LIFESTYLE MODIFICATION THROUGH PLANT-BASED DIET AND EXERCISE TO PREVENT AND MANAGE HYPERTENSION: AN INTEGRATIVE LITERATURE REVIEW Nova Lina Langingi1 and Josephine D. Lorica2
1. Faculty of Nursing, Universitas Klabat, Airmadidi-Manado, 95371, Indonesia
2. College of Nursing, St. Paul University Philippines, Tuguegarao City, 3500, Philippines
Abstract
Notably, hypertension is a serious medical condition that escalates the risks of the individuals^ heart, brain, kidney, and other diseases. Nevertheless, the contemporary approach of lifestyle can be modified for the prevention and management of hypertension. Thus, this study is to verify the effectiveness of lifestyle modification through plant-based diet and exercise to prevent and manage hypertension as published in the different databases. The inclusion criteria for the integrative literature review were focuses on adult, the full research papers written in English and published over the period of 2015-2019, in EBSCO Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and PubMed databases. Furthermore, the studies were evaluated using QualSyst tool, a research appraisal tool developed by researchers from the Alberta Heritage Foundation. The analyses of the final three selected articles passing the inclusion criteria showed that lifestyle modification through plant-based diet is applicable to prevent hypertension, as an effective non-pharmacologic intervention to reverse hypertension, and an enormous remedy to reduce other risk factors of cardiovascular disease extensively. Moreover, exercise alone, especially the spasmodic exercise, were not significantly verified to be an intervention to prevent and manage hypertension. It is recommended that the community may apply a mutual combination of a consistent plant-based diet and routine exercise for the prevention and management of hypertension and that for government to encourage policymakers to develop a policy draft regarding plant-based diet and exercise, while for future researchers may widen the specified time frame of integrative literature review to be 2010-2020 or 2005-2020.
