Health Tip for Travelers in Thailand

By Phalangthep Prapatjukkit, MD, General Practitioner, Bangkok Hospital Samui

Check up your health!

People's lifestyle today has changed a lot from the past. In the early days, people spent most of their time with nature, in activities such as building their home, hunting animals, growing vegetables, which were not merely for food, but those activities also resulted in regular exercise. Moreover, their lifestyle was not rushed; there was not much of stress to make money.

These days' people have changed immensely; they are always in a hurry. They receive chemical and toxic substances through both active and passive ways e.g. contaminated food, alcohol, smoking and pollution.

Changing this environment and lifestyle made a change of disease trend. "Infectious diseases" used to be the major health problem and cause of death, because humans did not know of tiny organisms like virus, bacteria, rickettsia or parasites and they also did not know about antibiotics. But the situation has changed; major causes of death are not from infectious diseases anymore but from more chronic problems with multifactorial causes. "Diabetes, Hypertension, Hypercholesterolemia and Cancer" are the results of lifestyle change. Theses diseases are like a dark cloud that will silently kill the people who overlook this health threat. The multiple factors come from food consumption, repetitive drinking and change in lifestyle, i.e. inadequate exercise, which cause a change of cellular system to organ system, until one day the body cannot tolerate and the disease manifests itself.

So, before it is too late, you should check your health for detecting endangered system(s) in your body and get advice for disease prevention or start treatment for diseases already apparent.

Prevention is always better than correction, and the earlier the treatment, the better the outcome. If you can bring your car in for regular maintenance, you can also do the same for yourself.