Sugar, Blood Pressure, Constipation, Piles: Why, Exactly?

Twenty kilometres a day in a car taught me what my medical books never did

Image Genrated by AI

My friend Irfan walked all day as a boy. Nobody called it exercise. He walked to school, to the fields, to wherever his legs were needed, and came home hungry and dusty. Today Irfan is overweight, his knees complain on every staircase, and constipation is something he mentions with a laugh that isn’t really a laugh.

I meet Irfan in my clinic every day. Only the names change.

I’m Dr. Anwar Khan, a homeopathic physician. My clinic, Yousafzai Homeopathic Clinic, is in Thana, Malakand Agency. I live in Shamozai, a lovely corner of Swat that people call its gateway, so I drive about twenty kilometres each way, daily.

My Grandfather Walked to Where My Clinic Stands Now

Here’s what keeps nagging me. Thana bazaar, where I treat patients today, is where my grandfather and his brothers came for supplies about fifty years ago. Flour, salt, cloth, whatever the house needed. They left at first light and went on foot. No bridges over the rivers. No proper road for most of the way. They shopped, loaded their backs, and walked home, reaching the door by evening.