Issan, Liver Cancer, And Parasites...

[bina]

sheryl, or other medical experts in the asian areas;

hubby's doc here in israel wants to know more about liver problems, issaan, males (alcohol, etc).... and of course, laab from raw fish....

he did his bloods, apart from triglycerides very high, his urea is high and his ggt... ... doc has told me to change him from beer to wine of an evening, get him to move himself in sport (we will walk a few times a week, since he works very long evening shifts), but never having a thai worker in her repetoire, she is curious about the liver diseases...

apparently he was vaccinated at some point against hepatitis b, hsas shown up negative on all other liver things.... even sugar etc were fine (she was thinking diabetes like many agricultural folk that come to israel , adn start eating lots of bread, junk, cake etc... )...

also, any health sites for EASY UNDERSTANDING of things like cholesterol, etc.... that are NOT geared for hi/so city types? like pamplets or something, that can be scanned and sent to me that maybe (maybe?) are written for use in issan or other rural areas? he is, how surprising, not interested in knowing, but if i leave the stuff laying around, he will take a peak....

he isnt ill, just i decided he needed a base line for our socialist type insurance set up here, to get him in to the system, to make later diagnoses a bit easier.... docs here are used to ethinically oriented diseases (north africans,ehtiopians, iraq, polish, north americans.) but thai are not in the list.

thanx, bina

[Sheryl]

Bina, I am not really sure what info you are asking for. Wht were the ifndings that led to these questions? Elevated liver enzymes or what?

In thailand as anywhere else, excessive alcohol use leads to cirrhosis of the liver. Excessive drinking among men is in general more socially acceptable heer than elsewhere but that has really no relevance to an individual case, what is important is how much he personally drinks.

Liver flukes are endemic in NE Thailand due to tendency to eat raw fish/crabs (som tham etc). This is probably the most relevant thing for the doctor to know. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7982745

Hep B is also very common but if he has been vaccinated and is antigen negative not an issue for him.

Afraid I don't read Thai well enough to be bale to help you on materials. The Bumrungrad, Bkk Hosp and Samitivej websites all have write-ups of common diseases and health problems in both Thai and English, could try there if you have enough Thai to navigate it.

[bina]

thanx, thats what i was lookin for;

doc wasnt worried too too much about liver; more about hubby's 70 kilos on a short man!!! ... but alls good apart from the GGT ... she was just curious since i brought it up about the liver fluke thing...

always good to meet a doc that wants to learn new and interesting stuff (its got to be more interesting than the gambit of ethnic related stuff she deals with daily-- a bunch of elderly jewish kurdistan families with their own particular disorders... )

im surprised he was vaccinted for hep B. maybe all foreign workers are ? he hadnt a clue.

im finding it very hard to get him in a health awareness mode.... am making more israeli style salads (tomatoes cucumbers onions, mint garlic all chopped in small pieces), keeping the beers down to two a day (tried wine but available alcohol gets drunk like water if around and open), no cakes etc around (same as wine, if around and open, will eat it all at once. rather a sort of bulemic personality) , using olive or canola oil for frying, more fish in teh diet, less salt, getting him to use dark sugar so use less of it, but cannot get him to eat whole rice, or even indian style foods (dal, etc). tofu here is expensive and he doesn really like it either. frankly he refused to look at the blood work results (ostriches and sand come to mind here).

are there no sites in thai about diets that are geared for the non citified thai male? anybody out there have any thai wives that could find me sites ?

thanx...

bina