Lifestyle programs focused on high-intensity interval training or the Mediterranean diet have shown results for improving the heart health of people with abdominal obesity, finds a new study.
"Each of these lifestyle interventions alone is known to have an impact, but no one has studied them together in a longer term," says Dr. Mathieu Gayda, one of the study's authors and an exercise physiologist at the Montreal Heart Institute. "Our results show that the combination of the two interventions supersized the benefits to heart health."
The heart health benefits included significant improvements in body fat mass, cholesterol and blood pressure levels, exercise capacity, muscle endurance, weight loss, waist circumference, resting heart rate and blood sugar control.