New Delhi: Lifestyle diseases are likely to kill 270 million Asians by 2015, says the World Health Organisation. And of those, hypertension or high blood pressure is going to be one of the biggest killers. It could kill you and me, too.
The scary figures on World Hypertension Day: 1 billion suffering from high blood pressure globally and by 2025 over half a billion more victims. And all this is supposedly because of lifestyle, or rather a ‘fast’ lifestyle. What makes things scary is that you and me are working for that lifestyle. That laptop, the oh-so-soft double-bed mattress, the designer bag, the flat-screen TV or that home theatre… Ever since working and earning stopped being about roti, kapda aur makaan, ‘pressure’ has almost become synonymous with ‘work’. And then there is high blood pressure.
Hypertension along with some other lifestyle-borne diseases will kill more people than you and I can imagine. Tampons, sanitary napkins with plastic shields, lazyboy chairs for ultimate TV-watching comfort, crash diets to get rid of that beer-gut, addiction to sleeping pills due to insomnia, insomnia due to the sleeping pills... we are increasingly becoming a generation caught in its own silk web.
A generation that is ageing, tiring and collapsing faster: Fatal heart-attacks to 27-year-olds, high blood pressure in 15-year-olds, women menopausing at 30 and nervous breakdown and burn outs at 20. The culprits? Not cocaine, crack or heroine, but simple things and innocuous habits. While we are busy increasing our bank balance, we’re goofing up, fatally, on the basics—sleep, posture, food and self-image—of healthy living. With today being the World Hypertension Day, here’s a look at high blood pressure and the other significant Luxury-borne Killers
The has-bean bag
Most of us have beanbags: single people have two, small apartments have one and even big mansions have a beanbag or two in the kids' room. However, the same beanbag is your ticket to a life of pain and paralysis.
Continuous use of the bag — the worse kind of posture imaginable – will change the shape of your spine forever. Similarly, extra-soft, double bed mattresses, promoted as the ultimate in bedroom luxury also do not provide the right kind of support for your spine.
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Laptops too, if the correct posture is not maintained lead to chronic lower back pains and even spondylitis. If you want a chair for your space, go for something with a straight back that gives your spine the support it needs.
Sleepless in the city
Sleep, or the right amount of sleep is one of the first casualties of a stressful lifestyle. While debate rages on about the requisite number of sleep hours, sleep disorders – sleeping less, feeling sleeping at work, waking up after a full night's sleep and feeling tired, insomnia – are on the rise among younger people.
As the corporate workforce looks at younger talent, lifestyle choices are changing – long work shifts, midweek office parties, end-of-week partying with friends, gym in the morning, 12 hours at work, late night movies – and the amount of time spent sleeping is decreasing.
As consultant psychologist Dr Sameer Malhotra says, ''School pass outs are joining the work force and are getting into the corporate environment much earlier. When they cannot cope with the work pressure, they get into alcohol and tobacco consumption... Over-worked nerves lead to sleeping disorders.''
And without the natural sleep, the youth tries everything possible to induce that sleep: pills, over-the-counter valium and even narcotic substances. According to Dr Mark S. Gold (Marijuana: Drugs of Abuse, Volume I): "individuals may use marijuana in the mistaken belief that it will help them sleep or that it will relieve their depression, but in reality marijuana has been shown to cause insomnia and depression... patients often cite depression as a reason for their marijuana use, without realising that depression is a common consequence of marijuana use....''
Ponder this: Most car crashes happen by people falling asleep at the wheels, usually at 6 am or 4 pm, the times when the body becomes sleepy. Feeling sleeping at 4pm has nothing to do with having a heavy lunch or eating too much rice. It's part of any body's daily rhythm.
Only income, no sex
With reducing sleep time, the amount of time people spend having sex has also come down. And we don't mean a before-office-quickie. Too much of quickies and they could do you more harm than good, no matter how many calories you are supposed to burn during sex. Even doctors are prescribing foreplay. Longer sessions in the sack translate into more time spent with each other while love-making releases feel-good chemicals like oxytocin and vasopressin.
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The latest ‘lifestyle’ problem with sex: Performance Anxiety. Dr Jitendra Nagpal, psychiatrist and marriage counsellor shared how an increasing number of men were approaching him for help citing unfound fears that they wouldn't be able to satisfy their partners. The basis of such belief? ''Too much exposure to porn and erotic material, that raises the expectation levels for both partners. Men also begin comparing themselves and start feeling they are not doing enough.'' The result: depression, not being able to hold up an erection, shying away from your own partner, non-communication and of course, no sex.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Unreal expectations are also the culprit when it comes to people and their perception of their own bodies. There is just no room for imperfection, or perceived imperfection according to plastic surgeon, Dr Anup Dhir. ''People with no perceived deformity want their appearance altered because they don't like the way they look,'' says Dr Dhir, pointing out instances of people unhappy with their appearance – it's called Body Dismorphic Disorder – are on the rise. ''Such cases were prevalent earlier too, but now with technological advancements and the ability to get things fixed, people want to change the way they look,'' he says. If botox shots, fillers and intense peels are becoming parts of regular beauty regimens, an increasing number of people are going in for nose jobs, eyebrow lifts and cheek bone sculpting as well. In the last year itself, there have been at least 200 cases of successful penile implants.
Looking good has assumed gargantuan proportions perhaps because today looking good is about standing out in a crowd, making favourable first impressions, bagging that job; and people are willing to go to any lengths for those looks.
Fixated on food
Unhappiness with how we look is often a direct result of what we see around us. ''With waif-thin models and near-perfectly featured actresses, people feel they don’t look good enough,'' says Dr Dhir. While not everyone is going in for surgery, the next best thing to have an appearance change is to alter the shape of your body... through exercise, surgery or crash dieting and steroids.
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Walk in to any gym, and you will see young men pumping away furiously. They will also often be heard discussing dietary supplements, protein drinks and steroids with their trainers. The ambition is to have the body of a male movie star; fitness is a by-product. Dr Dhir adds, ''Men use steroid-based drugs to build their bodies. These could lead to obesity and raised blood sugar levels leading to diabetes.'' He points out how eating disorders like anorexia are on a big time rise too. But beyond anorexia, skipping meals is a far more sinister, less-talked about affliction.
Funny that we work so that we may have a better lifestyle: good food, complete rest and sleep, a comfortable home to come back to and freedom from stress and diseases. And yet, if we don’t watch it, the very luxury we create and crave for, will do us in. Missing out on meals, not taking proper rest and sleep, sitting in postures that kill our backs, using technology to our jobs and then becoming slaves to it, refusing to exercise... we need to remember that to enjoy what we have created, we have to be around and standing; not in a wheelchair or a bed because we wanted to work on laptops sitting on bean bags.
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