived and those who died the researchers generated a scale ranging from  to  to convey an individuals likelihood of dying of any cause over the next  years. The notion that being in good physical shape portends lower death risk is by no means new but we wanted to quantify that risk precisely by age gender and fitness level and do so with an elegantly simple equation that requires no additional fancy testing beyond the standard stress test says lead investigator Dr. Haitham Ahmed a cardiology fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Patients with a score between  and  have a  likelihood of surviving the next decade the researchers said. Those with scores between  and  have a  probability of survival. Patients who turn in a performance yielding a score between  and  have an  likelihood of year survival. And those with a score between  and  have a  probability of surviving. Probabilities may not grab all patients by the collar. But telling someone he or she has a better than in chance of dying before the next decades out or even a better than in chance would probably be a sobering reminder to hit the gym. The authors said the metric can be used to communicate fitnessrelated risk and motivate behavioral change after exercise stress testing. Doityourself stress testing is probably not very reliable since a physician or sports physiologist needs to be around to decide when to call a halt to the test and therefore what maximum a testtaker has achieved. But if you think youd like to try and can do a relatively simple computation you can use the metabolic equivalents METS and the percentage of maximum predicted heart rate MPHR which are both available on most cardio machines at the gym to calculate your own survival prospects. Heres the magic formula FIT Treadmill Score  MPHR   METS   age   if female"