Obesity and Diabetes Risk in India Goes Up Due to Migration of People from Rural to Urban Environment

Migration of people from rural to urban areas has increased the tendency to become obese and along with it the risk of lifestyle diseases like diabetes.

What's more, this migration is a factor driving the diabetes epidemic in India, according to the study published this week in PLoS Medicine.

Diabetes Essentials: Types, Complications, Management & Treatment
Diabetes is a metabolic disease caused by insulin deficiency that leads to high blood sugar levels and several associated complications if left untreated.

Like the rest of the world, the sub-continent too is experiencing a diabetes epidemic.

Diabetes has increased in urban areas of India from 5 percent to 15 percent between 1984 and 2004. As in other developing countries this is thought to result from increased consumption of saturated fats and sugar and reduced levels of physical activity.

The process of urbanization - migration from rural areas to towns and cities and the expansion of urban areas into the periphery - is linked to changes in diet and behaviour.

Diabetes and Exercise
Regular exercise especially in type II diabetes not only helps reduce the sugar but also reduces the demand for medication by 20% and helps you stay healthy.

To examine how migration has impacted on obesity and diabetes in India, Shah Ebrahim and colleagues interviewed rural migrants working in urban factories.

To reach the conclusion, researchers recruited rural-urban migrants working in four factories in central, north and south India and the spouses of these workers if they were living in the same town. Each migrant worker or spouse asked a sibling still living in the rural area that they were originally from to join the study. Non-migrant factory workers and their siblings from urban areas were also recruited.

Gestational Diabetes About
The condition is not caused by a lack of insulin, but by the action of hormones produced during pregnancy that blocks the action of insulin.

Each participant answered questions about their diet and physical activity and had their blood sugar and body mass index measured.

The results showed similar levels of obesity in urban and migrant men (41.9 percent and 37.8 percent respectively), in comparison with 19 percent of men in rural areas. Diabetes also stood at similar levels in urban and migrant men (13.5 percent in urban and 14.3 percent respectively), in comparison with 6.2 percent in rural men. These patterns of obesity and diabetes were similar in women.

Diabetic Diet - Diabetes Mellitus
The diabetic diet most often recommended is high in dietary fiber (especially soluble fiber) and nutrients, but low in fat (especially saturated fat) and moderate in calories.

The findings demonstrate that rural-urban migration in India is associated with rapid increases in obesity and diabetes and also indicated that changes in migrant behaviour - such as reduced physical activity - put them at similar risk to the urban population.

Source-ANI
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