Effects of intensive diet and exercise intervention in patients taking cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Patients taking cholesterol-lowering drugs were placed on a very low fat, high-complex-carbohydrate diet with daily aerobic exercise and achieved 19%, 20% and 29% reductions in total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, respectively. Fifty-one percent of the primary care physicians had not used diet therapy before initiating drugs and 29% did not use diet therapy along with the drugs as recommended by the National Cholesterol Education Program.