AN incurable love for condiments and salty viands has emerged as a major factor for why heart disease remains among the top killers of Filipinos nationwide, according to experts from the Department of Health (DOH) and the Philippine General Hospital (PGH).
During the recent PhilPen Summit, DOH Disease Prevention and Control Bureau Medical Officer Carmela N. Granada said many Filipinos continue to use condiments such as soy sauce when eating salty viands. This raises the risk of them developing hypertension, which increases the risk for cardiovascular events such as stroke or cardiac failure.
Based on DOH data, there are around 938,655 Filipinos who are included in the hypertension and diabetes registry in the Philippines. This, however, only includes patients receiving medicines from public health centers.
“We haven’t captured yet half of it. The prevalence of hypertension is 23.9 percent. The one showed by Dr. Debbie [Deborah Ignacia D. Ona of the UP PGH] is actually 2013, which is 22.3 percent, so that’s roughly about 12 to 13 million adults. What we have registered right now is [less than a] million,” Granada told the BusinessMirror.
Uncontrolled hypertension
In a presentation, Ona said that another problem is uncontrolled hypertension. She said preliminary 2017 data of a DOH health survey showed that 34.3 percent of participants had hypertension.
However, participants with hypertension and not receiving treatment accounted for 14 percent while participants receiving treatment but have uncontrolled hypertension, 41.6 percent.
Apart from unhealthy diets, risk factors that cause hypertension include family history; old age; gender, specifically male; and low socioeconomic, educational status, according to Ona.
Granada said that while it was true that consuming healthier foods may be costly, continuing bad habits, such as unhealthy diets, will cost more in the long run.
DOH Calabarzon Director Eduardo Janairo told the BusinessMirror on the sidelines of the event that eating healthy can actually be cheap, if people make better spending choices and veer away from unhealthy options such as fast food or processed food.
“When it comes to [a healthy] diet, you do not need to spend a lot. You have access to cheaper options. In NCR, when I was the director there, P100 could feed a family of six per day but they are healthy,” Janairo said.
Apart from food choices, Filipinos need to veer away from vices such as smoking. Janairo said that while the sin taxes helped improve government revenues, it was not successful in forcing older smokers to quit.
What happened was, most of these smokers just chose a different and cheaper brand to continue their vice, Janairo said. The only consolation was that millennials now are more aware of the health risks of smoking.
Granada said what is important is that the government is able to give Filipinos, especially millennials, a reason to believe they will benefit from keeping a healthy lifestyle.
“We need to teach them what are the benefits of living healthy. They may spend more now [for healthier choices] but it will lead to greater savings in
the next five to 10 years because they will not get sick,” Granada said.
Based on 2016 data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), ischaemic heart disease was the top leading cause of death with 74,134, or 12.7 percent of the total deaths in that year.
The second top cause was neoplasm’s, commonly known as “cancer” with 60,470 or 10.4 percent, followed by pneumonia with 57,809 or 9.9 percent for both sexes.
Among males, ischaemic heart diseases was also the top leading cause of death with 44,472 or 13.3 percent, followed by cerebrovascular diseases at 31,675 deaths, or 9.5 percent then neoplasms at 29,516 deaths or 8.8 percent.
For females, the top cause of death was neoplasm or “cancer” with 30,954, or 12.5 percent, followed by ischaemic heart diseases with 29,662 with 12 percent; then pneumonia, with 28,816 or 11.6 percent of the total.
Image credits: Roy Domingo