What’s your cholesterol? What’s your blood pressure? What’s your weight?
What’s your blood sugar?
These are important questions. Doctors ask them all the time. Numbers have changed
the practice of medicine, and numbers save lives when we pay attention to their message.
Research indicates that the number which may be the most important of all, in
terms of both quality of life and length of days, is not on the list. Amazingly,
we don’t have a number to put on a person’s level of fitness.
The Governor’s Council on Fitness, in partnership with the Kansas Department of
Health and Environment, the Kansas Medical Society, and the Kansas Academy of Family
Physicians—is working to try and add that numerical indicator to the medical
professional’s heath assessment tool kit.
Based on years of research 
and data collection, an individual’s physical activity level can be an early indicator
of potential health problems. What’s
Your Mile? is designed to be a free, useful tool as a relative measure of an
individual’s physical fitness level based on national studies and databases.Your actual
level of physical fitness is best determined in partnership with your primary care
provider.
Are you up for the challenge? In consultation with your physician, taking this short
questionnaire to identify some common
health risks will assist you in determining if you can safely self-administer the
walking test. Once you’ve ensured that you can safely participate, take the One Mile Test .
What’s Your Mile? is collaborative tool designed by Douglas Iliff, M.D., Topeka, Kan.
family practice physician.; and David Dzewaltowski, Ph.D., department of kinesiology,
Kansas State University. Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.