Doctor who? Tech and I

Thanks to technology, all of us don the role of many professionals — doctors, dieticians, advocates, physical trainers! Just click a button to obtain loads of information on any matter. Is this enriching our knowledge and empowering us?

Way back in the 1950s, when I was a child, my parents trusted one doctor and dutifully fed me with the liquid medicine of different colours — mixture, as it was colloquially called — that he dispensed and the porridge he recommended. Tablets and injections were rare. Today, when I remember my childhood, I can get the bitter smell and taste of the mixtures. People hardly uttered the names of some diseases like TB, Cholera and Typhoid.

Today, let alone TB, Cholera or Typhoid, diseases like cancer, AIDS etc have become so common that we live with the Damascus’s sword hanging over us all the time. We were happier not knowing about many illnesses. For every little symptom, we go on the internet, only to get scared and confused. Just a simple cold or fever can be the symptom of many serious illnesses, the names of which are very complicated. We come out of the clinic holding our test reports to be that ‘one in the million’, fully confused and depressed. We hunt for specialists in that field. ‘Ists’ are a plenty like ‘isms’. Thus, the day is not far off when there may be specialists for left eyes and right eyes separately! No doctor takes the risk of treating me as one individual, like the doctor did in my childhood.

Self-medication/self-treatment, too, is rampant, because we consider ourselves very knowledgeable, not just about one school of medicine but many — such as allopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda, nature cure, home medicine, yoga, distance healing, pranic healing, acupuncture etc from around the world! For instance, all systems consider obesity ‘dangerous’, but each one has a different solution, such as walking, walking plus exercise, walking plus exercise plus diet, yoga etc.

I keep looking for the least cumbersome method in which I can hog and still lose weight. The very fact that I have only been gaining weight proves the ineffectiveness of all those articles.

Most of us suffer from hypochondria and have become health conscious. We walk, jog, attend yoga classes, gymnasiums, eat organic food, read all about health in the newspapers, watch health shows on the TV, discuss with friends and relatives. Yet, most of us are already on some drug to be taken life-long. I buy various kinds of food grains like brown raw rice, brown boiled rice, red boiled rice, red raw rice, black rice, minor millets, wheat, ragi, maize and the list goes on. Besides, I have so many kinds of powders made by roasting, powdering and mixing varieties of medicinal herbs and spices.

‘Every morning, on an empty stomach consume: a few amrutha balli and curry leaves; a mix of certain spices; a glass of warm water with honey and lemon juice; a few spoons of cocum extract; a few spoons of cinnamon decoction; a glass of pumpkin or lauki juice or bitter gourd juice; a spoon of soaked methi seeds etc’

All of them are to bring down my weight, control my cholesterol and my husband’s sugar level. I have been trying one of the above at a time, as nobody’s stomach will be empty after having all of them, at once. Now, I am so confused about the numbers that are revealed by our blood tests, because on one side, the standard parameters are gradually being brought down and on the other side, no doctor is sure about what exactly is helpful, and no two doctors agree upon a common panacea.

So, has technology really helped us? I wonder!