[MollyR]

This is an anecdote. I have coworker friend who is from india, and he told me most of the men in his family die from heart attacks from age 40-50.

I thought it was weird as heck, but when I researched it showed they had 4x for heart issues against the general population in america.

https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-now/2015/sout...

[triplesec]

Any idea of why this might be?

[newscracker]

[My limited knowledge and reading of this is reflected here]

There are genetic, dietary and lifestyle factors. Genetically and historically, people were used to famines and lower availability of food. So the body evolved to store up whenever food consumption increases. This applies to large parts of the population in Africa too.

With affluence and affordability improved drastically in the last few decades, people tend to eat more and richer food, which forces the body to store as fat. This triggers Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Diet wise, the consumption of dairy is quite high (not as high as some developed countries though) - significantly higher than consumption in the past. This combined with genetics makes things worse, and a lot of lacto-vegetarians also tend to suffer from the lifestyle diseases mentioned above.

[theparanoid]

South Asians have a high predisposition to metabolic syndrome - http://lmgtfy.com/?q=india+metabolic+syndrome+genetic+predis...

[MollyR]

My initial guess was diet and/or exercise, but I was thinking it could be some genetic factor as well.

I really wish we had more genomic data from across the world.

[ajcarpy2005]

1. their traffic intersections appear to be extremely stress-inducing because it requires hyper-vigilance.

2. the heat indices of that country can be quite astonishing

[sumedh]

Poor diet, we eat lot of fried food. We eat lot of Indian sweets (to be fair they are really good) and we dont exercise.