hey guys welcome back to the channel thank you so much for joining me today we're going to talk about something which is an epic proportions worldwide as well as in India and it goes by the name of dengue about 11 years ago when we first came to India I had been out and about I just loved it here and I was walking everywhere playing tennis doing other things and as usual you can't do that in midday it's too hot so you're going to do it in the mornings and the evenings and it just so happens
my Nemesis was out at the same time because unbeknownst to me the female egypti mosquito was out hunting for some blood to fertilizer eggs or rather to Bear her eggs and so what happened was I had come home from work and I just could not get warm and I had a headache and I couldn't figure out and in India we get a lot of virals right quote-unquote virals obviously with covet and everything we worry when we get high fevers as to whether it could be coven but the truth is for the last 11 years I've
gotten any number of different virals but this one was different and as soon as I got home I mentioned to my wife I'm not feeling well and she's like well what's going on she's like I I told her I just can't get warm and she having grown up here said look let's take your temperature and sure enough it was 103.5 and me being the Western trained physician said look it's no big deal I'll just take you know some medicines and you know go to bed I'm sure it'll be better in the morning she's like no
at 103.5 we need to like work you up next thing I know there's a lab drawer or a blood drawer from the lab at my doorstep taking blood for a variety of things and so they checked for typhoid they checked for malaria they checked for all the routine things and they also checked for Dengue worse yet as things progressed I just started to get a headache which was the worst headache I've ever had it felt like my my the back of my head was being hit with a sledgehammer and my my bones started hurting and
you know I've had some of these sort of flu-like symptoms before but not like this and no matter what I tried paracetamol uh you name it cold packs on my head whatever it wouldn't get better and the first set of labs came back within about six to 12 hours and I didn't have malaria that was good and I didn't have typhoid that was great and I didn't appear to have any type of other common infectious things that happen in India so I think thought well maybe I can take some more medications and so I took
a Naprosyn which is a non-stortle anti-inflammatory thinking that would make it better about 24 hours in the uh Eliza and the RT pcrs for Dengue came back positive and I was diagnosed with Dengue what ensued was a week's worth of horrible bone pains horrible headaches no appetite and I literally lost five kilograms of weight not exactly the diet you need or want and more than that I just had the worst weakness it lasted for about a week but it took me almost three weeks to get better and I I tell you for someone as fit
as I was at the time I was just amazed how it knocked me off my horse and made me humble and so I started to do some research on it even back then I said what can we do to change that so let's talk a little bit about Dengue Dengue is from the Flavor virus genus and it constitutes four different stereotypes its incidence has gone up dramatically in the last 40 years because they think it's due to increase in industrialization and stagnant pools of water as well as construction sites as well as potted plants and
other things uh we've seen more and more uh epidemics of this in India and in particular more so than malaria the problem with Dengue is while you can get diagnosed you can't necessarily be treated with anything but symptomatic care the problem with denke is while it has a lot of the normal symptoms of a flu and one of the Hallmarks is a very high fever as well as the bone pains the headaches and the lack of appetite and all that the other Hallmark is that up to two to five percent of the people who get
it will become hemorrhagic meaning that their platelets will be attacked and the platelet count will go down so I remember during that week every day for the first four or five days they were sending a blood draw home to check my platelet count and it did go down from about 150 to 80. if in those patients you start to get bleeding from the gums from the eyes from the gut from other areas spontaneously that's the time that we need to think about going into the doctor but the the real question is um you know in
my case as well as in other people's cases what can be done about it and Dengue is fairly common they estimate up to 390 million cases worldwide of which only 92 million are symptomatic why some people get symptomatic and some don't is a real question and it can be reflected on four different factors in the literature but what is clear is that if you get Dengue to one type of stereotype you'll probably be immune to that serotype you can still have it from the three others and the second infection can be worse than the first
and you can have a drop in platelets or not the second thing is other than symptomatic care and support what can be done to prevent it they're testing out a whole host of vaccines and they're all in phase one phase two trials but nothing has been shown to reduce the numbers for Dengue substantially so really what it comes down is to Mosquito Control which means that in urban areas we need to control any stagnant water if you have potted plants you get rid of the containers underneath so you don't have stagnant water and then the
second thing is at dawn and does try to avoid going out the third thing is wear long sleeve shirts when you're going out and the fourth thing is to wear anti-mosquito repellents you can get either natural stuff or or in in some parts of the world DEET is what we use and those have their own set of downfalls but I think in India until we normalize all of that malaria and Dengue are still going to be an issue so the the take home is this that Dengue can be prevented potentially if you get the signs
and symptoms um you need to take rest and if you have a very high fever get tested for it so you know it's not something else when do you go to the doctor if you have unremitted nausea and vomiting if you have bleeding from any of your orifices or from your eyes or whatnot or alternatively if you you can't eat anything and you're you're having trouble you need to be evaluated by a physician and even admitted and hydrated and watched very carefully because the worst thing it can happen is if you develop hemorrhagic fever and
start to bleed in which case you do need to be in a hospital setting fortunately in my case it self-resolved I will tell you it was the most humbling experience because for someone as strong as I was to have something like this really told me a story that you need to protect yourself but I would say that all of you guys out there need to keep an eye for this and take the precautions that we've just talked about it's really not that mind-boggling to wear a long sleeve shirt and to wear mosquito repellent and to
avoid Dons and dusts if you can I love to walk I love to get out you know me by now and it's hard for me so I have to go the extra distance to do that but even with that I haven't got Dengue again and thankfully I haven't gotten malaria malaria is another story for another day which my wife got off the sets but that too is something which you can protect against I hope this has helped you in understanding this the video will have a lot of supporting data in terms of where you can
find it it's tropical and subtropical and also what we've seen in terms of the numbers going up in the last 40 years and I hope that will help you in understanding this disease and not being afraid of it if you have any questions leave them in the comments below as always if you like what we say hit the like button if you want to see more of these videos hit the Subscribe button and always tell your friends so that they can share it with others thank you for joining me and I look forward to seeing
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