long working hours and job stress have become the key barriers to a healthy heart
Nearly 50 per cent of women in India live with an abnormal cholesterol level, an alarming indicator of the risk of them being prone to cardiovascular diseases (CVD), a survey has showed.
The survey by diagnostic chain SRl Diagnostics revealed that 48 per cent women in the age group of 46 to 60 years had the highest level of abnormality in the lipid profile tests – the number one cause of death globally and in India.
A lipid profile test measures the amount of cholesterol present in lipid carrier proteins like low density lipoprotein (lDl), high density lipoprotein (HDl) and fats (triglyceride) present in the blood and determines the risk of CVD.
Further, women living in North India (33.11 per cent) and East India (35.67 per cent) had higher abnormal levels of triglycerides while low HDl and high total cholesterol levels were more commonly seen in women living in South India (34.15 per cent) and West India (31.90 per cent).
“In India, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women. It’s an alarming situation as heart attacks appear differently in women than men and it is more fatal in the post-menopausal women than it is in men,” said Avinash Phadke, President Technology and Mentor (Clinical Pathology) from SRl Diagnostics.
High saturated fat, sugar and salt intake, very low consumption of vegetables and whole grains leading to obesity, coupled with sedentary lifestyles, rising stress levels and smoking are the major contributory factors for deterioration of heart health in women in India, the survey revealed.
Also, long working hours and job stress have become key barriers to a healthy heart, felt Indians as per a recent survey.
Besides, 83 per cent of Indians said they give in to temptation of food and 74 per cent believed that healthy food is not tasty and hence can’t be eaten regularly, said the Saffolalife Study 2017.
Along with long working hours (80 per cent), long travelling hours (69 per cent) are also seen as reasons people are not able to do enough for their heart health.
The study was conducted among 1,306 respondents (648 men and 658 women) across Delhi, Mumbai, lucknow, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. The study was commissioned by AC Nielsen among those who have been identified to be at risk of cardio-vascular diseases.
Many Indians (76 per cent) cited job stress and home stress as reasons that come in the way of efforts to stay healthy.
When it comes to women’s heart health, stress at home (75 per cent) and job stress (77 per cent) impacted over 70 per cent of women. Among women, factors like “having to cook separately for herself if they want to have a healthy meal” (74 per cent) and “concern about what will others will say” (65 per cent) also came out as barriers.
With one third of heart failure patients dying within six months of diagnosis, cardiologists have said that heart failure in India occurs a decade earlier than elsewhere in the world, where the average age is 59.
AIIMS Cardiologist, Sundeep Mishra felt the need to caution citizens against early cardiac issues as out-of-pocket expenditure and lack of infrastructure are corroborating to the increase in disease prevalence, while Cardiological Society of India President MS Hiremath said that a third of heart failure patients die in the hospitals within six months of their diagnosis.
“This is an indication of how sick the patients are when they report to us. Basic knowledge of managing heart failure or detecting the disease at an early stage is missing, so it is difficult to manage them in the hospital,” Hiremath said.
An earlier study, the International Congestive Heart Failure study, had said that death rate of patients due to heart failures in Southeast Asia is 15 per cent, while it is seven per cent in China, nine per cent both in South America and West Asia — significantly lower than in Indian patients.
Mishra, a Professor of Cardiology at New Delhi’s All India Institute Of Medical Science, said that in India, heart failure occurs a decade earlier than in the Western countries.
“There is availability of new treatment options like sacubitril/valsartan — combination of two existing blood pressure reducing medications which are found to be highly effective,” he said.
According to the World Health Organisation, heart failure impacts more than 60 million people worldwide.
The risk of death in heart failure patients is comparable to that of patients with advanced cancer, and currently costs the world economy $108 billion every year.
The experts have also said that due to late diagnosis and adoption of unfriendly heart activities, a large chunk of the youth population is becoming patients of heart by-pass surgeries, a situation not very different in other parts of the world.
“The stress, strain, pollution and all sorts of things exists everywhere in the world and its affecting the youth population extremely,” said Sanjeev Aggarwal, Director of Centre for Cardiac Sciences at the city’s Saroj Super Speciality Hospital.
“There is a general tendency towards younger population getting heart diseases in underdeveloped countries.”