September 2012 ©2012 Am Ang Zhang
Medicine progresses and new discoveries
are made though not necessary all that often. Compare with transistor and
electronic technology medicine is the tortoise.
Yet, there are things we thought were a
given at Medical School. Certainly, functions of well known Vitamins
such as A, D & C. Vaccination against Smallpox. Endocrine conditions
such as Thyrotoxicosis and Type 1 Diabetes. Stress and Peptic Ulcer is more or
less a given. This is the phenomenon of “settled medical science”, next topic
please.
We have at our school a wonderful
teacher in endocrinology. Coming to think of it, a great one in haematology, GI
disorders and I am not even venturing out to other specialties. Of course all
our teachers were British trained and many became really the parents of
medicine in Hong Kong.
We were so proud of our teachers that we
have acquired a degree of arrogance about certain areas of medicine. We
certainly know all there is to know about Thyroid, Diabetes and Thalassaemia.
Peptic Ulcer is an interesting one as our Professor, Old Mac is not happy and
decided that we should only call it Ulcer Syndrome, and as with other syndrome
diagnosis, it implies that we still do not know. It has taken nearly another
three decades before someone else proved that he was right.
So in 1996, I was
in Finland for a World Congress in Infant Psychiatry more or less
during the longest daylight week of the whole year. Walking back with some
Finnish Child Psychiatrists back to our University Accommodation at well past
11 at night when it was still bright, my Finnish colleagues jokingly said that
in Finland, people started contemplating suicide after the Summer
Solstice.
That Finland has the highest
suicide rate of any first world country is well known and ever since the
popularity of the diagnosis of SAD, it was naturally assumed that darkness in
the Finnish Winter must have contributed to their famous suicide rate. I was
back to Finland in 2012, this time for an extended Autumn holiday.
Researching before travel uncovered some medical information that surprised me.
Extensive research in Finland[1] revealed that the highest rates of
suicide started in May peaking at Summer solstice and tailing off symmetrically
in July.
Our
key finding of statistical significance demonstrates the increased suicide
mortality on nationwide level in Finland during the period from May
14th to July 25th. This 76-day period covers symmetrically both sides of summer
solstice. During this period there is only 1 to 4 hours of darkness during the
night in Helsinki but no darkness at all in Oulu.
This is a high quality research that
came out in 2011 in a country where suicide rate is high although in recent
years, they have done much in terms of improving mental health care that has
quite dramatically moved Finland out of the top few countries.
As I have stated earlier, there are
subjects we studied in medical school and had the confident impression that our
knowledge on some conditions were complete! Now let us concentrate on other
newer conditions. Settled Medical Science indeed.
Other
links:
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2133&context=theseshttps://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2133&context=theses
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12668374/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/474847921/the-arctic-suicides-its-not-the-dark-that-kills-you
https://theswaddle.com/does-sunlight-make-people-suicidal/
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/05/11/2566391.htm?site=sunshine&topic=latest
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Suicides-in-the-midnight-sun%E2%80%94a-study-of-seasonality-Bj%C3%B6rkst%C3%A9n-Bjerregaard/2f402d0545f6dce588e2738218330ec51b5ec3ba
https://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2009/05/suicide-rates-in-greenland-are-highest.html
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507190558.htm
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