Around 47 persons die of heart attack every hour in country: experts

ISLAMABAD: The sedentary lifestyle coupled with a habit of smoking and eating unhealthy food is causing heart ailments. Besides, Over 65 percent of people died of cardiovascular disease in the country were less than 60 years of age.

Around 47 persons die of heart attacks induced by unhealthy lifestyle every hour in Pakistan, said health experts, adding these are the reported deaths and the number could be much higher as many deaths go unreported.

During a three-day International Lifestyle Medical Conference 2022, the vice chancellor, Health Services Academy, Prof. Dr. Shahzad Ali Khan, maintained around 44 percent of women in Pakistan are anemic, which means that their bodies don’t have enough healthy blood cells and when they become pregnant, their babies are also born underweight and premature, becoming an easy prey to different ailments.

Similarly, over 50 percent women in Pakistan are also overweight as they consume unhealthy diet and avoid physical activity, said Prof Khan, adding it also indicates that 25 percent of country’s population is suffering from various lifestyle diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, mental ailments and other health issues.

“We can’t treat such a large population for their entire life. It is beyond our capacity. The only option we have is to change our lifestyle and adopt lifestyle medicine, which actually get people of all kinds of therapeutic drugs and medicines”, he said. Lifestyle medicine specialist Dr Shagufta Feroz said consuming healthy diet, resorting to physical inactivity, having proper sleep, taking measures for stress reduction and rest, avoiding addictive substances and having social connect are the main pillars of lifestyle medicine.

“Lifestyle medicine is the evidence based medical speciality that uses predominantly whole food plant-based diet, adequate sleep, stress management, regular exercise/ physical activity, avoidance of risky substance use and social support to prevent, treat and reverse non-communicable disease”, she added.

She advised the citizens and patients about evidence-based alterations to diet or exercise to prevent and treat disease. The World Health Organisation predicts that now two-thirds of all disease worldwide are the result of lifestyle choices, she added.