Ravensong Poetry And Writing Blog by Donovan Baldwin

Interesting interview on the radio yesterday.  Unfortunately, I only caught a few minutes of it.  

It was actually about a novel.  The plot was about a doctor in Canada.  I don't know much more than that about the book.

It was the author, and his comments, that caught, and held, my attention.

The author had been a Doctor in Canada and drew on his experiences for the novel.  He had also been a doctor in Afghanistan, again, I don't know the circumstances, but his experiences in both areas provided him with an interesting point of view on modern health dilemmas.

In Afghanistan, he found that the local people "never" in his words, required insulin for diabetes or to stabilize blood sugar.  Apparently, the use of insulin in other, more "modern" societies is quite common due to diet and lifestyle....which have contributed to high levels of body fat, particularly the insidious abdominal, or visceral, fat.

He also compared this to medical observations over just a few decades of the Inuit of Northern Canade.

Not too long ago, many of their "major" health problems were what you would expect from such a civilization...broken bones, cuts, etc.  These days, they can have Kentucky Fried Chicken from a fast food emporium, rather than whale blubber from a beast they chased for hours, or even days and expended huge amounts of calories to kill, butcher, and prepare.

The difference in lifestyle is reflected in medical problems.  They have fewer broken bones, cuts, and gashes, but have diabetes (once nearly unheard of), heart disease, and strokes...all conditions related to high accumulations of visceral fat.

Sure, they used to have subcutaneous body fat which helped protect against the cold and provided energy stores...which they drew upon regularly.  Now, they, like so many of us in the U.S. and other "Western" nations, have accumulations of abdominal fat which surrounds the internal organs and keeps the body in a state of chronic inflammation, contributing to heart disease, as well as diabetes.

Not a whole lot of conclusions here, but I think I will go exercise now.