Posted by 
A new Northwestern Medicine study found that a lifestyle intervention could change unhealthy behaviors that increase the risk of developing heart disease and common cancers like breast, colon and prostate. Prevention of chronic disease through behavior change is feasible.
They contradict the pessimistic assumption that it’s not possible to motivate relatively healthy people to make long-lasting healthy lifestyle changes,” said lead author Bonnie Spring, director of the Center for Behavior and Health in the Institute for Public Health and Medicine and professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
A smartphone app, a wearable activity tracker, some social support from a coach and a small financial incentive, study participants made large improvements in their eating and activity habits. From a starting point of less than two servings of fruits and vegetables per day, they increased their intake by 6.5 servings per day.
They decreased saturated fat intake by 3.6 percent to consume less than 8 percent of their calories from saturated fat. From a baseline of 4.5 hours per day of leisure screen time, they decreased screen time by almost three hours and increased their moderate to vigorous exercise by 25 minutes per day over a nine-month trial.
Participants were able to achieve the same gains whether they implemented all four diet and exercise changes simultaneously or sequentially (changing two or three first and then changing other behaviors later). Between 2012 and 2014, the study enrolled 212 Chicago-area adults, primarily female (76 percent), minority (59 percent), college educated (69 percent) and with a mean age of 41 years old. All participants had low fruit and vegetable and high saturated fat intakes, low moderate to vigorous physical activity and high sedentary leisure screen time.
Participants used smartphones and accelerometers to track their activity and behavior, which they also sent to a coach who monitored whether they were tracking and how they were eating and being active. Giving accelerometer feedback to the participant and their coach is the way to improve diet and activity habits, because the coach can support when they know what’s going on.
haleplushearty.org