I have
never thought about the interesting relationship between disease and
anthropology before. After reading and studying this week, I have a
better understanding of the cause and care of diseases from a different
perspective.
“Anthropology:
Everything human—context...”1 “Context” includes many things,
for examples, economic development. As a Chinese immigrant, I have noted that
there is a big difference between what people eat. Chinese use fresher
ingredients than in America. It’s not say Americans don’t like
fresh vegetables, fish, or meat. But one big different is that farmers markets
are everywhere in China. Not to mention small towns or villages, but even in
big cities like Shanghai, you can easily find farmers markets. Chicken are
alive in the cage and you can pick anyone you want and vendor will butcher them
in front you. By comparison, here in America, the high price for shopping
at farmers markets and the cheap packaged foods at grocery stores force people
to get frozen foods which not good for their health. We all know that about 50
years ago Americans shopped in farm market too. But big box stores like Costco
and Walmart, who have big volume purchasing and lower price, killed off many
small vendors. Similarly, this makes some Chinese worry that their life style
will change to the same way someday; the farmers markets will be replaced by
big stores just like here. While big companies are successful at bringing
prices down for consumers, they are more interested in selling products which
have longer shelf life instead of perishable products which are heather.
Geography
can have an effect also. From economic viewpoint, it’s easy to understand that
investors will not invest in a place where they will not benefit to. So,
more often poor places can result in areas called “food deserts”. When you have
a geographical area underserved by high quality food, people who live there can
only access foods such as hot dogs, and potato chips. Food deserts offer people
high calorie low nutritional value food.
WHO
health statistic points out that unhealthy diet is a key factor leading to
obesity. Besides food deserts, TV dinners and frozen foods have become popular
because of their convenience. Before World War 2, men typically worked while
women were homemakers. They will prepare nice food for their husbands and
children. Nowadays both women and men work, and they have less time for
shopping and cooking, leading to reliance on packaged processed food.
WHO
health statistics also points out other risk factors include “tobacco use,
physical inactivity“. “In terms of attributable deaths, the leading … risk factors
globally are raised blood pressure … tobacco use (9%).”2 With
tobacoo allowed in all the states, it helps people who need it, but also
provide easy access for those who don’t need it. The development of
the Internet
has changed the world, many people spend hours surfing the internet, gaming and
working. Long hours sitting in front of the computer can cause eye, and
back problems and contributes to inactivity.
Cars
are beneficial to people in many ways, but at the same time, they make people
more sedentary. Car accidents can also lead to health problem.
Religion
has always played a big role in every perspective. Polio is a disease that was
almost eradicated, but it’s slowly begun to come back. Its return is
politically motivated by some religious leaders.
When it
comes to achieving wellness and curing disease, western medicines are the
mainstream tool. They are widely perceived as the better choice for the
treatment of sickness. But there are many people who choose differently, such
as many Chinese still choose traditional Chinese medicines. Chinese medicine
originated in ancient China and has evolved over thousands of years.
Traditional medical practices have been widely used by the local people
for thousands of years. To those who prefer Chinese medicine, Western medicine
most often treats symptoms but does not get to the root of the problem. If
someone has a headache, pain killers will help him out very quickly, and the
root cause of the illness is merely subdued. Besides, Chinese medicines are
made of natural materials, such as Herbs, insects and minerals. They are not
artificially synthesized and have fewer side effects. Many Chinese believe that
while relying on Western Medicine as the short term cure, Traditional Chinese
Medicine is still the longer term fallback solution. “The trend of
international migration ...means that medical practitioners in the Western
countries are quite likely to see patients of different ethnic origins, who are
also quite likely to be using traditional therapies of their countries of
origin.” 3 Indeed, disease care is tied to many perspectives. How to
effectively control infectious disease is extremely important.
Everybody
knows SARS. It started in China and spread quickly, taking the world by
surprise. Despite the cause, as a virus, SARS is a great example of how a
disease like this can be a global threat. And how quickly a connected health
system can respond to a new health threat is important.
Modernization
and urbanization result in high population densities. The change of the
ecological environment effects the incidence, transmission and prevalent of
disease. World travel also helps to spread the disease. Thousands of people
around the world were infected in a short period. As SARS became a global
health threat it was the issue of a travel advisory by WHO to reduce spreading
of the disease.4
Diseases are not just abnormal cells, molecules or odd
genetic structure. Just like this picture shows. Rather, diseases are“A
collection of problems” &“Messy social realities” (Paul Farmer). They are
“social experience … larger economic and political context affect the
emergence, spread, consequences, and fight against (mostly) epidemic diseases.”5
Disease cause and care are shaped together by many factors. It's an invisible
web.
Workcited:
1: slide#3, week01-2
2: WHO2012-World Health Statistics, p37.
3: Kraut
AM (1990) Healers and strangers. Immigrant
attitudes toward the physician in America—a relationship in historical
perspective. JAMA
263:1807–1811.
5: Birn Etal 2009-The historical origins of modern
international health-W2 .
Countless things in modern day contribute to different types of diseases and health problems around the world. Many factors affect the emergence, spread, consequences, and fight against diseases. Such factors include, but are no limited to our social experiences, culture, the economy, and politics. Much of this is all interconnected and has a large impact on our everyday lives and health. As show in the cartoon provided, the character on the left feels that he is coming down with something and begins to list off possibilities contributing to him feeling unwell. The possibilities he lists are related to behavioral habits, the environment, transnational diseases, and terrorism. The character to his right does not know specifically which factor is the culprit, but she knows for a fact that it could have been any one of them. The blogger described multiple factors that influence our health, which included our geography, diet, religion, medicines, modernization, and urbanization. She uses an invisible web as a metaphor connecting all the things that influence our health. Of the many examples she gave, the one about more women pursuing careers and unhealthy diets got me thinking.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned in lecture, medical anthropologists are interested in examining how the health of individuals, larger social formations and the environment are affected. They look into interrelations between humans and other species, cultural norms, social institutions, micro and macro politics, as well as forces of globalization. It is a very difficult task to cure diseases and to achieve health wellness when every little thing can cause harm to us. I was very much interested when I came across the WHO health statistic that pointed out unhealthy diets. Almost a century ago, men were responsible for going out and working to support his family, whereas the woman stayed at home. In movies, women were depicted as homemakers, caring for their children, keeping the house clean and preparing mouthwatering meals. I definitely agree with the blogger in that nowadays, both men and women are more consumed in their careers, resulting in having less time to think about health eating. Today, more and more people, especially women are earning degrees and pursuing better jobs. Statistics have shown that couples are getting married and having children later because they are so focused on their careers. In the states, we are very fast-paced; everything we do needs to be time efficient and convenient. This is why have prepackaged, frozen, and processed foods at the supermarkets. No one ever has the time to sit down comfortably to enjoy a nutritional meal anymore. Very few women in our culture are solely homemakers; more time is spent at the work place. This is of no surprise to me because I too live in a world where I’m constantly operating on time constraints and there is never enough time in a day to finish all my work let alone eat a hearty meal. It’s funny because my friends and I all believe it is now a luxury to go home and eat a home cooked meal. It is important to realize that everything affects our health, whether it is obvious to us or not.
The topic of the blog posted by Qin Qin Williams is about the relationship between disease and anthropology, and how a disease is connected different contexts such as economy, politics, and culture. The aspect of this blog that really interested me was the paragraph that talked about how some Chinese choose the Chinese medicine and the Western medicine. In the post Qin Qin wrote, “Many Chinese believe that while relying on Western Medicine as the short term cure, traditional Chinese medicine is still the longer fallback solution.” This quote shows how Chinese view Chinese medicine as the more reliable and efficient way to seek medical assistance compared to the Western medicine. For most of American citizens this is quite the opposite. This paragraph shows how people living in other cultures have different belief system about health.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I do agree with what Qin Qin said about how culture affects disease treatment. In lecture, we also talked about different approaches to the same disease for different cultures and individuals. This reminded me of when I was in elementary school in Korea, and I was sick and barely ate anything for few months.
My mom first took me to the hospital, but they told us they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Since I was still not eating, my grandmother suggested that they take me to go see a traditional Korean doctor to fix me up some herbal medicine. The treatment that the traditional Korean doctor gave me was a mixture of some roots, herbs, plants, and dried mushrooms. I was supposed to boil these ingredients in water, and drink it like tea at least once a day. Drinking these “teas” were agonizing for because of their bitterness and unique smell that I wasn’t used to. To my surprise I eventually did get better and started eating again few weeks. To this day I’m not quite sure if the herbal tea was the cause for the end of my sickness. However, looking back at this experience that Western medicine is not always the best and the only way to heal human body, regardless of all the science behind the Western medicine.
Even though Western medicine is the mainstream in Korea, there still exists traditional Korean medicine. Koreans use both Western and Korean medicines when they seek for medical expertise. I’ve seen this especially among older generations like my grandmother. The culture that my grandmother lived in was much different than the kind of culture that I’m in. My grandparent’s generation went through the Korean War in the 1950’s, and Korea was one the most poorest countries in the world. That was when Western philosophies such as medicine just began to influence lives of Korean people. So, older generations know a lot more about Korean home remedies, and have stronger belief in traditional Korean medicine. Like many younger generations, before I took this class I was ignorant towards traditional Korean medicine and other Asian medicine because I believed they don’t really treat disease. In contrary to what I used to believe, now I think understanding other medical doctrines are important to bridging health care for people in other countries. Like what Qin Qin said, finding a way to treating disease is not just the biological treatment, but it is also connected to the economy, political, social, and cultural aspects.