Lifestyle diseases are no longer confined to middle-aged or elderly populations. Increasingly, clinicians across specialties are encountering obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in adolescents and young adults. This demographic shift signals an important change in disease epidemiology, with earlier onset translating into longer disease exposure and a higher lifetime risk of cardiovascular and metabolic complications.
The drivers are multifactorial and widely relevant to everyday practice: sedentary lifestyles, high intake of ultra-processed foods, disrupted sleep patterns, chronic stress, and early-life metabolic programming. Urbanization and technology-driven behaviours have further amplified these risks, often unmasking disease in genetically predisposed individuals at a much younger age. Clinically, early-onset lifestyle…
