DyspepsiWHa?

I have a chosen a topic pretty close to home for my first official post.  Food poisoning. Remember when I said this blog will certainly be partially anecdotal? Well guess what plagued me most of last Thursday....  Anyway, to understand more what the library has to say on this topic, I reference Emery R. Hayhurst, and a Professor of Hygiene and chairman of the Department of Public Health at Ohio State University, and the author of  Personal Health, circa 1927.  Keep in mind, that was 86 years ago.


According to Dr. Hayhurst, food poisoning is a "fairly common occurrence," of which I personally have no doubt.  Although it seems that some people tend to have stronger stomachs than others, the ingestion of certain bacteria, pathogens, etc... will wreak havoc on all of our bodies.  Dr. Hayhurst is correct in his first statement that most food poisoning is due to germs that have gotten into or onto the food we eat.  According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, campylobacter enteritis, cholera, E. coli enteritis, staphylococcus aureus, salmonella, and shigella are the most common germs that cause that uncomfortable sensation in our tummies.

Hayhurst continues the chapter with typical foods and situations that cause stomach illnesses, of which the U.S. National Library of Medicine agrees with: raw seafood, unwashed fruits and vegetables, undercooked meats or eggs, handling food with unwashed hands (in this instance, Hayhurst mentions the milkman as a common culprit...haven't seen one of those in a while), and contaminated water.
Most of the introductory information on food poisoning seemed pretty standard to what we know how, However, the keyword in this section that caught my eye was Dyspepsia. As a non-licensed contributor of medical advice, I had no idea what this word meant.  Well, I had a clue after I saw the "pep" root, since I am familiar with drugs such as Pepcid AC, which I know deal with tummies in some way. Anyway, Dyspepsia simply means indigestion.  Go figure. And according to a credible source found in a wikipedia article, functional Dyspepsia affects about 15% of the present population.  Hayhurst mentions a whole list of reasons that may cause Dyspepsia, most of which seemed like a whole lotta hooey; eating too fast, too much, eating foods that are too hot, or too cold. But the item that made my ears (or eyes) perk up most was that that Dyspepsia may be a family trait, "in which case, it is usually due to some faulty method of preparing the food, some method which is handed down in the family." Now this is probably how genetics worked back in 1927, but today I know that diseases are usually hereditary through genes, not cooking methods, so I looked it up. 

In 2009, "Whither dyspepsia? A historical perspective of functional dyspepsia, and concepts of pathogenesis and therapy in 2009"in The Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology stated that genetic markers for dyspepsia have been tentatively identified. And according to a later article published in the same journal in 2011 entitled the "Genetic factors for functional dyspepsia," genetic factors, by way of genetic polymorphism (which means that two or more phenotypes exist in the same population) are associated with the development of dyspeptic symptoms in families with functional dyspepsia, although more studies are needed to confirm the clinical manifestations in patients. So in conclusion, Doc Hayhurst, you were on the right track.  Indigestion, as we like to call it in 2013, may in fact be hereditary.

Side Note: Dr. Hayhurst says that Dyspepsia may also be caused by squeezing the stomach too much with a belt, corset, tight pants, or vest...So all you hipsters out there...BE WARNED!