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Foods, Habits and Lifestyles

What is Driving us to Eat More and Fall Sick?

by Dr.G.Choudhuri March 27, 2023

Disorders of the Digestive system and Liver

Skeletal Muscle latest member to join the Endocrine Club

by Dr.G.Choudhuri March 21, 2023

Facing unpleasant realities and coping

Lessons from the Turkey Earthquake. Can we be better prepared for such an eventuality?

by Dr.G.Choudhuri March 6, 2023

General medical awareness

Can you do Cardiac Resuscitation?

by Dr.G.Choudhuri February 6, 2023

Philosophical perspective

New Year Resolutions: fate and implications

by Dr.G.Choudhuri January 9, 2023

Disorders of the Digestive system and Liver

What makes Pele feature Health Adda?

by Dr.G.Choudhuri January 3, 2023

Foods, Habits and Lifestyles

Seasonal Affective Disorders or Winter Blues

by Dr.G.Choudhuri November 14, 2022

General medical awareness

Brain Fog

by Dr.G.Choudhuri November 7, 2022

General medical awareness

Oral Rehydration Therapy and Dr Dilip Mahalanobis

by Dr.G.Choudhuri October 31, 2022

Common problems

Balancing Skill and Health

by Dr.G.Choudhuri October 17, 2022

Ethical, morals and governance in health

Spurious Drugs, Lives and Our Pride

by Dr.G.Choudhuri October 9, 2022

Philosophical perspective

Two-Way Patient Doctor Relationship

by Dr.G.Choudhuri September 25, 2022

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Public Health Issues in Digestive Health: Lessons from the COVID Pandemic

(Talk delivered in national e-Conference of Association of Physicians of India on March 7th, 2021)

One major track-change that the COVID Pandemic has brought about is to shift the focus from individualized precision medicine back to PUBLIC HEALTH, a subject dealing with
- protecting and improving the health of people and their communities.
- by promoting safe behaviour and healthy lifestyles,
- researching disease and injury prevention,
- and detecting, preventing and responding to infectious diseases.

While it is a viral infection this time, following on the heels of its predecessors such as the SARS, swine flu, influenza and other respiratory infections, PUBLIC HEALTH as a science started with a Gastrointestinal infection, namely cholera, in 1854 in a London epidemic, when a doctor (John Snow) was the first to suspect that it could be spreading through infected water.
Infections, be it respiratory, GI (water or food borne), skin are still the typical ones that PUBLIC HEALTH has grown up to address, but has now expanded to 5 more domains:
- Contaminants such as high levels of toxins like arsenic in drinking water
- Occupational : such as those of miners where their eyes and lungs bear the brunt
- Genetic: such as thalassemia
- Accidents: such as road traffic accidents, a leading cause of injuries and death in India
- LIFE STYLE diseases such as obesity, fatty liver, cardiac disease and depression
While COVID pandemic has been dramatic because of the rapidity with which it has spread across the world, a slow simmering one of the “Life-style” variety that has been going on for the last 3 decades is FATYY LIVER disease, a condition characterised excess deposition of fat in the liver
These two seemed to have intersected in recent months. Scientists noted that those with Fatty Liver (often associated with Diabetes, obesity, heart disease) constituting 30% of urban adults, developed more severe disease and had a higher chance of dying when they contracted COVID infection
Commonly referred to as Co-morbidities, the presence of these metabolic “life-style related” diseases made the COVID 19 infection much more deadly.

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