Heart disease, cancer, Down's Syndrome, spina befida - Is this what Padriac Pearse died for?

The Irish lifestyle is fatal. We have adopted the behaviour patterns of affluent consumerism and it is slowly but inexorably killing us. We eat the wrong things, we inhale the wrong air, we drink the wrong drinks, we take little exercise and we impose on ourselves a way of life full of stress and torment.

We might have been expected to have avoided the death traps of modern western living with our more relaxed indigenous culture, our expanses of uncluttered spaces, our largely rural and non-industrial-based society. But instead we have opted for the values and life style of high pressurised, polluted consumerism and we are suffering the consequences.

Number one in our death league comes heart disease, the chart topper in every affluent country in the world.

In 1976 heart attacks killed 1,985 Irish people under the age of 65, 2,644 people between the ages of 65 and 75 and another 3,997 people over the age of 75.

Heart disease is the disease of affluence par excellence a rich diet, obesity, lack of exercise, smoking - all are cited as culprits. Indeed in one respect Ireland is unique. A World Health Organisation report issued in 1976 which compared major conurbations in every European country found that Dublin had the third highest incidence of heart attacks among young males, exceeded only by two cities in Scandanavia.

Women everywhere suffered far fewer heart attacks according to the WHO report - about one-fifth of the male ratio in the under 65 age group. But then the Dublin male beats his fellows everywhere. He is more prone to heart attacks than the London male, twice as prone as his youthful comrades in Russia, three times as prone as the young Yugoslav, etc.

Dr. Aloysia Radic, who carried out the WHO survey for Dublin and who is currently doing a similar survey on strokes, believes that diet, rich in animal fats, lies behind Ireland's grisly record. Afterall the Irish economy has always boosted meat and milk consumption at the cost of healthier foods. Only recently the head of the Irish Association, Mr. Paddy Lane, attacked those who claim that margarine with no animal fat such as Flora were safer, as unpatriotic.
   
Doctors    now identify animal fats as the killer but say that the vegetable fats, once also under suspicion, are actually good for you as they break down secretions of fat in the arteries.

High on the mortality stakes comes another affluence disease - strokes. In 1976, 619 people under the age of 65 died from strokes. 1,055 between the ages of 65/75 and 2,722 over 75.

Strokes again are strongly related to the stress of urban life and rich diets. But after heart disease the major killer is the Big C. And Cancer is the number one killer of those under the age of 65. In 1976, 2,243 people in the State -under the age of 65 died of cancer.

And again there is no doubt that a sedentary, stressful existence combined with a bad diet can be seen as the genesis of some cancers, combined with other factors as yet not fully understood.

After all 1,750 Irish people every year die of colon, rectal or stomach cancer but this form of cancer is almost unknown in Africa. It was an Irish doctor

J. D. Burkitt who discovered that an average meal in rural Nigeria passed through a person in 24 hours or less. In the West it can take up to five weeks. Burkitt posits that the reason the Nigerian does not get stomach or colon cancer is that he eats a diet with un-refined grains which irritate the stomach lining thereby stimulating it, where as your typical Westerner eats refined grains, lots of stodge which can remain in putrid form in the guts for weeks.

Breast cancer killed 520 Irish women in 1976. Another 120 died of womb cancer and 150 from cancer of the ovaries. Three hundred and thirty men died of cancer of the reproductive organs mostly cancer of the prostate gland.

It is then a pretty depressing picture. The Irish suffer as much, if not more, from the illnesses of the unthinking consumer society - and this article has excluded respiratory collapse often caused by excessive alcohol consumption which comes a close fifth after accidents in the mortality stakes.

But still the picture is better than it was at the beginning of the century. Infant mortality is dramatically down and the major infectious diseases such as typhoid, TB and small pox have almost disappeared. (Smallpox is officially a disease of the past now.)

The WHO issued a stamp to commemorate its demise this year, the last case anywhere being in Somalia three years ago.

In 1900 the average life expectancy was under 50.  Now it stands at 68.77 for the Irish male and 73.52 for the Irish woman. Add another year if you live in the country, another year if you have a University degree, a further two years if you drink moderately, but remove two years if you are a teetotaller.

As you have survived birth and if you have not got a history of chronic illness and if you are in your mid-thirties you should on average survive until your mid-seventies, if you're a man, and the early 80s if you're a woman.

On the other hand our expectancies have peaked out. In 1960 the average life expectancy was .2 of a year more than it is today. There are of course, illnesses to which the Irish are particularly prone. These make pretty depressing reading.

First comes Down's Syndrome or Mongolism of which there are a uniquely high number per capita in Ireland. Studies carried out by Dr. Michael Mulcahy for the Socio-Medical Research Board have shown conclusively that this is due to the Catholic Church's attitude towards contraception and our penchant for marrying late.

The more children you have and the later you have them, the more likely you are to have a Mongol child. The incidence is higher in the West and North-West where people have bigger families and marry later than in the East.

Dr. Mulcahy suggests that this may be due to a wearing down in the genetic material in the woman and damage to her eggs from X-rays and infection as she gets older. He also suggests that the woman may lose the capacity to spontaneously abort the genetically wrong fertilised egg in the first of the month after nidation.

The second 'Irish' disease is Spina-Bifida. For a long time the hapless spud was blamed for Ireland's dire record in this disease which used to be almost invariably faded ultil the last decade. Hard water was also blamed. But the doctors have exonerated these culprits and now suspect racial genetic factors in the Celts.

The lrish share an un-enviable record in Spina Bifida with other Celtic peoples such as the Welsh and Normans (but not the Scots). Belfast has the highest incident of infant split-spine syndrome in the world.
Lastly comes another Irish disease which is pretty dire but not fatal - schizophrenia. Ireland has a very high number of hospitalised schizophrenics - almost 16,500 a uniquely high number.

Here Dr. Dermot Walsh of the Socio-Medical Research Board suggests that this is (a) because the Irish have traditionally lumped geriatric cases into mental hospitals labelling them schizophrenic (which they may become after a period of incarceration) and (b) because Ireland is so depressing a society in the rural areas that hospitalised schizophrenics don't want to get better. Each slump makes the average stay  in hospital longer, each hoom in the economy offers remissions in schizophrenia.

The West has a higher rate of hospital admissions and readmissions than the East and one reason may be that the doctors in mental hospitals West of the Shannon don't have the back-up staff to help schizophrenics cope with life outside on release.
But, finally, there is no doubting that the Irish are a gloomy lot - Ireland does not offer a picture of a happy society or contented society. One Irish male in nine is hospitalised at some stage in his adult life suffering from alcoholic psychosis, a staggering figure. And if you survive to the age of 70 no matter what sex you are you have one chance in five of being hospitalised in a mental hospital. The total number of patients attending out-patient clinics in psychiatric hospitals alone in 1974 was 28,900.

As Bishop Cross Browne of Galway asked once upon a time - is this what Padraic Pearse died for!