A new study suggests researchers may be concentrating so much on pharmaceutical interventions that they downplay or even ignore the health benefits of exercise.
The metaepidemiological study, released online October 1 by BMJ, found existing randomized trial results show that exercise and drug interventions may provide similar mortality benefits in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and the prevention of diabetes, that exercise was more effective than drug treatment among patients recovering from stroke, but that diuretics were more effective than exercise in heart failure (http://bit.ly/1bbnFlt). The findings are based on data from 4 exercise and 12 drug meta-analyses along with 3 recent exercise trials.