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Healthwatch

Counting Steps Is Good Is Combining Steps And Heart Rate Better?
~4.9 mins read
A new way to assess fitness and estimate health risks.
type 2 diabetes
high blood pressure (hypertension)
coronary atherosclerosis, heart attack, and heart failure
stroke.
Low: 0.0081 or lower
Medium: higher than 0.0081 but lower than 0.0147
High: 0.0147 or higher.
Participants in this study were likely more willing to monitor their activity and health than the average person. And more than 70% of the study subjects were female and more than 80% were white. The results could have been quite different outside of a research setting and if a more diverse group had been included.
The findings were not compared to standard risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as having a strong family history of cardiovascular disease or smoking cigarettes. Nor were DHRPS scores compared with standard risk calculators for cardiovascular disease. So the value of DHRPS compared with other readily available (and free) risk assessments isn't clear.
The exercise stress testing findings were based on only 21 people. That's far too few to make definitive conclusions.
The cost of a device to continuously monitor heart rate and steps can run in the hundreds of dollars; for many this may be prohibitive, especially since the benefits of calculating the DHRPS are unproven.

Have you met your step goals today? If so, well done! Monitoring your step count can inspire you to bump up activity over time.
But when it comes to assessing fitness or cardiovascular disease risk, counting steps might not be enough. Combining steps and average heart rate (as measured by a smart device) could be a better way for you to assess fitness and gain insights into your risk for major illnesses like heart attack or diabetes. Read on to learn how many steps you need for better health, and why tagging on heart rate matters.
Steps alone versus steps plus heart rate
First, how many steps should you aim for daily? There's nothing special about the 10,000-steps number often touted: sure, it sounds impressive, and it's a nice round number that has been linked to certain health benefits. But fewer daily steps — 4,000 to 7,000 — might be enough to help you become healthier. And taking more than 10,000 steps a day might be even better.
Second, people walking briskly up and down hills are getting a lot more exercise than those walking slowly on flat terrain, even if they take the same number of steps.
So, at a time when millions of people are carrying around smartphones or wearing watches that monitor physical activity and body functions, might there be a better way than just a step count to assess our fitness and risk of developing major disease?
According to a new study, the answer is yes.
Get out your calculator: A new measure of health risks and fitness
Researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that a simple ratio that includes both heart rate and step count is better than just counting steps. It's called the DHRPS, which stands for daily heart rate per step. To calculate it, take your average daily heart rate and divide it by your average daily step count. Yes, to determine your DHRPS you'll need a way to continuously monitor your heart rate, such as a smartwatch or Fitbit. And you'll need to do some simple math to arrive at your DHRPS ratio, as explained below.
The study enrolled nearly 7,000 people (average age: 55). Each wore a Fitbit, a device that straps onto the wrist and is programmed to monitor steps taken and average heart rate each day. (Fitbits also have other features such as reminders to be active, a tracker of how far you've walked, and sleep quality, but these weren't part of this study.)
Over the five years of the study, volunteers took more than 50 billion steps. When each individual's DHRPS was calculated and compared with their other health information, researchers found that higher scores were linked to an increased risk of
The DHRPS had stronger associations with these diseases than either heart rate or step count alone. In addition, people with higher DHRPS scores were less likely to report good health than those who had the lowest scores. And among the 21 study subjects who had exercise stress testing, those with the highest DHRPS scores had the lowest capacity for exercise.
What counts as a higher score in this study?
In this study, DHRPS scores were divided into three groups:
How to make daily heart rate per step calculations
Here's how it works. Let's say that over a one-month period your average daily heart rate is 80 and your average step count is 4,000. That means your DHRPS equals 80/4,000, or 0.0200. If the next month your average heart rate is still 80 but you take about 6,000 steps a day, your DHRPS is 80/6,000, or 0.0133. Since lower scores are better, this is a positive trend.
Should you start calculating your DHRPS?
Do the results described in this study tempt you to begin monitoring your DHRPS? You may decide to hold off until further research confirms actual health benefits from knowing that ratio.
This study merely explored the relationship between DHRPS and risk of diabetes or cardiovascular disease like heart attack or stroke. This type of study can only establish a link between the DHRPS and disease. It can't determine whether a higher score actually causes them.
Here are four other limitations of this research to keep in mind:
The bottom line
Tracking DHRPS or daily activity and other health measures might be a way to improve your health if the results prompt you to make positive changes in behavior, such as becoming more active. Or perhaps DHRPS could one day help your health care provider monitor your fitness, better assess your health risks, and recommend preventive approaches. But we don't yet know if this new measure will actually lead to improved health because the study didn't explore that.
If you already have a device that continuously monitors your daily heart rate and step count, feel free to do the math! Maybe knowing your DHRPS will motivate you to do more to lower your risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Or maybe it won't. We need more research and experience with this measure to know whether it can deliver on its potential to improve health.
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News_Naija

Lagos LG Poll: PDP Candidates, Others Lament LASIEC Screening Delays
~2.2 mins read
Few days to the Lagos Local Government Elections, opposition party candidates are still undergoing statutory screening by the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that under the Electoral Guidelines for the July 12 elections, candidate validation was to be completed by June 30. However, a NAN correspondent observed on Wednesday that PDP, Zenith Labour Party, Young Progressives Party, and other candidates were still undergoing screening two days after the deadline. Seven days to the end of campaigns, many opposition candidates besieged LASIEC headquarters to validate their nominations amid delays. Some opposition leaders alleged LASIEC was colluding with the ruling APC to disenfranchise their candidates through administrative bottlenecks. At the LASIEC headquarters, Chief Sunday Olaifa, PDP Deputy Chairman (Lagos West), expressed concern that only opposition candidates faced screening delays. Olaifa said the process appeared designed to frustrate opposition parties and distract them from campaign efforts. “I’m alarmed by the prolonged documentation process. “Many candidates are still outside LASIEC’s gate, struggling to get screened. “The verification process is highly questionable. I’ve not seen any APC candidates facing the same difficulty,” Olaifa said. He said opposition candidates should be on the campaign trail, not struggling to validate their nominations days to the election. He urged LASIEC to ensure a level playing field for all political parties throughout the entire election process. Also speaking, Alh. Isiaka Shodiya, PDP Chairman in Alimosho LGA, said LASIEC’s requirements were unprecedented and unfair. Shodiya noted that asking candidates to present primary school certificates contradicts the Election Guidelines, which require a minimum of SSCE. “How do you expect someone who finished primary school 40 years ago to produce that certificate?” he asked. He argued that LASIEC’s duty is to midwife elections, not disqualify properly nominated candidates. Shodiya insisted that only a court of law has the power to disqualify candidates, not LASIEC. He said delays were wasting valuable campaign time, preventing candidates from engaging voters and sharing their manifestos. Mr Adebayo Alade, PDP Chairmanship Candidate for Kosofe, said he had spent several days at LASIEC without being screened. “I’ve been here since Friday. I also came Monday and today. “I’ve waited five hours without any progress,” Alade said. Edide Yonwuren, ZLP Deputy State Chairman, described the screening process as overly complicated for opposition candidates. Mr Honfovn Denagan, ZLP Chairmanship Candidate for Badagry, urged LASIEC to remove barriers preventing timely screening. Samad Okufuwa, Lagos Publicity Secretary of the YPP, said the process should be more seamless and less stressful. In response, LASIEC Chairman Justice Bola Okikiolu-Ighile said screening began June 26 as outlined in its April 12 timetable. She said the process involved validating candidates’ credentials under the Lagos State Independent Electoral Law, 2008 (as amended). She noted that some candidates failed to submit all required documents and were advised to use the open window on July 2 and 3. “Some returned on June 30 and caused a disruption by forming large, noisy crowds during the ongoing exercise,” she said. She said this led to temporary suspension and postponement of the screening for other parties to July 1. LASIEC, she said, remains committed to a free, transparent, and credible election on July 12. NAN recalls that the LASIEC guidelines state that campaigns started April 18 and will end July 9.
Read more stories like this on punchng.com
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Worldnews

Israel Now Faces Adversaries That It Cannot Defeat
~3.6 mins read
Once a master of narrative warfare, Israel is now losing to smartphones, social media, and the digital archive. Since October 7, 2023, the war of images has eclipsed the war of weapons. From Gaza’s pulverised hospitals and starving infants to mass graves and desperate fathers digging through rubble, every pixel captured on a smartphone strikes deeper than a missile. These raw, unfiltered, and undeniable images have a far greater impact than any press conference or official speech. And for the first time in its history, Israel cannot delete them or drown them in propaganda. The horrifying images of the Israeli army massacring people at aid distribution locations prompted newspaper Haaretz’s Gideon Levy to write on June 29: “Is Israel perpetrating genocide in Gaza? […] The testimonies and images emerging from Gaza don’t leave room for many questions.” Even staunchly pro-Israel commentator and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman no longer buys into the Israeli narrative. In a May 9 op-ed, addressed to US President Donald Trump, he declared: “This Israeli government is not our ally,” clarifying that it is “behaving in ways that threaten hard-core US interests in the region”. Once, Israel’s narrative was protected by the gates of editorial rooms and the gravity of Western guilt. But the smartphone shattered those gates. What we see now is no longer what Israel tells us — it’s what Gaza shows us. The platforms carrying these images — TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, X — don’t prioritise context; they prioritise virality. While older generations might look away, younger ones are glued to the stream of suffering, absorbed by every pixel, every siren, every moment of destruction. The global public is agitated, and this works against the Israeli interest. Israel is no longer just at war with its neighbours; it is at war with the lens itself. The psychological toll of this visual war is reverberating deep inside Israeli society. For decades, Israelis were conditioned to see themselves as global narrators of trauma, not subjects of international scrutiny. But now, with videos of Israeli bombardment, flattened Gaza neighbourhoods, and emaciated children flooding every platform, many Israelis are grappling with a growing ethical predicament. There is unease, even among centrists, that these visceral images are eroding Israel’s moral high ground. For the first time, public discourse in Israeli society includes fear of the mirror: what the world now sees and what Israelis are forced to confront. Internationally, the effect has been even more destabilising for Israel’s diplomatic standing. Longstanding allies, once unconditionally supportive, now face growing domestic pressure from citizens who are not consuming official statements but TikTok’s live streams and Instagram’s image feed. Lawmakers in Europe and North America are openly questioning arms shipments, trade deals, and diplomatic cover, not because of the briefings they have on Israeli war crimes but because their inboxes are flooded with screenshots of scattered body parts and starving children. The battlefield has expanded into parliaments, campuses, city councils, and editorial rooms. This is the backlash of a war Israel cannot win with brute force. To regain control of the narrative, Israeli officials have pressured social media platforms to curb content they dislike. Yet even Israel’s most sophisticated public diplomacy efforts are struggling to keep pace with the virality of raw documentation. Behind closed doors, the Israeli military is no longer merely worried about public relations; it is concerned about prosecution. The Israeli army has admonished soldiers for taking selfies and filming themselves demolishing Palestinian homes, warning that such material is now being harvested as evidence by international human rights organisations. Footage and images from social media have already been used by activists to target Israeli servicemen abroad. In a number of cases, Israeli citizens have had to flee countries they were visiting due to war crimes complaints filed against them. In the age of smartphones, the occupation is no longer just visible — it’s indictable. In the past, Israel fought wars that it could explain. Now, it fights a battle it can only react to — often too belatedly and too clumsily. The smartphone captures what the missile conceals. Social media disseminates information that official briefings attempt to suppress. The haunting images, digitally preserved, ensure that we never forget any devastating atrocity, or act of brutality. Images of conflict do not just convey information; they can also redefine our perceptions and influence our political positions. The powerful “Napalm Girl” photo that captured the aftermath of an attack by the US-allied South Vietnamese army on civilians during the Vietnam War had a profound impact on American society. It helped create a significant shift in public opinion regarding the war, accelerating the decision of the US government to end it. Today, in Gaza, the stream of powerful images does not stop. Despite Israel’s best efforts, the global opinion is overwhelmingly against its genocidal war. Smartphones have completely changed the nature of conflict by putting a camera in the hands of every witness. In this new era, Israel struggles to defeat the relentless, unfiltered visual record of its crimes that calls for justice. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Follow Al Jazeera English:...
Read this story on Aljazeera
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Healthwatch

Counting Steps Is Good Is Combining Steps And Heart Rate Better?
~4.9 mins read
A new way to assess fitness and estimate health risks.
type 2 diabetes
high blood pressure (hypertension)
coronary atherosclerosis, heart attack, and heart failure
stroke.
Low: 0.0081 or lower
Medium: higher than 0.0081 but lower than 0.0147
High: 0.0147 or higher.
Participants in this study were likely more willing to monitor their activity and health than the average person. And more than 70% of the study subjects were female and more than 80% were white. The results could have been quite different outside of a research setting and if a more diverse group had been included.
The findings were not compared to standard risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as having a strong family history of cardiovascular disease or smoking cigarettes. Nor were DHRPS scores compared with standard risk calculators for cardiovascular disease. So the value of DHRPS compared with other readily available (and free) risk assessments isn't clear.
The exercise stress testing findings were based on only 21 people. That's far too few to make definitive conclusions.
The cost of a device to continuously monitor heart rate and steps can run in the hundreds of dollars; for many this may be prohibitive, especially since the benefits of calculating the DHRPS are unproven.

Have you met your step goals today? If so, well done! Monitoring your step count can inspire you to bump up activity over time.
But when it comes to assessing fitness or cardiovascular disease risk, counting steps might not be enough. Combining steps and average heart rate (as measured by a smart device) could be a better way for you to assess fitness and gain insights into your risk for major illnesses like heart attack or diabetes. Read on to learn how many steps you need for better health, and why tagging on heart rate matters.
Steps alone versus steps plus heart rate
First, how many steps should you aim for daily? There's nothing special about the 10,000-steps number often touted: sure, it sounds impressive, and it's a nice round number that has been linked to certain health benefits. But fewer daily steps — 4,000 to 7,000 — might be enough to help you become healthier. And taking more than 10,000 steps a day might be even better.
Second, people walking briskly up and down hills are getting a lot more exercise than those walking slowly on flat terrain, even if they take the same number of steps.
So, at a time when millions of people are carrying around smartphones or wearing watches that monitor physical activity and body functions, might there be a better way than just a step count to assess our fitness and risk of developing major disease?
According to a new study, the answer is yes.
Get out your calculator: A new measure of health risks and fitness
Researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that a simple ratio that includes both heart rate and step count is better than just counting steps. It's called the DHRPS, which stands for daily heart rate per step. To calculate it, take your average daily heart rate and divide it by your average daily step count. Yes, to determine your DHRPS you'll need a way to continuously monitor your heart rate, such as a smartwatch or Fitbit. And you'll need to do some simple math to arrive at your DHRPS ratio, as explained below.
The study enrolled nearly 7,000 people (average age: 55). Each wore a Fitbit, a device that straps onto the wrist and is programmed to monitor steps taken and average heart rate each day. (Fitbits also have other features such as reminders to be active, a tracker of how far you've walked, and sleep quality, but these weren't part of this study.)
Over the five years of the study, volunteers took more than 50 billion steps. When each individual's DHRPS was calculated and compared with their other health information, researchers found that higher scores were linked to an increased risk of
The DHRPS had stronger associations with these diseases than either heart rate or step count alone. In addition, people with higher DHRPS scores were less likely to report good health than those who had the lowest scores. And among the 21 study subjects who had exercise stress testing, those with the highest DHRPS scores had the lowest capacity for exercise.
What counts as a higher score in this study?
In this study, DHRPS scores were divided into three groups:
How to make daily heart rate per step calculations
Here's how it works. Let's say that over a one-month period your average daily heart rate is 80 and your average step count is 4,000. That means your DHRPS equals 80/4,000, or 0.0200. If the next month your average heart rate is still 80 but you take about 6,000 steps a day, your DHRPS is 80/6,000, or 0.0133. Since lower scores are better, this is a positive trend.
Should you start calculating your DHRPS?
Do the results described in this study tempt you to begin monitoring your DHRPS? You may decide to hold off until further research confirms actual health benefits from knowing that ratio.
This study merely explored the relationship between DHRPS and risk of diabetes or cardiovascular disease like heart attack or stroke. This type of study can only establish a link between the DHRPS and disease. It can't determine whether a higher score actually causes them.
Here are four other limitations of this research to keep in mind:
The bottom line
Tracking DHRPS or daily activity and other health measures might be a way to improve your health if the results prompt you to make positive changes in behavior, such as becoming more active. Or perhaps DHRPS could one day help your health care provider monitor your fitness, better assess your health risks, and recommend preventive approaches. But we don't yet know if this new measure will actually lead to improved health because the study didn't explore that.
If you already have a device that continuously monitors your daily heart rate and step count, feel free to do the math! Maybe knowing your DHRPS will motivate you to do more to lower your risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Or maybe it won't. We need more research and experience with this measure to know whether it can deliver on its potential to improve health.
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