Marga Lisa Behamry pondered whether she should become a musician or a doctor. It has become medicine – and she is now editing her dissertation with the thesis »Fint som snus? Suff, deaths and everything in between ».
Can you tell us about your research?
– I researched snuff and health effects with a main focus on mortality. We investigated the factors that could cause the increased mortality seen in poisonings. What we’ve seen is that overall mortality increases by about 30 percent in nebulizer users compared to non-nebulizer users, and then above all through cardiovascular disease. In the past, it has been noted that spray smokers do not have an increased risk of heart attack or stroke, but if you do have one, your risk of dying from it increases. We don’t know exactly why that is.
What happens after the defense, should you keep looking?
– I will complete the unpublished studies and intend to do another study on snuff. Then I want to do more research in my area of expertise, which is geriatrics. I am doing ST in Geriatrics at Örnsköldsvik Hospital.
How, then, did I get into searching for snuff?
It was simply that I became interested in research, and I thought it was interesting to read and write. ‘I am experimenting,’ I thought after my AT, and so I found a good supervisor who was interested in this, much because we have a strong snuff and snuff-hunting tradition in the North. Then you connect it. I wanted to do broad research from a public health perspective—concrete, directly applicable research. I didn’t choose a major at the time, but with the focus of research on cardiovascular disease – and the fact that geriatrics accounts for a lot of internal medicine – it just doesn’t go right!
Is it worth searching?
– Yes, it’s a great opportunity to sit back and survey – and get paid for it! You should give it a try, at least if you’re curious, I think. We are few researchers at Ö-vik Hospital, and I think it would be good to have more researchers in small hospitals.
But first you wanted to be a musician?
– Yes, I’ve wanted that for a while. I went to folk high school, but I felt like it wasn’t music that I should base my career on. Partly my back ached from playing the violin so many hours a day, and partly my head needed more of a challenge and things to figure out. Now I still play a lot of music, but in the way I like best: attentively, playfully, and undemandingly. I play in the music community in Örnsköldsvik with a lot of great people – we’re actually having a concert this weekend. Then I play in a folk orchestra, then I sing in the Örnsköldsvik Chamber Choir.
Finally: do you smell yourself?
– number. I thought I’d try, mostly to be able to say I did, but it just didn’t. But I have many friends and colleagues who smoke.
What do they say about your research?
– Most of the snus users I spoke with were positive and thought it was still good to know how snus affects – so you can do whatever you want with that information. In the past, we had such a poor knowledge base about the effects of snuff, the only thing we could say to patients was, “Yes, it’s better than smoking,” but now we know it’s harmless.
– I didn’t feel like an enemy of the hacks, but I went into this with an open mind. It would have been nice if we could prove that sniffing is harmless, but now it’s not quite done that way.
Marga Lisa Behamry
profession: PhD student at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, and ST doctor at Örnsköldsvik Hospital.
age: 41 years.
family: Husband and four children ages 5, 8, 11 and 13.
Stream: Disputed on November 25 with the thesis » Fine as Wet? Snuff, deaths and everything in between ».
Medical Journal 48-49/2022
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