Lifestyle diseases increase significantly in Karnataka: NFHS 6

Lifestyle diseases, like obesity, hypertension, and diabetes, are on the rise in the state, the NFHS 6 data has revealed.

According to the data, diabetes, among both women and men, has increased significantly over the years.

While the prevalence of hypertension has only marginally increased among women, obesity has been a cause of concern. Doctors attributed the increase in such diseases to a changing lifestyle among youngsters.

“Sedentary lifestyle is the major cause. Now, we see many youngsters coming to us with such diseases. While there are some cases where youngsters develop diabetes owing to genetic predisposition, in the majority of the cases, some minor lifestyle changes can help prevent early onset of such diseases,” Soumya K, consultant, Department of General Medicine at a private hospital, said. 

Apart from a sedentary lifestyle, increasing consumption of unhealthy foods, stress, smoking and consumption of alcohol were the leading causes for an increase in such diseases, the data has shown.

The data has also revealed that the prevalence of such diseases has increased significantly even among the rural population, contrary to the idea that only the urban population was following an unhealthy lifestyle.

While doctors opined that the unhealthy practices had increased, NFHS 6 also pointed out that the state’s population is trying to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Increasing awareness and early onset of diseases might have forced people to adopt a healthier lifestyle, experts said.

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Use of tobacco among women declined from 8.6 per cent to 6.4 per cent, and even among men, it came down from 27.3 per cent to 24.2 per cent. Consumption of alcohol has also come down significantly from 16.6 per cent to 15.6 per cent among men and from 0.9 per cent to 0.5 per cent among women.