TROPICAL HEALTH NONSENSE

I remember back home when I was young, I learned all kinds of what I will call “traditional health tips” since the phrase “old wives’ tales” might be offensive to some. Feed a cold or starve a fever, and vice versa. Never go swimming on a full stomach or your muscles will cramp up and you’ll drown. Don’t eat ice cream too fast, or you’ll get a headache. Wine after beer, not beer after wine, or you’ll really get a headache. Don’t warm your hands too close to the fire when suffering from frostbite or you’ll singe before you thaw. Good sensible advice. In Mazatlán also they have many such health-minded practices and beliefs, but due to increased latitudinal circumference everything is different down here. Notice the way locals open a can or bottle of beer or whatever. They break out napkins and limes and scrub around the top of the container until it is clean and sterilized before they put their lips to it. I used to just check for visible sand grains, maybe blow on it, then pop the top and down the hatch! But I’ve been here so long they’ve got me doing it too. Don’t you see all those invisible microbes swarming under the bottle cap? Pass the citrus and a surgical swab! High on the list of things to be feared and avoided is El Frio, or what they think of down here as “cold.” My first clue as to the extent of local frigiophobia was watching my friend Roberto let his beer warm up in a glass under the scorching sun for a few minutes so it would not be a shock to his throat. He also cautioned me (as have many others) against compulsively washing my hands every couple of hours, which damages the bones. Mexican guitarists will not wash their hands between sets for fear of chilling their fingerbones and developing arthritis, bursitis, elephantitis and worse. Crazy, huh? And if you allow a cold six pack of beer to warm all the way up, then try to chill it again it becomes quemada (burned) and undrinkable. Better to enjoy it and all other beverages al tiempo (room temperature). Healthier that way. If it’s a hot day in August and your waiter asks if you want ice in your gin and tonic, he is not kidding, he is serious. He’d probably recommend

it without. Here cold beverages, ice cream and so on are bad for you, and will make you sick. Anytime my kids catch a cold, my mother-in-law blames it on me for allowing them to eat a popsicle on a hot day or play in the garden on a nippy Mazatlán morning or some darn thing. And to think when I had my tonsils out in Edmonton, I was on an all-sherbet diet for a week, doctors’ orders. Sometimes when delivering fliers mid-winter nights I would lie on my back in a snowdrift watching the Northern Lights, numb to the cold, happy as an otter. I should worry about my kids eating frozen Snickers bars and chasing butterflies through green grass? And, of course, the ocean breeze in mid-winter Mazatlán is a germy one, bringing pneumonia and plague to those foolish enough to venture out in it. In the summer it’s worse. The beach is empty in September and October when the tourists leave town because no local in his right mind goes near the place, their mothers have warned them. If somehow somebody does manage to catch a cold or fever, despite taking the usual precautions, they don’t rest in bed and drink plenty of chicken soup; they just go to the doctor for a shot or two of penicillin, room temperature. If they don’t have time or money to consult a physician, they head straight to the farmacia and buy a shot of penicillin to go. In every colonia in town there are certain houses well known to the neighbors where for 5 or 10 pesos some self-proclaimed expert will gladly inject complete strangers. Maybe you’ve seen a hand painted sign, “Se Inyecta - $5.” It works for everything — viruses, toothaches, hypochondria, hangovers, you name it. If the first shot doesn’t do the trick, come back for a booster. Of course, I don’t seriously believe any of the local superstitions, I mean health lore. What do they know? I drink iced micheladas for breakfast then ride around in open air taxis wearing wet swim trunks. Was it Nietzche or Hemingway who said whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? It’s all about building up an invincible immune system. If only I could shake this nasty cough… eg@pacificpearl.com