by VAUHINI VARA
Murali Dharan used to eat a mound of white rice every day, overindulged in ice cream, rarely worked out and was overweight. When his chest started hurting one evening three years ago, the Los Altos entrepreneur took painkillers and went to bed. Only later did he find out that he had suffered a heart attack at age 46.
The experience of Mr. Dharan, an Indian immigrant, isn’t uncommon in the Bay Area. He and other relatively young South Asians—including Indians and other ethnic groups like Pakistanis and Sri Lankans—are up to three times as likely as all other ethnic groups combined to die of heart disease, according to a study of California death records from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, a research center.
That has translated into what some doctors describe as an epidemic of heart disease among the region’s South Asians, one of the largest ethnic groups in the Bay Area after Caucasians and Latinos, according to the U.S. census. The causes include low levels of so-called good cholesterol and lifestyle factors such as high-carbohydrate diets and lack of exercise.
“With this large immigration of young, hard-working South Asian engineers, you see more South Asians living in this area having more cardiovascular events,” said César Molina, a physician in Mountain View.
The Wall Street Journal for more
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