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Monday, Sep 5, 2005
Answers To Diet Questions
Pramila K Duphare, MS, RD, LD

Educated from Lady Irwin College , Delhi University- I acquired my Diploma in Dietetics and Public Health Nutrition and Masters in Food And Nutrition. I worked in ALL INDIA INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES for 12 yrs as Clincial Dietition. I did additional course work and Internship from Univ of Wisconsin at Madison. Currently I work at Redmond Regional Hospital in Rome, GA as Registered and Licencesed Dietition.

Readers can send their diet related questions to the nutrition expert, Pramila Duphare, by clicking on the comments page link at the bottom of the article. The answers to the questions will be published in the next update.

Que: Is Indian diet to be blamed for high rates of heart attack among Indians living around the world? Most recently I read the news about Indians and Pakistanis having high rate of heart attacks in Scotland

From Deepali Goel

Ans: Yes it is true that indians/pakistanis living abroad have a higher rate of heart attacks/heart disease than people of other ethinic groups. In fact physicians of indian origin lead the group in sudden death due to heart disease.

The reasons are :

  1. Genetic predisposition for the race. People who originate from the south Asian population - from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and to some degree Sri Lanka - have the highest rates of death from heart disease compared to any other population in the world. Genetic predisposition means an inherited tendency to develop the disease though it does not mean a 100 percent guarantee that the disease will appear.
  2. The Indian diet is very healthy- but when people live abroad the diet pattern changes. There are more refined foods/fast foods in the diet. As people lead a more hectic life there is less time to cook like our mothers did. We are relying on more processsed foods to make our meals. We are also eating out more. The intake of sugars and salt goes up considerably in western diets.
  3. Stress is a major contributory factor too. Immigrants who are successful have to work harder to be successful. Those who are not successful enough go through tremendous stress because there is lack of friends and family support. Sharing your anxiety with someone close to you reduces the stress level.
  4. Lack of excercise endangers both men and women. We all remember running after buses/trains to get to school/place of work in India. Here we pull the car out of the garage to go buy milk!

All these life style changes contribute to weight gain and poor health, which in turn predispose to diabetes and heart disease. To stay healthy lifestyle choices are vitally important. Be vigilant about diet and exercise and don't think that you can't do anything about this risk factor.

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