Effectiveness of mindfulness based cognitive therapy on weight loss, improvement of hypertension and attentional bias to eating cues in overweight people.
Mercedeh Masoumi Alamout, Mahdieh Rahmanian, Vahideh Aghamohammadi and 2 others
PMID 32099857WHAT IT FOUND
Overweight women who received mindfulness-based cognitive therapy plus a reduced-calorie diet lost more weight and had lower blood pressure and less attention to food cues than diet alone or no treatment.
Diet alone also reduced weight.
Key findings
01Adding mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to a reduced-calorie diet led to greater weight loss than diet alone or no intervention.
02The combined group had lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure and reduced attentional bias to food cues, while diet alone did not show a significant difference from control for blood pressure or attentional bias.
03In the combined group, weight and BMI reductions continued at the 4-week follow-up, and attentional bias remained lower than at baseline.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
All participants were women aged 30 to 50 years with BMI 25.0 to 29.9 kg/m2, and pregnancy, lactation, menopause, major disease, recent weight loss, appetite-suppressing medication or supplement use were excluded, so results may not apply to men, older adults, people with severe obesity or other health problems. The sample was small and recruited from one clinic by convenience sampling, with 15 participants in each group. The paper does not state which outcome was primary, and it reports several outcomes. Follow-up was only 4 weeks after the interventions ended, and personality traits were not controlled. The diet counselling was delivered by a nutritionist, so the study does not test a nurse-delivered intervention. Baseline systolic and diastolic blood pressure were within the normal range, so the study does not test treatment of hypertension.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interests, and the study did not receive any specific grant from public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy alone caused the weight loss. The effective group received both mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and a reduced-calorie diet, and the diet-only group also lost weight versus control, so the added benefit applies to the combined programme.