You may think that scurvy is a disease confined to the dusty confines of the history books which only afflicts 18th century sailors who ate exclusively sauerkraut for three month voyages. Wrong! So wrong. Turns out the disease is making a surprise comeback in Sydney due to poor modern dietary habits.
Professor Jenny Gunton, who heads the Diabetes Centre at Westmead Hospital, says that she’s identified scurvy in a group of diabetes patients, after theorising that a Vitamin C deficiency was behind several unusual symptoms.
Gunton spoke of a patient whose wounds did not heal for an extended period of time. “She just did not have a reason not to heal her ulcers and they’d been there for seven months and that’s just not right.”
“When something doesn’t add up you go and look for the unusual causes.”
The woman was tested for Vitamin C levels. She came back with a level of 10 – the normal level is 40. “The irony is that it is possible for patients to have scurvy, even when they are overweight or obese,” Gunton told the ABC. “It highlights a danger that you can consume plenty of calories yet not receive enough nutrients.”
Gunton said that as scurvy is considered a historical affliction, medical authorities tend not to test for it and generally do not keep instructive population data on the frequency of cases.
This is thought of as an historical disease, with the English sailors needing to eat the dried limes on their way out to Australia so they didn’t get scurvy.I think the resurgence in my patients with diabetes might be in part because people with diabetes tend to avoid eating fresh fruit because it raises your blood glucose levels. They should still eat fresh fruit but they worry about their blood glucose levels.
There ya go. Especially if you’re a diabetic, keep an eye on those Vitamin C levels. Ya scurvy dogs.
Source: ABC.
Photo: The Simpsons.
