The year 2024 has dawned upon us. We all are presumably back to our busy daily routine.
No matter how hard we try, end of year celebrations often make us go easy on our eating habits, exercise plans and looking after our health in general.
No worries, it's time to catch up and make a resolve of leading a healthy 2024.
Health is not mere absence of disease; it stands for complete mental, physical and social well being. One issue which often gets overlooked as a physical condition is being overweight and obese. If we look around us, we will realize that the prevalence of these conditions in Mauritius is quite high in all age groups.
We often assume that if obese person does not have other complications like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol etc, then that person is at low risk of heart disease However, this is not the case.
Obesity is an independent risk factor for many heart diseases like heart failure, heart attacks, rhythm disorders and sudden death. It also increases the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, and makes their control difficult.
We have an unhappy triad of Obesity, diabetes and hypertension
The sad news is that each component of this triad is deadly alone and becomes deadliest in combination.
Therefore, all the components of this triad need to be tackled at the earliest.
The happy news is that not only common lifestyle interventions like regular exercise, healthy diet, abstinence from alcohol , smoking, drugs are helpful but also we now have new medicines which can treat all three conditions at the same time.
After years of research we have a category of medicines called GLP-1RA and SGLT2i which reduce blood sugar levels, reduce blood pressure and also help in weight loss. These drugs already have FDA approval and our recommended by major international cardiovascular societies for people at high risk or pre-existent heart disease, obesity and
diabetes.
Let us kickstart 2024 on an optimistic note of following a healthy lifestyle and utilizing all the scientific evidence available to get rid of the unhappy triad of obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.