Healthy Lifestyle Cuts Costs for Medications
By Chauncey Crandall, M.D.
People with heart disease spend a lot less on medications when they take steps to lower their risk of complications by doing things like getting enough exercise, avoiding cigarettes, and keeping their blood pressure in check, a U.S. study suggests.
For the study, researchers focused on adults diagnosed with the most common type of heart disease, known as atherosclerosis, which happens when fats, cholesterol, and other substances build up on artery walls.
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When these patients did as much as they could to avoid so-called modifiable risk factors for heart disease — inactivity, obesity, smoking, high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, and diabetes — their total average annual pharmaceutical expenditures were $1,400, the study found.
But patients who did little to modify these risk factors had total average annual pharmaceutical expenditures of $4,516, researchers report in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The study’s researchers hypothesize that this is for two distinct reasons:
First, if you’re unable to or unwilling to make changes to your lifestyle, such as going for a walk to raise your physical activity and combat obesity, you may be more likely to turn to medicine as a backup plan.
Second, many of these risk factors are interlinked. If you aren’t active, you’re more likely to be obese, and therefore more likely to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. This in turn raises your risks of heart disease like atherosclerosis.
If saving more than $3,000 on drug costs by simply eating healthier and incorporating more physical activity in your life isn’t motivation enough, avoiding the drugs themselves may be an additional bonus. Many heart disease medications come with side effects like constipation and nausea.