All three of the devices accurately measured energy expenditure when the volunteers walked briskly, Dr. Meckes and his colleagues found; their estimates closely matched those of the oxygen-consumption monitor.

But the devices were far less reliable in tracking the energy costs of light-intensity activities like standing or cleaning, often misinterpreting them as physical immobility. Only the calorie cost of typing was overestimated, and only by the armband monitor, which considered the arm movements involved to be far more dynamic than they actually are.

These miscalculations echo those of the findings from several other new studies. One, also reported at the sports medicine meeting, involved 74 adults, young and old, who wore an armband accelerometer and a portable oxygen-consumption gauge while walking, jogging, riding a stationary bicycle, windmilling an arm ergometer, and completing so-called activities of daily living, like lifting boxes and sweeping.

The study also found these devices to be “terrible” at accurately measuring bicycle pedaling, one of my own personal favorite physical activities.  Here’s more from the article:

The question, of course, is whether it matters if the devices are inaccurate, especially if they underestimate daily energy expenditure, and perhaps fiendishly spur some at-home users to move more, thinking that they’ve expended less energy than they actually have.

The studies’ researchers think the inaccuracies do matter. “There’s a growing consensus” among exercise scientists, Dr. Meckes says, “that people should spend less time in sedentary activities, like sitting,” and instead stand up, stroll or sweep more. But if people get the idea from their activity monitors that such activities don’t really count, in terms of movement and calorie expenditure, “it may be harder to get that message across,” he says.

However, here is another key excerpt from the article and basically the upshot for us at DE:

• Inviting others within your organization (or “group”) to directly join your conference.

• Move challenge participants between teams within your conference.

• Assign team captain rights.

• Assign conference captain rights.

• Email challenge participants individually.

• Email entire teams.

• Email entire conference.

• Email the main challenge group administrator.

• Reset passwords for challenge participants.

…the wellness industry is moving toward an outcomes-based incentive model that measures health outcomes such as tobacco use, BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure or blood glucose levels. Penalizing smoking is most popular among wellness programs, with many employers applying a premium surcharge against smokers. But employers can reward or apply a penalty for each metric. According to Frank Hone, managing director of Healthcentric Partners, Inc., many employers are considering structuring incentives as a tiered health plan, similar to the auto insurance market.

In terms of implementation, Hone suggests determining how a wellness incentive structure fits in with the employer’s overall human capital approach and company culture. Another factor is whether the employer is more paternalistic or leans toward a model of accountability based on the insurance plan selected. A value-based plan or consumer-driven health plan would have accountability built into the overall structure. For example, employees could earn additional contributions into their health savings accounts by participating in a health coaching series or achieving a health goal.

The article also provides some quality general guidance on staying in compliance with HIPAA and ACA rules and regulations:

Downs recommends employers implement wellness incentives as part of a group health plan to avoid litigation under discrimination of employment laws. She adds that employers should pay attention to state laws because some states allow for smokers’ rights.

The number one red flag she sees is prohibiting individuals from enrolling into a health plan until they lower their BMI or achieve another health outcome, which could violate HIPAA’s discrimination rule.

To avoid penalties, she suggests that “the more aggressive the wellness program, the more cautious the employer should be before implementing it and getting legal counsel before applying incentives.”

And eventually self-reported data will need to be supplemented by more hard data to confirm outcomes more objectively:

Cigna’s Herbek believes the next stage in incentive programs will be making metric reporting easier to monitor. Instead of self-reporting data or measuring health status in a lab, self-monitoring devices that are objective will measure the individual’s health.

Go read the whole article here today.

Wellness is about more than reducing health care costs. It’s about creating massive value for organizations. Some might suggest this is stretching reality a bit. Those people have never seen a wellness program properly implemented and continually supported over time.

His post also does a nice job of explaining why we need to step away from the spreadsheet, look at the bigger picture, and understand there are multiple (many of them often hidden) factors involved in measure true “ROI” resulting from wellness programs:

One recent report cited, almost apologetically, that although there was no short-term financial return, the wellness program in question did reduce hospitalizations by 40% for targeted conditions. It’s a sad day when there’s not enough value in preventing numerous employees from having heart attacks to unequivocally declare such a program as being a wild success, simply because these outcomes didn’t immediately deliver a hard financial return.

As the author puts it so eloquently, why not just do the right things for the right reasons and then expect the desired (and some unexpected) results to follow?  Be sure to go read the whole blog post right away and then possibly re-think your wellness program strategy if you’re putting too much focus on hard ROI.

DailyEndorphin’s platform offers simplicity with configurability.  Tufts Health Plan noted their clients sought help with administering and tracking onsite group fitness challenges.  The agreement with DailyEndorphin helps Tufts Health Plan meet a growing demand for effective wellness tools for employers of all sizes.

“We at DailyEndorphin look forward to our partnership with Tufts Health Plan that will offer a highly configurable and effective group wellness platform to its clients over the next 12 months and beyond,” said Jeff Mann, DailyEndorphin Co-founder.

Expectations from employees and rising healthcare costs have fueled the adoption of online wellness programs.  Recent studies have shown that the healthiest employees are nearly three times more productive than unhealthy ones and are nine times less likely to be out sick.  And a top university study showed over 160% improvement in behavior change when individuals received support from online teammates.

Research has also shown that the right incentives combined with group-based challenges can increase engagement among employees.  The result means an overall healthier workforce.  In turn, employees will experience higher morale, greater productivity, and less illness and absenteeism.

Tufts Health Plan, which recently received accreditation from the National Committee for Quality Assurance for Wellness & Health Promotion, encourages and supports employers in implementing a comprehensive wellness program that incorporates senior management support, policy and environmental changes, and measurement.   Providing behavior change programs is a part of the cultural changes that employers can offer to employees to support a healthy lifestyle.

Marybeth Allen, Tufts Health Plan Clinical Consultant, said:  “We are excited to be able to offer DailyEndorphin’s platform to employers offering group fitness challenges to their employees.   DailyEndorphin’s platform provides an easy to use online resource for employers who want to offer team challenges to employees.”

About DailyEndorphin

DailyEndorphin offers a simple and configurable solution for wellness.  An administrator can initiate a team-based wellness challenge for any size population in minutes. The platform offers configurable challenges for fitness, nutrition, and wellness with back-end reporting and administrative control.  DailyEndorphin’s mission is to enable people to live a healthier, happier life in the context of supportive social networks. They do so by making wellness easier for everyone.

Visit www.DailyEndorphin.com to learn more.

Or check their Facebook page and follow DailyEndorphin on Twitter.

About Tufts Health Plan

Tufts Health Plan is a nonprofit organization nationally recognized for its commitment to providing innovative, high-quality health care coverage. The plan offers members and employers an array of health management programs, which support evidence-based approaches to health and wellness.

Visit us at www.tuftshealthplan.com.

I’m pleased to release our new group administrator challenge manual for your ongoing use and reference.  This document should help make it super easy to start and administer your own “DIY” fitness or wellness challenge with colleagues, friends, or family.

You may continually access this manual in your group admin page (those with group admin rights only), or here:

Group Admin Wellness Challenge Manual

This document should give you all the information you need to start and run any of our configurable fitness & wellness challenge in just a few minutes time.  Please contact us at support@dailyendorphin.com you you have a question about a key item that does not appear in the manual.

Enjoy!

Notably, the researchers found that staying up late and getting just five hours of sleep increased a person’s metabolism. Sleep-deprived participants actually burned an extra 111 calories a day, according to the findings published last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But even though we burn more calories when we stay awake, losing sleep is not a good way to lose weight. The light sleepers ended up eating far more than those who got nine hours of sleep, and by the end of the first week the sleep-deprived subjects had gained an average of about two pounds.

It also turns out that not only do people generally eat more when getting less sleep, but we consumed food that was unhealthier for us and ate bigger meals at the wrong times of day:

In fact, sleep-deprived eaters ended up eating more calories during after-dinner snacking than in any other meal during the day. Over all, people consumed 6 percent more calories when they got too little sleep. Once they started sleeping more, they began eating more healthfully, consuming fewer carbohydrates and fats. Dr. Wright noted that the effect of sleep deprivation on weight would likely be similar in the real world although it might not be as pronounced as in the controlled environment. The researchers found that insufficient sleep changed the timing of a person’s internal clock, and that in turn appeared to influence the changes in eating habits. “They were awake three hours before their internal nighttime had ended,” Dr. Wright said. “Being awakened during their biological night is probably why they ate smaller breakfasts.”

The effect was similar to the jet lag that occurs when a person travels from California to New York.

Go read the whole article now and then let us know your thoughts!

The industry is guilty because it knew what the consequences of its actions might be. Large food processors employed a flock of Ph.D. nutritionists and food scientists. The connection between calorie consumption and weight gain was always as plain as the number on the bathroom scale. But instead of acknowledging this and taking corrective action to sell a better product more responsibly, food processors played innocent by blending in with the crowd of causes. It’s time to end the charade and mandate the needed changes that the industry has refused to make. 

The following are his main prescriptions to start forcing change on the industry:

Levy federal and state excise taxes on sugared beverages and a few categories — snack foods, candy, sweet baked goods — that most undermine health. These taxes could help pay for education programs, subsidize the healthiest foods for low-income individuals and, maybe, discourage consumption.

Make mandatory the federal guidelines for marketing food to children that were proposed in 2011. These guidelines — written jointly by the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Agriculture — were only to be voluntary, and still lobbyists for the food industry persuaded Congress to block them.

Is he right or wrong?  What other things can be done within the food industry and our culture itself to begin facilitating big changes for the better on this front?  Before you judge for yourself and weigh in here, go read the Op Edfor yourself.

A study of workplace emails found a strong link between the frequency coworkers emailed each other and body mass index (BMI), a measure used to determine obesity. The analysis of emails found obese co-workers were more likely to email each other.

Study co-author Dr. Elizabeth Rula, executive director and principal investigator at the Healthways Center for Health Research, told CBSNews.com her team was surprised to find this link in a random assortment of emails. She hopes these social networks at the workplace can be used to spread more healthful messages.

The following are details on how the study was conducted:

The study, published in a February issue of PLoS One, involved employees working at several U.S. offices of Healthways who had been screened for their BMIs, a ratio of height over weight. People with a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 are considered normal weight, those with a BMI 25 to 29.9 are overweight and those with a BMI of 30 or greater are considered obese, according to the National Institutes of Health.

After reviewing more than 5 million emails from more than 2,000 employees, the researchers mapped a corporate social network that showed which employees were most influential to their peers and which employees were more likely to pick up certain health traits, in this case being thin or overweight.

Since most companies have access to employees’ emails, Rula thinks targeting a particular person in a social network with lots of influence may be an ideal way to promote a healthy campaigns in the workplace.

Be sure to go read the whole article today and offer your thoughts in our comments section on some of things your employer is doing to effectively tap the social networks dynamic to promote greater health & wellness among employees.