Do 40 pushups daily for heart health

Forty daily pushups does more than help strengthen your upper body. It also is likely to help men stave off cardiovascular problems.

That was the finding of a study led by doctors at Harvard that compared the cardiovascular health of 1,104 active adult men over a 10-year span. Participants were firefighters, with an average age of 40.

At the start of the study, recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the firefighters had a physical exam and testing that included doing push-ups. In the next decade, 37 of the men experienced a cardiovascular problem, such as coronary artery disease, heart failure or sudden cardiac death. But those who had done 11 or more pushups at the start of the study were less likely to have had a subsequent cardiovascular problem than those who did 10 or fewer. And the higher the fitness level, based on how many push-ups the men could do, the lower their rate of cardiovascular incidents.

Those able to do more than 40 pushups had a 96 percent reduced risk of heart trouble compared to those who only did 10 or fewer.