Check out Some interesting findings on Diabetes​ on World Health Day

Hyderabad: India has the second largest number of people suffering from diabetes and may soon earn the ignominy of being the World’s capital. Talking about diabetes, very recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his monthly broadcast asked citizens to defeat it by modifying their lifestyles.

With this year’s World Health day theme also being ‘Beat Diabetes’, eKincare, India’s fastest growing healthcare technology has come out with an interesting study on awareness around the lifestyle disease among people in India. The study was conducted across eKincare’s user base in India.

The single most important step to prevent diabetes is to monitor your blood sugar levels regularly. However, despite the widespread education and awareness campaigns, almost 80% of the users on the platform are either not aware or have not taken a blood sugar test in the past one year. This is a startling revelation given that most of them belong to educated, urban population.

The data also indicated that the risk of diabetes almost doubles for the age group of 41-50 when compared to the age group of 31-40 indicating 41-50 years to be the most risk prone years. This increase in risk is for both men & women. While rudimentary lifestyle and unhealthy food are the biggest contributors, it is critical that a mass awareness campaign or programme is launched to educate people on not just healthy lifestyles but also on importance of preventive healthcare mechanisms such as tracking & monitoring their vitals like BP, BMI, Blood sugar values. This is essential because the cost/ burden of living with diabetes is far greater than prevention. Regular monitoring helps one to spot the risks early and take preventive measures

The data also suggested that the risk of diabetes increases considerably (almost by 70%) as one moves from being normal weight to obese, indicating that obesity is one of the key factors of diabetes. These insights are extremely significant since they are based on crowd sourced data of eKincare, hence provides a realistic understanding of the level of awareness and the need for more impactful education. “Our primary endeavour at eKincare is to help individuals assess, track and stay informed about their health. Awareness, education and regular monitoring of your vitals is a key step towards preventing and controlling chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and CVD,” said Kiran Kalakuntla, Founder, eKincare.