Exercise is Medicine

This week we focused on the value of physical activity to our overall state of wellness. We were joined in studio by Dr. Felipe Lobelo of Emory University, Mike Tinney, of Fitness Interactive Experience, and JP Matzegheit, of Wahoo Fitness. We talked about the physiologic importance of physical activity along with innovative technologies that facilitate inspiring people to get moving.

Physical inactivity now ranks as the 2^nd leading cause of mortality in the world. However, too few health systems and health care providers include physical activity (PA) as part of the prevention and management of obesity and chronic diseases. For 5 years, the Exercise is Medicine (EIM) initiative of the American College of Sports Medicine has helped build local networks to support the systematic inclusion of PA in health care in the US and more than 40 countries in 5 continents via the “EIM Solution”, an evidence-based approach to assessing patients, prescribing appropriate PA and developing community-based PA resources linked to health services and public awareness. The

Large-scale implementation of the EIM Solution across different populations, settings and health care systems is a complex process. The EIM-GRCC serves as a coordinating center for EIM implementation projects by offering state-of –art consultation research and evaluation support, training, policy, cross-national networking and management dimensions of EIM programming to support the initiative.

Fitness Interactive Experience (FIX) has developed a tech platform that incorporates a video game-inspired approach to motivating people to walk and engage in brief periods of other physical activities. FIX provides their application to businesses seeking to improve the health of their employees for use over 6-8 weeks as a fitness challenge. The application uses the popular zombie theme to get the user to walk more each day.

The application interfaces with wearable fitness devices such as FitBit to track physical activity such as walking/running. In order for their character to survive in the game they’ll have to walk while wearing their fitness device to “walk/run” their character to safe zones. The early data from their initial challenges has shown promising statistics regarding the level of participation and engagement by employees using the application.

Wahoo Fitness produces a range of wearable fitness devices designed to give feedback on a variety of physical activities and bio data. The sensors enable athletes to become more efficient runners, swimmers, and riders through the use of accelerometers in the sensors. Additionally, users can train smarter by monitoring heart rate instead of subjective rating of perceived exertion (RPE).

Users are able to compare current training session against previous sessions to evaluate number of reps, cadence, and other training data.

Special Guests:

Dr. Felipe Lobelo, MD, PhD, Emory University, Global Health Department, Exercise is Medicine