Quoted message said:"Heart disease country is in India among the vegetarian Hindus who have
triple the incidence of heart disease of their meat eating neighbors,
the Indian Muslim. This is referred to as the Indian Paradox."
Web source please.
http://www.indianewengland.com/media/paper549/news/2004/05/01/Medicine/Study.South.Asians.At.Higher.Risk.Of.Heart.Disease-673859.shtml
---
"Asian Indians have the highest rates of heart attacks, with those
settled in the United States having a 400 percent higher incidence than
white Americans, and a 600 percent higher hospitalization than
Chinese-Americans, despite the fact that almost half of them are
lifelong vegetarians.
---
Unique Indian paradox
The higher rates of heart attacks in Indians worldwide are accompanied
by paradoxically low rates of conventional risk factors: hypertension,
obesity, cigarette smoking and cholesterol levels.
The common tool employed to assess heart attack risk is the lipid
profile. Indians usually have acceptable lipid profiles as recommended
by the American Heart Association.
----
Indians differ from other ethnic groups in the following ways:
* Higher prevalence of abdominal obesity, glucose intolerance, insulin
resistance and diabetes.
* Higher prevalence of emerging clot-promoting risk factors.
* Higher prevalence of cardiodysmetabolic syndrome (consisting of
abdominal obesity, high tryiglycerides, low HDL, glucose intolerance,
hyperinsulinemia and hypertension).
********************
http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501040510/story2.html
"So vulnerable is the subcontinent to cardiovascular ailments that the
World Health Organization (who) estimates that 60% of the world's
cardiac patients will be Indian by 2010. "Of all Asians, South Asians
have by far the worst problems" when it comes to heart disease, says
Dr. Timothy Gill, an Asia-Pacific specialist with the International
Obesity Task Force, a medical NGO that coordinates with the who on
obesity issues."
---
"Equally troubling, it is not just the elderly who are being hit by
cardiovascular disease. In India, nearly 50% of CVD-related deaths
occur below the age of 70, compared with just 22% in the West."
----
One of the world's foremost epidemiologists of cardiovascular disease,
Yusuf once championed the idea that ethnicity was a significant
determinant of heart disease, but his recent research has convinced him
otherwise. "By and large, the differences in heart-disease rates are
because of different lifestyles," he says. "About 80% of the risk can
be accounted for by known risk factors like smoking or obesity or blood
pressure and the way we live and eat, which leaves very little room for
genetic risk factors." Even the common idea that family history is a
decisive risk factor, Yusuf says, overlooks the fact that families tend
to have similar lifestyles and are exposed to the same environment.
*******
http://www.tlca.com/adults/heart.html
Asian Indians at highest risk of heart disease in world
BY JULIE SEVRENS LYONS AND ANU MANCHIKANTI
(KRT) - Mr. Rao always chalked up his high cholesterol and blood
pressure to bad luck, figuring a family history of heart troubles set
him up for coronary artery disease. The 48-year-old never suspected his
ethnicity could be to blame.
But now researchers have determined that those of Indian and Pakistani
descent have the highest rates of heart disease in the world, despite
coming from a culture that shuns smoking, encourages a vegetarian diet
and lacks many of the other classic risk factors for the disease.
About 25 percent of all heart attacks among men of Indian descent occur
while they are younger than 40, unheard of in any other population,
according to researchers. Death rates from the disease are up to three
times higher among Indians than those of European or East-Asian origin.
Such findings, borne out most recently by a new report, surprise many
Indo-Americans - and just as many doctors. Research carried out in the
United Kingdom years ago began to suggest a genetic link, but there has
not been a push for early screening in the Indo-American community
here, and relatively few education campaigns.
"Most physicians trained in the U.S. are not aware their Asian-Indian
patients are at risk," said Dr. Susan Ivey, an assistant researcher at
the University of California-Berkeley Center for Family and Community
Health, which spearheaded the new study.
And this lack of awareness, researchers worry, may be deadly.
"Just being of Asian-Indian descent places you at higher risk for heart
disease than having high cholesterol and being a smoker," said Dr. H.
Robert Superko, director of research at the Berkeley HeartLab.
Superko launched a separate study, the National Asian Indian Heart
Disease Program, several years ago and discovered one gene is
responsible for part of the increased risk in heart disease rates. A
metabolic disorder common in Indians likely also plays a role, as does
having high levels of a dangerous type of cholesterol. Lifestyle, such
as diet and lack of exercise, is also to blame.
The problem is coming into sharpest focus in places such as
California's Bay Area, where Indians are the fastest growing of all
Asian groups. But there are 1.6 million Indians sprinkled all over the
United States who are also at risk. Because the population is
scattered, researchers say it is difficult to study the problem fully
or raise awareness among doctors and within communities.
The elevated risk of heart disease often catches many Indians off
guard. Generally, their overall cholesterol levels have been normal.
High blood pressure isn't prevalent in the community. Smoking rates
are low. And about half are vegetarians.
Knowing that doing many of the right things to prevent the disease
still might not be enough, "It does make you afraid," said Mr. Rao, a
Yuba City sandwich shop owner who immigrated from India nearly three
decades ago. His father has been battling heart problems for years.
"A lot of people, they just feel they look healthy, they feel healthy,"
and so they don't get tested for heart disease, Mr. Rao said. "By the
time some of them find out they have it, they're either in an
ambulance or a hospital bed."
As lifestyles change in India, heart disease is hitting epidemic
proportions there - and also among Indo-Americans - with more than 10
percent of urban Indians now suffering from the disease. Over the past
three decades, coronary artery disease rates have declined by half in
many developed countries, but have more than doubled in India,
according to the Coronary Artery Disease among Asian Indians Research
Foundation. Rates are significantly higher in urban regions of India
than in rural ones.
This helps dispel the theory that a Western lifestyle is entirely to
blame for the problem among immigrants, some scientists believe. Dining
on greasy fast food and adopting a couch-potato lifestyle can certainly
make the situation worse, they said. But other factors clearly are at
play.
"Genetics load the gun. Environment pulls the trigger," said Dr. Enas
A. Enas, director of the research foundation.
That is all the more reason why Indo-Americans need to be aggressive
about preventing heart disease. Parents should be sure to start their
children on health diets and exercise programs when they're as young
as age 2, Enas said.
"If you have a loaded gun and you don't pull the trigger, no harm is
done."
Viren Venkat, 66, knows first-hand the importance of a healthy
lifestyle. The Sunnyvale resident experienced his first heart attack
when he was only 44. His oldest brother, Surendra, had one at 48.
Another brother, Narendra, had one at 47.
They were all busy business executives, and none of them got much
exercise, he conceded, but they were still surprised to suffer heart
problems at such an early age.
At the time of Venkat's first attack, he lived in Bombay and worked
as a record executive in India. His staff included a gardener, a
chauffeur and a cook. Venkat didn't even have to carry his briefcase
to his car in the morning.
Like many Indians and Indo-Americans, he ate heavier food cooked in
ghee, or clarified butter. Doctors recommend that foods be cooked in
olive oil instead.
Enas is convinced that high heart disease rates are partially
attributable to what he calls an "influence of affluence," which could
help explain the higher rates in urban India versus rural regions.
Research into this theory is still ongoing, but Enas points to the
highly automated lifestyle that is enjoyed in urban areas.
"Indians are Silicon Valley high-tech execs. What do they do? They do
not exercise. How do they go to work? By car," Enas said.
The Berkeley researchers believe that the children and grandchildren of
Indian immigrants could be at the highest risk for heart problems,
given their lifestyle as children is much more inactive than their
parents' tended be. The scientists, who looked at more than 300
Indo-Americans living in Yuba City and Alameda and Contra Costa
counties, anticipate the phenomena won't be visible, however, for a
few more years.
"We haven't hit the big wave of second- and third-generation"
Indo-Americans, Ivey said. "Indians are more at risk when they're put
in a Western environment."
*************
The Indian Paradox: a supposed heart-healthy vegetarian diet and they
have the highest heart diseases rate in the world.
The mainstream medical response: blame it on every thing else except
the diet, call it a paradox, and start prescribing pills and surgery
and start making some serious money.
TC
