The six-minute walking test.

[Guest guest]

My wife - the lovely yet formidable Beth - works in PR at the

University of Michigan Med School and Health System. She's an

absolutely charming woman known to be able to tell a reporter or

lawyer, or even a Med School Dean, to go to hell so nicely that for

minutes afterwards they stand there wondering why they never bothered

to make the trip before.

We owe her our thanks for researching the origins of the 'six minute

walking test.'

You walk just as fast as you're able for six-minutes while hooked up

to the whatever it is they hook us up to. The great advantage of the

thing is that it's just a treadmill test and it was designed to be

cheap and readily available to essentially any pulmonologist.

To learn about the tests that proved its value you'll probably want a

computer that has a paid subscription to the American Journal of

Resparatory and Critical Care Medicine. Volume 168 pp 1084-1090

(2003).

The bottom line is that the test can be predictive of longevity.

By the way - the stories of MB talking a starving dog off a loaded

meat waggon are exaggerations. I have first hand knowledge that the

dog was not, in fact, deaf.

Best Wishes Owen