Saurav Ganguly and health consciousness of Indians

Saurav Ganguly gets a heart attack at the age of 48 and everyone reels into shock. May he get well soon. He is one of my most favourite cricketers. However, the public reaction remains curious. His celebrity doctors make statements to undergo regular check-ups like CT scans 'available in every street of India' to prevent heart attacks.

Cooking oil companies withdraw advertisements featuring Saurav in the face of trolls. The media coverage is at maddening levels.

A good healthy diet, regular exercise, and stress control are keystones to live a full and happy life in the material world. Is human life, or for that matter, any form of life, immortal? At some point, all life ends. Predicting and preventing an event a decade earlier still prolongs life but does not stop death.

There are many genetic factors for any person, perhaps equivalent to fate, which would at some point lead to health problems despite the best in diagnostic and treatment modalities.

A good lifestyle is a necessity to live a good life and not to stop any adverse events, including death. Ageing still stays unconquered by all medical advances. At a great philosophical level reaching Advaita, the best way not to age, have problems, and die is not to be born at all.

But, at a more mundane level, it is well to remember that fitness does not equate to good health. There are strong voices that decry the 'complete health-checks'. If you run a person through a significantly large number of tests, then every person is bound to be diseased.

A wise person once commented that the progress of medicine is bringing more people into the ambit of sickness. An abnormal lipid profile, consisting of a host of numbers and ratios, is almost a new normal. And there are medicines for all the numbers and ratios. Maybe the intention is good, but the consequences are decidedly not so.

Testing in the absence of symptoms may not be always a prudent decision in matters of health. Screening programmes have had a chequered and sometimes controversial place in the history of medicine.

If one is feeling healthy and is ready to face the world physically and mentally when the sun rises, a routine health check may become a reason for unnecessary drugs and procedures with its attendant problems. They may also have serious psychological issues. There are always exceptions, of course, which only prove the rule.

Dr Pingali Gopal, Warangal