Young Indians are increasingly at risk of heart attacks. It used to be a major health concern that was a cause of alarm in midlife or late adulthood, but it is now not sparing the youth in their twenties and thirties. This is further worsened by certain lifestyle habits, which raise the risk of life-threatening cardiac events.
ALSO READ: Cardiologist reveals high sodium diet may weaken heart’s ability to pump blood, suggests how to reverse the damage
Dr Babu Ezhumalai, senior interventional cardiologist at MGM Healthcare, Chennai, told HT Lifestyle in an interview that irregular eating habits are directly associated with heightened cardiac risk and worse outcomes.
Most shocking, yet not surprisingly, two irregular eating habits are one of the common triggers. As per Dr Ezhumalai, heart diseases show up when indulging in these two problematic habits, “even for those with no history of heart disease.” He identified these two habits: skipping breakfast and late-night eating.
The youth’s erratic eating pattern is to blame here, whether morning rush makes them skip breakfast or late work calls make them delay dinner, in the end, the heart bears the strain of these habits.
Further, he highlighted that heart attacks are hitting Indian adults a decade younger than their Western peers because of poor habits like these. The cardiologist said, “Skipping breakfast and late-night eating, once innocuous tendencies, are today identified as leading causes of the alarming risk of heart attacks in young Indians.”
1. Skipping breakfast
Skipping breakfast may be for convenience’s sake, adding more time to your work commute, but this can have serious consequences for your heart. It throws hormones off balance, along with the potential for plaque buildup.
“Young adults who skipped breakfast were more vulnerable to increased blood pressure and abnormal metabolic reactions, which both contribute to atherosclerosis acceleration and instability of plaques in the arteries. Skipping the morning meal leads to prolonged fasting in the body, which increases stress hormones such as cortisol and enhances cardiac risk factors,” Dr Babu Ezhumalai elaborated on the demerit of skipping breakfast.
According to him, frequently skipping breakfast can increase the risk of heart attack and cardiovascular death by 27–35 percent.
2. Late-night eating
Late-night eating means hitting the sack immediately after finishing your dinner. This leads to inflammation in the body. Describing how late-night eating affects the body, he said, “Eating dinner within less than two hours of bedtime deranges the body’s intrinsic metabolic process, disrupts glucose handling, and leads to more inflammation, all of which promote conditions conducive to myocardial injury.”
Now, if you regularly indulge in these habits, beginning the day without any breakfast and eating dinner late at night whenever time permits, you are setting yourself up for serious heart disease. The cardiologist warned that when these two habits are combined, the “risk of an unfavourable outcome after a heart attack, such as recurrent events and death in 30 days, increases four- to five-fold.”
Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.