Inherited Disease or Conditions That Would Cause Low HT?

[Pursuivant]

Also don't forget cheap cigarettes that the U.S. Army sold and which came for free with K-Rations and C-Rations. Chain-smoking and bad diet can really mess you up.

Even so, it seems odd that people who are otherwise Fit and not overweight would suffer from Type II diabetes in their early 20s. OTOH, if there's a family recessive gene for high cholesterol and/or Type II diabetes, anything is possible.

As another factor, the fact that a Fit person in their 20s actually has Type II diabetes might be missed by 1930s to 1950s medical testing or discounted by doctors with little reason to look deeper (e.g., any racist doctor or a doctor with an agenda of clearing sick soldiers as fit for combat). A stubborn patient might also refused to follow doctors' orders regarding diet and/or can't afford insuin. The only thing worse than diabetes is badly-managed diabetes.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Also don't forget cheap cigarettes that the U.S. Army sold and which came for free with K-Rations and C-Rations. Chain-smoking and bad diet can really mess you up.

I'd like one inheritable medical explanation that covers Tony and Matteo Manzano's reduced HT after joining the Army and/or being deployed to Korea in their 20s, as well as Tony's son Arliss Manzano losing his HT in a rapid and catatrophic collapse exactly like his uncle Matteo, just more than fifty years later, in Afghanistan and not Korea, and Arliss was 43, not merely in his twenties.

An otherwise healthy young man won't suffer a catastrophic health collapse, sufficient to be medically retired in his twenties, just because he started smoking. Not without some previously unknown disease or condition. Lung cancer or emphysema generally is not instant, as soon as you start smoking.

And while stress might have driven Arliss Manzano to taking up smoking for the first time in his forties, it seems unlikely. Most people start earlier, if they start at all. And in the 2000s and 2010s, cigarettes were definitely no longer included in rations.

The three men all showed similar synptoms under similar circumstances, Tony's just much milder than his younger brother and son. I'd like to use some inherited trait or traits as the explanation.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Even so, it seems odd that people who are otherwise Fit and not overweight would suffer from Type II diabetes in their early 20s. OTOH, if there's a family recessive gene for high cholesterol and/or Type II diabetes, anything is possible.

There should be some genetic suscectibility, maybe even inherited traits from both parents, which separately might be no big deal, but if you inherit both, you are at dire risk. Like diabetes from one side and some condition of the spleen, heart or lung from the other side. Maybe I could even find plausible genetic factors which explains the whole family medical history; two males out of eight in three generation of the same family died in infancy or at least before age five, they got the worst case scenario inherited traits, Matteo and Arliss got some bad combination of inherited traits, Tony and maybe one other family members got just a mild case, maybe just inheriting the bad trait on one side, and the remaining two males inheriting no negative medical traits from either parent.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

As another factor, the fact that a Fit person in their 20s actually has Type II diabetes might be missed by 1930s to 1950s medical testing or discounted by doctors with little reason to look deeper (e.g., any racist doctor or a doctor with an agenda of clearing sick soldiers as fit for combat). A stubborn patient might also refused to follow doctors' orders regarding diet and/or can't afford insuin. The only thing worse than diabetes is badly-managed diabetes.

I think doctors might misdiagnose it, yes, and maybe Arliss never knew he was suspectible to the same thing as happened to his father and uncle. If he knew, modern diabetes drugs are good enough to easily prevent his issue, even if that wouldn't have worked for his father and uncle half a century before.

I have classic lifestyle-related Type II diabetes and don't need insulin. It's not often required for those who don't have Type I. 21st century drugs keep my long term glucose levels down to perfectly normal levels, with essentially no symptoms which can be determined, and no need to worry much about diet.

It's theoretically possible that having diabetes contributed to me contracting a mystery illness at age forty, which caused widespread nerve damage, muscle trauma and momentarily interfered with heart and kidney functons. Kidneys were undamaged, heart is damaged, so far, I don't know the root cause, whether diabetes was in any way relevant (doctors think not, though), whether the coronaries were damaged before this and caused the heart damage just because of the systemic strain, or if the mystery illness just damaged the heart for no clear reason.

[Ramidel]

Congenital tendency toward diabetes (which absolutely knocks your HT down the pike).

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Maybe they passed poor diet decisions on to their children.

Environmental exposure to the same infection or toxin is another way related characters could share non-hereditary traits.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Environmental exposure to the same infection or toxin is another way related characters could share non-hereditary traits.

That would call for complicated explanation, as eight males grew up on the same reservation until age 14 or older. Two died as children, one a few days old, one aged four. Two or three never exhibited any symptoms and lived long, healthy lives (there's one whose life past early twenties I have't rolled for yet, so I don't know which category he falls into).

Three developed symptoms which in GURPS terms were largely reduced HT. If I get a solid diagnosis that fits all the facts that calls for some more Disadvantages than that, they'll also get those. Of those three, one, Matteo Manzano, was medically retired in his mid-20s, after serving in Korea during the Korean War. He was wounded in combat, but it's doubtful there's any causal link there, his wound was shrapnel to a leg, it was removed in a hospital, and he didn't get sick until years later.

Another is Tony Manzano, whose HT was reduced by ca -2 while deployed in Korea in his early twenties. Went from a divisional boxing champion who had a realistic chance for the All-Japan and Far East Army titles to a fighting soldier whose Will greatly exceeded his HT and he almost killed himself from exhaustion and exposure. Also wounded in action, but it was a clean in-and-out bullet wound, passed right through his torso and somehow avoided damaging anything vital, just bled a bit and required a short hospital stay, mostly to make sure he didn't develop an infection around the stiches.

Third was a bit different. Tony's son Arliss Manzano did grow up in the same house he did, but he went to the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, NM when he reached high-school age, attended the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque to finish a Bachelor's degree, double major in Criminology and History. Spent the next couple of decades in Nevada, as a Las Vegas Metro cop, homicide detective for the last eight years or so, belonged to the Nevada Army National Guard and developed symptoms very similar to his uncle Matteo when he was called to federal service and deployed to Afghanistan at age 43, in command of a cavalry squadron.

What would they have been exposed to that leads to symptoms only if they leave the one location they all share, Pueblo Isleta?

And, for that matter, those who died in childhood never left it, and those who had long and healthy lives , apparently unaffected, did leave, for military service (four of eight reached adulthood while there was a draft, they could enlist and pick their service, maybe even branch or MOS if they tested well, or be drafted and end up wherever the Army liked), for college and/or for jobs elsewhere. One became a stuntman in Hollywood.

And the three with symptoms all developed them while abroad, none of them in the same place. Matteo and Tony didn't serve in the same place or even the same areas in Korea, which is not a small country. And Arliss never visited Korea, he went to Afghanistan. And not somewhere cold and mountainous. The weather was nice most of the time, he felt. For that matter, Tony and Matteo were in their early-to-mid twenties when they developed symptoms, Arliss was 43.

None of the sisters of Tony and Matteo had any similar health problems. Nor were any of Arliss' cousins born to Manzano women or his symptom-free uncles sick.

So, my thinking is something passed down the male side of the family, and, from what I've seen in suggestions, maybe they share a genetic predisposition to Diabetes Type II (on its own, no big deal, at least not in my experience, drugs can keep it down easily and if I were willing to eat better and exercise more, I wouldn't even need any drugs) which they inherited from Juana's side of the family, but are only seriously affected if they inherit some condition from Giancarlo's side which, when combined with diabetes, especially unmanaged diabetes, can lead to catastrophic collapse of some kind. Maybe damage to the spleen and/or the cardiovascular system, would explain reduced HT pretty well.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ramidel

Congenital tendency toward diabetes (which absolutely knocks your HT down the pike).

Does it?

I mean, on its own and managed, it doesn't seem like it would lead to the medical retirenent of a man in his twenties, or even in his forties. Lots of people hold down jobs with diabetes. Even stressful jobs, and/or ones requiring physical labour.