Research

Mixed

Higher cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2peak) significantly reduces the risk of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events in men, independent of conventional risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, and lipid profiles.

Get your cardiorespiratory fitness measured via a maximal exercise test (VO2peak). This single metric is one of the strongest predictors of your heart disease risk, potentially more important than your cholesterol or blood pressure numbers. If your fitness is low, especially if you have other risk factors, prioritize increasing your aerobic capacity through training to significantly lower your risk of fatal and non-fatal cardiac events.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
VO2peak can be used as a very powerful predictor of future fatal cardiac events beyond that predicted by many conventional risk factors.
Jari A. Laukkanen et al. · European Heart Journal · 2004

Why this rating

Prospective population-based cohort study with long follow-up (median 13.7 years) and direct measurement of VO2peak, though observational.

Source

The predictive value of cardiorespiratory fitness for cardiovascular events in men with various risk profiles: a prospective population-based cohort study

Jari A. Laukkanen et al. · European Heart Journal · 2004

DOI 10.1016/j.ehj.2004.06.013

cohort · n=2361Cited 277×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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