Physical Activity Intensity Measurement and Health: State of the Art and Future Directions for Scientific Research

Juan Pablo Rey-López (), Dong Hoon Lee, Gerson Ferrari, Edward Giovannucci and Leandro F. M. Rezende
Additional contact information
Juan Pablo Rey-López: Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad International de Valencia (VIU), 46002 Valencia, Spain
Dong Hoon Lee: Department of Sport Industry Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea
Gerson Ferrari: Escuela de Ciencias de la Actividad Física, el Deporte y la Salud, Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH), Santiago 9170022, Chile
Edward Giovannucci: Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Leandro F. M. Rezende: Department of Preventive Medicine, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo 04023-900, Brazil

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 11, 1-10

Abstract: Physical activity guidelines for health recommend any type of unstructured physical activity for health promotion. Adults should perform at least 150–300 min per week of moderate intensity or 75–150 min per week of vigorous intensity activities, or an equivalent combination of the two intensities. However, the relationship between physical activity intensity and longevity remains a debated topic, with conflicting perspectives offered by epidemiologists, clinical exercise physiologists or anthropologists. This paper addresses the current known role of physical activity intensity (in particular vigorous versus moderate intensity) on mortality and the existing problems of measurement. Given the diversity of existing proposals to categorize physical activity intensity, we call for a common methodology. Device-based physical activity measurements (e.g., wrist accelerometers) have been proposed as a valid method to measure physical activity intensity. An appraisal of the results reported in the literature, however, highlights that wrist accelerometers have not yet demonstrated sufficient criterion validity when they are compared to indirect calorimetry. Novel biosensors and wrist accelerometers will help us understand how different metrics of physical activity relates to human health, however, all these technologies are not enough mature to provide personalized applications for healthcare or sports performance.

Keywords: reliability; mortality; wrist accelerometers; criterion validity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/11/6027/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/11/6027/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:11:p:6027-:d:1161630

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().