Confronting Asia’s growing rate of chronic conditions means tackling cultural issues as much as medical ones

Asia’s health crisis is often framed as an inevitability: Aging populations, rising medical costs, a surge in lifestyle diseases, elderly patients needing care for longer. Rates of conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and hypertension are climbing across the region, driven by insufficient exercise, poor diet, drinking, smoking, stress and pollution. These lifestyle diseases now account for roughly 80% of all diagnoses in Asia, a growing burden of morbidity that healthcare systems are struggling to keep pace with.

Yet focusing on lifestyle diseases, and the choices behind them, overlooks the cultural pressures that shape how people think, feel, and behave long before they ever seek medical care. And it’s critical for those of us in the healthcare industry—particularly those of us concerned with keeping people healthy and curing them once they’re sick—to push back against these pressures.

Across the region, health is being defined less by clinical advice and more by social expectations about “what healthy is supposed to look like.” These scripts are repeated and reinforced by the media and our social media feeds, turning wellness into a performance. Think photos showing a visible transformation, or grindset posts that extol rigid routines and emotional stoicism. When people internalize these rules, two things happen: They pursue unsustainable, all-or-nothing programs; then, when they abandon these plans, they delay seeking help because admittin...