[ad_1]
A major cause behind Coronavirus deaths is poor diet and Indians must urgently cut down on ultra-processed foods to create resistance against the deadly virus, a leading cardiologist of Indian origin in the UK warned.
Dr. Aseem Malhotra, who is among the front-line physicians of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) and also a professor of evidence-based medicine, said obesity and excess weight were the “elephant in the room “to be addressed as an important factor behind Coronavirus deaths.
The 42-year-old doctor from New Delhi said, “India is particularly vulnerable, has a very high prevalence of lifestyle-related diseases,” which is on a mission to spread awareness of lifestyle changes as a Important weapon in the fight against COVID-19.
“Specifically, conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease are three of the main risk factors for death from COVID-19. This is based on excess body fat, a group of conditions known as metabolic syndrome, “he added.
The highest death rates from coronavirus worldwide can be seen in western countries, such as the US. USA And the UK, which is likely to correlate with unhealthy lifestyles.
“The elephant in the room is that the general health of reference in many western populations was already in a horrible state to begin with. In the United Kingdom and the United States, more than 60 percent of adults are overweight or obese, “he noted.
In the USA USA, Fewer than one in eight people are metabolically healthy, which means having normal blood pressure, having a weight girth if you are a man less than 102 cm and less than 88 cm for a woman, and healthy blood sugar levels in the blood and good cholesterol
Malhotra said: “There is no healthy weight, only a healthy person. If people try to maintain all of these metabolic health parameters through a healthy lifestyle, this could be accomplished within a few weeks with just a change in diet.” .
“Nature,” a scientific journal, recently conducted a report revealing that patients with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome may have up to a 10-fold increased risk of death when they contract COVID-19 and require mandatory glucose and metabolism control. of patients with type 2 diabetes to improve results.
Malhotra cautions that medications used for type 2 diabetes and many of the other conditions have “very, very marginal effects” in terms of improving life expectancy or reducing the risk of death, which most people don’t know about. , and they also come with side effects
“This is not to say that medications should be discontinued, but lifestyle changes are considerably more impactful on health and will reduce the need for medications. The positive news is that it can reverse this, but most doctors do not. they are not informing patients or practicing it as lifestyle recipes in India, ”he said.
The expert recommends giving up ultra-processed foods, which cover any packaged food that comes with five or more ingredients, according to his own clinical experience and also reflected in the medical literature, because these are generally rich in sugar, starch, unhealthy oils, additives and preservatives.
In the UK, these foods now account for more than 50 percent of the diet, which he says is “truly amazing and shocking.”
Similar figures exist for the USA. USA And probably to some extent they reflect why there are specifically higher death rates from COVID-19 in these countries.
“So what I would recommend to the Indian population is that they completely eliminate these types of food from their diet, make sure they are cooking from scratch, do not eat snacks,” said the doctor.
“Beyond that, the other problem in the Indian diet is that we have a very high intake of foods with refined carbohydrates, these are also foods that are particularly harmful in excess because they increase glucose and insulin and therefore are rooted in many of these chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease: this implies an excessive consumption of flour and white rice. “
“They should be swapped with a variety of whole foods, like vegetables and fruits, and for those who are not vegetarians, it is completely fine to eat red meat, as well as full-fat dairy products, eggs, fish, etc.,” he said.
Referring to recent data on the increased risk of black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) communities in the UK from coronavirus, the NHS doctor believes the disparity is also related to culture or lifestyle. .
“South Asians have found themselves vulnerable because the prevalence of metabolic syndrome is three times higher in the population. Indians, therefore, believe that they should be very careful with their diet and what they consume, and they should not have the illusion of protection either just because they are given a normal body mass index (BMI). Extra body fat, particularly around the waist, is much more damaging to health than using outdated indices like BMI to define health risk, “he said.
Coronavirus cases in the country were approaching the 40,000 mark on Sunday, of the 39,980 confirmed cases, 10,633 recovered, while 28,046 are active cases. India reported the largest single-day jump in the number of coronavirus patients and deaths with 2,644 new cases in the past 24 hours, including 83 deaths.
