Doctors practicing healthy lifestyles more likely to preach it to patients

Physicians who have more healthy habits are more likely than doctors without such habits to recommend five important lifestyle modifications to patients, including eating healthy, limiting sodium, maintaining a healthy weight, limiting alcohol and being more physically active.

In a survey of 1,000 physicians about their lifestyles and whether they recommend national guideline to patients with high blood pressure, researchers found:

-- Four percent smoked at least once a week.
-- Almost 39 percent ate the recommended five or more cups of a week.
-- About 27 percent exercised five or more days a week.
-- About 66 percent made all five lifestyle recommendations to patients.
-- Doctors who exercised at least once a week or didn't smoke were about twice as likely to recommend the five interventions.

Citation: Doctors practicing healthy lifestyles more likely to preach it to patients (2012, March 14) retrieved 19 March 2024 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-doctors-healthy-lifestyles-patients.html
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