Long-Term Weight Loss & Blood Pressure
Weight Loss & Blood Pressure Study
Summary
Long-term weight loss for people with high blood pressure, who are not
being treated with drugs, brings a sustained reduction in blood pressure.
Weight loss has previously been shown to reduce the need for medication
in hypertensive overweight patients, but nothing is known about the long-term
effects of weight loss on blood pressure in unmedicated patients with
hypertension.
Weight Loss & Blood Pressure Study
Method
The effects of weight changes on blood pressure in 181 overweight hypertensive
patients was studied. The patients had never been treated with antihypertensive
medications, and remained untreated during the 4-year study.
Weight Loss & Blood Pressure Study
Results
In the group as a whole, average body weight did not change much during
the study, the investigators report, but average blood pressures increased
slightly. For individual patients, blood pressure varied directly with
changes in body weight. Also, changes in body weight also paralleled changes
in the size of the left-side chambers of the heart. Heart enlargement
often follows prolonged hypertension and can lead to heart failure.
Heart size decreased in the people who lost weight loss and increased
in those whose weight remained unchanged or increased.
Weight Loss & Blood Pressure Study
Conclusion
Even a modest degree of weight loss over the long term is highly beneficial
in hypertensive overweight-to-obese patients. Losing weight might be considered
as the first and sometimes the only treatment for otherwise low-risk overweight
subjects with high blood pressure.
Source: American Journal of Hypertension,
August 2003.
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