Dr. Richard Cyr over at the My Health Beijing blog has coined a new illness for foreigner living and working in China – expatitis -  and I hope it catches on.  The piece, Expatitis: Are You Infected? and the second installment of the series, Expatitis, Part Two: Stress are both worth a read since they spell out just what one can expect when living life in the expat fast lane of cheap beer, cigarettes, and irregular sleep cycles.

Both pieces are  products of a conversation that he, Adam Daniel Mezei, James, and I had last month about using his comparative advantage as a Beijing doctor to bring us unique pieces.  I am very happy that he took it to heart – and I couldn’t have hoped for him to write better articles.  Below are two amusing excerpt’s from the first piece that introduce you to Expatitis and who is susceptible to it;

What is expatitis, you ask? Good question; you won’t find this on WebMD because I just made it up, to fit a syndrome of health problems I see in many expats. Here’s my definition:

Expatitis (Expat from expatriā “to leave native land” +itis “inflammation, abnormal states, excesses, tendencies, etc”) – a syndrome of multiple physical and mental illnesses brought on by conscious lifestyle decisions among expats.

Let’s look at the syndrome’s main features:

1. Poor mental health (stress, insomnia, anxiety and depression)
2. Exhaustion
3. Too much alcohol use
4. A lot of smoking
5. Lack of exercise
6. Risky sex
7. Poor eating habits

Does this remind you of a friend, a loved one — or yourself?

To help illustrate the symptoms of this disease, Dr. Cyr has invented a patient prototype, Mr IndySpensible, who functions as a stand in for any and all varieties of illness-susceptible expat:

Let’s jump into Case One: Mr Indy Spensible, a mid-50’s General Manager of a large company, comes to my clinic with “funny chest pains” for a month. He’s a stocky guy with a big belly; very outgoing but obviously exhausted, wistfully eyeing his beeping Blackberry as we talk. He gets about 6 hours of sleep “if I’m lucky” and constantly travels. He has “no time” to exercise like he used to. He smokes and drinks “just enough to keep ahead” at his frequent business dinners. Lately he’s feeling “really stressed” and started having panic attacks after his second wife started threatening to move back to Europe “if I don’t slow down”. “You gotta help me, doc, I’m falling apart”…