With many "lifestyle" diseases on the rise, medical doctors and insurance companies alike are searching to find new ways to maintain health and prevent and control diseases. With obesity reaching epidemic proportions, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction to combat the trend. Health providers are now looking more closely at diet and exercise as a way to prevent disease.
Maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle is important for several reasons. Health maintenance through diet and exercise helps to prevent loss of bone mass and vitamin deficiency. A healthy diet helps to prevent diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis, some cancers and obesity. A healthy diet can also help to treat and control diseases like lupus, high blood pressure, diabetes, celiac disease and mellitus.
The body runs on a cocktail of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals to sustain healthy organ function. Vitamins and minerals are essential to the body and are necessary for proper growth and proper functioning of systems inside the body.
With obesity and heart disease on the rise, they are a major public health issue for the United States and other countries. Many of the dietary recommendations nowadays are aimed at the preventing these two diseases. Obesity occurs when a person eats more calories than the body burns off. When obesity becomes chronic, then other diseases start to develop such as heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, just to name a few.
Losing weight requires that people take in more low energy-dense foods. These foods include vegetables and fruits. Foods like this contain few calories per unit so a person can consume large volumes without taking in many calories. High energy-dense foods like sweets, fried foods and foods containing trans fats. These foods have high cholesterol and saturated fat content which has been linked to heart disease. Avoiding processed foods is also recommended.
In 2005, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a new guideline detailing changes in the dietary recommendations for Americans. The new guidelines emphasize more fruit, vegetable, whole grains and lean meats. There also should be close attention paid to saturated fats and added sugars.
Eating healthy nowadays is more complicated than ever. We are often victims of our own convenient society that we've forgotten how to listen to our bodies and our own instincts for health. In our highly industrialized and technical world we've gotten away from knowing where food comes from. These guidelines are one voice in the din of many. I hope that we may all choose to listen more carefully.
After conducting a series of experiments and clinical studies in the last few years, medical scientists have concluded that cholesterol-lowering drugs alone are most often inefficient in controlling cholesterol levels and reducing the risk of heart disease. Medical scientists claim that without proper diet and regular physical exercise, cholesterol-lowering drugs can neither prevent cholesterol build-up nor reverse the damage caused by cholesterol deposition inside the organism. Regardless or their nature, cholesterol-lowering drugs are only efficient when supported by a proper dietary plan and plenty of physical exercise. Overweight persons who follow treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs are also advised to lose weight in order to maximize the efficiency of such medications and considerably reduce the risk of heart disease.
The results of several recently conducted medical experiments have clearly suggested that even the most efficient cholesterol-lowering drugs are no substitute for proper diet and regular exercise. According to scientists, the risk of heart disease increases proportionally to bad cholesterol levels (bad cholesterol is a viscous, fatty substance that accumulates inside the body, obstructing the arteries; the higher the levels of bad cholesterol, the greater the risk of coronary disease and heart attack) and BMI (body mass index). Overweight persons who follow treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs may in time have balanced cholesterol levels. However, a high BMI (due to inappropriate diet and lack of physical exercise) can still pose a serious threat to one's life; due to this fact, lots of persons with weight problems who are administered treatments with cholesterol-lowering drugs are not safe from coronary disease and other high-cholesterol associated problems.
The most relevant and conclusive experiment upon this matter has been recently conducted by an experienced team of medical researchers. The experiment involved the participation of 409 patients confronted with cholesterol problems, heart disease and obstruction of the coronary arteries. The patients were divided into 3 separate groups and were studied over a period of 5 years. The first group included 92 subjects who followed a doctor-prescribed treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs, kept a strict diet and exercised regularly, working hard to maintain normal cholesterol levels (LDL ? bad cholesterol under the value of 90 and HDL ? good cholesterol above the value of 45). The second group included patients who didn't take cholesterol-lowering drugs, had an unhealthy diet and a physically inactive lifestyle. The last group included patients who followed a doctor-prescribed treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs but kept no healthy diet and didn't exercise regularly.
By the end of the study, the results were more than conclusive: around 8 percent of patients in the first group had a heart attack or stroke over the period of the study; around 31 percent of patients in group two had a heart attack or stroke; around 24 percent of patients in the third group had a heart attack or stroke. Compared to the second groups, the first group (patients who received cholesterol-lowering drugs, kept a healthy diet and exercised regularly) was exposed to the lowest risk of heart failure or stroke as a result of abnormally high cholesterol levels.
The results of the experiment clearly suggest that cholesterol-lowering drugs, proper diet and regular physical exercise should go hand in hand. In order to minimize the risks of heart attack and stroke, patients with cholesterol problems are advised not to rely entirely on medications; they should respect an appropriate dietary plan and exercise frequently.
Article Source :
About Author
Both Frank Abbott & Groshan Fabiola are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Frank Abbott has sinced written about articles on various topics from Travel Insurance, Health Insurance. Frank Abbott is a freelance writer and is passionate about health and fitness. If you'd like more information on how insurance companies can reduce premiums in conjunction with healthy lifestyle choices, go to. Frank Abbott's top article generates over 1300 views. to your Favourites.
Groshan Fabiola has sinced written about articles on various topics from Woman Menopause, Medical Condition and Health. If you want to find great information about many subjects like. Groshan Fabiola's top article generates over 6120000 views. to your Favourites.