Team Metabolic Health

SURVEY POINTS TO HIGH PREVALENCE OF LIFESTYLE DISEASES AMONG DOCS

Ahmedabad : They are advocates of balanced diet, exercise and healthy lifestyle, but a study conducted in the state reveals high prevalence of lifestyle diseases among doctors.
The MP Shah Medical College in Jamnagar surveyed 490 doctors working in govt facilities and found that 20% of them were obese, 53% were diabetic and 24% were hypertensive. According to several medical organisations, while there is no comprehensive study on private practitioners, the results could be the same for them as well, with a high prevalence of lifestyle diseases.

The study titled Prevalence of Normal Weight Obesity and Its Cardiometabolic Implications Among Government Doctors in Gujarat, India: A Cross-Sectional Study, by Yogesh M, Nidhi Trivedi, Naresh Makwana, P Hari Priya, PVM Krishna, and Kadalasaru D, from the Department of Community Medicine at the MP Shah Medical College, Jamnagar, was published recently in the journal Clinical Diabetes and Endocrinology.
Researchers measured various parameters for doctors in the govt medical setup, including Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure, fasting glucose and lipids. The results showed that only 10% of doctors fell into the normal weight category. While 20% were found to be obese, 26.5% of those surveyed had normal weight obesity (NWO) where the BMI is 18.5–24.9 kg/ m2 with high body fat per cent, and 21% had normal weight central obesity (NWCO) where the BMI is 18.5–24.9 kg/ m2 with high waist circumference. The rest had both NWO and NWCO, the study said.

“Regarding the lipid profile, the mean total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLC) levels were highest in the NWO+NWCO groups,” the study mentioned. It said that the prevalence of obesity mirrors the trend observed in National Family Health Sur veys —from 11.8% in 1998, it had increased to 31.3% in 2016.
“Doctors are increasingly falling victim to lifestyle diseases. A major factor is stress, especially in the 30-50 years age group,” he said. “Doctors face the same risk factors as the general population when it comes to lifestyle-related diseases, with their eating habits and long working hours,” said Dr Dhiren Shah, president of the Ahmedabad Medical Association (AMA).

Credit: The Times of India