Archive for June, 2006
Ayurveda is a holistic science of well being and medication based on the correct food, herbs, formulations, therapies and life style. It is about living with nature, of nature and for nature. The system is about understanding and following laws of nature.
The system has developed methods to say natural from the unnatural, healthy from the unhealthy and wrong from the right in all facets of life. For ayurveda evolved through research and practice over millennia.
A simple facet of life sums up the spirit of ayurveda, as my teacher often mentions. Ayurveda starts as soon as you get set to go to bed. Every animal has a sleeping posture according to its frame and size. So do we have. There are certain ways to lie down as prescribed under ayurveda.
Every animal has a definite food – it’s a myth of the modern medical science that the nutrients must come from different food sources to make for a complete diet.
Ayurveda and other living creatures establish that food has to be definite. It’s the medicines which are sourced from different plant species – hence the food sourced thus is what an ayurvedic medicine is all about. We humans too can live in perfect health while on a restrictive but balanced diet.
Our body, just like that of animals, is equipped to make its own micro and macro nutrients which need not be sourced from outside. This is ayurveda extended to yoga. The practice of yoga restores body’s capacity to manufacture its own stock of nutrients from very frugal and restrictive food diet; even ayurvedic medicines are not needed in most of the cases.
But before food, it is the time when you leave your bed which, according to ayurveda, is very important. So my teacher would say - a donkey does not get up after the sun is up.
We do not find a dog sleeping after twilight breaks. The birds have no choice but to get up before the dawn. They do not eat normally anything other than what is their staple or comes closest to the natural. Thus a cow will not touch chocolate or monkey will not have coffee. See a tiger smoke a cigarette and it will make a headline news worldwide!
The natural discipline, and it is very important, gives the animals the capacity to self-heal when they are sick. Ayurveda recognizes the potential in its elaborate treatise of Pashu Ayurveda.
We humans lose the power to self-heal as we fiddle with our biological clocks about sleeping, eating, getting up and going about different aspects of life. We go against the tenets of nature. With the pattern of modern development, we have gone completely unnatural in our lifestyle.
No wonder we have so many problems.
Ayurveda and yoga have the power to save us, if we choose.
June 18th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
I had been wondering for a while now - how on earth do I get myself a healthy lifestyle? There is so much work I do, so much running around, and then partying and all, where is the time for anything else?
And then it struck me, how much more stupid could I get? I figured it is a simple matter of prioritizing. Rescheduling, if you like. So first up, out with the partying. No more alcohol (it doesn’t do me good anyways, and costs money too). I am not a smoker, so that is something I don’t have to worry about.
Second, I need to make time for a proper meal. No, not proper meal, because in my case ‘proper meals’ become really proper meals… So nowadays at lunch and dinner, my stomach throws a general tantrum (arrrgh! fruits and juice again???? Nooooo…) But I listen to my brain, which is what I should have been listening to anyways, and it constantly nags me - no sweets, no chocolates, no rich food. At the same time, I must be careful not to fall into the dieting trap. No starving myself, instead I need to have 2-3 small meals of fruits. It will sate my hunger and is healthy too, I guess.
Third, I need to sleep a bit more than the usual 4-5 hours. I am doing 6 hours now, and I can see the difference. Now there is a different problem, which I had written here - I can’t wake up early!!
Fourth, I am trying with the jogging thing. Yoga, I figured, is too complicated right now. Good old walking/jogging is ok for now, I think.
The problem is actually this. Once you get used to a set lifestyle, every cell in your body screams out when you try to alter it. Especially when you try to downsize. Its a universal principle, I think - downsizing is good, but is always hated!
Let’s check the results after 2 months!
June 17th, 2006
Written By: daisy
Sometimes I feel sorry for chickens. They’re getting such a bad press at the moment.
If they are not going to kill you with bird flu, these unfortunate creatures will get you another way, that is if you like fast food.
Apparently there is a major fast food chain that is being sued in the United States for cooking its fried chicken in partially hydrogenated oil containing the naughty trans fatty acids.
Hydrogentated fats prolong the shelf life of processed foods and are linked to increased risk of heart disease, probably by raising the levels of bad cholesterol in your blood.
The maximum recommended daily intake of trans fats in the diet is 4.4g for women and 5.6g for men. Apparently a single portion of Killer Fried Chicken can contain 4.4g of trans fats so that is your whole daily allowance in one portion.
Eat any more foods containing trans fats during the day and you’re increasing the chance of raising your bad cholesterol levels.
Angina, heart attacks and strokes can be caused by prolonged elevated cholesterol levels as the bad cholesterol causes narrowing and hardening of critical coronary and cerebral arteries.
So the next time that you feel like tucking into a portion of fried chicken at your favourite fast food outlet, think of those trans fats circulating in your blood until they find a place to land on one of your artery walls, slowly clogging up your arteries.
June 16th, 2006
Written By: chris
Nowadays, the days just pass me by. It is Monday morning, and I have that familiar blue feeling. 5 days of hard work await, and I am wondering just how long it is going to take for these 5 days to pass. Which is a funny thought, because 5 days should take… 5 days! But on a Monday morning, 5 days seem like eternity.
A whirr, a flash, and poof! suddenly it is Friday evening! Where did the time go? How did the days pass? I am wondering if I got caught in some kind of time warp. But that isn’t what it is.
It is just that we are too busy with our lives to notice it sail by us. We work hard, and we work long. Some of us are lazy and don’t work at all, some of us are awfully rich, and don’t need to work, but those are different stories for another time.
Let me talk about me this time.
I realized that in the speed at which I am runing ahead through life, I have lost the time I used to take out to exercise. I look at myself, and what I see saddens me. Gone is the superfit look that I had until about a couple of years back. The toned body is now soft and fleshy. There is a hint of fat across the landscape, and it sets alarm bells ringing. I resolve to resolutely work out again.
I set the alarm to 5:00 a.m. I am going to jog slowly (which means walk slightly fast) for a mile or so. That should be good enough for starters. I go to bed, awaiting the morning and, at the same time, dreading the hard labor.
It is 7:00 a.m. and the sun is shining. Arrgh! I overslept again, as usual. I curse myself, my lack of commitment to my health and well-being. Over a slightly large breakfast, I think probably 1 mile at 5:00 a.m. was a harsh choice anyway. Tomorrow! I tell myself. Just wait and see.
Tomorrow I’ll try yoga…
June 15th, 2006
Written By: daisy
I might as well admit it. I go to the local sports club most weekdays.
Working from home, spending most of my time at the computer, means that I need a break and I want to be active, so going to the club is ideal.
I swim a fair bit (a mile twice a week) and on other weekday visits I jog/run on the treadmill. I also endure other tortures on the cross trainer and exercise bikes.
On the treadmill I run for 25 minutes on an incline of about three percent, which is fine for the level of fitness I’m happy with.
Mostly I find that I’m anxiously watching the timer on the treadmill to see how long I’ve got left for that exercise. 2.5 minutes gone, great I’m a tenth of the way through! Ten minutes - fantastic almost half way there. It’s like my brain is focussing on powering my body along, almost step by step, minute by minute.
This morning was different.
Almost as soon as I set off on the treadmill, my mind drifted off thinking about this and that. I suddenly looked down at the timer and was amazed to see that I was at the thirteen minute mark already. Where had the time gone?
Back to the mental drifting until I saw that I had gone nineteen minutes, almost in the blink of the eye.
I wasn’t tiring, counting down the minutes to the end point at 25 minutes. I wasn’t willing my legs to get to the end of the exercise. I was motoring, my body working like clockwork, allowing my mind to drift away.
At 25 minutes, all was well so I carried on.
30 minutes and it was only common sense that made me stop. I could easily have carried on for I don’t know how long.
Ten years ago, I used to run most days for about 4 miles through a heavily wooded and very hilly army training area. I was very fit and almost invariably I’d get to the end of the run and suddenly almost wake up. I was at the end of the run already - where had I been, mentally, for the past forty five minutes?
Its a fantastic experience to have your body working in a well honed way, all systems working together, creating an effortless physical harmony that allows you to almost seperate your mind from your body.
I’m not sure what causes this state, but I think it only happens when you achieve a level of fitness that optimises the cardiovascular system to the physical exertion so that your muscles are therefore working optimally under those conditions too.
You are not forcing anything so your mind is free to wander at will rather than be required to keep things together.
I used to be able to tell if I was starting to go down ill, or I was tired, as my mind wouldn’t “fly away” whilst running. It seemed to be continually engaged in managing the physical systems - step by step, minute by minute.
So today was pleasing - maybe I’m getting pretty fit again!
June 14th, 2006
Written By: chris
With my interest and experience in some specialised areas of medicine, and my degree in Physiology, I was at a bit of a loose end a few years ago so I decided to “put something back into society” by working at our local general hospital.
I was accepted as a student Cardiology Clinical Scientific Officer (CCSO) and joined the Cardiology department to learn everything about the heart from a clinical point of view.
I thought I knew a lot about heart physiology and anatomy before joining the department, however my degree was 20 years old and there had been an amazing development in diagnostic techniques and technology during those intervening years.
For example when I was at University I remember being shown cardiac catheterisation in the top hospital in the region. It was a new technique then and very few hospitals in the UK had the technology and knowledge to perform such studies. Now, of course, “cath” studies are common place and as a fledgling CCSO, I was assigned this area of diagnosis as my specialist area, given my background in technology.
I actually ended up working at the hospital for seven months. For a variety of reasons, I realised that it wasn’t for me and that I should “put something back into my business” again, however I learnt a huge amount about clinical cardiology and saw many patients with heart problems and many who thought they had heart problems.
Given the nature of FurtherHealth.com and the importance we all place on the health of our hearts - though the abuse we subject that vital organ to is staggering - I intend to blog about some of my experiences and knowledge that I gained during those topsy turvy months at the hospital.
I hope you find them interesting!
June 13th, 2006
Written By: chris
Among a majority of regular practitioners of yoga who have been diagnosed as diabetic, their blood sugar levels have dropped from as much as over 400 to less than 160 over a fortnight. Even in case of less committed diabetic yoga practitioners significant improvement has been noticed.
This does not come to me as a surprise as the diabetics who have responded to yoga perhaps make for the largest category of chronic patients.
It is established beyond doubt that this system of breathing and mental exercises (pranayama) and simple diet have returned even the worst cases of diabetes back to normal life.
Pankaj Mehrotra was on dialysis when he joined a yoga camp two years back. He was a diabetic for more than 25 years. And he was just 45 when he took to pranayama and other exercises. He was unable to pay up the high cost of dialysis when a friend of his introduced him to the camp.
I remember him breaking down with grief often, as he expected to die at any time.
There was one positive thing about his condition though. LIke many people undergoing dialysis, he was on too frugal a diet to avoid build up of creatinine in his body. Yoga turned his condition around in less than two months. The creatinine levels came down significantly and he stopped attending dialysis.
He achieved a new lease of life without incurring high expense through th epower of yoga.
Suman Aggarwal was an overweight diabetic with heart disease and asthma. Arthritis had also started to affect her knees. She was put on a strict yoga regime which she could not take for too long. “I could not have given up on Chinese fast food and lot of sweets every day, so I gave up yoga. Before long, I was admitted to a hospital with a heart attack,” she recalls.
Suman survived but she lay on the bed for five months before she resumed pranayama just lying on the bed. After six months of yoga, Suman suddenly realized that she was healthy and spirited enough to pursue her childhood hobby – pottery.
June 12th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
The world has changed drastically over the last few decades. The pace of life has picked up, to an extent that it is not merely fast now, but frantic. Social empowerment and upliftment has translated into more and more people taking the plunge into career building and moving towards the high life. The human mind has evolved, and evolved drastically. From inventing the wheel to nanotechnology, we have come a long way. And while this has increased the comforts of life, it has also brought about tremendous changes in lifestyles. The changes occur at many levels - the individual level, the family level, the social level.
The high life is good, no doubt. Having money helps, obviously. However, while career-builiding as a passion may be good, it definitely is not good news when in turns into obsession. We are a need-based society. We need, so we do. However, over time, there has emerged a serious dichtomy between need and requirement. Need is no longer the central theme. Need has become secondary. Earlier, a roof over our heads was a need. Not so any more. Today, a roof over our heads is a requirement. A 5-digit salary is a need.
This in turn has led to people sacrificing smaller things in life. While these seem like small things, the impact they have is often huge. Two such things are food and sleep. These are basic requirements for the body. The body cannot function normally if it is deprived of either of these. Today’s employee sacrifices both in large amounts. To be able to pack in our hectic schedules, we wake early and work late. We sacrifice a good meal for snacks. It has become all about maximum benefit with minimum input and the shortest time fame. While this may be a good business concept, it doesn’t work as far as the body is concerned.
The result? Stress, hypertension, sleep deprivation, and other assorted problems such as sleep apnea. The need of the hour is to strike a healthy balance between ‘work’ and ‘life’. If this doesn’t happen, the results can be ominous. Burnout, failing health, and fatigue are just the beginning.
All this is at an individual level. At a social level, the results are there for all to see. Failed marriages, divorces, separations have become the norm today. People are awe-struck today when they hear that someone has been happily married, to one person, for the past decade. These incidents affect not just the individual, but also the partner in the relationship, the children they have.
Having a high paying job at the expense of family - it is for the individual to decide whether it is worth it.
June 11th, 2006
Written By: daisy
I saw an article on the BBC news a few days ago about a huge warehouse full of Carlsberg beer that is waiting to be delivered to the millions of thirsty football fans watching the World Cup in the UK.
It was staggering to see how much beer will be drunk in the next few weeks - and that was just one warehouse for one brewer.
In the supermarkets you can see who is buying this beer - and mostly they are not the fit, slim healthy looking types. It’s a shame to see that many of the football fans are carrying a beer belly along with their beer purchases, and many are not that old - mid twenties, I would guess.
I can feel slightly virtuous at this point as a few weeks ago I decided to stop drinking any alcohol on weekdays. I had previously had a small bottle of beer on occasional weekday evenings - maybe three small bottles a week in total - so I can hardly be classed as a heavy drinker.
You know what? I suddenly realised that I was feeling more alert and energetic than usual. It might be the good weather we’re having at the moment, or a whole host of other reasons, but if reducing my alcohol intake is part of it, its working wonders.
I don’t want to stop drinking altogether as I like wine and I also like beer occasionally, but if my experience is anything to go by, all those football fans would feel even better when England wins the World Cup!
June 9th, 2006
Written By: chris
Ramji Bhai used to eat large quantities of meat every day, drink at least two bottles of alcohol every day and can’t remember how many packs of cigarettes he would smoke. Weighing 122 kilograms, he had many disorders ranging from hypertension to arthritis.
He lost nine kgs in seven days, after attending a strict yoga camp. Several months later, he looks taller at 82 kg having lost his girth and becoming a complete vegetarian and a teetotaler. His arthritis is almost over and hypertension, too, is in the past.
Quite a few friends of Ramji have taken to yoga too while others having found them boring have left their company. “Now I get back home from work early in the evening…no more socializing and boozing with friends….I have become a family man”, he says with a winning smile on his face.
Other students of the yoga camp have similar success stories too.
For Yoga enables our body to consume as little food as it needs.
Dependence on smoking and alcohol, according to the tenets of yoga, is the recipe to physical and spiritual downfall.
Yoga enables its practitioner to stop smoking and drinking alcohol over a period of time, though it takes an effort of willpower to move towards this abstinence.
Consumption of meats also follows suit – the intake of meat will reduce and become eliminated from one’s diet as one progresses with the yoga regime. Meat, as per yoga, is an unnatural food. It brings to its consumer the stock of all the stress hormones the animal has at the time of butchering apart from the excessive fat and the protein that again will convert into fat when it is assimilated into our body.
Vegetarianism, according to yoga is not a choice but the only way of life.
Cigarettes have no place in the life of a yogi, the yoga practitioner. Smoking must be avoided to get better results in a weight management program under yoga. Smoking stimulates artificial hunger through increase in digestion and the other metabolic activities, thus forcing overeating.
As one progresses through a yoga regime eating itself gets curtailed as less food suffices. One tends to sleep less too and the energy level maintains all day long. This happens over a few days of yoga practice
One is advised to take his weight before one starts with yoga and check it every few days - the gradual reduction in weight will be very pleasing.
June 8th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
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