Lifestyle diseases are avoidable

 

Dr Gure Gure of MedExpo Private Clinic says that it is high time people change their way of lifestyle and live healthy in today’s era. He is of the view that High blood pressure and heart diseases have become common, hence people should be careful about what they eat and the way they live.

“With modernization, and fast food restaurants popping around the city as well as the high rates of unemployment, lifestyle diseases keep on growing,” said Dr Gure.  He emphasized that the main cause for High Blood Pressure is stress. “With all sorts of ailments in the society we now see High Blood Pressure getting common even among young people because they are stressed out,” he said.  “It is small things including living allowance running out of transport fare, groceries, milk of the baby finishing while the young people get into adulthood. This is the time when the reality of life strikes and the young people fall into the High blood gap,” he said.

He also adds that the challenge of bad eating habits, also contributes to lifestyle diseases including Diabetes.  “Eating right is still expensive for an average Motswana, especially in drought seasons,” he said emphasizing that; lack of vegetables and too much starch on the diet remains a concern for most people in the country because of lack of employment.  “The burden of a disease is the chronic medication and lifestyle change, and when it is diagnosed this becomes a concern because having to take an anti hypertensive pill everyday for the rest of one’s life is not easy,” he said.  He adds that above that, cardiovascular diseases and stroke, which are lifestyle diseases, can also cause kidney failure, as a resulting consequence.

He noted that it is their mission at MedExpo Clinic to engage people and teach them about choosing the right lifestyle because it cannot be the government ’s effort alone to fight this problem. “We have outreach programs each month to sensitize people on lifestyle diseases and we had one recently at Airport Junction mall where people came in large numbers to learn about lifestyle and non communicable diseases,” said Dr Gure.  He revealed that they have scanned people for; blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol and body mass index for free, and advised people on medical precautions to take to ensure good health in their lives.