World Heart Day

heart healthA study conducted by Saffolalife on the occasion of World Heart Day has highlighted the barriers that Indians face when it comes to leading a healthy life for a healthy heart.

The Saffolalife Study 2017 found that long working hours, job stress, lack of sleep and long travelling hours are the key barriers for Indians, in addition to the temptation of tasty food.


This pan India survey commissioned by AC Nielsen was conducted among 1,306 respondents across Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata.

The study revealed that while both men and women find temptation for tasty food and eating out as a barrier to staying healthy, there are some differential barriers which get highlighted between the two genders.

While women site time spent in household work as a big barrier, men say that job stress and lack of sleep hours is a big reason why they are not able to put in efforts to stay healthy.


When it comes to different age groups, household responsibilities and stress at home are seen to be skewed as barriers towards the age group of 35-44 as compared to the age group of 25-44.

Time spent on tablet or phone is seen to be adding to sedentary lifestyle and is a barrier and lack of facilities and infrastructure (space to exercise nearby their office or home) is also cited as a barrier that comes in the way to putting efforts to stay heart healthy.

The study aims to understand the barriers to heart health to enable higher compliance and encourage people at CVD risk to lead heart healthy lifestyle.

Key barriers keeping Indians from a healthy heart

1. 80% Indians feel that they have long working hours and that comes in their way of putting efforts towards having a healthy heart.
2. 68% Indians say that they have long hours of travelling, which is a reason they dont get time to put in the required efforts to stay healthy.
3. 76% Indians feel that job or business (work) stress prevents them from making healthy efforts.
4. 69 % Indians feel that they don’t know where their time goes because they are always on a tablet/ phone. This trend was seen to be similar across age groups contrary to popular belief that use of technology is more in the younger age group.
5. 74% Indians say that they dont get enough sleep which is a barrier to their heart health.
6. 81 % women feel that household work takes up a lot of their time which is a reason they dont get time to put in the required efforts to stay healthy.
7. 72 % Indians feel that stress at home acts a barriers towards heart healthy efforts.
8. 83% Indians say that temptation of tasty food is a barrier to heart health. Temptation for tasty food is higher for age group 35-44 than age group 25-34 (86% vs 81%).
9. 74% Indians say that healthy food is not tasty, so they cant eat regularly.
10. 66% Indians say they don’t have space to exercise / workout / do yoga /walk/ run nearby their office or home.
11. 74 % women need to cook separately for herself, if she wants to have healthy food and that itself becomes the barrier.
12. Healthy food not tasty, home stress and job stress is a bigger barrier to Indians with cholesterol (greater than 200 mg/dl) as compared to Indian not suffering from high cholesterol (less than 200 mg/dl).


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