It’s pretty sad, but in today’s society, it is common to boast and brag. It is also common to make things seem much better or worse than they really are. We see marketers do it every day through the advertising they bombard us with. Who hasn’t bought something after watching a TV commercial only to find out it wasn’t half as good as claimed? Well, what you’re about to read is different and without any hype, it could change both your health and your future. With rising insurance costs in the United States and other countries, this information may also save you a lot of money and time.
Here’s what this is all about: Healthcare professionals want to give their patients the best possible treatments but how does a doctor know which treatment is best? Scientific research is used to determine which treatments work, which treatments do not work, and which treatments do more harm than good. Countless medications have been scientifically tested over the years, and new drugs are often compared with older pharmaceuticals to prove their efficacy. However, very few studies actually directly compare drugs with exercise to treat common health conditions and diseases. Until now…
Huseyin Naci, a graduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Dr. John Ioannidis, the Director of the StanfordPreventionResearchCenter at the Stanford University School of Medicine, studied the effectiveness of both drugs and exercise in lessening mortality among people who had been diagnosed with either heart disease, chronic heart failure, stroke, or diabetes.
The two researchers gathered all of the recent randomized controlled trials, reviews, and meta-analyses of older experiments relating to mortality among patients with those illnesses, and whether the study participants had been treated with drugs or exercise.
In total, they studied information from 305 studies, which included a total of 340,000 participants. Most of these past studies focused on pharmaceuticals like . Only 14,716 of the subjects were prescribed exercise to treat their disease.
The results of their study were published in the October 2013 issue of the British Medical Journal. Their conclusion: “No statistically detectable differences were evident between exercise and drug interventions in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and pre-diabetes. Physical activity interventions were more effective than drug treatment among patients with stroke. Diuretics were more effective than exercise in heart failure…
“Although limited in quantity, existing randomized trial evidence on exercise interventions suggests that exercise and many drug interventions are often potentially similar in terms of their mortality benefits in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease, rehabilitation after stroke, treatment of heart failure, and prevention of diabetes.”
WOW!
According to this study, both drugs and exercise are more or less just as effective as treatments for those common and life-threatening diseases.
But here is what the study did NOT mention… Exercise is cheaper and does not come with dangerous side-effects!
What Does This Mean for You? Clearly, health care is changing. With the restructuring of insurance in many countries and an aging population, it must change. Expensive treatments will be cut if cheaper and just as (or more) effective therapies are found. (Or, at least they should be.) Clearly, insurance coverage is not what it used to be. Many times, patients have to pay huge sums of money out-of-pocket, even if they are insured by private or government insurance plans. Who wants to pay all that money if it can be avoided?
But even more important is doing what’s best for YOU. If exercise can help keep you healthy so you do not end up with heart disease, diabetes, etc., then it makes sense to add it to your lifestyle. Imagine what combining exercise, eating right, stress reduction, and chiropractic care can do for your long-term health.