When you hear stories of 80 year old man participating in cycling and Marathon you say "Wow , Inspiring ". But what actually we think is "I don't even know whether I will be able to stand without support at that age". Forget 80 how many people are having discomfort and pains in joints and bones at 40's?
So what happens once you get these discomforts at 40's ? Most of us don't take care until it starts restricting their movements or pain becomes unbearable. Then you seek solutions which are temporary. Then finally you start accepting and live with it. Women are considered as the back bone of a family but unfortunately most of the Indian women have low bone density and are more prone to osteoarthritis.
Do you know these sufferings can be prevented or eliminated if you are willing to change?
There is constant wear and tear happening at all the joints in our body. But the good news is our body has the ability to repair itself provided it is supplied with the right nutrition. This body's ability to repair itself is a true blessing. So all we need to take care is what we feed our body .
Simple dietary changes with focus on right nutrition and exercise can help you get out of it. All you need is an expert to guide you.
Live life without restrictions.
In the era of 80’s or 90’s, High Blood Pressure or Hypertension (HT) used to be the disease prevalent among old-age folks. But it is not so anymore. In our generation, having HT condition has become very commonplace - One of my Degree College classmate collapsed on the spot on a railway platform about to catch a train for office after suffering a massive cardiac arrest. He was just 26 years of age.
It was extremely shocking for all of us. It was a short few years ago.
But if you see around today, slowly but steadily, these lifestyle diseases have become a common phenomenon such that 1 in 3 Indian Adults actually suffers from high blood pressure condition. As they visit clinics, physicians make them “lifelong patients” for medication. Allopathic Medicine comes with side-effects, most of them treat symptoms but can't cure the underlying illness. Even worse, if these health conditions do not get detected or addressed on time, people become vulnerable to a heart attack or stroke. Now we all know about general health guidelines to follow to control HT along with medicines
But Why Do Generic Guidelines Fail? Because We Lack Personalized Information That Will Work For ‘ME’…
A healthy human body gets ill because of various lifestyle disorders. To heal our body we need a customized combination of remedies because “Freedom from Hypertension” can be achieved through lifestyle changes only.
- TAMALIKA PAUL
Diabetes…. a very well-known health situation among people worldwide, our country INDIA is leading in this…but have we ever thought why that is happening & what has changed since last 30+ years or so. I am sure we all have some idea what has changed & caused Diabetes to become leading health situation in India. I am penning top #3 most important factors, which are causing this.
No Movement (Sedentary life style): We are not moving at all, even not a simple walk. I remember my grandfather used to ride cycle every day, and we used to walk a lot for - to visit our relatives house, to visit temple, to buy groceries, to buy vegetables...etc. But that had started changing slowly, from Walk to Bicycle to Scooter to …. now Car. Today most of the Tier1/Tier2 cities in India, people stopped commuting by walk, which is good from prosperity perspective, but we are losing underlying benefits of walking. Though today people pay money to go to Gym, etc, but then this requires a discipline, and commitment, & in which most of the people fail. When walking was part of life, then we did not require to be disciplined as there were no option anyways except walking 😊.
Our Food:
Eating too much: if you look today’s perspective, we are eating way beyond what we need to eat. Our body does not require that much amount of food, what we eat today. I am here talking about quantity and number of times we eat, I personally think #1 reason why we are eating as we have lot of things are available to eat. Few years back like in 70s/80s, Indians did not have that many things to eat, but today you know, just look at your kitchen.
Not Eating Right: In continuation to above point, we have too many things to eat, and 90% are of that not right things to eat. Most of the people in today’s scenarios what do they eat – Chips, Pizza, Burger, Pasta, Noodles, Cakes, White Bread etc., these are just extra calories [bad carbs] which is getting converted into FAT. Even snacks like Biscuits, Namkeens, Samosas, Bhajji, Pakaudi etc. do fall in the same category. If you see people’s eating habit, they are eating at-least one of these things on daily basis.
Food Quality: in last 20s/30s years, quality of vegetables, fruits, grains have gone done tremendously. Our soil is now much more contaminated then any time before due to multiple reasons like pollution, use of pesticides etc. when inputs are not strong enough, how can we expect output to be good, and that’s reason we don’t see vegetables/fruits keeping the same goodness as these were 20 yrs before. Another imp reason is – keeping the vegetables/fruits in cold storage so that this can be supplied for longer duration – is causing nutrient in vegetables / fruits to go down to almost ZERO. We don’t get what we are thinking that we are getting from vegetables/fruits.
Stress: In today’s fast life, our life has become much more stressful than ever before. We are always in stress thinking about traffic, work pressure in office, handling office colleagues /our boss, /challenges in businesses, meeting targets. etc. Also, over period of time, we have seen that work hours have increased from 8 hrs to 10-12 hrs in day, woman has started working, that means in a family, there is no time, where people can sit, relax & have fun. Even having fun, enjoyment is also wrapped with Junk in today’s life.
If we understood above 3 points, we might think that we know what we need to do, but not really (in terms of food it becomes real challenge), as we don’t know what we don’t know, so we need someone who knows what we need to have, that’s where we required professionals who knows what to eat ( right nutrition) , exercises what we need to do, how to handle stress, etc.
- Shankar Shrivastava
It was different this time!!
'Miss photogenic' as we call Reena, was looking little different in her holiday pics. Her clothes looked one size bigger for her and also her smile looked as if she has stopped at 'breathe in' position.
Mahesh came upset to me for his consultation. I was surprised because his sugar levels were absolutely fine this time. I asked him reason for his despair. To which he responded, a lady colleague teased her today saying her Ganesh instead of Mahesh. I controlled my laughter but understood what he was going through.
This is not only the story of Reena or Mahesh, we have all gone through or going through this; struggling with that ugly looking and stubborn Belly Fat.
Why does a big belly happens?
Medical science gives us 5 reasons of a big abdomen-
Foetus, foecal, flatulence, fluid and fat.
All others are mostly taken care by nature but the belly fat has to be worked on. Since we created it, we are responsible to get rid of it.
Is it something to be worried about?
Mother in laws are really happy to see their sons with big bellies. "The bahurani is feeding my son well". Some call it the sign of prosperity.
But the fact is- the bigger your tummy is, the higher your hospitals bills would be in the near future, especially if you have reached 40+ age, and all that prosperity will shift to the doctors.
High belly fats can lead to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, hepatic disorders, hormonal imbalances and infertility (in women), just to name a few.
Now time for some good news.
It can be reduced and you can still get back to your flat tummy, sexy curves, and a fit body. What is required is a professional help with regards to right diet, proper nutrition, personalised exercise regime and stress management. Yes, it's possible!!
A fit body is always a work in progress. Let's start today!!
- DR. UJAWALA
You offered sweets to an elderly person and they said, "No thanks, I have blood sugar".
How many of us have encountered this?
We all have blood sugar!!! Luckily for some of us the blood sugar is controlled by efficient insulin secretion by a healthy pancreas. But for some people the pancreas gets lazy. It does not produce sufficient insulin or effective insulin. So a lot of sugar floats in the blood causing high blood sugar (a.k.a diabetes).
This starts a chicken and egg game.
The cells in the body needs glucose (sugar) for creating energy but the glucose is not able to enter the cell in the body due to defective insulin. So we end up feeling tired, experience weight loss/weight gain, experience extreme thirst, frequent urination and so on. We think, "I can solve this with diet changes". In a few months we rush to a doctor since we are unable to solve the mystery ourselves.
The doctor confirms what you already know and puts us on a medication and ask to do a lifestyle change. But what lifestyle changes is the doctor talking about? Has he also talked to you about damages that diabetes eventually causes to our body? Damages to organs like the eyes (retinopathy), kidney, nerves, blood pressure, heart (cardiomyopathy) and so on. How do you think most diabetics fare in not just controlling blood their sugar levels but in managing all this organ damage? They don't fare very well.
But there is a way out. With the right guidance, we can make the lifestyle changes that will make us feel energetic first and will also take care of all the organs in healthy way.
How can we do it?
It is simple. We need to understand our diet and make slight modifications. We have to identify the right workout for our body type. We work on our sleep routine and stress levels. And we give ourselves the right nutrition that works wonders for our body. And yes, we add a pinch of patience and not give up until we reach our health goals! Thankfully, a community based involvement (like WQ) can not only give us this information but also give a few wingmates to run the race with…
So we can all say, "ONCE UPON A TIME I USED TO HAVE DIABETES".
Oh, those are sweet words!
- Ramya K L
Motherhood is Bliss, Starting from the day of conceiving till holding my little one in my arms has been a beautiful journey. Pregnancy is the best phase where we get all the attention and not only that we also eat guilt free, yes!! that extra dollop of ghee ,extra ladoo I mean any food (with cravings ,without cravings) who cares :) and along with all this extra love and care comes those extra kilos.To be very honest, initially I felt all those extra kilos gain were fair enough for that “ cute little” gain.
I was content and accepted happily all the physical changes post pregnancy (especially weight gain) as marks of pregnancy till the time when I went for shopping one fine day when my son was 6 months old and realized that I have promoted to size XL from L. It was definitely not a happy feeling because it was not only the appearance ,it was my stamina,my energy level which went down,and the thought of resuming back my career with this state was something my brain could not register and my heart denied to accept. First time ever I disliked any promotion.
From that time my fitness journey started as my neurons got activated with respect to getting my size back to L, that was the only motivation as I did not wanted to throw away all my old good clothes.
I started with baby steps ,yes I mean it .It was only 15 minutes of walk in the morning and I want to thank myself here as I have started with this, because after that day I never looked back on physical activity, that 15 minutes walk turned into 45 minutes to 1 hour of brisk walk in 45 days and now it has moved upto 1 hour of HIIT,was it easy? Absolutely not, but the desire of getting back into my original weight was certainly very high. But the changes which I have observed in myself was not only weight loss,I became very thoughtful about the food and its importance in our life, who said we need to starve or follow any fad diet to get fitter? How about eating clean and whole food and losing weight as well.
After 10 months ,now I don’t get fit into size L ,I fit into M :).Thank God along with my son's size ( who is 16 months old now) I didn't grow in size.Not only this ,the biggest joy is leading a healthy life and setting a right example in front of my son is something I can never put a price tag. Motherhood is indeed bliss, lets cherish it !!
- RIMI PAUL
The recommended dietary allowance for Vitamin C is 60mg per day, enough to prevent the deficiency disease scurvy. But wait, is it enough to ward off a common cold? Fortunately, we aren’t living in a severely malnourished region where we need to worry about diseases like Beriberi, Scurvy, Rickets and other such names we learnt in class 5! But we do need to worry about frequent coughs and unending and highly embarrassing bouts of cold; and worst of all, the onslaught of the virulent viral fever!
So is 60mg a day enough to wage war with a running nose? Is it enough fix the itch in the throat? Is it enough to ensure that your precious leave days in office don’t get wasted on getting better from fever but instead can be used for something fun and fulfilling?
Let’s assume that 60mg a day are indeed enough to be your own personal Batman for battling immunity issues. Then, these 60mg take on a whole new meaning to add to the quality of your daily life. So where can you get your own personal Batman...er...I mean 60mg of vitamin C? A tomato has less than 15mg of vitamin C. And I doubt any of us are chomping on 4-5 tomatoes every day. 2 oranges a day could give us the required daily allowance of vitamin C but most of us would admit that we don’t even eat 2 oranges in a week, let alone in a day! Hey, wait...what about lemons? One and half of those could definitely give you the desired amount of vitamin C. But alas, most lemon drinks have more sugar than lemon in them. And once someone has the onslaught of a sore throat, having lemons can be dreadfully painful.
It’s no wonder then that common cold is so common, and so many of us are plagued with a sore throat every other month. Making intelligent yet implementable dietary choices requires conscious effort and it’s not a bad idea to seek the advice of an expert in the field. After all, Batman couldn’t have been Batman without Robin! So go find your Robin...er...I mean Resource Person who can help you on your journey of healthy living.