As doctors, we go through gamut of emotions on daily basis. In addition to our personal lives and the challenges of running our clinics or hospitals, there are a few things that bother us constantly which are unfortunately beyond our control. Naturally we cannot control everything, but the ones that bother me are genuinely controllable problems if we become more aware and decide to change our thought processes.
The issues like sedentary lifestyle, malnutrition, social stigma against vitiligo, reluctance to educate themselves on chronic conditions like psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, self medication, social media influence and misinformation, lack of sex education thereby people risking their lives, rampant usages of steroids- the list goes on. In this piece of writing I will briefly touch upon lifestyle.
Lifestyle disorders are already the leading cause of morbidity at present if not mortality. The modern inventions have taken us as much backward physically as they have taken us forward technologically. People do not realize the simple fact that human body has evolved over millions of years when it was crucial for human to be physically agile for his survival. Moreover food has always been scarce and they had to hunt, gather or cultivate food which required physically intense activities. Mere 50 years are not enough for us to change the way our body functions. It needs constant movement and calorie restricted organic diet.
As science aspired to make our lives comfortable, we have crossed that line which separated essential inventions that increased our efficiency and inventions that are potentially disastrous for human race.
Agricultural revolution ensuring food safety, advances in medical sciences, quick communication technologies, easy transportation etc have greatly improved our quality of life. But processed food, presence of unending entertainment at the fingertips rendering people immobile for hours, societal norms which pressurize people to assume that a person is successful if he has money; have played complete havoc with human body and minds.
Most of the children coming to my clinic, whether they are from urban or rural backgrounds eat the most unhealthy diet. Processed food like chips, biscuits, chocolates, pizzas etc form the major part of the children's diet. The majority do not eat green vegetables or fruits. Many are completely sedentary and are obese.
The people have lost the sense of ideal body weight and the appearance of an overweight person is called 'healthy'. Some parents of completely normal children approach doctors to increase their children's weight because the majority of peer group looks different from their children.
The society is blissfully unaware of coming catastrophe. Most of the children are obese. Most of the girls have poly cystic ovarian disease, many young people in early twenties have abnormal sugar and lipid profiles, many have early onset of hypertension. The collateral issues which associate with these are infertility, abnormal susceptibility to infections, poor wound healing, knee joint damage, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome etc. Many are unaware that these unhealthy lifestyle patterns cause or accelerate a lot of common skin problems like acne, hairfall, melasma, psoriasis, fungal infections etc.
It just takes a little bit of effort and willpower to overcome lifestyle problems.
Hope you all try.
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