Reducing calories from the diets of aging, obese adults had greater health benefits when combined with regular exercise.Eating better, plus daily exercise was shown to improve the cardiovascular health in people with obesity. GETTY
“This is the first study to assess the effects of aerobic exercise training with and without reducing calories on aortic stiffness, which was measured via cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging to obtain detailed images of the aorta,”, lead author of the study and associate professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at the Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The study employed a randomized controlled trial of 160 obese, sedentary adults, aged 65 to 79. The average age of the group, which was 74 per cent female and 73 per cent white, was 69 years. Subjects were randomly divided into three groups: Exercise plus regular diet, exercise plus moderate calorie restriction and exercise plus intensive calorie restriction . Meals were prepared by a dietician and subjects received supervised exercise instruction four times a week for 20 weeks.
Over the five-month period of the study, researchers found a 10 per cent decrease in body weight was associated with significant improvements in aortic stiffness. This group enjoyed a 21 per cent increase in distensibility and an eight per cent drop in PWV. The other two groups experienced no significant changes to aortic stiffness.
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