Catch 22, of being overweight..

Overweight people may have a lot of vitamin D, locked with the fat tissue. Lack of free vitamin D, prevents the release of Leptin a hormone which signals to the brain that you have eaten enough. So…

a) Overweight people have an inbuilt system that can make them eat even more.
b) When there is less of vitamin D, calcium absorption will surely be hampered, which increases their risk of osteoporosis.
c) These people often take sugarless sweeteners which have fewer calories than sugar.
These products are also known to suppress Leptin, which again makes them eat more.
d) Overweight people are likely to have sedentary habits, which again makes them more prone to osteoporosis.
It is important that you don’t get in to this trap.

Will getting more Vit D, help?

Ask an expert.

The Spirit of Spiritualism.

“From one viewpoint, religion can be seen as sort of a luxury. If you have religion, that’s good, but even without it you can manage and survive - but we can't survive without human affection. While anger and hatred, like compassion and love, are part of our mind, I still believe the dominant forces are compassion and affection. Therefore, usually I refer to these human qualities as spirituality.”….His holiness Dalai Lama on facebook (Sunday July 18^th 2010.)

I think I understand faith, why does a string tied on your wrist protect you against all evils? It does because you think so. No that is an understatement “you firmly believe so”. The effectiveness of the string is proportional to the faith. I have a string tied to my car steering too, and believe that my car is protected. I was told this faith story by Mr. Ramni, a long time back, it goes like this:

After two years of drought, the villagers (in a village) decided to have the great rain god, ritual - worship. It was said that just as the rites of the worship ends it shall rain heavily. A huge crowd had gathered as it always happens on important occasions. However on this particular day it did not rain after the rites were over. Why?

The wise man said “It did not rain because none of the villagers in the crowd save a little child carried any umbrella.” Only a child’s faith isn’t good enough to end this drought he added..

A long time back, when I was a medical representative (yea that I was) my job was to discuss “common products” as innovative products to doctors. I often showed doctors results of double blind clinical trials (none done in India though) where the composition was found to be more effective than other drugs and placebo. In most of these trials Placebo had an efficacy of 30% some times 40%. I found this amazing. How do sugar pills or other such material used as placebo work. I am sure if you took sugar pills to cure your headache it will not be cured 40% of the time or even 40 %.

A word about double blind trials: These are conducted on volunteer patients in very well equipped hospitals. The drugs are coded and kept a secret till the end or revealed only in case condition of a patient deteriorates. The key is that patents have faith that they are in good hands and all shall become well. So if faith can make a non-drug, give drug-like result, isn’t faith the all important thought process for mankind.

How does one have faith? By falling in love of course, with god, with a person, a craft just about anything.. Meerabai thought the poison was prasadam from Lord Krishna and so it became. To me faith is the most important step towards spiritualism. The spirit of spiritualism is faith.

Devotion is a relationship of faith and love to a very personal god. Is faith a sort of hypnotic state? It sure is. When Dronacharya asked Arjun what he saw of the bird (that was kept for arrow shooting practice) Arjun had to be hypnotized to be able to see “just the black of the eye” .and in the process miss the smell of sweets being cooked nearby. Bhim did not miss the whiff of sweets; he missed the bird’s eye though.

All of us, (I certainly do), have a problem of integration to belong to a purpose. Our life is what our soul decides. The soul is huge because it can think while the body is only so much. The computer could be a great analogy the soft ware being its soul. The soul can make or unmake a person, it give us wisdom to decide the means to the ends of this life. We humans need regular reminders that we are essentially a creation of god a hence a part of the concept of god.

It is said that when wisdom comes ignorance goes. When ignorance goes faith dawns…. and what of Science? Is science wisdom or just knowledge? Where does faith fit in it?

Science and the arts, (humanities is a better expression as it already tells you that it’s humanly) are the means and the ends. Humanities being the end. The means are often exciting, attractive and make us overlook the ends of life. The ideas of Right and Wrong do not belong to Science or the means of life – it must belong to Humanities around which our happiness ultimately depends.

The odd thing about faith is One cannot “not have faith” just like one cannot have vacuum in the open. Something goes and occupies that space. So if you must have faith in something good and substantial. Otherwise your faith would be in things that could be detrimental to you and the society. Here in comes the role of Parenting.

Ho Ho Brand Dad.

To me even today Dad’s shirt is a prized possession, the greatest brand in life.

I remember in class X, I wore my dad’s white shirt, little collars and baggy at the belt.. it was a style statement. I’d told the guys it was my dad’s shirt.

Hey my son doesn’t see me as a brand. Is that because:

1) I am a no good for nothing dad.

2) The brands have become darn big.

3) My shirts are lousy.

4) The kid has far too many shirts.

5) It is a conspiracy against family values.

6) Any other reason. Tell me.

Independence Day.

I think it was in standard 4, that I first wrote an essay on Independence Day. My essay was rubbished by the teacher, then he gave me ideas “write that Independence Day was celebrated in our school, a minister had come to hoist the flag, we ate lots of sweets, then we had sports and I won two prizes “and more such humbug.

Now you know what kind of education has nourished my personality. Now I celebrate Independence Day by shopping. Bazaars big and little are great help and those where reliance is the key are in it too.

…and what of the Chickens, god dammed chickens they get fried if it is Independence Day of India or of the US …. How many countries are there? Or if it is Sunday. Even a Monday, just a day and it is good for the chick to get fried and what.. You think we eat only cucumbers at night. Ha ha.

A friend has a soft corner for the Chickens; he likes to eat them 24x7.

In God I trust rest absolutely Bunkum.

Those were the days when a child had to take small pox shots and invariably one would fall sick with high fever. The poke would create deep wound. Many old timers would show you small pox scars with relevant pride of having survived.

I have three on my left arm and my mother tells me that it was an unusually hot August and my wound had flared up. The Humerus bone was exposed. Lesser gods had given me up. There was a Dr Mehta in my Nana’s village my savior. Ma has a different take though; of course there was this doctor and some sweet homeopathy pills but I was saved by goddess Kali the supreme local deity.

Recently I e-mailed a paragraph on faith to a friend I should have added about Ma‘s faith in the goddess in saving her first born.

There is Science and Humanities in life. I reckon science is only the means while the arts make the “ends”. The ends make the rights &wrongs - good and evil. The means have changed in the last few decades the ends haven’t that is happiness.

The trust, the faith of Ma in the goddess remains.

While I gloat in the sea of science with little humanities.