Abstract 12825: Comparison of Workout Heart Rates in Obese and Non-Obese Individuals Using Wearable Devices

Abstract

Introduction: The impact of exercise on the body is influenced by various factors, including obesity. Existing research on how exercise affects heart rates of obese individuals, especially in a real-world, unsupervised setting, is limited. Our study aims to address this gap by comparing heart rates recorded during workouts in both obese and non-obese individuals using Fitbit data from the All of Us database. Methods: This study analyzed data from the "All of Us" Dataset v6, which included data from 258,188 individuals. ICD codes were used to identify people with obesity. A control group was generated using propensity score matching, accounting for age, gender, race, ethnicity, cigarette exposure, drug use, and Charlson Comorbidity Score. The heart rates during Fitbit-recorded workouts were analyzed for both the obesity cohort and the control group. The maximum and minimum heart rates for each workout session were averaged per individual, and the mean of these averages was compared between the two groups. Results: A total of 63,704 obese and 63,704 matched non-obese individuals were analyzed. Demographics for the two groups were not significantly different for variables used for matching. By recruiting available Fitbit workout data and after discarding erroneous data points, 160,248 workout records from 1,092 obese individuals and 142,065 records from 967 non-obese individuals were included in the study. The mean and the standard deviation (SD) of the average minimum and maximum heart rate for the non-obese group were 99.98 (SD=12.24) and 127.53 (SD=13.06), respectively, and for the obese group were 101.05 (SD=11.61) and 128.55 (SD=12.53), respectively (Figure 1). Conclusion: The heart rates, both maximum and minimum, during workouts were found to be higher in the obese group compared to the non-obese control group. This difference was statistically significant but small, and further research is warranted regarding the less-than-expected difference in heart rates.