Question

Discuss a selected chronic illness in relationship to a specific culture (e.g., a Chinese patient with cancer using traditional Eastern medicine, a Hispanic patient with a high probability of contracting adult-onset diabetes being treated by a curandero).

Answer 1

Culture is a major force in shaping behaviors, values, and beliefs that impact an individual's health and response to illness. Patients’ cultural preference to disease/illness affects their treatment-seeking behavior, choices of treatment compliance with medical treatment, etc. The belief of certain culture regarding the disease conditions are varying. According to them, there are certain cultural beliefs which explain the causes of such disease or treatment for it. They are really reluctant to change their concept. In every cultural group, their culture plays an important role in getting treatment. In fact, their cultural patterns affect how they view about a particular type of disease, how they approach it and get treatment for it.

For example:

In the earlier decades, many Chinese assumed that most of the mental health problems arouse due to supernatural powers, ghosts or evils and they believed that their treatment to these psychological problems involve letting the ghost move out of the body. As a result, they never sought medical treatment for their mental illnesses.

In Philippines, neural tube defect among new born are common in certain traits. It is true that neural tube defect is genetically predisposed one. But parents of these children believe that it is spreading to child through blood if any of the relative poses this.

Chinese cultural perception of the disease, cancer:

Chinese, in earlier decades, had a unique concept for tumour, but not for cancer. Traditional practitioners assumed that the major factors leading to the cause of tumour was:

External factors: Toxins and other products from the environment

Internal factors: Emotional stress, unhealthy diets, damaged/unhealthy organs, and other defects in normal functioning of the human systems like stagnant blood stagnation, Qi blockage/accumulation, etc.

Types of treatment used for cancer using traditional medicine:

1. Chinese herbal therapy like Artemisinin, Astragalus, Gan Cao or licorice root, Poria or Fu Ling and Asparagus root.

2. Acupuncture therapy: In earlier days and even nowadays, Acupuncture therapy was used and an adjuvant for the management of conventional cancer treatments like chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.

Conventional methods of treating cancer:

In the modern world, there are multiple approaches for treating cancer like surgical resection of tumour/cancer, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, etc. However, research proves that traditional Chinese herbal medicine also offers significant treatment for most of the types of cancers like lung cancer,

Hispanic ethnicity is one of the fastest growing ethnicities in the USA. Hispanics is a Nuclear family. The husbands are expected to take care of everything and once he passes, the children are supposed to come in and help their mother. Type 2 Diabetes (non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, NIDDM) is highly prevalent among Hispanics and it is the fifth cause of death among Hispanics. Several risk factors have been implicated in type 2 DM including: age obesity, ethnicity , family history [ and dyslipidemia