Creating a heart psychosis
Dr. R. JAYAPRAKASH
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An overdose of articles has created fear in the minds of the people.
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MY uncle and I were due to fly to Singapore. The airlines' new safety regulation required a full appraisal of the risk to be conveyed to all passengers. Ten minutes after boarding, the captain stood up front and gave a talk on what could go wrong during a flight, the statistics about plane crashes, the different problems one could encounter, what to do in a crash landing and how to survive a free fall.
He explained that the probability of both engines failing at the same time was miniscule. He went on to describe the various health problems and sickness one could expect during air travel and finally told us not to worry.
He finished his speech: "Now that you know, you will be the safer for it".
Panic attack
No sooner had he resumed his seat than my uncle panicked and wanted to get off. I thought he was being silly but, to my surprise, many others followed and the captain watched, exasperated. He could do nothing. He knew it was not the people but the airline regulation that made "information" mandatory.
Though others stayed on, throughout the flight, I could feel the tension in the air. On arrival, all the passengers got down and ran out.
This is a good enough example about what is happening in the "medical world". The media is falling over itself in supplying "newer health information" to the people. The focus is not on tuberculosis and amoebiasis — for which we are already endemic. It's also not on the huge load of fevers this season or the availability of vaccines to prevent it.
The public thriller is heart disease and diabetes. An overdose of articles has put fear in the minds of the people.
Many are being denied the normal amount of oils and fats that are essential for the normal functioning of the human body. Oils run the brain, skin defences, sexual hormones, nerve conduction and much more. Healing of wounds also depends on oil and fat.
Focus attention
The "information overkill" has focussed attention on the heart. A sudden heart attack is forbidden.
All the medical checkups in the world may not pre-diagnose gut cancer or an impending brain stroke but that's all right, as long as a person is doing the same medical check up every six months for heart disease and diabetes, which he may never have.
We clinicians can feel this loss of balance in thinking in our daily practice.
Today, we have normal patients who insist on having an ECG test. Simple acidity at night becomes a heart problem, with ICU admissions and relatives flying down from all over India.
The cost of this kind of "heart psychosis" is enormous. Influential "health advisors" go around trumpeting what they understand of the disease and add to the fear.
Even normal and minor findings in the heart for a 20-year-old boy becomes "major" to his family, as he has a "heart condition" and the Internet has to be tapped to add to the chaos. Relatives jump in with half-baked advice.
A well-placed business executive is perpetually scared during his travels because he may not be able to fulfil the "first golden hour rule" in case of heart attacks or trauma. The point he is missing is that he is a completely normal person.
The same applies to diabetes. India has not made any new discoveries in diabetes. But studies and statistics abound. Unlike for other diseases, these statistics on diabetic complications are "publishable" in the media.
Consequently, for every small scratch on the feet, the patients run to a diabetologist — to prevent a possible leg amputation. For a whiff of high blood sugar that occurs during any stressful period, a person has to run the entire gamut of diabetic tests. And this is not just once, but periodically — as one may never know if it is a signal for future diabetes.
Stress
Stress is associated with early heart attacks. It seems to play a major role in converting hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol into strokes.
But often we walk into a doctor's room, get all the information about our diseases and then walk out totally psyched. Ever wonder why it's so hard to find heart patients and diabetics in village health camps? So we go looking for them in the city.
The flip side has to be mentioned. My grandfather, ate well, worked hard, slept well and, though educated, didn't care a damn. He had hypertension and diabetes and took his medicines regularly.
He visited his doctor thrice a year and went through life without the power-packed health knowledge that we possess. He lived happily till 84. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
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