Low cardiorespiratory fitness has continuously proven to be essentially a predictor of all-cause deaths and disease-related deaths, especially as you get older, the preventative reversible adherence of CRF (cardiorespiratory fitness) decreases by age. According to the CARDIA study, “estimated CRF in young adults (18–30 years) who were followed for over >25 years and reported that each additional minute attained during maximal treadmill testing (~1MET) was associated with a 15% reduction in all-cause mortality after adjusting for traditional risk factors and left ventricular mass”(Harber et al., 2017,p. 17).
The CARDIA study estimated:
young adults (18-30) followed over 25 year span shown a 15% reduction in all-cause mortality rate by adjusting risk factors and left ventricular mass (Harber et al,,2017).
mortality risk in men over the age of 60 decreases to 11% reduction
least fit men less than 50 years and age 50-59 had an 80% higher mortality risk
"... graded inverse relationship existed between CRF and CVD mortality for each age group"(Harber et al., 2017).
All-cause mortality and low VO2 Max determinants:
Age
Gender
Body composition
Nutrition
Pulmonary and cardiovascular function
Physical activity
Prevalent diseases
Drug/alcohol consumption
In Laukkanen et al. (2009), VO2max was found to be directly associated with:
body weight
heart rate during maximal exercise
mean intensity of conditioning physical activity
intake of carbs
frequency of conditioning physical activity
blood hemoglobin
FEV1.
While CRF was inversely associated with:
HR at rest, age
fasting serum insulin
waist-to-hip circumference
prevalent CHD
asthma.
This means that those found directly associated with CRF are determinants that positively impacted CRF while the inverse determinants lowered CRF. Additionally, it was found that VO2max decreases by 53ml/min per year of age with intervention but decreased to 19ml/min per year with lifestyle change. This goes to show how it is critical in order to decrease mortality risk to inhibit physical activity in general and inhibit cardiorespiratory fitness to reduce all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and disease-specific mortality risk.