Diet or exercise: What's best for the middle-aged heart?
If you're a middle-aged couch potato in serious need of boosting your heart health, is it better to exercise or diet?
New research says dieting, exercising or a combination of the two can all get the job done about equally well as long as you lose some weight.
But the study authors added that exercising in tandem with dieting is probably the best way to go.
The researchers designed the three study interventions so people participating would drop about 7 percent of their body weight -- through any method -- over a roughly three-month period.
The study showed it didn't seem to matter which intervention people chose to lose weight. Participants in all three groups saw their lifetime cardiovascular risk drop from 46 percent to 36 percent.
"Exercise and a low-calorie healthy diet are both known to improve risk factors for cardiovascular disease, even in the absence of weight loss," said study lead author Edward Weiss. He's an associate professor at Saint Louis University's department of nutrition and dietetics, in Missouri. Read More: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/09/15/Diet-or-exercise-Whats-best-for-the-middle-aged-heart/1611473958583/
