New Delhi: Across India’s workforce, elevated blood sugar levels, vitamin deficiencies, stress and poor sleep are rampant, found a new report by Loop, a corporate insurance firm and health benefits provider.
Loop’s “Workforce Health Index 2026” found that health risks and diseases which are typically associated with older people are now even appearing in those who are still in their 30s. The findings were based on 11,427 health reports, 9,097 survey responses, and results from 816,003 biomarkers in 2026. However, Loop does add a caveat to the report highlighting that the dataset is based on reports, responses and insurance claims, and might not be nationally representative.
“The most important finding from WHI 2026 is how early these health risks are showing up. One in three professionals in their 30s already shows blood-sugar dysfunction, and that is only one part of the picture. We are also seeing high stress, widespread Vitamin D and B12 deficiencies, and a clear gap between the health risks people have and the care they actually seek,” Ryan Singh, co-founder and COO of Loop Health told ThePrint.
The survey relied particularly on lab reports that measured specific biological molecules such as genes, proteins, DNA mutations in the blood, tissue of body fluids to give an analysis of the person’s overall health status.
“In the 20s, 30.6 per cent of female haemoglobin reports fall below the female cutoff against 4.0 per cent of male reports below the male one; at 60 and over the two shares are 42.0 per cent and 32.2 per cent. Diabetic-range HbA1c in the 30s runs 10.3 per cent of male reports against 4.3 per cent of females,” read the report.
Even among India’s metros, the survey found that Mumbai has the highest share of elevated blood sugar among the five metros, at 46.8 per cent followed by Pune at 43.2 per cent. Bengaluru has the lowest of the five metro shares, at 30.7 per cent.
“We often treat a diabetes diagnosis as if the job is done: check the HbA1c, prescribe a medicine, give a diet chart. But what happens after that? Does the person stay on the same medicine and the same diet plan year after year? Diabetes care has to deal with several things together. You cannot hand the same exercise plan to someone in their twenties and someone in their late forties and expect it to work for both,” said Mihir Shah, a family physician at Loop Health, adding that if such diseases are arriving earlier, they need better diagnosis and early treatment too.