HoldsUp

Benjamin Levine

Dr. Benjamin Levine is a medical researcher in the fields of cardiology and exercise physiology. His work investigates the cardiovascular impacts of aging and exercise, including methods to address cardiac stiffness and the hemodynamics of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. His published research also covers sports cardiology, autonomic conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and physiological responses to altitude and hypoxia.

72 claims checked on air: 7 context 5 contradicted 2 overstated 50 supported 8 unverified

What they said on air - overstated

3 citing their own research

0:10:14overstatedmoderateDr. Benjamin Levine: How Exercise Prevents & Reverses Heart

Collegiate athletes who had abnormalities on initial COVID triad screening but no cardiopulmonary symptoms had normal cardiac MRI scans.

"We then went on to do cardiac MRIs in a lot of people, a lot of athletes who had abnormalities in this triad, and if they didn't have cardiopulmonary symptoms, they didn't have anything wrong with their heart." (said at 0:10:14)

Large prospective registry data from collegiate athletics cohorts (such as the Outcomes Registry for Cardiac Conditions in Athletes, ORCCA) showed that routine 'cardiac triad' screening (ECG, troponin, echocardiography) had very low yield and high false-positive rates among athletes without cardiopulmonary symptoms. In ORCCA, among 3,018 athletes evaluated after COVID-19 infection, true cardiac involvement was rare (0.7%), and isolated triad abnormalities without symptoms rarely represented true myocarditis on cardiac MRI (CMR). However, stating definitively that none of these athletes 'had anything wrong with their heart' is an overstatement: isolated abnormalities did occasionally correlate with cardiac involvement, and multicenter registries (including the Big Ten COVID-19 Registry) identified subclinical myocardial involvement on CMR even in some asymptomatic athletes.

1:42:08overstatedmoderateDr. Benjamin Levine: How Exercise Prevents & Reverses Heart

Smartwatches that rely solely on photoplethysmography (PPG) are accurate for measuring heart rate at rest but are inaccurate during exercise.

"If you've got a watch, at rest it's pretty accurate. During exercise, the watches that just use the PPG, the plethysmogram, are not accurate." (said at 1:42:08)

While motion artifacts during exercise increase measurement error compared to resting conditions, stating that photoplethysmography (PPG) smartwatches are simply 'not accurate' during exercise is an overstatement. Systematic reviews and validation studies show that while performance varies across device models and activity types, many commercial PPG smartwatches maintain acceptable to high heart rate accuracy during exercise (often with an overall mean bias within ±3% to 5% relative to electrocardiography or telemetry standards).

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