Patterns of Movement

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Anchor lead: It’s not just exercise that predicts mortality risk, Elizabeth Tracey reports

How often do you move around during the day? Do you find it easy to continue moving once you start? These are the kinds of patterns that wearable physical activity trackers help to identify, and according to research by Jacek Urbanek and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, are the best predictor of mortality risk.

Urbanek: Low physical activity is a modifiable risk factor. We also found that next to volumes of physical activity, fragmentation of physical activity, how often you break sedentary bout, how well you’re able to maintain physical activity, it’s a very strong predictor as well as characteristics in selected chunks of time, mostly morning and early afternoon is very predictive.  :27

Urbanek notes that even regular exercisers may not move much otherwise, so having complete picture is valuable. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.