Diet & Exercise Ineffective for Type II Heart Risks

A few things of note:

  1. All participants were overweight or obese… 5145 participants in total… study length was 11 yrs
  2. Control group and exercise/diet group experienced same rate of cardiovascular problems
  3. Exercise/diet group lost 5% of body weight… on 1500-1800kcal per day and 175 minutes of moderate activity a week
  4. Exercise/diet group used fewer medications than the control group

With over 5000 participants, the study was most likely done by self-reporting. And, the study isn’t published yet, so we do not know the rate of compliance to the diet and exercise program. I suspect actual compliance was very low. Even with Type II Diabetes, a 1500-1800kcal diet should have resulted in losing more than 5% body weight… especially in overweight and obese individuals. If you add in 3 1-hour walks, further weight loss should have occurred. At 5% of total bodyweight lost, these individuals were still overweight or obese. They still had all of the negative factors that excess body fat brings. Even with losing that small amount of weight, they were able to use less medication than the control group.

I will be really interested to see this study when it is published. Too many unknowns to make a conclusion.

I’d like to read to study when it gets published, I hate getting info via the media.

You raise a good point about the diets. I’ll be surprised if they don’t indicate the decrease in medication needed as a partial success given side affects of statins etc.