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| Dr K.K. Aggarwal uses yoga and meditative chants along with Ayurveda to ensure a better life; Pic by Jagan Negi |
The spanking clean sitting area in Moolchand Medicity Hospitals, Delhi, resonates with the hum of 10 souls chanting ‘Om’ in unison. It’s 7am and the lifestyle management class is on but you’ll be forgiven for mistaking it for a spiritual discourse. However, for Dr K.K. Aggarwal, consultant, medicine and cardiology, Moolchand, meditative chants and yoga are as important for treating patients as allopathic medicines or Ayurveda.
And patients are queuing up for the three-month lifestyle management programme at Moolchand from across India (even though it costs a cool Rs 16,000). They’ve come from far way Bahadurgarh, Gwalior, Assam and from far-flung areas of the NCR and even from Nigeria and Bangladesh. There’s a 36-year-old smoker who wants to quit after 19 years of puffing 20 cigarettes a day, diabetics whose sugar levels closely resemble the Sensex on an upward climb, a chronically depressed 50-year-old, and another who is fit but wants to improve the quality of his life.
As if in answer to the avalanche of people beset with lifestyle-related ailments, top-notch hospitals across the country are doing some crisis management in terms of dealing with these issues. Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai and Delhi’s speciality hospitals including Medanta Medicity, Apollo Hospitals, Max Hospitals, Fortis and Artemis in NCR or Columbia Asia and Apollo Gleneagles Hospital in Calcutta, have all unveiled separate departments christened Lifestyle Management or Internal Medicine Clinic.
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Even The Leela Group of Hotels is getting into the game. It has tied up with US-based healthcare firm, Meta Wellness, to offer heart patients a specialised programme. Open to everybody, the 90-day Reverse Programme will take off at the end of this year and cost Rs 1.5 lakh. Patients will check-in at Leela hotels in Mumbai or Kovalam for two days where they will be put through the intense paces of the programme including check-ups and counselling by doctors on their diet and lifestyle. The procedure will be repeated every three weeks for a day at the Leela property.
So, what does a visit to a lifestyle management expert entail? It begins with an assessment of the patient’s lifestyle. Doctors and patients discuss the problems that the person is facing, their diet, exercise regimen and their stress-levels. Then, a tailor-made programme (diet/exercise) is created for each person.
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| Dr Arpit Jain |
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| Dr Rachna Singh |
Dr Rachna Singh, lifestyle management expert at the Artemis Health Institute, Gurgaon, says: “We look at lifestyle management from a holistic perspective — including physical, mental or emotional health and nutrition.” Doctors also emphasise de-stressing by taking vacations and spending quality time with the family.
Says Dr Zinobia Madan, founder and MD Clinoma Healthcare and honourary consultant lifestyle medicine, Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai: “Lifestyle management deals with an umbrella of disorders like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart diseases, arthritis or even osteoporosis.’’
The doctors confirm that diabetics and people with high cholesterol form the bulk of patients who come to the clinics.
Says Dr Dipankar Sarkar, head, critical care unit and non-invasive surgery at Columbia Asia, Calcutta: “Just popping medicines for diabetes or cardiac problems isn’t enough. You need to make lifestyle modifications.”
Lifestyle diseases, say the doctors, are no longer the domain of busy executives as the malaise has spread to housewives, schoolchildren and youngsters too. “About 50 per cent patients at Max Healthcare are in the age group of 30 and 40 years,’’ says Dr Rommel Tickoo, senior consultant, internal medicine, Max Hospital, Delhi.
Around 30 per cent of the walk-ins in these clinics are medically fit people. “They just crave a better quality of life. Wellness is a concept that’s rapidly gaining ground,” says Dr Ambrish Mithal, chairman, endocrinology and diabetes, Medanta Medicity, Gurgaon.
Dr Arpit Jain, consultant — internal medicine, Artemis Health Institute, Gurgaon, says: “Some patients come with purely psychological symptoms like headaches, or insomnia which are manifestations of their stress-filled lives.”
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Since lifestyle management is all about modification in your daily life, diet is a major part of it. Aggarwal, for instance, employs the principles of Ayurveda to determine the diet so you can say goodbye to tea and sugar. He roots for grains like soybean, jau, wheat, bajra, jowar and chana which he adds in the diet. Madan, on the other hand has a repertoire of about 40 healthy recipes in her kitty which she recommends to her patients.
For exercise several of the doctors recommend a combination of yoga and aerobics. Sleep, often the first casualty of a stressful life, too is emphasised. Says Mithal: “Either people don’t sleep enough or sleep at odd hours as they are working on American or European times.”
The lifestyle medicine clinics also heavily rely on specialists who are called in at different stages of the programmes as required. So, a psychologist would attend to a stressed out individual while a cardiologist would advise a cardiac patient.
Several sessions are required to incorporate the changes as a part of the lifestyles.
Dr S.K. Sharma, lifestyle consultant, Ethos Healthcare, Delhi, who falls back on acupressure, acupuncture and homeopathy to treat his patients, says: “The emphasis is on control — whether it’s time management, diet or exercise.