Endocrine Abstracts

Dietary therapy, programmed physical activity and cognitive-behavioral therapy are basic measures in the treatment of obesity. Cognitive-behavioral therapy applies methods which change eating habits of obese persons, aiming to remove barriers relating dietary therapy and programmed physical activity. The goal is to try efficiency of applying cognitive-behavioral therapy in the program for the reduction of body mass of obese persons, versus the application of dietary therapy and programmed physical activity alone. The study included 60 obese persons, who were divided into two groups with 30 patients in each group, 20 to 58 years of age with the body mass index ≥30 kg/m² and hyperlipidemia (LDL cholesterol ≥ 4.2 mmol/l). Patients from both groups were on hypocalorie diet, individually designed and had programmed physical activity every day. Patients in group II underwent group cognitive-behavioral therapy under the supervision of psychiatrist once a week with the duration of 120 min. Both groups also went to see an endocrinologist 6 times, on which occasions their body weigh, blood pressure, parameters of lipid status serum and level of glucose in serum were mesured. Results showed that in group II the medium value of body mass reduction after twelve weeks of treatment was 9.5 kg (8.9%) and in group I 4.4 kg (4.1%). In group II, LDL cholesterol decreased for 34.5% and in group I for 5.0%; HDL cholesterol increased for 2.7% while in group I it decreased 2.5%; total triglycerides decrased for 15.3% and in group I for 5.4%; values of glicaemia decreased for 14.8% while in group I they remained unchanged. Cognitive-Behavioral therapy affected the improvement of motivation and readiness of patients to stick to the dietary regime and programmed physical activity. In designing the program for the reduction of obesty it is necessary to include cognitive-behavioral therapy, which brings significantly better therapy outcomes.