High Blood Pressure And Diabetes Trends In India
What causes High Blood Pressure?
High Blood Pressure and Diabetes are both very deadly diseases. In India, High Blood Pressure accounts for more than 1.47 million deaths every year. While 3.1% of the deaths in India in the year 2016 were due to diabetes.
When the blood is not able to flow freely through the vessels there is an increase in pressure which is experienced by the heart. The individuals struggle to obtain the free flow of blood through the body. But our body requires a constant supply of free-flowing blood to function properly, which doesn’t happen in this case.
What is Diabetes?
Diabetes is a result of when cells, muscles, fats aren’t able to interact with insulin. This results in less intake of sugar which is required for the body to get energy. This results in excess sugar built up in the body.
Since sugar is not being absorbed, the body is tricked into producing more insulin, which is responsible to regulate sugar levels.
How are Diabetes And High Blood Pressure related?
As the insulin levels increase in the body, there is an increase in salt retention in the body. This results in the thickening of the blood vessels and thus restricts the free flow of blood. This results in higher blood pressure. Patients having High Blood Pressure and Diabetes are more likely to suffer heart stroke and other heart-related diseases and even kidney failures.
One of the important causes leading to High Blood Pressure and Diabetes is obesity. More than 135 million of India’s population is obese. Obesity in India is rising year by year. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RISC) estimates suggest that between 1980 and 2014, age-standardized diabetes and hypertension prevalence among men in India grew from 3.7% to 9.1% and 24.5% to 26.6%, respectively, and among women from 4.6% to 8.3% and 22.7% to 24.7%, respectively.
The prevalence of both conditions is likely to continue increasing in the future given that India’s population is aging, due to urbanizing, and rapid changes in standards of living in the country are improving, which tends to be accompanied by an increase in obesity and its associated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors.