Research
Mixed
Lifestyle modification interventions significantly reduce systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, triglycerides, waist circumference, and fasting blood glucose in patients with MetS, but do not significantly improve HDL levels.
Lifestyle changes effectively lower blood pressure, triglycerides, waist size, and blood glucose in people with MetS. However, you should not expect a significant increase in HDL ('good') cholesterol from these changes alone. Focus on the other improvements for better health outcomes.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
LMI ... significantly reduced mean values for SBP by -6.4 mmHg ... DBP by -3.3 mmHg ... triglycerides by -12.0 mg/dl ... waist circumference by -2.7 cm ... and fasting blood glucose by -11.5 mg/dl ... but reductions were not significant for HDL
Why this rating
Meta-analysis of RCTs.
Source
Effects of lifestyle modification on metabolic syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Kazue Yamaoka et al. · BMC Medicine · 2012
DOI 10.1186/1741-7015-10-138
Meta-analysis · 8 studiesCited 409×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
Related findings · Mixed
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