Some see blood circulation pressure, cholesterol meds as substitute for healthy habits
07 March, 2020
People who begin taking medication to lessen their blood circulation pressure and cholesterol may think they are able to drop healthy lifestyle patterns, a report in Finland suggests.
Researchers surveyed a lot more than 41,000 people with no history of heart disease and found that those who started hypertension and cholesterol medications were much more likely than those that didn’t to lessen on exercise and placed on extra weight.
They were also much more likely to quit smoking, but that didn’t totally explain the volume of weight gained in this group, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
“Unfavorable changes in lifestyle may reduce beneficial effects of medication employ,” coauthor Maarit Korhonen of the University of Turku explained.
In the early 2000s, U.S. surveys discovered that people using cholesterol-lowering statin therapy possessed lower calorie and extra fat intake than non-users, but newer analyses have suggested the contrary is now true, Korhonen and co-workers note in their report.
Which may be because recommendations have expanded the use of statins and blood circulation pressure medications to people at lower risk for cardiovascular disease, said Dr Mary Ann Bauman, a member of the American Heart Association’s national table of directors, who wasn’t mixed up in study.
As prescribing of medication to stave off heart disease expands, Korhonen’s crew wished to learn whether sufferers are more likely to complement their medications with healthier lifestyle changes or more inclined to displace lifestyle initiatives with the medicines.
The survey individuals were all community sector workers, all over age 40 and mostly women of all ages. Each answered a questionnaire at least twice in four-year intervals between 2000 and 2013.
Compared to people who didn’t start medicine during this period, those that did were 82% much more likely to become obese and 8% much more likely to be physically inactive.
“People often feel that taking a medicine will suffice for controlling for an illness and get a false good sense of security that they don’t need to make changes in lifestyle and that the pill will manage the trouble,” Bauman said in a good phone interview.
It is often much easier to have a pill than to make lifestyle alterations such as participating in exercise, taking healthy and maintaining a healthy weight, she added.
The dangers of cigarette smoking are popular and that could be what prompted people to give up the habit, Bauman noted. Intensive public health activities in Finland through the research period, such as for example prohibition of smoking in workplaces and eating places, may also have contributed to the large quit rate, the analysis authors point out.
To get patients to look at or keep up healthy lifestyle habits, clinicians could make an effort learning the patient’s known reasons for changing their lifestyle and take part in discussions to incorporate those motives and preferences right into a regimen they could stick with, Korhonen said.
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