News - Hypertension Week of October 26, 2003/ Vol. 2 No. 43

Study to See Whether Diet Combined With Exercise Can Control Blood Pressure

Duke University Medical Center researchers will study whether changing the behavior of those with hypertension through diet and exercise can lead to significant reductions in their blood pressure levels.

Researcher James Blumenthal, a psychologist at the medical center, said a behavioral remedy would be better than commonly used medications to treat high blood pressure since they are not always successful and can be costly and cause unwanted side effects.

"We hope that combining both dietary and weight loss approaches will lead to even greater blood pressure reductions," said Blumenthal, who has organized a 120-patient clinical trial supported by a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Study participants will be placed on a diet known as DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), a reduced-fat regimen that includes four to five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, and three daily servings of low-fat dairy foods.

Instead of a controlled setting, Duke researchers will evaluate how those on this diet fare in a real-world setting, where the participants have to shop for the food, prepare it and eat it in their own homes.

The researchers will assign the participants to one of three groups -- the DASH diet alone, the DASH diet combined with a behavioral weight-loss program that includes exercise or a usual care control group.

In addition to studying the effects of these different strategies on blood pressure, the researchers also plan to see if diet and exercise can have a positive effect by reducing vascular stiffness.

Other sources: Duke University