Health Adda

If difficult stretches of time throw us a challenge and make us think and behave differently, they also often emerge as life’s best TEACHERS. While the tone is of fear, gloom and lament on most lips nowadays, some are using this period as an opportunity to turn things completely around.  Many are going back into reviving their long-lost hobbies. The social media is throbbing with people displaying their musical talents, either rendering solo song s or getting together with other musicians on “tele” platforms to create complex music. In one of the displays, several musicians joined in from different parts of the globe to create a finely tuned “orchestra”! There are others who are reverting back to dancing, cooking, craftsmanship, yoga or fitness. All of them look surprisingly happy in the videos they post, their pursuits proving helpful in lifting their gloom and bringing a smile of accomplishment and joy onto their faces. Few seem to be discovering and enjoying their new avatar in ...

The ongoing explosive outbreak of COVID is bursting and splitting society like never before, turning many a table upside down. The reassuring and comforting words of leaders emanating from the TV channels that 80% of those infected will have mild or no symptoms, and only 5-10 % need to be wary, are not sounding soothing anymore. People are increasingly becoming witness to someone they “knew” having COVID and falling unluckily into the wrong basket of 5% or even made it into the unfortunate ditch of 2.8% and died, and are beginning to ask, “ How do I know which one I will fall into”? Three months ago, we were hailing the South Korean model of testing, testing and testing and believed that an early answer to “Do I have COVID?” would control the spread. We even had examples where over 150 people who attended a “party” were all tested and quarantined where only one symptomatic attendee had been positive. Two months down we are now been given to understand that “early detect...

The COVID19 story that started just 5 months ago as a regional outbreak and then snowballed into a massive pandemic, seems to have another facet that scientists are coming to terms with: a funny spin or DOOSRA for most aspects we thought we knew!  BLOOD VESSEL DISEASE There is increasing evidence that COVID that was thought to be a viral pneumonia quite like influenza, SARS or H1N1 is turning out to be BLOOD VESSEL disease. Studies on lungs of patients are showing that small vessels that supply blood to the lungs are choked with clots, in stark contrast to what we see in “pneumonia” where the blood vessels are intact but the small airspaces are filled with fluids and cells. This is helping explain why many patients have breathlessness and low levels of oxygen in the blood, and why providing high flow rates of oxygen rather than mechanical ventilation seems to help. Damage and choking of blood vessels in other parts of the body are being increasingly seen a...

One of the off shoots of the COVID 19 scare and lockdown and that many of my colleagues and I are witnessing is the growing use of TELEMEDICINE. It is not without reason that most good hospitals are now offering tele-medicine services, and many patients are benefiting from it. In fact, I thought it makes perfect sense for a patient of Chronic Hepatitis B who is doing well under my treatment with oral medications for the last 4 years and residing in a remote small town of Uttar Pradesh for example, not to spend time, travel cost and effort to visit me in my clinic to show his reports, have a 10- minute consultation, and get a fresh prescription, all that he may now get on-line by telemedicine using his smart phone. Telemedicine is emerging as the in-thing nowadays across the world where people are reaping the benefit of technology, having a face-to face consultation (without masks!) on video with a doctor after having shared all reports with him in advance. And you can do it fr...

With the COVID outbreak spreading and infecting more people across the world, doctors and scientists are getting to understand the widening spectrum of mischief this virus causes in the body, far beyond just lungs and respiratory passages. 1. Brain and Nerves Several patients report loss of taste or smell during the phase of illness. These symptoms ascribed initially to involvement of receptors of the tongue and nose, have now been traced to the brain. MRI studies have revealed that regions that receive the taste and smell signals brought there by the cranial nerves show small spots of oedema and nerve degeneration. Brain involvement has also been found in several patients complaining of headache, disturbed consciousness, loss of memory, tingling sensations and extreme body weakness due to a form of ‘encephalitis’ and neuronal degeneration. Fortunately, these changes regress in most who recover. 2. Muscle and Heart Another notable feature in a third of patien...

I cannot recall witnessing the government machinery of this country so active, energetic, concerted and committed in its fight against a common enemy, as during the COVID outbreak this time. The next few weeks are going to be a “make or break” phase…when we might either breathe a sigh of relief, or suffer much for a long time. But I must share a story with you. Our house help who shares our home for 20 years got a call on her cell phone t hat one of her elderly aunts staying in a congested part of her hometown had died. She had been old and had a long-standing breathing problem. To my obvious next question “Was it COVID?”, she answered that she had not been tested. On pursuing further if there was time still before the body was disposed, as a precaution just in case, she said “It would be too much hassle… the police will land up at home, perhaps take grieving relatives elsewhere, involve expenses, and delay the last rites”. Officials, be it of the health department...

It could not be more sardonic that when forcibly confined to our homes and locked into isolation, our earlier hankering for holidays, respite from school and work and time for rest, is turning out to be like Midas’s boon of golden touch! In this unprecedented period of depressive developments, we are experiencing many types of emotions that are broadly included under “stress”. The international expert David Kessler  terms it “Grief” and describes 6 stages which I found helpful to understand my feelings: 1.The 1st stage is DENIAL; like what we felt in early March…..”this is just another scare….happening elsewhere…wont affect us in any way”. 2. It gives way to ANGER: “how can this be happening here? Lockdown on our freedom and movements? Never happened before! The government and enforcement people are victimising us…..we need to raise our voice and fight!” 3. When we run out of options, we start to BARGAIN: “OK.. If we suffer for these 3 weeks, all will be OK ag...