Columns

Hi everybody,

So we were gonna kick the final quarter of the year off by speaking about obesity in New Zealand. Initially I thought the topic would be a piece of cake, but it turns out there are big issues tied up in big waistlines. Whilst many medics think we’re currently undergoing an “obesity epidemic” and that the healthcare system is doomed because of it, there’s a decent argument to be made that we’re actually not ballooning up like a foreskin full of piss. Complicating the matter further is the fact that there’s not a lot of good evidence to support the current diagnostic cut-off for “obesity,” while there is some solid evidence that being “fit but fat” is healthier than being skinny but less fit than Susan Boyle.

And that’s not even touching the devastating impacts of socially acceptable stigmatisation, fatphobia, minority stress, the portrayal of beauty in society and eating disorders. Basically, obesity is a heavy issue. True to med student form I’m shelving it in the “too-hard basket” for now in favour of talking about something that currently seems to be affecting 90 per cent of first year students: conjunctivitis.

Like most diseases, conjunctivitis defines itself, but does so using big words so it seems more medical. It’s the inflammation (-itis) of one of the layers of the eye (the conjunctiva). The main cause of the “junc” going round at the moment is infection – either viral or bacterial.

If you have viral conjunctivitis (“pink eye”), you’ll likely have a very red, very watery, very itchy eye (or eyes). It sucks, but for most it’s a case of sticking it out and getting over it. Generally the virus responsible is one of the adenoviruses, which can also cause things like respiratory infections, tonsillitis and the ol’ V&D (vomiting and diarrhoea). There are causes of viral conjunctivitis though, including herpes, which can be serious and require treatment to preserve eyesight, so don’t go rubbing infected wangs in your face.

Bacterial conjunctivitis is the nastier, pussier one. Like its viral counterpart, it’s red and unpleasant, but this one comes with the bonus of swollen eyelids and a gritty mucous-y/pussy discharge that often sticks your eyelids together after sleeping. Like viral conjunctivitis, you can get over it on your own, or you can take your place in the doctor’s office and get antibiotic eye drops that will speed the healing up. Either way, bacterial conjunctivitis has no permanent effects, unless you’ve got one of the nastier bugs like chlamydia or gonorrhoea in your eye. Again: keep your eyes closed when going down on a dirty dick.

The frustrating thing about conjunctivitis is we let it run rampant. Halls are very good at handling conjunctivitis because, like Santa or a guy who only gets birthday sex, it comes yearly. Halls are geared towards spreading infections. They’re full of hundreds of people living together, eating together, “socialising” together after a drunken night in town – all in all, a microbe’s dream vacation. Obviously that contact is unavoidable; nobody’s gonna stop scoring the floor just because they might get pink eye. The frustrating part is not the interactions between people; it’s the lack of hand hygiene between interactions.

The biggest thing you can do to prevent conjunctivitis is wash your hands. Not all the time, and not with one of those pocket bottles of antibacterial, resistance-promoting, overpriced-and-unnecessary-for-most-people’s-daily-routines hand sanitisers, but with plain old soap and water or alcohol gel. Eye infections aren’t actually spread by eye-to-eye contact, or knob-to-eye contact, or even by that urban legend about Japanese tongue-to-eye contact that went round the social media sites recently. They are spread because we rub our eyes with our dirty hands.

All is takes to prevent this is washing your hands before meals, after using the bathroom, and after coming into physical contact with somebody who is sick. Like every part of public health, it’s not exactly rocket science.