Ever HAd?

When i was at work today, one of the scientist showed me this article written by a retired GP regarding a patient he treated. This patient has been having chest pains the day before and the GP visited him to confirm or to rule out myocardial infarction (i.e. a heart attack).. turns out he exhibited none of the symptoms associated with it. But this patient looked really sickly and apparently has been so for years… When the GP started taking the patient’s history, the patient told him that about 50 years ago he was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease.

Now, Addison’s Disease is a hormonal disorder associated with the endocrine system. Basically the gist is, the body’s adrenal glands (which produces cortisol, which is responsible allowing the body to respond to stress i.e. maintainig blood pressure and heart function etc.) is fucked and it doesn’t produce enough cortisol or aldosterone (which is another hormone that maintains blood pressure and water and salt balance i.e. helping the kidney to retain sodium and excrete potassium). A treatment for Addison’s Disease nowadays is to take hydrocortisone tablets and fludrocortisone acetate tablets once a day to replace the insufficient aldosterone and cortisol levels.

So back to the story, the GP asked this patient whether he has been taking these tablets to help with his condition. This is what the patient replied…

‘Doc, 50 years ago, there was no medical treatment for Addison’s Disease. So the doctors back then recommended me to consume a packet of salt a day…’.

So the patient lead the doctor to his kitchen and there were boxes and boxes of hundreds of 450g packets of salt. So.. for the last 50 years… this patient has been taking 450grams of salt a day! That’s half a friggin’ kilo if you think about it.. ! However, it seemed to do the trick.. he managed to keep his sodium levels in check (since salt is pretty much sodium and chloride anyway…). Needless to say, the doctor was shocked and started the patient on cortisol and aldosterone replacement therapies and three weeks later.. the patient has never been as healthy as he is now in the last 50 friggin years!!!

My first reaction was this…. WTF?!?!?!?!?

SERIOUSLY!

With all the advances in medical science lately.. you’d think 20 or even maybe 30 years down the track.. he’d at least get a second opinion to treat his condition. Almost half a friggin kilo of salt a day for the last 50 years of his life… this is just negligence at its best in my opinion. This is just bad dispersal of education…

Dammmmmnnnnn……

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 8th, 2006 at 3:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.