Health experts have advised people to abstain from taking high cholesterol food items, as it may develop gallstones, apart from posing other health problems including high blood pressure, heart diseases and stroke.
According to them, hypertension affects one in three individuals over the age of 45 years, and it is one of the main causes of heart diseases as well as stroke in Pakistan. Only three per cent of the hypertensive population in Pakistan is adequately controlled. Most of the people facing hypertension never opt medication to maintain their blood pressure levels and thus exposed them to various complications associated with hypertension including stroke and heart diseases.
Another common problem, which surfaced due to taking polluted water and adopting unhealthy lifestyle, is developing of gallstones. An estimated over 10 million people in Pakistan have gallstones, but most of them don't know they have them, they added.
To a query, they said gallstones were clusters of solid material made mostly of cholesterol that form in the gallbladder. They could form as one large stone or many small stones. Some were as large as a golf ball and others were as small as a grain of sand. Elaborating they said painless gallstones were called silent gallstones, while gallstones that do cause symptoms were called symptomatic gallstones. The symptomatic gallstones accounted for about hundreds of thousands of hospitalisations as well as operations each year in the country.
They further said gallstones were formed in three different ways ie when bile contained more cholesterol than it could dissolve; when proteins or other substances in the bile caused cholesterol to form hard crystals; and when the gallbladder didn't contract and empty its bile regularly. Indigestion after eating foods high in fat was one symptom of gallstones, while other symptoms included: sudden severe pain in the upper abdomen that lasted anywhere from 30 minutes to many hours; nausea or vomiting, and pain under right shoulder or in the right shoulder blade.
To another question, they said south Asia housing one fourth of world populations served an index example to highlight increase in various diseases. In the absence of a major subsidy on tertiary care in most developing countries, the healthcare cost borne out of pocket by individuals were enormous and in most instances unaffordable. Therefore, we must strive to prevent diseases in developing countries by promoting healthy lifestyle among the people, they asserted.