Step counting is fine, but is it preferable to combine steps and heart rate?

A novel approach to health risk assessment and fitness evaluation.

Have you achieved your daily step goals? If so, well job! Keeping track of your steps can motivate you to increase your level of activity over time.
However, counting steps may not be sufficient to evaluate cardiovascular disease risk or fitness. You may be able to evaluate your fitness and learn more about your risk of serious conditions like diabetes or heart attacks by combining your steps and average heart rate (as determined by a smart gadget). Continue reading to find out how many steps you need to take to improve your health and why heart rate tracking is important.

Steps alone versus steps plus heart rate

First, how many steps should you aim for each day? The 10,000-steps-per-day amount is not particularly noteworthy; sure, it sounds impressive and is a nice round number that has been linked to certain health benefits, but taking 4,000 to 7,000 steps per day may be sufficient to help you become healthier, and taking more than 10,000 steps per day may be even better. Second, even if they walk the same amount of steps, people who walk briskly up and down hills are getting a lot more exercise than those who walk more slowly on flat terrain.

Therefore, is there a more effective method than a step count to determine our level of fitness and danger of serious illness at a time when millions of people carry smartphones or wear watches that track bodily functions and physical activity?
The answer is yes, per a recent study.

Take out your calculator. A novel way to gauge fitness and health hazards

A straightforward ratio that includes both heart rate and step count is superior to simply counting steps, according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. It is known as the DHRPS, or daily heart rate per step. It can be computed by dividing your average heart rate per day by the average number of steps you walk each day. Yes, you will need a device that can continuously monitor your heart rate, like a Fitbit or smartwatch, in order to calculate your DHRPS. Additionally, as detailed below, you will need to perform some basic math in order to determine your DHRPS ratio. Nearly 7,000 participants (average age: 55) were enrolled in the study. They were all wearing Fitbits, which are wrist-worn devices that track daily heart rates and steps taken. (This study did not include Fitbits’ other functions, which include sleep quality, walking distance tracking, and activity reminders.) Volunteers walked more than 50 billion steps during the study’s five years. Researchers discovered that when each person’s DHRPS was computed and contrasted with their other medical data, higher scores were associated with a higher chance of

• diabetes type 2
• hypertension, or elevated blood pressure.
• heart attack, heart failure, and coronary atherosclerosis.
• stroke.

Compared to heart rate or step count alone, the DHRPS showed greater correlations with these disorders. Furthermore, compared to those with the lowest DHRPS scores, those with higher scores were less likely to report being in excellent health. Additionally, those with the highest DHRPS scores had the lowest ability for activity among the 21 study participants who underwent exercise stress testing.

In this study, what constitutes a higher score?

Three groups of DHRPS scores were created for this study:

• Low: less than 0.0081 
• Medium: less than 0.0147 but greater than 0.0081
• High: at least 0.0147

How to calculate heart rate per step each day

This is how it operates. Assume you have an average heart rate of 80 beats per day and 4,000 steps each day for a month. Your DHRPS is therefore 80/4,000, or 0.0200. Your DHRPS is 80/6,000, or 0.0133, if you walk roughly 6,000 steps a day and your average heart rate remains at 80 the following month. This is a good trend because lower scores are better.

Do you need to start figuring out your DHRPS?

Are you tempted to start tracking your DHRPS after reading about the findings of this study? You might choose to wait until more studies verify that understanding that ratio actually improves your health.
This study only looked at the connection between DHRPS and the risk of diabetes or cardiovascular conditions like stroke or heart attack. Only a connection between the DHRPS and illness can be established by this kind of research. It is unable to ascertain whether they are genuinely brought on by a higher score.
You should be aware of the following four additional research limitations:

• Compared to the general population, study participants were probably more willing to keep an eye on their health and activity levels. Additionally, over 80% of the study participants were white, and over 70% of them were female. If a more diverse group had been involved, the outcomes might have been very different outside of a research setting.
• The results were not contrasted with common cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as smoking cigarettes or having a strong family history of the condition. Additionally, DHRPS ratings were not contrasted with those of conventional cardiovascular disease risk calculators. Therefore, it’s unclear how valuable DHRPS is in comparison to other easily accessible (and cost-free) risk evaluations.
• Only 21 individuals served as the basis for the exercise stress test results. There are far too few to draw firm conclusions from.
• Since the benefits of calculating the DHRPS are unknown, many people may find the expense of a gadget that continuously monitors heart rate and steps — which can reach the hundreds of dollars — to be prohibitive. 

Final Thoughts

Monitoring your daily activity and other health metrics, or DHRPS, may help you get healthier if the results encourage you to modify your behaviour for the better, such as doing more exercise. Or maybe in the future, DHRPS might assist your doctor in tracking your level of fitness, evaluating your health risks more accurately, and suggesting preventative measures. However, the study did not examine if this new metric will genuinely result in better health, therefore we do not yet know.

Feel free to do the maths if you already have a gadget that tracks your heart rate and steps taken each day. Perhaps being aware of your DHRPS will inspire you to take additional steps to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Or perhaps it won’t. To determine whether this intervention can fulfil its potential to promote health, more investigation and experience are required.