Posts filed under 'Healthy Lifestyles'
Ever since man invented the wheel, he has been on a gradual march towards lesser and lesser physical work. So the invention of wheel is the first landmark on our road to a society which finds physical work menial and a drudgery. Of course the wheel saved us lot of walking to begin with.
The second landmark in our history of evolution is industrialization, which brought in automation. Life thus came to depend upon machines. We have had motorized devices running simple household chores and producing everything we need.
Industrialization saved us lot of work we were used to doing with our hands.
Information technology is pushing us towards a culture of work which is computer mouse-driven. It seems our grand ambition of achieving a culture of ‘effortless work’ is nearing fulfillment.
I recall an article by an eminent scientist I read sometime back. In his predictions about science in general and information technology in particular, the writer drew our attention to a scary future. Accordingly, in another couple of million years from now, we as a human race will be reduced to grotesque looking creatures – with an oversized head and our right hand connected with an arm-like limb. That is if we go by Charles Darwin’s famous sub-theory of ‘disusage’ of organs under the theory of Evolution.
Hence as we reduce in our usage of our organs or body parts we gradually lose their strength and size, and finally lose them altogether. Thus a generation heavily dependant upon brain and the computer mouse will be ruled by the creatures who are capable of using only their heads and the right hands. The rest of the body will disappear, the writer scientist predicted.
I shared this view with my neighbour, who is an information technology professional.
Being overweight and suffering from a host of digestive problems, his doctor had advised him to clean his car every morning before he goes jogging. While he agreed to do the latter, he refused to take the car-cleaning chore. I asked him the reason, thinking that he would quote the most clichéd one – shortage of time. “My neighbours will think that I cannot pay to have my car cleaned”, he said, in all honesty.
Our dislike for manual work is historic, as old as our civilization. And we all know it in our wisdom why we suffer from the physical ailments, as a result.
August 30th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
I wrote recently about my brush with the body mass index (BMI) tables at my gym. I couldn’t help myself seeing where I my body mass was on the chart and was horrified to find that I was on the over weight scale, even with my levels of exercise.
Well it seems that my thoughts that the BMI is a poor way of determing obesity have been vindicated by recent research which found that many patients classed as “overweight” by the BMI test actually outlived those judged to be of normal weight.
This is to be expected, of course, as many people who are active acquire more muscle mass and as muscle is heavier than fat, often have a BMI that is in the over-weight category. These people are probably also fitter and more healthy, as they take ownership for their well-being, and therefore tend to live longer.
This is good news for those of us who do exercises such as swimming which tends to increase upper body muscles. We can forget BMI testing now, however we should be aware of another recommended test - the waist to hip ratio which compares the circumference of your waist to the circumference of your hips.
If your waist is much bigger than your hips then this could be due to abdominal fat deposits. We know that the so called “apple shaped” body shape, which is due to abdominal fat, presents greater chance of heart disease and diabetes, so this is a more reliable indicator of obesity and associated health risks.
So the next time I see a BMI chart lying around, i’ll feel justified in ignoring it, though I’d better go and find a tape measure, just in case!
August 18th, 2006
Written By: chris
Here’s some good news for those who are contemplating trimming some of that excess weight by taking up an exercise programme.
It appears that not only does exercise help you slim, it helps your abdominal fat cells trim down as well!
This comes from research in the United States that compared the sizes of abdominal fat cells in women who dieted and exercised with women who just dieted without undertaking an exercise programme. The fat cells in the exercising women reduced in size, whilst those in the other group maintained their pre diet size.
“Its obvious”, you might say - exercise was reducing the overall fat content of the women. However, apparently this is not the case as fat cells in the ladies hips, in both groups, remained the same. Exercising was preferentially reducing the sizes of the abdominal cells.
Whilst it might seem trivial, actually this may have implications for our health as it is generally known that those with abdominal fat (the so called “apple shaped” profile) have a greater risk of developing diabetes and heart disease than those who deposit fat on their hips (the “pear shaped” physique).
So we have yet another reason to become, and remain, active, though I must admit that I’ve never given the size of my fat cells much thought, which is probably just as well!
August 16th, 2006
Written By: chris
You are in the middle of a massive traffic jam. It is sweltering hot, and nothing is moving. Not even the leaves on the plants by the roadside. Senseless blaring of horns. Senseless because there is nowhere you can go, no matter how much the guy behind blares away.
Judas Priest pounding away on the car CD. Someone is screaming; someone else is screaming back. You look out and you go, ‘Arrgh! &*#@$**!%#’ (unprintable, because this is a health blog). That is all you need now. Two guys quarrelling over some trivial issue:
Commuter 1: Why the hell are you honking away? You think I can fly out of this mess to make space for you?
Commuter 2: Who asked you to shove your way into this little space, you moron?
Commuter 1: Nitwit!
Commuter 2: Dumbass!
Commuter 1: You $*&@*^!
Commuter 2: Screw you, *&%$#*
And the traffic policeman standing helplessly in the middle of this chaos, whistling away. And the two are going on and on. No action, just trading insults. And suddenly one turns to you, ‘What’s your problem, lady?’ You realize you have let loose an obscenity at them and one of them has heard it. And seeing it coming from a lady, finds it a better way to channel his rage; with a lady probably he could win the argument.
You can simultaneously feel a few things happen. One, your ears go red and redder. Two, you can actually hear the heart thumping away – hit him, hit him; hit him, hit him. Three, you can’t see it, but you can feel it – your blood pressure is soaring like the happy albatross. Scary Uncle Rob thundering ‘Breaking the law, Breaking the law’ and Uncles Downing and Tripton launching into a ferocious riff…
You get out of the car, and walk to the scene of the altercation, slowly. The two guys are eyeing you now, one belligerent, the other slightly uncertain (what’s this stupid woman coming here for?). You are almost there. And then, for a moment you close your eyes. And focus. Focus on something pleasant, something that makes you happy, not these two morons that make you mad, but your dog Attila furiously running to your house from the direction of the neighbors, stolen chicken leg dangling precariously from his mouth…
The thumping of the heart has subsided to a regular ‘lub, dub; lub dub’. The scary uncles from Priest are silent now. The blood is flowing regularly, no stress at all. You open your eyes and tell them, ‘Why don’t you punch the daylights out of each other instead of yelling your heads off like two scared punks? Beat each other up; at least we’ll all have something to look at. Or, shut up and wait for the jam to clear.’ You smile at the two bewildered blokes, and walk back to your car…
That is the power of meditation. It calms you down, regulates your vital signs, and generally helps you to destress. You can count on it to save your day, especially when it needs the most saving!
August 8th, 2006
Written By: daisy
What is intriguing me today is the news that obesity has more quality of life costs for women, than for men. A study has found that the number of years of poor health as a result of obesity can be quantified and thereby compared between the genders.Apparently the study shows that obesity cost American women over three million years of lost health compared with just under two million years for men.
Thats about 5 million years of “lost health” in total, just in the United States.
It sounds a bit complicated, however it does go to show how something as common as obesity can exert a large effect on the health of the nation. The problem is, of course, that obesity is becoming more prevalent in the United States and elsewhere in the western world.
You can see it for yourself as you walk around any UK town or city. The number of people who are overweight to the point of obesity is definitely increasing.
The very sad fact is that you see more overweight children now. If only we could find a way of helping these kids understand the long term impact of their weight problems and help them realise that they are at risk from a variety of disorders that will reduce their ratio of “healthy” years and increase their chances of leading unhealthy lives.
I suspect that those large numbers of “health cost years”, mentioned in the study are set to increase before long, unless children (and probably more so, parents) can be better educated about the perils of being overweight.
July 31st, 2006
Written By: chris
I wrote a few days ago about how hot it is in the UK at the moment.
Don’t think I’m complaining, as I’m not. Far from it actually as I quite like the good weather day in day out. We poor Brits aren’t used to it as our summers are usually rain, a bit of sun to remind us that it really is summer, then more rain again.
Nice though all this hot weather is, there is a serious downside. Apparently the sun kills 60,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organisation.
According to that report, these deaths are caused by various skin cancers, though it fails to mention the thousands of deaths that resulted in France from the heat wave in 2003, which were mostly caused by heat stroke and dehydration.
I spent three months in Australia about ten years ago, just as the Australians were starting to become concerned about the numbers of people who were contracting skin cancer from too much exposure to the sun.
I was shocked by the appearances of some youngsters there, whose skins were looking many years older than their actual years. Excessive exposure to the sun had prematurely aged their skins and wrinkles were starting to appear. It was noticeable, however, that people were making an effort to avoid too much sun exposure and the sun block costumes were becoming very popular on the beaches, particlularly for children.
Here in the UK, this summer, we are seeing people who have become very tanned, and many who have been badly sunburnt. If we start to have a run of hot summers like this, then even we Brits need to start paying heed to the dangers of the sun and make sure that we don’t add to those world wide statistics.
July 27th, 2006
Written By: chris
I am writing this sitting on an excruciatingly hot train as I am travelling to a meeting in London today.
There have been record temperatures in the UK this month and all you really want to do in this heat is to sit in the garden with a long cold drink, or even to practise your yogic breathing if you are feeling particularly virtuous.
The last thing you want to do is to sit on a train and also the thought of pounding away on a treadmill in a gym seems very off-putting at the moment.
Whenever I feel that I’d rather be doing a thousand other things other than putting in the (static) miles on a treadmill, I think back three years to my encounters with another sort of treadmill - the stress test treadmill in the Cardiology department of the hospital where I worked.
I must have performed hundreds of stress tests on a huge variety of people, all complaining of chest pains and various conditions such as heart attack, angina and breathlessness. I hope never to be on that treadmill myself.
I recall a large number of patients, mostly elderly, but alarmingly some in the forties and fifties, who could not even walk at the slowest speed on the treadmill for three minutes.
Why am I reminiscing about those experiences in the Cardiology department, as I sit on this hot train?
Well, knowing that I would be going out later on today, I decided to do my swim this morning instead of the afternoon as I normally do. If you go to a gym regularly you’ll notice that you meet a completely different set of people to the ones who are there when you normally are.
This morning it seemed that most of the people were elderly, getting their swim out of the way to free up the rest of the day. Although they were swimming slowly and kept getting in my way, I didn’t mind a bit as I recognised that these are not the sort of people who end up being investigated for heart problems.
Like me they had resisted all the other temptations and excuses to do something outside and were committed to improving their health and fitness, even in these temperatures.
July 25th, 2006
Written By: chris
Sometimes you read something that touches your soul, something that gives you hope and something that stirs tremendous admiration.
For me, today, that something, is the news that Jane Tomlinson, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live almost six years ago, is succeeding in her grueling endurance feat to cycle 4,200 miles across America.
Very few fit and healthy people could tackle a feat like that - she has endured searing heat, exhaustion and pain, and is raising significant amounts for charity. Her example is also raising awareness of breast cancer and how it is possible to cheat the cancer death sentance.
Reading the article, you can see how her immensely positive outlook on life is probably helping, but it is also a good diet, fitness and sheer mental toughness that are combining to delay the inevitable. Of course she has undergone chemotherapy and takes other cancer drugs such as Herceptin, but it is her personality and drive that shine through.
I wish her well and hope that she continues to show us all that strength of mind and sheer determination can conquer all.
July 20th, 2006
Written By: chris
There’s hope for those who like nothing more than to slump in front of the television eating a ready meal as they watch the latest reality TV show.
These “couch potatoes” are not necessarily destined for an early trip to the “great soap opera in the sky”, that is if they follow the advice of some new research which shows that starting exercise in later life can help prevent heart diease.
The research not only confirmed that being active throughout your life does significantly reduce the risks of coronary heart disease, but also those who leap from their couch and pursue reasonably rigorous exercise, when in their 40’s and 50’s, also benefit from reduced heart disease.
I guess this makes sense as exercise not only helps you maintain, or improve your health, but feeling fitter gives you a better outlook on live, encouraging you to do more, which, in turn makes you more active.
Not only can you live more healthily, but you will probably maintain your health and fitness for longer whilst allowing those vital coronary arteries to flow as freely as possible.
July 19th, 2006
Written By: chris
The Einsteinian concept of ‘relativity’ is one of the most profound yet simple concepts you can come across. Profound more so because of its universality, the universality that makes it a simple solution for almost every conceivable enigma or problem or puzzle or whatever you call it - for everything that requires an answer, so to say.
It applies to us, in every aspect of our daily lives. It defines ‘new’, ‘old’, ‘young’, ‘aged’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, in fact it defines dichotomies. And yet at the same time it blurs the dichotomies. For how young is young? How old is old? How fast is fast? How sick is sick? Just imagine - ‘relatively old’ could mean a few days (in the case of stale food) or a few million years (in the case of evolution)!
In today’s world, when everything whizzes by, when even nanotechnology will soon become passe, it is this one thing that will still be around to define what is the latest ‘new’, what is the latest ‘old’…
In this context, are our lives relative? In the face of that eternal constant, the great equalizer - death - yes, our lives are relative too. If that is the case, then does it make sense to run 5 kms every day, twist and contort your body in every conceivable position in an effort at physical stability and mental peace, try and climb the ladder of success, stay fit? Of all things, stay fit? If our lives are relative, and death is the constant, then what is the point of fitness, health, wellness?
There is a very valid point to all these seemingly futile endeavors (’futile’ in the context of relativity). The point is to live, for how many ever days you get to, a full and happy life. A life where you have the physical ability to do things you want to do, the mental peace and balance to be as you want to be. The point is to live the days of our lives with abandon. To not spend our days worying about disease, sickness, death. To be able to do 500 squats, run 5 kilometers, run 20 flights of stairs happily, sprint with your pet dog over a 50 meter stretch and maybe even win… To live as long as you get to, and be proud about yourself, that you have a body that you have taken care of, loved… that is why exercising and all is important, more than being just trim. because you take care of those things that you care about (the term ‘take care’ is self-explanatory), love.
When the focus becomes the act of living, and not the fact of living, is when we can say we have taken the first steps to a healthy and eventful life…
July 18th, 2006
Written By: daisy
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