Author: Sameed Chaudhary

June in Lahore or Karachi is brutal. Temperatures cross 42°C, and the last thing most people feel like doing is eating a heavy meal. That natural appetite dip is real, and it’s one of the biggest advantages summer gives you for losing weight — if you use it right. Research from the University of Massachusetts Medical School found that average calorie intake drops by roughly 200 calories per day in summer compared to autumn and winter. Pakistani summers amplify this effect: the heat makes oily, heavy food genuinely unappealing, and seasonal fruits like watermelon, falsa, and kharboza (muskmelon) flood the…

Squinting at your phone screen or struggling to read a road sign in Lahore traffic is easy to brush off. Most people assume it means they need glasses, get a pair from the nearest optical shop, and move on. Sometimes that’s exactly right. But blurry vision isn’t always a prescription problem. Pakistan has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world, and diabetic eye disease is a growing cause of vision loss here. Cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness in the country, according to Pakistan’s national blindness surveys. Both conditions can quietly damage your sight for months…

Summer in Pakistan is relentless. Between April and August, UV index readings across Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad regularly hit 10 or above, the level the WHO classifies as “very high” to “extreme.” Anyone spending time outdoors, whether commuting, working on a construction site, or just running errands, comes home with noticeably darker skin on their face, neck, and arms. Most people call this “tanning” and reach for a fairness cream. But not all skin darkening is the same, and treating the wrong type the wrong way can make things worse, not better. Understanding what is actually happening in your skin…

Sweating is something every Pakistani knows well. In Karachi’s humid summers or Lahore’s scorching May afternoons, drenched clothes feel like a rite of passage. But some people sweat heavily even in an air-conditioned room, even at rest, even in the middle of winter. That is a different story. The medical term for this is hyperhidrosis (pronounced hy-per-hy-DROE-sis), a condition where the body produces far more sweat than it needs for temperature control. According to a published estimate in WebMD, primary hyperhidrosis affects roughly 1% to 3% of the global population, and many cases go undiagnosed because people assume it is…

Nosebleeds in summer heat catch most people off guard. One moment you’re stepping out into a Karachi afternoon in May, and the next there’s blood on your shirt. It happens more than people expect, and in Pakistan’s scorching summers, where temperatures in Lahore and Multan regularly cross 42°C between May and July, the nasal lining takes a real beating. The medical term for a nosebleed is epistaxis (pronounced ep-ih-STAK-sis), which simply means bleeding from the blood vessels inside the nose. Most episodes are harmless and stop within ten minutes. But when they start happening every few days, or when the…

Every summer in Pakistan, the same pattern repeats. Temperatures cross 40°C, water demand surges, and the pressure in municipal pipelines drops. That pressure drop is exactly when sewage seeps into supply lines through cracks and joints — and hepatitis A and E travel right along with it. Both viruses are waterborne, both cause liver inflammation (hepatitis means inflammation of the liver), and both are preventable. Yet thousands of Pakistani families get caught off guard each year, often dismissing the early symptoms as a routine stomach bug or heat exhaustion. By the time jaundice appears, the infection is already well established.…

Every May to September, Pakistani hospitals fill up with heat-related patients. Karachi’s Civil Hospital alone reports 70 to 80 such cases daily during peak heatwaves, according to a 2025 Express Tribune report. Many of these patients arrived too late because a family member couldn’t tell the difference between heat exhaustion and heatstroke. The two conditions sit on the same spectrum of heat-related illness, but one is manageable at home and the other is a life-threatening emergency. Getting that distinction wrong can cost a life. Pakistan’s outdoor workers, rickshaw drivers, construction labourers, and students walking to school in June heat are…

Most people who have prediabetes feel completely fine. That’s the part that makes it genuinely dangerous. Blood sugar has already started climbing above normal, but the body hasn’t triggered any alarm loud enough to notice, so years pass before a test reveals the problem. Pakistan carries one of the heaviest prediabetes burdens in the world. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis published in ScienceDirect estimated a prediabetes prevalence of roughly 11% among Pakistani adults, translating to approximately 26 million people. Men showed a significantly higher rate of prediabetes than women in that same analysis. These aren’t abstract numbers; they represent…

Karachi in June is a different world from the rest of the year. Temperatures cross 38°C, humidity sits above 70%, and most people spend their days in sweat-soaked clothes. That combination is exactly what skin fungi are waiting for. From the groin to the feet to the back, fungal infections spike every summer across Pakistan, yet many people spend weeks treating them with the wrong cream. A study reviewing 863 patients at Aga Khan University Hospital Karachi found tinea cruris (jock itch) was the single most common superficial fungal infection, making up over 27% of all cases. A separate Lahore…

Quick Answer Antibiotics only work on bacterial infections. They have no effect on viruses and cannot shorten a cold, flu, or most sore throats. Taking antibiotics when you have a viral illness does not help you recover faster — it only increases your risk of antibiotic resistance. A doctor’s assessment, and sometimes a blood test or throat swab, is the only reliable way to tell the two apart. Every winter in Lahore, and every monsoon season in Karachi, clinics fill up with patients carrying the same request: “Doctor, please give me an antibiotic.” The fever has been there two days,…