The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Rural people also highly susceptible to diabetes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 22, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Rural people also highly susceptible to diabetes

Staff Reporter

Sedentary lifestyle the reason

CHENNAI: The sedentary lifestyle that has come to be identified as one of the key causes for the growing prevalence of diabetes in urban centres is also showing up in rural areas.

One of the reasons for villagers, who otherwise are known to be hardworking, embracing a sedentary lifestyle is the growth of technology and gadgets promising to make life easy for them, said a leading diabetologist in Chennai.

With everyone having access to electricity and television and the increasing popularity of mobile phones, people in rural areas are adopting a sedentary lifestyle.

The obesity levels there are also on the rise, said A. Ramachandran, director, M.V. Hospital for Diabetes and Research Centre.

He was speaking at the Public Health Centre here on Saturday on "insulin resistance and management".

An epidemic in India, diabetes prevalence had grown ten-fold in the urban population, he said, pointing out that Chennai was "the capital of diabetes knowledge" considering the information generated from the surveys pertaining to the disease.

The level would also go up in villages.

Insulin, according to him, was the oldest medicine for diabetes and well tested. It remained the fundamental treatment for the disease.

Public Health Centre president M.K. Srinivasan said diabetes had become a universal disease.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail