Race Matters

Nope, this is not going to be a rant on the evils of racism, ethnicism, or any other ~ism. This is simply an attempt at pointing out why your ethnic origins define who you are...medically.

Indians immigrate all over the world. Just like I did. We assimilate into the local populace, pick up their diet and habits, and in due course become creatures moulded in the image of the indigenous population, a process that is known as acculturation.

Yet, at the very core, we remain very different beings- and I am not refering to our undying affinity for cricket and almost ungovernable vice of wasting time on this game.

Consider this, if you are an Asian, you are almost twice as likely to get type II diabetes mellitus than the Caucasian neighbour who lives next door. Despite similar diets and body mass index, you are more likely to suffer from hypertension, and are at a greater risk of suffering from a heart attack. Your neighbour the Scotsman may be drinking 28 units of alcohol a week, at the upper limit of recommendation by the Chief Medical Officer, and getting away with it, except for the odd occasion when he gets pulled over on A66 for deviating off straight lines once too often, and suffers incrimination via a breath test. If you, dear fellow Indian, indulged in similar levels of alcohol consumption, you'd almost certainly suffer meltdown of your liver, or cirrhosis, as it's better known.

The unfairness of genetic wiring doesn't end there. If you put on a stone in weight- 6.3 kg to those uninitiated to the almost insane intricacies of British measures, you'd almost certainly develop osteoarthritis, your knee joints reduced to a slit, hobbling with pain while McBloke next door creaks downstairs with his 15 stone frame on his way to the pub. He'll get his comeuppance too- a decade later. Poor you. As if you didn't have enough to reckon with, with your higher odds of dying from liver, cervical or gallbladder cancer.

If you felt that was bad enough, wait till you hear this. Your skin was designed to make vitamin D, the increasingly important ingredient that ensures bone and muscle health, protects you from various cancers and for Mrs McWife next door, provides a shield against such debilitating conditions such as multiple sclerosis. The problem is, having immigrated to 47 degrees north, your access to sunshine has dwindled to nothing for four months through the winter months, and you develop debilitating aching in your muscles and joints all over. You struggle to get off a low chair. If you came to a jointo-logist like me, I'd measure your vitamin D levels and tell you that they are undetectable because you are simply not making enough big D in your skin. You'd look at me in that aggrieved way, raise your eyebrow and want to know why McNeighbour doesn't have the same problem. Well, two things- firstly, his lighter skin tone lets in more ultraviolet light to maximise the benefits of what little natural illumination there is- but he would, wouldn't he, he was born to this gloom, and this is evolution at work, and secondly, he eats loads of oily fish- salmon, tuna, mackarel and sardines, which you abhor, because they don't remind you of chicken bhuna and lamb karahi.

Have I driven you to the point of despair? Wait, there is some retribution. There are ailments which these annoyingly healthy caucasians suffer, which you, Jo Ahmad, almost have an insurance policy against. Multiple sclerosis, coeliac disease, pernicious anaemia, giant cell arteritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, cancers of breast, endometrium, lung and prostate...the list rolls on and on like a who's who of big bad baddies.

If that makes you feel slightly better about being brown (hey, didn't I warn you this was all about race?) you might be further buoyed to find out if you have a major surgical operation, you are much less likely to die of a deep vein thrombosis lodging in your lung as a clot (pulmonary embolus) some 5 days after the operation. Similarly, you are less likely to get unsightly varicose veins, and despite having overall less bone mass, your mum is less likely to fracture her hip than a Caucasian woman of her age.

I do not intend to be the purveyor of gloom, so let me remind you that nurture is as important as nature. If you exercise regularly and run 30 or so miles a week, your risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, suffering a heart attack and ending up with debilitating osteoarthritis are substantially diminshed despite your genetic handicap, although not altogether eliminated. Your cheery white family next door might similarly consider cutting down on alcohol and red meat and thus substantially reducing the risk of colon, breast, and oesophageal cancers. You might even consider taking this acculturation thing one step further by resolving to consume those disgusting oily fish a couple of times a week and boosting your vitamin D stores.

Don't do it all too quickly please. You wouldn't want to put me out of business now, would you?