A Clinical Trial of The Effects of Dietary Patterns on Blood Pressure

A Clinical Trial of The Effects of Dietary Patterns on Blood Pressure

 

Section A:

1. Introduction: (a narrative paragraph explaining why you have selected your topic)

Blood pressure is a severe disease these days. Most people suffer from this disorder. According to my knowledge, blood pressure patients must follow some recommendations to avoid the harmful effect of this disease. They should not drink beverages that contain caffeine. Moreover, they should avoid salty foods besides keeping away all the sources of hypertension. Also, they should follow dietary patterns that result in low blood pressure. Unfortunately, my mom and dad’s complaints about the disease make me care a lot about the issue.

2. Summary of the article: (The final version of your summary in Task 2 ‘edited & revised’)

Appel’s article (a clinical trial of the effects of dietary patterns on blood pressure) (1997) discussed the influence of different types of diet. The authors in this article stated that the previous study showed the impact of salt, body weight, and alcohol, which were the basis for this article. The main goal of this study was eliciting the effect of various dietary patterns. The trial by Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) was conducted in three phases (screening, run-in, and intervention). The trial was applied on 459 adults with a systolic blood pressure of less than 160 mm Hg and diastolic of 80 to 95 mm Hg. In the first phase, the researchers focused on participants where they recorded their blood pressure daily after 5 minutes of stated rest. The second phase had the participants that were under control diet.

In the last phase, the staff members took samples of urine besides recording the participants’ physical activities. In contrast to previous studies, the findings assure that the effect of sodium intake, obesity, and alcohol could not be considered for high blood pressure. Also, there is no relationship between gender and diet. To sum up, the overall goal of this study was to determine the effective mechanism by which DASH dietary patterns lower blood pressure by using a control diet.

 

3. Discussion: (evaluate and interpret the article’s topic, method of investigation (e.g., qualify the instrument, the results, draw inferences/interpretations and conclusions from them, discuss the generalizability of the major findings), acknowledge the limitations of the research article, etc.).

The overall results of this study broadly answered the primary goal of the researchers, which was showing the effect of the different patterns of diet on blood pressure. The results indicated that the combination diet reduced systolic blood pressure by 5.5 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure by 3.0 mm Hg more than the control diet. Also, the reduction with fruits and vegetable diet was 2.8 mm Hg and 1.1 mm Hg higher than the control diet. On the contrary, the previous results showed a similar reduction of blood pressure for changes in weight that resulted from non-salty foods. One of the findings was that there was no evidence of interaction between sex and diet. The results confirmed that the combination diet reduced blood pressure more than the fruits and vegetables or the control diet. As a result, the more significant effect of these results was on the subjects with hypertension. The generalizability of the results was limited by the shortage of dates that show the consumption of alcohol, and the physical activities affected the three dietary groups. Besides, the effect of sodium chloride, body weight, and alcohol consumption could not be considered. 4.Conclusion: (DISCUSS why is this topic important? – are the findings valid, useful, and replicable? – what other problems/issues remain unresolved because of these findings? – why is this topic of importance for other readers ‘inside and outside your own specialty’?

This research aimed to identify the effect of various dietary patterns. While the shortage of data limited the results of this research, we should search for further investigations and studies to provide us with further data that could help reach the best results.

5. References: (Reference your article + any other articles, books, websites, etc. that

you have used)

APA: Appel, L. J., Moore, T. J., Obarzanek, E., Vollmer, W. M., Svetkey, L. P., Sacks, F. M., … & Lin, P. H. (1997). A clinical trial of the effects of dietary patterns on blood pressure. New England journal of medicine, 336(16), 1117-1124.

Vancouver: Appel LJ, Moore TJ, Obarzanek E, Vollmer WM, Svetkey LP, Sacks FM, Bray GA, Vogt TM, Cutler JA, Windhauser MM, Lin PH. A clinical trial of the effects of dietary patterns on blood pressure. New England journal of medicine. 1997 Apr 17;336(16):1117-24.