Lifestyle Online Re-Intervention On Eating Behaviour and BMI On Obese Hypertensive Patients

Hypertension incidence and overweight or obesity related, constitute a worrying public health problem nowadays. Evidence indicates that, despite the existence of several factors involved in their etiology, diet and physical activity play a particularly important role in the treatment and prevention of obesity and associated disorders.

However, interventions for the treatment of obesity encounter some environmental and personal barriers, specifically problems or deficits in motivation. These barriers sometimes make it difficult to implement intervention strategies. In this sense, there is an important agreement about the need to generate alternatives and strategies which promote intrinsic motivation, self-regulation and self-efficacy as fundamental variables which have a direct relationship with the adherence and success of obesity treatments.

To achieve this, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are a very promising alternative, as they can provide personalised feedback and can be flexibly adapted to each user. In addition, ICTs also present other important advantages, especially their excellent cost-benefit ratio, and the possibility of increasing the efficiency of the interventions, since they allow to reach a greater number of users at a lower cost.

This research will constitute a 3-year follow-up that includes a re-evaluation and re-intervention of overweight or obese adults suffering from hypertension, who already participated in a similar programme with the same objectives 3 years ago.

Patients will be recruited in the Hypertension Unit of a public hospital and assigned to a experimental group. The evaluation will include: eating behaviour, body mass index (BMI) and physical activity levels.