The detailed explanation follows:
good news for the heart According to a recent study in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, losing those extra pounds over the long run, even if there is a modest weight gain, can benefit your heart. For those who have struggled to sustain weight reduction and worried about the potential health dangers associated with gaining weight again, this discovery is a huge relief. The results imply that the overall effect on heart health goes beyond changes in weight, providing hope to people who are trying to improve their cardiovascular health.
Researchers examined information from 124 clinical studies involving more than 50,000 people for their new analysis. They made an interesting discovery: those who lost weight through rigorous behavioral programs had a decrease in risk factors for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes and continued to experience this lower risk for years after finishing the programs. The favorable effects persisted even if they did not lose all of the weight back.
Susan Jebb, a co-author and professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, succinctly put it this way in an email: “As long as your weight stays lower than it would have been otherwise, your risk factors for heart disease remain lower too.” How amazing is that?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 in 5 persons in the United States are obese, and heart disease is the leading cause of mortality, accounting for 697,000 deaths in 2020.
The current analysis included trials that examined the effects of behavioral weight management programs on heart disease risk factors and had follow-up periods of at least one year, such as those that included counseling, coaching, and education. The trials had an average follow-up of 28 months.
The trials that were reviewed compared participants who took part in such rigorous weight reduction regimens to those who followed less rigorous regimens or no regimen at all. Studies included in the research used intermittent fasting, partial or complete meal replacement, diet or exercise interventions, or both, as well as financial incentives linked to weight loss.
The average weight loss across the included trials was 5 to 10 pounds, and the average weight gain per year ranged from 0.26 to 0.7 pounds. The individuals were obese because, on average, they were 51 years old and had a body mass index of 33.
Those in intensive programs saw improvements in a number of heart disease risk variables when compared to the control groups:
One year later, the average systolic blood pressure was 1.5 points lower, and five years later, it was still 0.4 points lower. (The top number in a blood pressure reading is the systolic pressure.)
HbA1c, a measure of a person’s blood sugar during the previous three months, decreased with weight loss, and at one and five years after the trials’ conclusion, it still performed better than the control group, despite starting to climb again with weight gain.
With weight loss, the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol, a marker of LDL cholesterol levels, increased, albeit the improvements diminished as weight was gained again.
The benefits of losing weight do start to regress as a person regains weight, but Jebb said, “At least you have reduced the metabolic burden on your body for a period of time,” adding, “That can be enough to delay the onset of diabetes, for example, which has a big benefit for your heart.”
Overall results indicated a decreased risk of heart attack and diabetes, but there is less data on these outcomes “because most trials don’t follow up for a long time,” according to Jebb.
People in intensive programs had decreased risk compared to those in the control groups, according to a selection of studies that did look at the risk of developing heart disease or Type 2 diabetes. And even after weight gain, the risk remained reduced.
The NYU Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and preventive cardiologist Dr. Sean Heffron concurred that more research is still required to understand the long-term effects on “the outcomes we really care about: heart attack, stroke, and death.”
The participants in this study, he said, were on the younger side, and it takes a long time for someone to die of heart disease.
But as Heffron, who wasn’t involved in this new study, pointed out, the results support what we see with numerous heart-related hazards in real-life circumstances. They appear to respond well to weight loss even when those risk levels are only marginally off.
Interventional cardiologist Dr. Matthew Tomey, an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, compared shedding pounds to depositing cash in a savings account.
He views losing weight as an investment in your health, much like making a bank deposit. Obesity reduction has advantages regardless of when it occurs in life since it reduces risk factors. Tomey, who was not involved in the study, underlines that making an investment in your health will pay off in the long run. He understands that reaching and keeping a target weight can be challenging, but he counsels perseverance. Every effort counts toward achieving improved health, after all.