Shimla: Health experts sounded a warning to Himachal Pradesh on Tuesday stating that most of the people in the state are suffering to a new type of health compliations called dyslipidemia which can increase the chances of cardiovascular disease among the people.
Nationwide Indian Council of Medical Research-India Diabetes (ICMR-INDIAB) study whose results for the state were declared on Tuesday said that around 77 per cent people in the state suffer from dyslipidemia,
11.5 percent are diabetic, and 39 percent suffer from obesity,
Dyslipidemia is an abnormal levels of one or more kinds of lipids in the blood, leading to increased risk of heart diseases.
The survey covered nearly four thousand people in the state and was conducted here from September 2019 to March 2020.
“Himachal ranks seventh in the country in terms of prevalence of type 2 diabetes, and has a higher prevalence than the national average as well as its neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
The prevalence is same among males and females, but is higher in urban areas as compared to the rural areas.
Around half of those suffering from diabetes have not been diagnosed with the disease and are therefore unaware about the problem, the study found.
Moreover, around 18 percent people here are prediabetic, which means they have a 50 percent chance of developing diabetes in the next ten years,” said Dr JK Mokta, the principal investigator of the study, said in a press conference.
He said that Himachal is the fourth worst-hit state in terms of abdominial obesity, with 55 percent people here having a larger than normal waist circumference. Around 31 percent people in the state also suffer from hypertension, the study found.
The fifth national family health survey released in December had come out with similar results for the state, shattering the popular belief that residents of the hill state are healthier on account of more physical activity in the mountainous terrain.
Mokta said that 61 percent of the respondents, in fact, were found to be physically inactive, and only five percent were highly active. “Unhealthy food habits and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle seem to be responsible for all these disorders.
They are also snacking on unhealthy foods in between meals, such as samosas, without indulging in additional physical activity. Legumes, complex carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables are not adequately present in the diets of the people of the state.
Our ancestors also fed on carbohydrate-rich diets but indulged in extensive physical work which is missing nowadays on account of motor vehicles, machines and sedentary jobs,” he added
The average cereal consumption in Himachal is 78 percent wheat and 21 percent rice. But people are largely consuming refined carbohydrates and not whole grains. The milling process removes the dietary fibre and nutrients from the whole grain.
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