Adherence
Primary care behavioral counseling interventions targeting diet and physical activity produce small, statistically significant improvements in intermediate cardiovascular risk factors (blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI) in adults without known CVD risk factors, but do not consistently improve long-term health outcomes like mortality or morbidity.
If you are generally healthy, talking to your doctor about diet and exercise will likely lower your blood pressure and cholesterol slightly. However, do not expect this counseling alone to prevent heart attacks or death. The benefits are modest and require sustained effort (high-intensity counseling yields better results).
Diet and physical activity behavioral interventions for adults not at high risk for cardiovascular disease result in consistent modest benefits across a variety of important intermediate health outcomes across 6 to 12 months, including blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein and total cholesterol levels, and adiposity... There was no consistent benefit of the interventions on all-cause or cardiovascular mortality or morbidity
Why this rating
Based on 88 randomized clinical trials involving over 120,000 participants, providing high statistical power for intermediate outcomes.
Source
Behavioral Counseling to Promote a Healthful Diet and Physical Activity for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Adults Without Known Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors
Carrie D. Patnode et al. · JAMA · 2017
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