Research

Energy balance

Caloric restriction leading to ≥5% weight loss significantly reduces inflammatory biomarkers (hs-CRP, IL-6, SAA, neutrophils) in overweight/obese postmenopausal women, whereas exercise without weight loss does not.

For postmenopausal women, simply exercising more will not significantly reduce inflammation. To lower inflammatory markers like CRP and IL-6, you must achieve a weight loss of at least 5% of your body weight through caloric restriction. Exercise is beneficial for fitness but is not a substitute for weight loss when the goal is reducing inflammation.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Diet and diet + exercise participants with 5% or more weight loss reduced inflammatory biomarkers (hs-CRP, SAA, and IL-6) compared with controls... Although exercisers who lost 5% or more of baseline weight reduced hs-CRP by 19.1%, the effect did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.088 vs. control).
Ikuyo Imayama et al. · Cancer Research · 2012

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with a large sample size (N=439) and blinded outcome assessment.

Source

Effects of a Caloric Restriction Weight Loss Diet and Exercise on Inflammatory Biomarkers in Overweight/Obese Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Ikuyo Imayama et al. · Cancer Research · 2012

DOI 10.1158/0008-5472.can-11-3092

rct · n=439Cited 244×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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