Four popular diets work equally well, heart doctors report - HDL AND LDL

Posted on Mon, Nov. 10, 2003

Four popular diets work equally well, heart doctors report
BY ROBYN SURIANO
The Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla. - (KRT) - Agonizing over which diet will help you drop
the most pounds? No need. New research out Sunday suggests any will do.

In the first study of its kind, people lost about the same amount of
weight in a year using four vastly different approaches - from noshing on
meat and cheese in the high-fat Atkins diet to consuming low-fat, vegetarian
fare on the Ornish plan.

The participants weighed an average of 220 pounds and, overall, those
who stayed in the Boston-based study for the year dropped 10 to 20 pounds -
no matter which diet they were assigned.

The study confirmed the obvious: Those who followed their plans most
closely lost even more, up to 50 pounds.

But researchers said there is a deeper point in the data, presented
Sunday in Orlando, Fla., on the opening day of the American Heart
Association's annual meeting.

"Demonstrating that all four of these popular diets can work is the
best-case scenario," said Dr. Michael Dansinger, lead researcher of the
study done at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston.

"We now have a wide variety of eating strategies that have been
tested," he said. "Rather than trying to match every patient and every
individual with one plan, I would propose the best way is to match up an
individual's food preference with the best strategy for them."

Weight loss is a crucial issue for Americans, with 60 percent of the
population either overweight or obese. Doctors at the heart association's
scientific meeting were told to brace for the onslaught of heart disease
that will follow the extra pounds in the ensuing decades.

"The trends in obesity and its complications threaten to erode the
advances that we have made due to smoking cessation and blood-pressure"
control, said Dr. Augustus O. Grant, a cardiologist at Duke University
Medical Center in North Carolina and president of the association.

The dieting study involved 160 people randomly assigned to one of the
plans: Atkins, which is low-carbohydrate and high protein; the Zone, which
is moderate carbohydrate; Weight Watchers, which focuses on calorie control;
and Ornish, which is low-fat and vegetarian.

The purpose was to examine the effects of dieting alone, so the
participants did not take part in a plan's full program, such as the weekly
meetings that come with Weight Watchers.

Instead, people were given cookbooks for their particular eating
plans, and the first two months included small-group classes with a
dietitian and a physician. Exercise wasn't required either, though some
engaged in moderate workouts at first. By the end of the study, most
described their exercise level as low.

Some dieters from all four groups dropped out of the study, but the
Atkins and Ornish plans lost the most, with about 50 percent of their
members dropping out.

Researchers also did blood testing to see how the diets affected
cholesterol and other factors, such as blood-sugar levels. Dansinger said
all four diets seemed to have potential for decreasing the risk of heart
disease.

The Atkins, Weight Watchers and Zone plans raised levels of
high-density lipoproteins in the blood, or HDL, the so-called "good"
cholesterol that cleans the body of the "bad" or low-density lipoproteins,
LDLs.

The Ornish plan did not raise HDL as much, but it lowered the LDL
levels. The diet's creator, Dr. Dean Ornish, said there still is benefit in
cutting down the amount of bad cholesterol.

Likening high-density lipoproteins to garbage trucks, Ornish said, "If
you have less garbage, you need fewer garbage trucks to get rid of it."

In all, doctors said, the best plan is one to which the dieter will
adhere.

Laura Napolitano of Winter Park, Fla., tried the Atkins plan once but
couldn't follow it for long, saying it just didn't seem healthy to her. The
22-year-old junior at the University of Central Florida is now six months
into Weight Watchers and more than 30 pounds lighter.

"I feel 10 times better because I'm finally getting my five fruits and
vegetables a day," said Napolitano, who says her new approach to food is
something she'll follow for life. "I can never see myself eating the way I
used to."

While people struggle to find the best weight-loss plan, doctors will
be waiting for more research to help them guide overweight patients in their
choices.

Dr. Robert Eckel, chairman of the American Heart Association's council
on nutrition, physical activity and metabolism, said the new study - which
ended at a year - doesn't show whether one diet is better than another at
preventing the onset of heart disease.

"Show me data five years from now in terms of how these diets worked,"
Eckel said. "I'm not discounting this study, but the bottom line is, we
don't really know much more than we did before."

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© 2003, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).


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Ken

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