Revisiting the Women’s Health Initiative

March 20th, 2006

A few weeks ago, the headlines were full of ideas that seemed to contradict what physicians had been telling women for years. It seemed to contradict the advice that you should take calcium supplements to reduce your chances of osteoporosis. Or, that you should eat a low fat diet to minimize your odds for weight gain and heart disease.

Now, the press is beginning to report comments that disagree with the study’s apparent recommendations. Once again, what are we supposed to believe and do?

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) is a massive study focused on women, unlike most previous studies that gave results based mainly on men. Specifically, the study was attempting to determine how lifestyle might affect disease and health conditions in women. This important corrective was essential for women to begin getting better advice about lifestyle.

The initial reports in the press really knocked the conventional healthy lifestyle ideas for a loop. For example, if eating a low fat diet doesn’t either help significantly with weight loss or prevent heart disease, why bother?

The answer seems to be that the devil is in the details.

Closer inspection of the study results shows that many of the healthy lifestyle recommendations we have been making are still likely to be part of the answer for women seeking weight loss and health.

One story along these lines is reported in Bloomberg.com. It talks about a 54 year old woman who chooses to rely on her doctor rather than the press. One of the main points in the article is the caution against relying just on the headlines in those news reports about the WHI. Get under the blurbs to get the details.

A detail reported in this story is that the WHI found that women following a low fat diet had a breast cancer incidence 9 percent lower than other women. Yet, because of the rules of statistics, this wasn’t considered ‘significant’.

The bottom line seems to be this: The WHI is an important advance in the understanding of women’s health, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. In particular, there is no good reason to give up on a healthy lifestyle. It’s long-term benefits still seem to be positive (even if they aren’t always ‘statistically significant’ within the limited realm of the WHI).

Entry Filed under: Healthy Lifestyle Research