Two simple habits may outperform a popular longevity wonder drug: study
A buzzy diabetes drug that’s been hailed as a longevity booster may have some competition.The decades-old medication metformin has been touted for everything from treating Type 2 diabetes and reducing the risk of long COVID to potentially slowing the aging process.But a new study published in JAMA found that another intervention did a better job of reducing the risk of developing multiple chronic diseases over two decades of follow-up.And unlike a prescription medication, it’s available to virtually everyone.
The findings come from an analysis of participants in the landmark Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) and its follow-up study, the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study DPPOS, which tracked thousands of adults from 1996 through 2021.The winning strategy? Rigorous exercise and a healthy, balanced diet.Researchers found that among adults with prediabetes, lifestyle intervention — specifically a low-fat, low-calorie diet and at least 150 minutes of physical activity each week — was associated with a lower burden of multimorbidity over more than two decades of follow-up.Metformin, meanwhile, performed no better than a placebo.Multimorbidities refers to having two or more chronic health conditions at the same time.
In this study, researchers looked at 15 common conditions in the Medicare claims database, including hypertension, cancer, dementia, Alzheimers disease, chronic kidney disease, heart failure, osteoporosis and stroke.The original program enrolled 3,234 adults at high risk of developing diabetes.Participants were randomly assigned to intensive lifestyle intervention, metaformin or placebo for three years before entering a long-term follow-up study.Among 1,173 participants enrolled in Medicare and followed for 21 years, 82% of those in the lifestyle intervention group developed multimorbidity, compared with 85% in the metformin group and 87% in the placebo group.Researchers say that the study is especially important because efforts to prevent ...