Is Dieting or Exercise More Effective at Protecting Against Heart Disease?

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death among men and women in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), some 600,000 Americans die from heart disease each year.

While there's no magic pill to fully protect against heart disease, both diet and exercise can significantly lower the risk. But you might be wondering which is more effective: dieting or exercising? Well, researchers recently embarked on a quest to answer to this question.

For the study, researchers from a Saint Louis University analyzed 52 overweight men and women, splitting them into three groups: one group exercised, another group dieting, and another group both exercised and dieting. Researchers discovered that participants had equal benefits in terms of heart health, regardless of whether they exercised, dieting or did both. All three groups of participants had roughly a 10% lower risk of developing heart disease, dropping their lifetime risk from 46% down to 36%.

The bottom line is that both dieting and exercise are effective ways to protect your heart from disease.

"While our study did not find additive benefits of calorie restriction and exercise on traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, much of the actual risk of developing cardiovascular disease cannot be accounted for by traditional risk factors. Therefore, our findings don't preclude the possibility that dieting and exercise have additive effects for reducing the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, an inactive lifestyle itself is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, although the physiologic mechanisms for this effect are unknown," wrote the study's lead author.

Of course, there are other steps you can take to lower your risk of heart disease, one of which is choosing the right foods. Trans fat has been shown to increase cholesterol levels in the blood and subsequently raise the risk of heart disease. Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, however, have been shown to have the opposite effect: they raise levels of good cholesterol and lower levels of bad cholesterol in the blood, which in turn reduces the risk of heart disease. This is why many experts believe residents in the Mediterranean live longer lives.

This study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.