Drugs Alone Don't Lower Heart Disease Risks for Overweight Americans (HealthDay)

MONDAY, May 12 (HealthDay News) -- Daily doses of statins andblood pressure medications will not be enough to prevent heart diseaseamong the ever-growing number of Baby Boomers who are overweight or obese,a new study suggests.

The simple truth, experts say, is that pounds must also be shed to keepcardiovascular trouble away.

"There is a debate out there about whether this generation is going tolive as long as their parents, and the truth is they probably won't," saidstudy author Dr. Gregory L. Burke, director of the division of publichealth sciences at Wake Forest University School of medicine inWinston-Salem, NC.

"My ultimate worry is that we've seen a 50-year decline incardiovascular disease mortality, but if you begin to look at recenttrends, it's beginning to plateau," he added. "And my fear is that becauseof the increase in obesity we're going to begin to see a reversal of thattrend where heart disease rates begin to go up."

The research involving 6,814 men and women aged 45 to 84 revealed aneven greater prevalence of overweight and obesity than shown in similarstudies done five years earlier. Depending on the demographic group,between 60 percent and 85 percent of the participants were overweight andbetween 30 percent and 50 percent were obese, the federally funded studyfound. The obesity epidemic is more likely environmentally thangenetically driven, Burke said. The differences between the weights ofwhite, black and Hispanic Americans are no longer as meaningful, hestressed. Only Chinese-Americans have significantly less obesity (5percent) than other ethnic groups.

A decade ago, experts thought the heart-related risks of obesity couldbe counterbalanced by the treatment of risk factors such as highcholesterol and glucose intolerance, Burke explained. People thought that,"Gosh, all we need to do is treat those risk factors and we can amelioratethe effects of obesity. So, our study looked at whether that is indeedtrue," he added.

It isn't, said Burke, noting that this is where his study breaks newground. There is a relationship between less obvious, subclinicalcardiovascular disease markers, such as the thickening of the walls of thecarotid artery, and obesity, he explained. Even though the overweight andobese people studied hadn't had heart attacks they did show variousmarkers that are predictors of future cardiovascular events, Burke added.This is was true despite the high number of people who were takingmedications for the well-known triad of risk factors of high cholesterol,diabetes and high blood pressure.

Lona Sandon, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, saidthat the findings show that "many of the people who were obese were beingtreated with various medications, but they still were not improving to thepoint where they were decreasing their risk."

The American mentality is that "if I just take those pills, I'll beOK," said Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at theUniversity of Texas Southwestern Medical School. The study "kind of saysyou have to make some changes, some lifestyle changes and some foodchanges, to lead to a healthier weight."

Sandon added that even greater emphasis needs to be placed onprevention. "It's easier to prevent with an hour of exercise a day thancorrect with three hours of exercise a day," she noted. "Hopefully [thestudy] can be some kind of a wake-up call to tell us we need to dosomething more than hand out a prescription."

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