Foreword
2021 was the year when I got my first job right out of college, and that’s also the year I started trying to figure out what is wrong with my health. This is the first blog coming out from me about health related stuff, If you want to know one thing about me, I’m a full-time health evangelist — I walk, talk, breathe everything health. You could say I have some sort of health OCD, I track my blood markers, keep a tab on everything I eat, keep a tab on stool quality etc etc.
This is because I haven’t had the best of digestion I would have liked to have over the span of my life, from my childhood I have had an autoimmune which I was unaware of, I didn’t know it was an autoimmune disease, and used to think it was a normal thing to have.
As Indians, my parents’ generation more so than mine, take their health for granted, we don’t give a flying fuck about a lot of things. If someone is fat, a young teen has white hair, a young adult looks like they’re 40, someone has a very dark neck like layers of mud which is pretty evident when looking at it btw it means you are insulin resistant i.e. high blood sugar. These are just some things at the top of my head.
I think there are a few things which contribute to this peculiar Indian behaviour
1. People don’t know the basics of health, it should be taught in schools !!
People are not aware of their bodies in general as they should be, by aware I mean how their bodies react to certain foods, how lack of sleep affects their day to day behavior and energy levels, they’re also not aware of certain health issues as they were never taught what is a health problem and what is not. Also people still don’t understand when should you see a doctor and when you should not, because we have a general physician at 10 steps from our house and I’m pretty sure people in India don’t know what it means to be thriving.
In terms of metabolic health, “thriving” means achieving a state of optimal metabolic efficiency and resilience. It goes beyond the mere absence of disease, representing a state where the body efficiently converts food into energy while maintaining stable, healthy internal markers
2. People like to pop pills for anything and everything !!
This is my biggest jibe with my countrymen in general, the ability to pop a pill for anything and everything under the sky !! We were never taught, maybe build your immunity bro, or try a herb or a nutraceutical for your fever bro dont take that dolo for your mild fever, dont take that painkiller if your joints are aching, maybe get some blood work look at the B12 markers, uric acid markers. try some magnesium if you feel like you want to vomit while travelling bro, don’t pop that anti vomit drug,maybe you just need to build your gut microbiome so pop some probiotics,spam some fermented kanji, and yoghurt bro and no you dont need to carry so many antibiotics for your trips. This actually feels like a joke and an irony when we have have ancient history dating back over 3,000 years, largely rooted in Ayurveda,in texts like Charaka Samhita (internal medicine) and Sushruta Samhita (surgery).
3. Indian Doctors !!
Indian doctors are a breed in themselves, the most peculiar thing which I observed about Indian doctors, is that they operate on heavy volume and monthly cashflow at the cost of the patients health, I dont really think they give two fucks about if you will improve, because lets be honest we have so much people who are eternally sick, the doctors don’t have to think about improving their knowledge on certain health issues, they have a certain set of medicines mapped to certain disease profiles,they will rarely almost never try to understand your health from an individuals POV and then assess, because honestly every person is unique and has a different profile for a certain disease they have and 5 mins or less are almost never enough to gauge someones current condition, but hey, who cares? as a doctor I hear the same kind of words all day and I already have a drug mapped for that issue which you describing.
I have personally seen doctors prescribing patients certain invasive tests, where it can be done with a less invasive one, How do I know? you ask, well I went to different doctors with the same issue both took 5-15 mins to assess me, one suggested me two tests which would cost me around 20k INR and the other said well lets first see if you even need those, so get a cheaper one for 1k INR and then we can decide if we need to go further. The only reason the first doctor suggested me to get the 20k tests done was that he had a inhouse setup for those and it was his way of making money. Good side hustle btw, makes more money than the main hustle smh.