On July 4th, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut defended his title (and winning  for the 4th time in a row) in Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest by eating 54 hot dogs in 10 minutes. Due to a contracts dispute with Major League Eating & International Federation of Competitive Eating (yes, that organization is for real!), six-time hot dog-eating contest champion winner Takeru Kobayashi did not compete, but did attend the Coney Island annual event to supposedly support his fellow competitors.

Caught up in the excitement and by his chanting supporters (chanting “Let him eat! Let him eat!), Kobayashi jumped on the stage. Shortly after he got on the stage, he was arrested by officers and charged with obstruction of governmental administration, resisting arrest, trespassing and disorderly conduct and jailed overnight. He was released and then this somewhat serious press conference took place. What I found hilarious was one reporter’s question, “Did you have any hot dogs while in jail?”

Personally, I think the whole controversy was staged – like how wrestling is setup. I mean, Kobayashi was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Free Kobi.” And this only extends the coverage of the hot dog eating contest and Kobayashi’s fame. The New York Times does a great backgrounder piece on how the Nathan’s contest has grown and how competitive eating has taken the world by storm (amazing what good PR can do for a person, sport or company – aka Twitter).

When I was 34, my doctor refused to biopsy a lump I found in my right breast.  He told me I was too young to get breast cancer and had no family history. Besides, he said, “Asian women don’t get breast cancer.”  He was wrong.   After a second doctor told me with “99.9% certainty” that I didn’t have the disease, I told him I wanted to be 100% certain, so he biopsied the lump.  To his shock, I had breast cancer.

(flickr photo credit: yongjiet)

Susan Matsuko Shinagawa’s experiences with doctors and cancer are not unique.  This NPR discussion with Kathy Ko from the Asian Pacific Islander Health Forum talks about the model minority myth applied to Asian-American health, and breast cancer in particular.  That seems so terribly wrong, as I have known a number of Asian-American women who have gotten breast cancer and Tim’s Mom died from it.

The NPR discussion also talks about health disparities in between Asian-Americans and other Americans and between Asian-American subgroups.   For example, U.S.-born Vietnamese women are four times more likely to die of breast cancer than any other Asian-American ethnic group.  That is in contrast to another study that says that Asian immigrant women as a group are 4 times more likely to die of breast cancer than US born women.  Native Hawaiians experience high rates of diabetes and obesity, and Asian-American childhood obesity is on the rise.

Just as the Asian-American model minority myth applied to academics blurs academic disparities between different Asian-American subgroups, aggregating health data across all Asian-Americans causes important information about subgroups to be lost.  Asian-Americans as a whole are 50% less likely to die of heart disease than non-hispanic whites.  But within that broad group, Native Hawaiians are 40% more likely to be diagnosed with heart diseases than non-hispanic whites.   Asian-American kids are the fittest in California, but Filipinos and Pacific Islanders (actually broken out separately here) are not as fit.

What are Asian-Americans to do?  The NPR discussion mentions some solutions, like encouraging culturally appropriate health care access and increasing health care coverage.  Susan Matsuko Shinagawa suggests that some Asian attitudes about cancer, like not talking about it, need to change.  Other studies suggest that adopting the American diet increases cancer risks, so maintaining good eating habits and not being sedentary can go a long way into staying healthy.

“People of Chinese origin have been shown to have some of the highest rates of shortsightedness in the world,” Abhishek Sharma, of Oxford University in the UK

That news wasn’t a large surprise to me, but that’s because I’ve been nearsighted almost my entire life. And similar to the rural Chinese children described in the story, I too needed glasses when I was in elementary school, but never got them. The difference was that not wearing glasses in my case had nothing to do with superstition, or wrongly held beliefs (the rural Chinese believed there were medicines that could correct nearsightedness, and that wearing glasses could make vision worse). In my case, no one ever figured out I needed glasses, not until I reached 6th grade, and my sixth grade teach thought I was squinting a little too much and sent me to the school nurse; who then sent me to an eye doctor.

It turned out I was probably nearsighted for my entire elementary school career, but no one ever noticed since I did pretty well in school. My first pair of glasses were over -6.00 diopters in strength (20/700 to 20/800 on the snellen vision chart – note: corrected vision at 20/200 or worse is considered legally blind).

I’m not sure how I succeeded all those years without being able to see, but I suspect a lot of it had to do with memorization and working a lot harder than I probably needed to. My own daughter is about to enter school this fall. She’s more likely than most to need glasses, since both her biological parents are near-sighted. So, we’ve been careful to get her vision (and hearing) checked, so the same thing doesn’t happen to her that happened to me as a child. Lucky for her, for now her vision is pretty good. If you or your child is of Chinese origin, you may want to go in for that routine eye exam, sooner rather than later.

While I’ve never experienced anything that embarrassing due to Chinese medicines, I’ve had my share of history and ridicule for using wan-jian-you (tiger balm); seirogan (a creosote based laxative); and salonpas (pain relieving patch). All of these produced a highly distinct odor and were immediately noticed by my non-Chinese classmates during my school years. To store these medicines, I’ve often put them in double ziploc bags, but usually even that doesn’t do much to contain the odor.

As offensive as the smell is of many of these medicines, I still rely on them to get the job done. I just haven’t found any American medicines that are as effective at producing results as my Asian medicine standbys. So I guess I will continue to offend others with my unmistakable odor.

I’m sure there are other equally offensive Asian medicines out there, and plenty of stories to go with them. Lucky for me, while my smell may have offended others, I never stopped a plane from leaving for its destination.

But, somewhere in my genetic makeup is a deep love for instant ramen.

I blame my Dad for this; I grew up sneaking instant ramen into my belly as often as I can. I had to hide it from the Mother who frowned upon the horror that is instant ramen. She would go on and on about how bad it was and how it’s going to ruin my health. I would have a sassy comeback and ignore her and I happily slurped through my bowl of instant goodness. I love it so  much, I even have my own little method of cooking it.

This is the reason I would never show my Mother this article on students who have ate instant foods increasing their risk of getting chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Oh, the gloating she would do and the triumph she would feel knowing that her nagging has been true all along. She would never be silenced in saying over and over again how instant ramen consumption really does have negative and horrible affects on one’s health.

Posted without comment: this YouTube video this video from ABC (since YouTube is constantly taking down the original video source due to copyright violations) of a two year old baby from Indonesia, who needs his mother to change his diapers, but is totally capable of lighting up two packs of cigarettes a day.

At least he looks cool and fits in with the clique of other cigarette smoking babies on the playground! Remember: Smoking kills, kids. (Or maybe I mean “Smoking kills kids.”)

Recently, the San Francisco Hepatitis B Free Campaign launched a new controversial and in-your-face print, billboard and television advertising campaign in the Bay Area called “Which One Deserves to Die.” San Francisco has the highest rate of liver cancer in the United States due to the fact that 1 in 10 Asian Americans, most unbeknown to them, are infected with “Hep B” – a leading cause of that cancer. Asians make up over 30% of San Franciscans.

The campaign is being published in several languages including Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese targeting English-speaking doctors outside the Asian community who might not be aware of the prevalence of the disease amongst Asians.

We’ve blogged about Hepatitis B in the past and continue to do so since this disease affects Asian Americans disproportionately; Hep B is preventable, treatable and early treatment can save lives. And to my surprise, Hep B is not something that is screened normally when you donate blood. So the next time you have a checkup and blood work done, ask your doctor to check for Hep B.

And this is why you fill out the census, folks: so that such health awareness programs targeted to such specific demographics can get the much needed and appropriate federal aid that they deserve.

As APIs, there are many of us who have been raised in families who would rather die than let family secrets out into the open. Invariably, extended family members somehow find out. The omnipresent veil of secrecy incites speculation instead of quashing it.

Within my own extended family there’s been gambling, theft arrests, abortions, forced adoptions from teenage pregnancy, homelessness, and drug use.  Big deal. We all survived. I’d like to think that we took responsibility for our actions and moved on, or at least strove to. We never claimed to be perfect.

Korean singer and actor Choi Jin Young died by hanging yesterday in an apparent suicide. His famous sister, actress Choi Jin Shil, also committed suicide two years earlier. She was supposedly embroiled in a financial scandal with actor Ahn Jae-hwan, who killed himself a month before her suicide.

Some say rampant web rumors about the scandal drove Choi Jin Sil to kill herself while others accused her of being a loan shark who demanded repayment from Ahn for a $2 million dollar loan. Her pressure on Ahn, these net attacks claim, led to his suicide.

On the other hand, many of America’s big scandals of late seem to be shortly followed by all sides coming out with books and national event-interviews. They act quickly to dispel what they deem false truths from becoming part of the national fabric.

I’ve always thought that remaining silent tells volumes, and that while vicious lies are spread, the honorable stay mum. But with the onset of these events, I’m learning that silence seldom works for public consumption. As someone who is the focus of lies spread by a well-known community person, I can either strike back or let it eat away at me.

“Silence = Death” was the slogan for ACT UP, an AIDS advocacy and awareness group in the late 80s and mid-90s, and it still applies today. I’m not claiming to know or understand the intricate situation with the suicides of these three Korean celebrities, but I do know that keeping something welled inside can lead to disease and/or death.

Silence impacts more than the immediate. Ricky Martin just came out yesterday after years of speculation. Though Barbara Walters suggested that she destroyed his career by her interviews in which she pressed him about his sexuality, I wonder if it was actually his evasion to her questions. Similarly, Rosie O’Donnell came out just two months before ending her daytime TV show.

Imagine the dialogue that could have happened about the sexiest singer of the time being gay or the extremely liked, respected, rich, popular, generous woman who was also lesbian. That dialogue died with their silence. We can only wonder how many more could have been spoken out had they found inspiration by those in the public eye.

Ken Choy is an actor, writer, community organizer, and producer of Breaking the Bow. He is gay, green, and gluten-free.