India’s hidden high blood pressure crisis: How the diet is increasing your blood pressure
High salt consumption in urban diet is triggering increased cases of high blood pressure among young Indians. This silent health crisis demands a change in lifestyle and policy intervention to prevent future heart diseases.
In the hearts of our modern cities, where the feature is important and the taste often trumps nutrition, a silent health crisis is going on.
Hypertension, or hypertension, has emerged as a major lifestyle disease among the urban population, and humble salt is one of the main culprits.
Urban diet is far from the traditional home-covered food of the past today. Fast food, packed snacks, processed meats, ready-to-eat food, and frequent restaurant outing are dominating food habits.
These foods are notorious in sodium, often more than the recommended daily intake of five grams (about one teaspoon) prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO). But does the salt make it so dangerous how much we eat; How unaware it is that we are from its dangers.
Hidden salt problem
Unlike table salt, which we add to food, most of us swallow “hidden salt” without realizing it. Sweet objects such as bread, breakfast grains, sauces, canned accessories, and even biscuits and desserts carry high sodium levels.
In a specific day, an office-goer can consume a salty breakfast grains, processed cheese sandwiches, immediate noodles for lunch, and one evening breakfast of chips-more than more than salt allowances, but often inadvertently.
This continuous overload puts pressure on the cardiovascular system quite literally. Consumption of high sodium causes the body to maintain water, increase blood volume and, as a result, increase pressure on the arterial walls.
Over time, it leads to chronic hypertension, a significant risk factor for heart disease, stroke and kidney failure.
The Urban Lifestyle Loop
City Life has its own opposition. Stress, sedentary work environment, lack of physical activity, irregular sleep cycle, and more dependence on food distribution apps make a lifestyle loop where high salt foods become ideal. In addition, the speed of life in urban centers often leaves very little time to eat mindful food or even nutrition labels.
Add it to the effects of food marketing and the increasing reach of ultra-produced foods, and you have the right recipe for a public health challenge.
These days, we have seen a dangerous regularity of the news of young urban professionals and celebrities, who are suffering from the arrest of the heart, in which the underlying hypertension is a silent, undesken contributor in most cases.
Young professionals, especially in the 25–40 age group, are being diagnosed with rapid initial stage hypertension.
According to recent studies, about 30 percent of urban Indian adults fall into a pre-high or high blood pressure category compared to the number a decade ago.
The increase in childhood and adolescent hypertension is also associated with urban diet patterns, including a younger consumption of salty snacks and soft drinks from an early age.
What can be done?
Reducing salt intake does not mean compromising taste, it means more conscious. Rupening of processed foods for fresh yield, cooking at home with natural herbs and spices, checking food labels for sodium content, and choosing a low-modal option in restaurants can create a significant difference.
Policy-level intervention such as front-off-pack sodium labeling, regulating salt and consumer education campaign is also important in processed foods. Countries such as UK and Finland have seen success in reducing the intake of average salt through such efforts, causing average drops to high blood pressure rates.
Hypertension is no longer the condition of the elderly, but a lifestyle-manual reality for many young, urban individuals. While salt may be necessary for life, in the context of urban life, it has become a tick time bomb. This is the time to reconsider our palate and make healthy salt-conscious food options, before the pressure is too much to handle.
Disclaimer: This is a writer article. The idea and opinions expressed by doctors are their independent professional decisions. Please consult your treatment doctor for more information.
