New Delhi, June 21 (IANS): With diabetes growing alarmingly in India, a health expert on Sunday urged people to embrace yoga to avoid or control the lifestyle disease.

Yoga is a crucial discipline that helps provides not only palliative care but also helps control or cure lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension, said Vaishakhi Rustagi, a paediatric endocrinologist with Max Super Speciality Hospital here.

Rustagi's comment came as the world celebrated the inaugural International Yoga Day on Sunday.

"Due to various factors, the pattern of diabetes emerges gradually in later life. However, it can be controlled by dietary and yogic practices. This state of exhaustion of the pancreas can be controlled and restored by yoga," Rustagi said in a statement.

According to the statement, over 65 million people are suffering from diabetes in India.

It said the most worrisome issue was the increasing numbers of children who were developing diabetes. Around 70,000 Indian children aged under 15 suffer from type 1 diabetes and another 40,000 from type 2 diabetes.

"Diabetes among children was considered a rare occurrence till a few years ago. However, today diabetes in children is increasing relentlessly because of the imbalances which are evolving within the modern lifestyle," the doctor said.