Personalized activity intelligence: A better way to track exercise?

Perhaps the best-known problem with fitness trackers is that people often retire them to a junk drawer after a few months, once their novelty wears off. But that’s not the only issue with these devices, which are typically worn around the wrist or clipped to clothing. Sure, they’ll count your steps, display your heart rate, and even estimate how many calories you’ve burned, although you’ll probably need to sync it with an app on your smartphone, tablet, or computer to see such data. However, very few of the popular, free apps related to physical activity are based on published evidence. And they don’t necessarily follow well-established exercise guidelines. Even if you do meet recommended daily exercise goals — like 30 minutes of brisk walking or 10,000 steps — how do you know if you’re really working your heart enough to keep it healthy? Easy as PAI? Now, a new scientifically validated tool, dubbed Personalized Activity Intelligence, or PAI, may have the answer. Developed by an international team of researchers, PAI is a formula that converts your heart rate to a number of points, based on your age, gender, resting heart rate, and maximum heart rate. The idea is to get an average of 100 points over an entire week, which you could earn through short stints of intense exercise, longer bouts of more moderate activity, or a combination of the two. Think of PAI as an index of how hard and how often you challenge your heart. “It’s a different way of quantifying...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Exercise and Fitness Health Healthy Aging Prevention Source Type: blogs