Health Adda

While swine flu is still spreading, the mass hysteria and the whining of the media seems to be settling. People seem to have come to terms with the following facts: 1.        1) It is an infection caused by a variant (H1N1) of the Influenza A virus, that regularly causes seasonal flu in India and elsewhere 2.        2) It spreads from one person to another through droplets of saliva shed while speaking, sneazing or coughing, or by touching contaminated surfaces. 3.        3) The symptoms of this infection are similar to those of ordinary flu: running nose, cough, fever, body aches, and rarely breathlessness. You can’t distinguish the 2 by symptoms alone. 4.        4) The risk to life with either of the 2 infections is very small; around 99.9 % of those infected recover on their own, even without any special medicines like Tamiflu. Local figures show that of 700 people tested at SGPGI, 80 had swine flu, almos...

While excessive computer use can lead to conditions such as attention deficit disorder, depression anxiety and proneness to violence, recent research has sho wn that internet is not all that bad after all! The web may in fact be teaching our brains, subtly rewiring the way we respond, think and behave. The book iBrain – Surviving the Technological Alterations of the Modern Mind, by Dr Gary Small, provides new insight through research undertaken at UCLA, and reveals that an hour of internet use every day may boost brain function. “We learn to react more swiftly to visual stimuli, improve our ability to sift through large amounts of information, and decide what is important and what isn’t”. This training is most evident when we scan our e-mails, quickly deciding and deleting what is spam, while focussing on those that are important. “If you never use computers, then start”, Professor Small recommends. “As we found, even an hour a day can vastly improve yor infrmation process...

Until the recent Delhi High Court judgment decriminalizing homosexuality, this subject was seldom discussed in public.  Sex between 2 people of the same sex was considered unlawful, immoral and hence remained clandestine. The extensive media coverage of exuberant gays and lesbians hugging and petting each other in the open, after the judgement, has made many wonder if being gay has become the latest “in thing”. Homosexuality poses a hazard to health. In a study of 5406 homosexual men in Canada, Dr Robert Hogg noted that their life expectancy was reduced by 8 to 20 years (http://ije.oxfordjournals.org). Through another recent study, researchers from Center for Disease Control (CDC), USA, reconfirmed that gays die around 10-20 years younger than those who engage in normal sexual practice. “These sobering results of our research should encourage our society to reaxamine what it’s doing with those who engage in homosexuality”, says Dr Paul Cameron, President of the Family Researc...

In this column last Saturday, we discussed how hospitals, w hich most citizen behold as morbid,  frightful places can be transformed into  pleasant , stress free, clean places, where people take care not only of the sick patients, but provide opportunities for the “healthy” attendants to check the staus of their health as well.  This could be your wish list from your hospital: 1.        The whole hospital environment becomes “health promoting”; for example a patient who comes with a minor skin problem also gets an opportunity to get his BP, blood sugar, weight checked and get gets to know if he is overweight or has a cardiac risk. 2.        While waiting for your doctor, you watch a glow screen or CCTV informing  about the benefits of taking the 3 shots of Hepatitis B vaccine, and are reminded to vaccinate your children and spouse as well. 3.        The hospital is sp...

You wouldn’t probably go visiting a hospital on a free evening, or be called a luny if you did. And if an ambulance parks outside a neighbour’s door in the colony, your heart would pound as you wonder whom you might lose soon.  Yes, hospitals are necessary evils you can’t wish way. They often become common bashing topics at parties. And the variety of sub topics that hospitals provide are varied enough to keep a conversation going for ages: attitude of doctors, the way nurses behave, the bedsheets, the long waits for investigations, the gentry, the inconvenience and long queues for payment, the escalating cost of care, how last time a person you knew went to that place and died (never mind if he had a terminal cancer and went there gasping), or if anyone who went in critically ill and came out better did so in spite of the hospital rather than due to it! And add to it the topics of unnnecessary investigations, delay in response, or that or that how cruel it wa...

Do you get burning sensation behind your chest bone, or have sour food come into your mouth? Do you wake up at night with “heartburn” or “acidity”, and need to drink water or take antacids for relief? If this happens more than once a week, you are suffering from GERD (Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease) one  our modern day maladies. GERD is caused by refluxing of acid that is normally produced by the stomach, into the food pipe or esophagus, due to malfunctioning of the one-way valve located at the stomach-foodpipe junction (GE valve). A recent nation-wide survey from 25 centers, conducted by the Indian Society of Gastroenterology, found that 8.4% of Indians suffer from this disorder. If you are a sufferer, you have 80 million in India for company! GERD is a lifestyle disorder, and hence a phenomenon of our times. Those who are overweight or obese, tend to have loose GE valves and are prone to reflux. Alcohol, nicotine (in tobacco), caffeine (in coffee and tea), fatty food ( pa...

Many accused the Delhi Government‘s banning of the ubiquitous plastic bags in shops and hotels since January 2009 as overkill and unmindful of its many benefits.The court however observed that plastics had indeed become a serious  hazard and upheld the decision. Plastic carry bags that are so liberally doled out by grocers and store-keepers are emerging a major killer. They are made of polythene, a product of petroleum and can be seen littered on roadsides, drains and fields while you travel by car or train. They choke landfills and drains and have even caused floods. They block the intestines of cattle and marine animals when they are ingested mistakenly while grazing, and kill around 10, 00,000 each year by painfully strangulating their intestines or by choking. Disposing these bags is not easy; their burning releases toxins that are harmful to environment and us. Burying them causes the landfills to choke as polythene does not breakdown and decompose easily, and wh...

When Sunita, a 20 year old engineering student, was brought to my clinic by her father a few years ago, nothing seemed grossly out of place in the nvestigations that she had gone through. Yet  was going right for her. While she had been a topper of her batch in school, she was now struggling to pass the year ending examinations, had developed a repulsion to the college, her books and the hostel, had stopped chatting or going out with friends, and had even started avoiding going home on holidays. She was not sleeping well at night, had lost her appetitie and could not remember the last movie she had seen. My suggestion that she could be depressed met with strong disapproval from her father. He demanded that I certify Sunita to be free of any serious disease, and insisted that she had to work hard and exell in studies to compensate for all he had struggled and invested to get her to become an engineer. I heard that Sunita unable to cope and pull on,  ended her life a year ...

More than a year after its introduction into India as an over the counter (OTC) drug, the Emergency Contraceptive pill seems to have become quite popular. Marketed by atleast 2 pharmaceutical companies, namely Cipla (i-pill) and Mankind (Unwanted-72), awareness about their existence among women who can watch TV has become widespread.  Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs)—sometimes simply referred to as emergency contraceptives (ECs) or the " morning-after pill "—are drugs that act both to prevent  ovulation  or  fertilization  and possibly post-fertilization  implantation   of a  embryo . Hence they are distinct from  medical abortion  methods that act after implantation.  As its name implies, EC is intended for occasional use, when primary means of contraception  fail. Since EC methods act before implantation, they are medically and legally considered forms of  contraception . ECPs contain the  hormone levonorgestre...

College freshers and their parents might wonder what Prof Rajender Kachroo might have felt when his son Aman was beaten to death by his seniors a year ago in the name of ragging. One may also wonder what made four “senior” medical students, aged perhaps 19 and who had chosen medicine as their carreer, gang up and beat a  lone helpless fresher to death in a display of their might and supremacy. Ragging in Indian campuses has existed for atleast 3- 4 decades. It was agonizing and humiliating even in our times in the early 70s. I recall how some students loved to rag, and were at their liveliest during the days when freshers came in. They would  terrorize trembling new comers who had just ventured out of protected homes. In the initial days and weeks of our joining,  we saw these “senior” raggers to exude confidence and power but as we settled down and got our bearings over the next few months, we realized that most of them were phonies, repeaters or perverts o...

Ever noticed how people respond and behave differently in classrooms, boardrooms, bedrooms or on playfields?  It depends on our personality type. And it is the type of personality we have that deteremines not only how we react and perform, but also our predeliction to health disorders. Try and see in whcih of these you fit best. Type A personality  is easy to recognize; people with this type are hard chargers , aggressive and ambitious. They are always struggling to win or lead, are restless with hunger in their bellies and are often dominating. They enjoy adventure and often make greatachievers. Their constantly charged state generates frequent surges of stress hormones called adrenaline and corticosteroids, from their adrenal glands. The health price they often pay for their achievements is high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and peptic ulcer. Type B personality  is the opposite of type A. They are  laid back , cooperative and not easily provoked ...

When Siddharth, a 22 year old, went to donate blood for his mother’s treatment, he was shocked to hear that he harboured the Hepatitis B infection! He was fit, played for his college cricket team and had not sufferred from jaundice. Hence hi s disbelief! Hepatitis B is usually a silent infection. This year’s global awareness campaign  “Am I number 12?” was aimed at drawng attention to this frequency. In India, the rate is somewhat less; 43 of 2500 apparently healthy people tested positive during a free checkup camp in the city. Around 20-40 million people in India are infected, 6 to 10 times more than HIV. It spreads through infected reused needles, poorly tested transfused blood, sharing of instruments such as shaving blades or ear piercing needles, from a “carrier” mother during child birth, or unprotected sex with an infected person. What makes Hepatitis B worrisome is its silent nature for many years during which the virus nibbles away at liver cells, leading ultim...

In the aftermath of Diwali, most weight watchers are expected to see blue for some time. The scale will remain stubbornly up for a while, making you wonder whether you had behaved really as badly with your eats and exercise the last week to deserve thi s! And where exactly was the problem?  In what we ate or just the few days that we skipped our exercise routine? Those who exercise vigorously, pile up kilos rapidly as soon as they stop. Look at the erstwhile sportsmen and dancers. Diego Maradona, the soccer legend from Argentina, became morbidly obese when he stopped playing. His condition was so desperate that he had to undergo a weight reducing bariatric surgery to loose a few score kilos! Many of our vintage cricket heroes seem to have similar problems. Dancers of Bhartnatyam and Kathak pile up kilos when they stop their rigorous practice. Similarly, gym goers are likely to put on more weight when they stop than their “regular walker” friends. My tennis buddies at S...

While Diwali is an occasion for praying, expressing love and greeting friends, we give expression to our festive spirit by lighting lamps, eating sweets, exchanging gifts and bursting crackers. The spirit of the “festival of lights” often however gets shrouded in the manner in which we celebrate it, and every year, this period of joy and gaiety turns into a nightmare for some. Health and life come under considerable threat during Diwali: the air we breathe gets smoky and polluted with suspended particles and toxic fumes, triggering attacks of  breathlessness and asthma. Crackers cause deafness, usually temporary but sometimes permanent, especially in children. The loud noise of crackers often triggers heart attacks in the elderly. Burns are common, claiming several lives and maiming many every year. Igniting of firecrackers releases fumes of cadmium, lead, copper and magnesium that cause a variety of problems from anemia to nervous ailments, making us feel tired and sleepless by l...