Cardiologia Hungarica (Feb 2024)
Balance of medical nutrition therapy between weight loss and cardiovascular benefits
Abstract
Although the number of randomized studies on the cardiovascular effects of diets is limited, the benefits of balanced, Mediterranean-type nutrition are convincing even at the level of hard clinical endpoints. There is also definite data that protective foods may be more important than forbidden foods. In order to reduce body weight, completely different dietary methods are also considered suitable by the representative recommendations. At the same time, the reasons for significant differences in efficiency and contradictions between compared, randomized, prospective nutrition studies, which can be detected both in the medium and long term, are not sufficiently clarified. There are also concerns about the cardiovascular safety of weight loss diets. These may be related to the increase in weight fluctuations on the one hand, and to the ketogenic diet on the other. However, we have indirect evidence regarding the cardiovascular benefit of ≥10% weight loss, which is currently considered the main success indicator in the field of obesity treatments.
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