Fitbit And Smartphones May Keep Your Health On Track

Fitbit and your smartphone may do a good job of logging the steps you take each day according to a new study, but a New York cardiologist says you don’t need the high-tech bells and whistles to get moving and get healthy.

“A brisk, 40-minute walk three or four times a week has been shown to reduce LDL, non-LDL cholesterol, and blood pressure and lower your cardiovascular risk,” said Adam Auerbach, MD, director of Inpatient Cardiac Services and director of Quality Assurance for Cardiology at North Shore University Hospital.

As for the pricier ways to monitor your health, a recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that wearable devices such as Fitbit were slightly less accurate compared to smartphone fitness apps for tracking physical activity.

The researchers compared 10 of the top-selling smartphone fitness applications with wearable devices, tracking 14 healthy adults as they walked on treadmills. Each participant walked on a treadmill set at three miles per hour for 500 steps and 1,500 steps two times, as a researcher counted the steps using a tally counter.

While most wearable devices tracked within a few steps of the actual number taken by the participants, one – the Nike Fuelband – missed 20% of the steps.

The number of steps is key to estimating the number of calories burned, which the wearable devices and apps track by detecting the shifting position of a person’s body as they move.

“These devices and apps provide an objective measure of how active we are,” said Dr. Auerbach, who uses a smartphone app to track his jogging workouts. “This allows a person to get real time feedback. As activity goals are met and positive feedback is given by these devices this behavior is reinforced. These devices also provide some degree of accountability.”

About one in 10 adults in the U.S. own Fitbit and other such wearable devices, while nearly two-thirds of American adults own a smartphone.

According to the researchers’ findings, smartphone apps may be a more widely accessible and affordable way of tracking health behaviors.