Pedometers Help Weight Loss

PedometerAccording to a study, people on walking program who use pedometers, which clip to a waistband and counts the steps, tend to walk an extra kilometers. These people burn more calories, and can lower the blood pressure.

Study lead author, Dr. Dena M. Bravata, a senior research scientists at Stanford University, said, “People who use pedometers increase their physical activity by about 2,100 steps a day, about a mile. They also seem to lower their blood pressure more and lose more weight.”

Researchers of the Stanford University School of Medicine reviewed 26 studies that looked at the use of pedometers as a tool to motivate physical activity.

A total 2,767 people participated in the studies, and most were females who were overweight and relatively inactive before they started their walking program. The study duration was 18 weeks.

In other studies, participants increased their walking by 2,183 steps per day after they started using a pedometer.

Dr. Bravata, said, “This goes a long way toward helping people meet the national guidelines for daily physical activity.”

Most volunteers lost few pounds and their body mass indexes (BMI) decrease by 0.4, systolic blood pressure fall by 3.8 mm Hg.

Dr. Bravata said she considered this decrease quite significant, since a reduction of 2 mm Hg is associated with a 10 per cent reduction in stroke mortality.

She noted, “People don't always achieve it, but just having a goal seems to help them stay motivated and improve their physical activity.”

James Hill, an obesity expert at University of Colorado, says he isn’t surprised by findings. “Fits with everything we've seen; we can get pretty amazing increased physical activity by using pedometers”

The study is published in Journal of the American Medical Association.

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