How long do you have left to live? A new test developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland may have the answer.

The test, dubbed the FIT Treadmill Score, involves simply a calculator and treadmill. Subjects were asked to run on a treadmill for three-minute increments at increasing incline, and then plugged their vital statistics into a formula to determine how likely they would be to die in the next 10 years.

“The notion that being in good physical shape portends lower death risk is by no means new,” said lead investigator Haitham Ahmed. “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.”

The FIT Treadmill Score was developed after a study of 58,000 stress exams by university cardiologists.
For the study, the team reviewed information on 58,020 people, ages 18 to 96, hailing from Detroit, Michigan, who took standard exercise stress tests between 1991 and 2009 and were evaluated for chest pain, shortness of breath, fainting or dizziness.

Next, the researchers charted how many of the participants from within each fitness level died from any cause over the following decade.

Along with consideration of a subject’s age and gender, the formula measures peak heart rate achieved during intense exercise, as well as ability to handle physical exertion, as calculated by metabolic equivalents, or METs.

METs gauge how much energy the body expends during exercise. Higher-energy activities demand higher energy output, or higher METs. For example, an activity like slow walking equals two METs, as opposed to eight for running.

Findings revealed that fitness level as measured by METs, and peak heart rate reached during exercise were the strongest indicators of death risk among subjects of the same age and gender. Subjects scoring highest had an average two percent chance of dying in the next decade, while subjects scoring lowest had a whopping 38 percent chance of dying in the next 10 years.

Fitness level was the single most powerful predictor of death and survival, even after researchers factored in other significant variables, including diabetes and family history of premature death.

“The FIT Treadmill Score is easy to calculate and costs nothing beyond the cost of the treadmill test itself,” says senior study author Michael Blaha.