The survey "prevalence of pre-hypertension in young military adults and its association with overweight and dyslipidaemia” published in the August, 2011 issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Research was carried out by 02 doctors of the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) and a Scientist from National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) Hyderabad in their personal capacity on their own accord. This study involved limited number of Naval personnel and results of such a small sample size cannot be extrapolated to the entire Armed Forces as the sampling was not representative of the entire population. This has also been clearly stated in the study.
Pre-hypertension is a stage with Systolic Blood Pressure (BP) varying from 120mm - 139mm of Hg and Diastolic BP varying from 80mm - 89mm of Hg. It is a stage, where non drug preventive actions like exercise, yoga, low salt low calorie diet may be initiated and it does not mean that individual is suffering from Hypertension. Body Mass Index (BMI) of >23.5 was used in this study for defining overweight, which is less than Body Mass Index of >25 being used in the Armed Forces for this purpose, which is also the standard of World Health Organisation.
Hence, the derivation, that 80 percent of population of Armed Forces is suffering from pre-hypertension, 30 percent are overweight and 67 percent of Armed Forces personnel have low HDL is factually incorrect.
The eating habits of the Indian Armed Forces personnel are based on authorized and laid down ration scales, which have been worked out by the specialists of the service in liaison with Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) and the NIN, keeping in view their special and extra requirement owing to terrain, environment, physical exertion etc.
This information was given by Defence Minister Shri AK Antony in written reply to Dr Ram Prakash in Rajya Sabha today.
Source:pib
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