Rising lifestyle diseases a concern for UAE

When basic, common-sense rules for maintaining good health are repeated ad nauseam, year after year, day after day by medical experts — and equally consistently ignored by people — what you get are alarming statistics that make you wonder if people, deep down, really want to play with their lives. These rules are neither complex nor abstract. Unless, having sunk really deep into the bean bag of hedonism, your mind is no longer capable of thinking straight. The rising statistics of lifestyle diseases in the UAE reveal once again how we are frittering away our most precious natural asset — our health — in pursuit of momentary pleasures like unhealthy foods, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and drinking and an indifference to tackling stress.

What is also of concern to doctors in the UAE is people playing truant from regular health check-ups, which could be potential life savers. All these factors combine to present an alarming picture of galloping lifestyle diseases — diabetes, hypertension, obesity or heart disease — which, by definition, are not genetic hand-me-downs over which we have little control, but conditions of our own making. Each of these conditions is preventable simply by opting to live a healthier life. And surely, among the primal instincts of man should be the desire to live a long, healthy life. The UAE has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest instances of diabetes, cardio vascular disease and hypertension. It is the kind of distinction the nation must work to collectively reject.