The Expatriates' Wednesday: Do we have the same body from one country to an other ?



Do we have the same body from one country to an other ?

It is the question I have been  asking  myself sometimes ; bitterly at times when worries were in the game ;

Wether you dealt with the men of art for a routine check up or when your body didn’t work normally anymore, advice and protocols can be different from one country to another … a lot different ;

So, does our body change depending on the country we live in ?

It is the feeling we can have when we play the role of the one supposed to be

–the- patient

Obviously the body doesn’t change, but its state representation does in a large cultural context :

Social, political, religious organisations and beliefs that establish the  care of the physical body by the caregiver

Handling the body and also the patient – caregiver relationship

As knowledge is, by principle, on the caregiver’s side, the patient is generally the one who has to adapt to the reference system of the health professional ; in addition to dealing with their illness or different medical acts to go through

Those representational changes the patient has to make can create multiple different reactions depending on how they feel at that moment of their life.

That will lead them to trust or not the health system they are confronted to.

Horror, rejection, denigration, fear

Or

Surprise, acceptance, curiosity, appeal

Some migrants chose to have part or all their health covered in their home country, estimating that the health care in their hosting country isn’t good enough for them.

Those different reactions are also linked with the state of mind you are in at that moment

Every health system works for who does accept and integrate it

Anyway, do not ignore your worries. You can share them with the caregiver you know and, depending on their reaction, chose your Heath system.

Your choice will be right for you.

All that reminds me of some anecdotes I’ve had between France, Great Britain and Brasil ..

Just one, for the fun of it

Fact : I have an inflamed lacrimal canal. It is totally blocked, red and painful

In France. The specialist inserts a very thin kind of needle in the canal for a few weeks. Didn’t unblock the thing. Tells me she is going to open it having a local surgery.

England where I just had moved to. Boil water and massage the entrance of the canal respecting a specific  movement direction : inside to outside of the canal. For one week.

Unblocked canal after two days, never blocked again.

If this topic about body / health subjectivity does interest you, reading Tobie Nathan is a must of course !

Here are below extracts of an article from Bernard Ugeux, PhD in theology and religion history – Institut de science et de théologie des religions,Toulouse, France

(This is my own translation so it may not always be the most accurate)

« Health isn’t only a subjective state, a physical sensation  or psychic feeling, it also is a social fact, a built state, a cultural fact. The social group, depending on its culture and so on its world representation that defines what is normal and what is pathological. 

A health system is the product of a culture. Every culture does manage its Health system with the view it has of the human being and its link with others, with the cosmos (natural environment) and, sometimes, with an invisible reality, a transcendence, etc …

For example, the chinese medicine is based on an energical perception of the cosmos and the human being (Yin – Yang balance), when the tibetan medicine has a conception close to Hippocrates’s, balance of the humors. As such it is uncorrect to assert that one medicine is universal.

Today,  the awareness of the cultural diversity leads to recognise the limits of every cultural system or civilisation and to take into account the existence of other conceptions of the health that allowed human groups to live through milleniums (cf. medicine that comes after the Indian Vedas, the Ayurvedism).

There is also a lack of mean and a lack of staff that make the medicine in hospitals more and more heavy and depersonalised… We may wonder if this suffer isn’t also the consequence of the illusion of omnipotence that medical science has maintained among the caregivers as much as among the patients.

Marcelo Azevedo, Brasilian jesuit defines the culture as :

« The particular social dynamism whereby a human group lives, feels, builds relationships, get organised, celebrates and communicates life. A culture is part of the concrete reality of its members, in their way to be and to express themselves. The cultural group does adapt to its environment, establishes relations, guides and determines the meaning it gives to its life, its action, its communication »

Vème congrès missionnaire latino-américain, COMLA 5, paris, dossier BIM 1996, P.10.

So it is important that a therapist, a caregiver who is confronted with psychosomatical manifestations, makes that move toward the other and toward their cultural universe, with the preconceptive idea that any culture, as a meaningful system, implies an internal cohesion, even though it is never totally encompassing  nor exhaustive.

The interpretation of a fact plays a big role in the way of assuming it. It is about discovering this coherence for better perceiving the issues of the pathology.

If the caregiver denies the importance of  what the patient expresses about their illness, they take the risk of losing their credibility. The suggested therapies may not be taken into account or lose some of their efficiency ( placebo effect, compliance).

It seems to me that an anthropological approach of the health invites us to be vigilant and  to respect alterity. There is no doubt that such an attitude is a source of deep enrichment. It leads us to our very own vision of the world, of life, of death, of our own culture and as well our own personal path … this is another story … »

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