5% school children in Lucknow have high BP

Lucknow, May 17 (IAS) Nearly 5 per cent of school-going children in Lucknow have been found to be suffering from high blood pressure.

Fast food, pressure of meeting expectations from a young age is affecting the health of school going children who are turning hypertensive, a survey has revealed.

The survey of about 5,000 students from different schools, conducted by Vandana Awasthi, who did her Ph.D from KGMU and Dr Abhinav Verma, has found shocking results.

Prof N.S. Verma, head of the department of physiology at the King George's Medical University who guided the surveyors, said: "The samples size of the survey was done on over 5000 students between 12 to 18 years of age at different institutions and we have shared these findings. The exercise is still underway as more students are being contacted.

"The main reason for this is children preferring to buy food from outside over home tiffin. The other key takeaway of this is that the children are under tremendous pressure to perform now and this peer pressure is detrimental to their health."

He underlined the need to ensure that children also get their blood pressure checked at regular intervals.

Prof Verma is also the secretary general of the Indian Society of Hypertension.

The KGMU professor said that since blood pressure of children is not monitored regularly, the extent of students being hypertensive is also not known.

"In the US, a survey said 5 per cent of the students there were hypertensive due to obesity but here the reasons are different. Even among adults, half of the people suffering with hypertension are not aware that they are hypertensive and that their vital organs such as brain, heart, and kidney are at risk," he said.

"During our time, we faced pressure only after class 10. Now, students in fourth or fifth standards too are under pressure to perform as they are supposed to decide a career, be it engineering or medical, at a very young age."

Prof Verma, along with Dr Anuj Maheshwari, the coordinator of Indian Society of Hypertension, had supervised the sample survey in India.

"After 2019 there has been no such survey with such big sample size," he added.

The survey included people over 25-years of age and covered those who had not got their blood pressure monitored in the past one year.

"Among elderly too high blood pressure causes damage to capillaries, the smallest blood vessels that form the connection between the vessels that carry blood away from the heart (arteries) and the vessels that return blood to the heart (veins)," said Dr Abhishek Shukla, secretary general association of international doctors.

"The major damage with prolonged high blood pressure is to the brain where small capillaries suffer irreversible damage. The heart, kidneys are the next vital organ to sustain damage from hypertension," said Prof Verma.

Source: IANS