Is Diet Or Exercise More Important For Heart Disease Prevention?

A proper diet and regular exercise should form an indispensable part of a person’s lifestyle should he or she wishes to lower the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke. But if he or she has to make only one choice, which of these two should he or she choose? 

Many people have a misconception that they can simply eat whatever they want and they can simply burn off the excess calories by exercising. Sadly, this might be misleading and unscientific.

Regular physical exercise, as shown by research, is no doubt essential for one to live a long, healthy life as physical activity helps prevent heart disease and stroke as well as other diseases including Alzheimer’s. Exercise also protects the joints from arthritis and pain. However, recent report published in the journal “Obesity Reviews” argued that regular exercise alone rarely helps lose weight, and sometimes even results in weight gain.

Numerous studies, on the other hand, have linked diet improvements to weight loss and lower risks of death and disease, regardless of the participants' exercise habits. Several studies tend to show that in terms of weight loss, diet does play a much bigger role than exercise. Nevertheless, people who have lost weight and are able to keep it off do exercise at the same time. In other words, a person’s health goals should include eating a proper diet and have a regular physical activity.

Problem is that for some people, they just do not have the willpower to tackle both at the same time. If this is the case, they should first focus on improving their diet, according to health experts. Imagine this, if a person wishes to reduce, say 500 calories, he or she needs either to walk 5 miles or to just cut a Snickers bar or similar food that is of 500 calories. Obviously, it is much easier for one to watch the diet than to walk 5 miles every day.

Obesity and overweight can lead to many medical disorders including Type-2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and certain types of cancer. Hence, maintaining a healthy weight is important! This can be done by balancing what is eaten with physical activity. If a person is sedentary, he or she should try to become more active. If one is already active, he or she should continue the same level of activity as he or she ages. Remember this, more physical activity is better than less, and any is better than none.