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Take More Steps to Ward Off Sickness

sick

Good news for regular exercisers: The more active you are, the less likely you are to get sick. At least that’s according to data compiled by Jawbone®, a manufacturer of wearable tracking devices.

The company wanted to determine a person’s likelihood of becoming sick, so it compiled a variety of self-reported data pulled from the Jawbone UP app. Based on that information, data analysts developed a sickness likelihood score. Here’s a rundown of what Jawbone learned:

  • People are more likely to fall ill during winter months.
  • Individuals with higher BMIs tend to become sick more often, unless aged 55–64. People in that age group are more sickness prone if they fall within lower BMI categories.
  • Men aged 25–45 who take an average of 14,000 steps daily are four times less likely to become sick than those taking fewer than 4,000 steps daily.
  • When sick, most people see a decrease in steps of 5%–12% and an increase in sleep time of 5%–7%.

Ryan Halvorson

Ryan Halvorson is an award-winning writer and editor, and IDEA's director of event programming.

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