Today, many people use devices like smartwatches to keep track of their health. These handy gadgets can tell you how many steps you’ve walked or how many flights of stairs you’ve climbed in a day.
This technology is not just fun to use, but it’s also helping scientists understand our health better.
Walking and Heart Health
Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Missouri joined hands with Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute.
They wanted to see if walking more could help people who have heart problems, specifically heart failure.
Heart failure is a condition where your heart can’t pump enough blood to meet your body’s needs. It can make you feel tired and short of breath.
The scientists published their findings in a journal called JACC: Heart Failure. Their main takeaway?
Taking more daily steps does seem to improve the health of people with heart failure. People who walked more every day had fewer symptoms and physical limitations.
Understanding the Study
Jessica R. Golbus, a doctor and a teacher at the University of Michigan Medical School, led this study.
She said that doctors are often unsure how to use the health data that smartwatches collect. This study is a step towards understanding how to interpret this data better.
As part of the study, more than 400 heart failure patients wore activity monitors for 12 weeks. The researchers checked to see how the patients’ daily step count and floors climbed affected their health.
They used something called the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaires (KCCQ) to assess the patients’ health. KCCQ is a set of questions that help doctors understand how well a person with heart failure is doing.
The study showed that patients who walked between 1,000 and 5,000 steps each day saw improvements in their symptoms and physical abilities. But after 5,000 steps, there was no extra benefit.
More Steps, Better Health
People who walked 2,000 steps per day had better health scores than those who walked just 1,000 steps a day.
If a patient increased their daily step count by 2,000 steps during the 12 weeks, their health improved significantly. On the other hand, if they walked less, it did not affect their health.
Brahmajee Nallamothu, another doctor involved in the study, emphasized the importance of wearable devices.
With these gadgets, doctors can now gather information about patients outside of their office visits. This can help them understand how things like travel, weather, and holidays affect a patient’s physical activity.
Wearable Devices and Medical Trials
Wearable devices are frequently discussed as tools for tracking patient health. They’re becoming more common in medical studies.
For heart failure, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to using patient-reported data to support treatment approval, but they haven’t said the same for data from wearable devices.
The team’s findings underline the need to better understand whether data from smartwatches and similar devices can be useful in a clinical setting.
John Spertus, a senior member of the research team, explained that this study is the first to show how changes in physical activity can reflect changes in a patient’s health status.
This study is just the beginning. As we continue to use wearable devices in our daily lives, we can expect more discoveries like this one in the future.
The study was supported by Janssen Scientific Affairs, L.L.C. For more details, you can read the full research paper.
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