Exotic Food And Exotic Disease: Part 1

Do you know the risks of your eating behavior?

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

Our generation likes eating. We like trying new food, not only for our Instagram shots, Facebook posts, snap chats or tweets but also for us as it gives us Adrenaline rush (at least some of them, definitely the one I am mentioning below).

We also like reading. Maybe not books anymore, but anything that comes up on the Internet. It doesn’t matter what it is but we like reading, at least scrolling or watching things that are on the Internet. Actually, that’s not everything. We have at least another thing, that defines the man-kind, trying. Yes, from the very beginning, we kept trying new things that made us the greatest after all. Well, I would like to mix these four most important things in our life: Eating, knowledge, Internet and trying, to come up to something interesting.

Well the disclosure, my journey is exotic. Exactly spoken, it’s about the exotic diseases from exotic foods. I’ll probably mention how I came up with this idea in the next article. But I’ll start now with my first article of the journey.

Drunken shrimp

Have you ever heard of that? Me neither.

To those who know about it and to those who even tried it, I salute (But only if you’re not Chinese 😉). It’s supposed to be very popular in China, so not necessarily exotic to them. It’s a dish, where shrimp is immersed in alcohol and consumed alive. There are many version of this dish in a different part of China and other Asian countries.

Image by RitaE from Pixabay

In Thailand there’s a dish called Goong ten, that is also popular as jumping shrimp or dancing shrimp. The raw shrimp dish is served with a spicy sauce. And there’s another from Japan called Odori Ebi. According to Wikipedia, it is a sushi delicacy from Japan with baby shrimps, which are eaten alive. It’s pretty interesting and pretty new to many of us. Trying these new things gives the adrenaline rush, what I mentioned above. I hope this is not getting boring as the most interesting part is yet to come.

But before we go to that, we have a puzzle to solve. I tried to name some dishes, that were so exciting only even to hear, how exciting would it be to try them. Yes, even I am tempted, maybe a bit less than you. Sorry I know the full story, you don’t. In certain regions of Africa, Asia, and South America, raw shellfish is used as a medicine, not as a prescription but as traditional medicine.

I am a medical doctor but I believe myself in beliefs. The belief is magical and mainly the unsolved puzzle in some medical cases. By belief I don’t exactly mean the same as accepting the faith, I mean strength, power and own’s mental strength to get cured and sometimes traditional medicine is a part of it. I guess, even some traditional medicine have scientific explanations, how they work but I also guess, it’s the belief that helps the most. But this all can be miserable sometimes. I’ll start with an illustration with an example.

A patient from some village in Nepal (Yeah, that’s the country, where I was born) gets sick. He had jaundice and ate raw minced crab as traditional medicine for jaundice. His jaundice got better. He, however, developed chest pain and cough after some time, which lasted for months. The cough was even tinged with blood. The must not miss diagnosis here is tuberculosis, TB. He got treated for months with anti-tubercular drugs but the symptom persisted. His 10 years son also came up with similar symptoms and also was treated with anti-tubercular drugs without any improvement. The patient cannot be treated and got referred to bigger and central hospitals. Finally, he got to the capital city and teaching hospital. You won’t imagine, what was the solution. The solution was his medicine for jaundice, yes the raw crab.

I blame neither patient for maybe not telling the complete history, nor my fellow colleagues for not identifying the condition, because it’s too rare and doesn’t get included in our lengthy medical school. I should certainly mention our proverbs “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras” or “das Häufige is häufig und das Seltene ist selten”. Sorry for that last german medical proverb. It’s great, that we have these proverbs saving our ass multiple times and build up our medical instinct to solve a mystery.

I haven’t disclosed the case yet. Sorry about that. As I already mentioned, the raw crab was actually the cause of the disease. And that is not a fictional case made by me but was published in 2017 in a medical journal: oxford’s medical case reports. Let’s catch up all things, what we have common in our exotic foods and this traditional medicine is raw crustacean. Yeah, these raw crustaceans can carry fluke-worms, exactly called Paragonimus. These worms are commonly called lung flukes.

They usually cause chronic inflammation of lungs and show similar symptoms as chronic bronchitis or TB, but sometimes these worms may even travel to the central nervous system. That could lead to a life-threatening disease called meningitis (inflammation of the coverings of the brain). Once known, the disease is very easy to treat with anti-parasitic medicines. I am not trying to scare you guys, the chance of getting this disease is fairly low but the diagnosis is complicated because of its rarity. Next time, you eat any crustacean,

please make sure to cook them to at least 145 °F (about 63 °C).

There are several species of Paragonimus, P. westermani being the most common one. It’s usually found in Asia, commonly in China. But cases of Paragonimiasis has also possible in the US, although rare many cases are reported mostly during river trips in Missouri. For the american cases, other species called P. kellicotti is commonly in the play.