LIVE LONGER: Exercise is a better predictor of lifespan than smoking, medical history
November 25, 2019 • 1 min read
-- Turns out that wearing an activity tracker has more uses than simply totalling calories burnt and steps taken. A fitness tracker might just extend your life.
Researchers at John Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, MD, have discovered that data captured by wearable devices is a better predictor of a person’s death than traditional indicators, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and history of cancer or heart disease.
The study, published in The Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, involved almost 3,000 U.S. adults aged of 50 to 84 years. Researchers examined more than 30 predictors of five-year all-cause mortality and found that physical activity made up 20 of these predictors.
“We’ve been interested in studying physical activity and how accumulating it in spurts throughout the day could predict mortality – because activity is a factor that can be changed, unlike age or genetics,” says professor Ciprian Crainiceanu, Ph.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Their work is not the first to find such a link. However, the results might be some of the first to offer concrete proof that wearable technology works better for predicting a person’s risk of mortality than other means.
Don’t stop till you drop.