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Identify Slow Poisons in your Life

 

chronicXdisease

According to the EURO Symposium, a chronic disease has been defined as “An impairment and/or function that necessitates a modification of patient’s normal life, and has persisted over an extended period of time”. According to a report by WHO, the total number of people dying from chronic diseases is double that of all infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria), maternal and perinatal conditions, and nutritional deficiencies combined. The exact cause of any chronic disorder is not yet known, though it is concluded that it is multifactorial and many theories have proved there are associated risk factors.

slow poison-1

Prominent of chronic diseases are

  • Coronary artery disease including blood pressure
  • Ischemic stroke
  • Mental disease
  • Diabetes
  • Thyroid
  • Some Cancers

Main causes for these are

  • Over-nutrition
  • Lack of physical activity
  • Addictions like smoking, alcohol, tobacco etc.
  • Poor sleeping habits
  • Stressful lives

These lead to raised blood pressure, glucose levels, abnormal blood lipids, overweight and obesity. If you indulge in the above, you are at risk! There are numerous other factors which cause chronic disorders and are beyond your control, for instance:

Conditions before birth and in early childhood influence health later. E,g, low birth weight is known to be associated with high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

  1. The impact of risk factors increases with age.
  2. Social, economic and cultural change – globalization, urbanization, pollution, population ageing, and the general policy environment have impacted health.
  3. Psychosocial and genetic factors also play a role.

 

healt check up-diagnosis

Listen to your Body– Meet a medical practitioner if you have the below symptoms –

  • Unusual pain/ discomfort in your chest, neck, jaw or arms, pressure or tightness in the chest usually points towards a heart attack
  • Dizziness, lightheadedness, or fainting with exercise or exertion
  • Shortness of breath with mild exertion, at rest, or when lying down or going to bed
  • Ankle swelling, especially at night
  • A rapid or pronounced heartbeat
  • Lower leg pain when you walk, which goes away with rest
  • Frequent urination, excessive thirst, increased hunger, weight loss, tiredness, lack of interest and concentration, a tingling sensation or numbness in the hands or feet usually point towards diabetes.

What can be done?

You can’t blame the government for your health! You play a VERY IMPORTANT role in being healthy

  1. Eating healthy won’t kill you! Include fruits & green vegetables in your meals. Indulge, but complement it with exercising & prevent risk factors like cholesterol, diabetes and all metabolic syndromes
  2. Get Moving! People don’t swear by Yoga, gym workouts and walk for nothing! Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system to work efficiently.
  3. Tobacco, alcohol and drugs run havoc with your system. The nicotine makes your heart beat faster; the particulates will make it harder for your lungs to exchange gasses; the carbon monoxide will make it harder for your blood to carry oxygen efficiently, and the carcinogens make it harder for your body to keep itself cancer-free.  Illegal drugs can damage the brain, heart, and other important organs.
  4. It is a good practice to conduct basic medical tests. The symptoms discussed are just a tip of the iceberg. Many times when symptoms set in, all the physiological compensatory mechanisms also set in, so to pick up a disease early in an annual checkup plays a major role. To know more, read the blog “A stitch in time saves nine”.

A detailed account of all chronic disorders is difficult to mention in this blog, but be rest assured, you are shaping your health every moment. Your attitude, mental health, physical habits and way of living life at this moment decide your next. So you take a call whether you want to stay healthy and cherish this creation or be a victim of chronic disorder tsunami which is engulfing us today. CHOICE IS YOURS…….

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“I learnt to listen to myself and understand my own body. I do not force myself to do anything”

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He has never had any fitness regime. He says he has had more ailments and has been on medication for the last 3 years. As a result of the medications his body weakened and could not fight back. He has also been subject to constant back pains. Above all this he has a sedentary work life. All day long he sits at his desk and his weight had started going up. He never cultivated any good habits nor was he aware of any. There were zero activity levels. Bottom line- he had constant health issues. But, last 5 months there has been a drastic change within Anthony Soares who has started walking the path of fitness and is more positive about life. He has managed to get his health back on track—one step at a time. Let’s hear it from him what changed him.  

I will soon turn 40 and I realised that I needed to get over a lot of issues. I need to physically be able to lead a better and healthy life in the future.

I have constantly been subject to some medical issues and been on regular medication. I was also on the heavier side and was unhappy about myself overall. I was looking for something that could help me get my basic health in place. I knew of fitness bands that help measure everything and lets you adjust your habits to get the results you want.

I started researching for the same and I was convinced to go for the MI band but unfortunately, it was out of stock. And then I stumbled upon GOQii which was slightly higher in price. I remembered a friend wearing GOQii band and I asked her for more information it. Once I understood how it works and that it came with a coach who can help you make the changes, I was convinced to go for it.  At the point when I took the band, I realised it is a good replacement for my watch.

I started with a 3 months plan. I had no goals clear in my head to achieve. I was expecting some miracle to happen with GOQii. My coach Tarun Arora then explained how I will need to change my habits and work hard to achieve my goals. She explained everything in detail to me and what I needed to do.

I started with running and interval training. Within a month of starting to run I participated in the 5 km ILFS run and hurt my knee badly.The moment I hurt myself, my coach and the doctor advised me not to run for at least a month until the pain completely vanishes. I was not very happy initially but, I realised if I followed their advice I would only get better.

Initially, when I got the band I was clueless about having any goals then I realised it was important to have a goal. My goal was to lose weight. Initially, I thought I should lose about 3-4 kilos. I have always been above 90 roughly plateauing around 94 kilos. In the last two decades, I have been maintaining my weight between 90-94.

After I came on GOQii, I have lost weight purely through right nutrition and exercise. I now weigh 87 kilos within a span of 4 months. I was last at 87 kilos when I got married 9 and a half years ago. So, I can now proudly say that I am back to my old self- looking good. I can tell the difference in myself the moment I started doing more activities. I feel so much more energetic in the morning and I am also mentally more focussed and strong all day long.

The other habit changes that I brought about within me is to drink 2 litres of water daily and do some interval training. This was then improvised by adding proteins to my breakfast and fruits as an evening snack. Then I was introduced to having dates before my run. When I was away from running for a while due to the knee injury, my coach gave me other exercises to do. I also started on having 1 teaspoon apple cider every day.

I am a foodie and it is really difficult to break old habits. But, a lot of what I do now I am aware of it. I have also realised that anything in excess is very bad. Moderation is key I was told by my coach. I have reduced my intake on butter and cheese. At one point I used to have these so often but, now I have it occasionally. I eat mindfully when I got to a restaurant.

From doing nothing at all, I now try to work out all 7 days of the week. If that is not possible then 5 days a week is for sure. My workout includes 3 times cardio and twice a week yoga. I also give my body enough rest. You cannot play around with your body. You have to give it 7 hours sleep daily and have to give it enough nutrition and water.

Being on the GOQii platform I have learnt to train myself to do various things. There is no magic pill that is being given to you. You have to work hard. The first thing I learnt to do is listen to myself and understand my own body. I do not force myself to do anything. If I cannot run one day that day I try and do Yoga instead. I am learning.

People around me especially my family was very surprised at the change I took to. Initially, my family was not very comfortable. They wondered was is this GOQii?  They were not very positive about what I was doing and the changes I was making or had made.

They were surprised that I had started eating fruits because prior to GOQii we never had fruits regularly. But, now over a period they have gotten used to my habits and do not say anything now. They have noticed that I have reduced considerably but, they do not ask how why etc etc…However, they are not too convinced with the changes I have made.

What matters to me is how I feel? Honestly, over the last 5 months, I feel much healthier and positive. I look better, my shoulders are not drooping. The best part now is I have the strength to lift my 4-year-old son when we go to the market and I do not stress about it like I did earlier. I am glad that things that I was not able to do or were not doing earlier I am doing them now.

Thanks to GOQii, I have become very active in life. Apart from running, I have now joined for a Salsa class. I am also planning to start playing a sport. Close to 20 years of my life all I did was just study and then work. Now, at 40 I want to live my life. We live it once, whatever time has gone is gone. But, not anymore. I am glad that I have started on a couple of activities. 

What does coachTarun Arora have to say about Anthony?

Anthony is sincere, disciplined and a hardworking person who understands the importance of health. He is always ready to make healthy changes in life once he is convinced of it and then gives his 100% to achieve them. There were few visible things which needed to be changed in his routine like a correct combination of meals, an increase in protein intake which was lacking in every meal and water intake.We started with one habit at a time. The first habit was to increase water intake to 2 litres because his water intake was quite less, we have developed a habit of having 2 litres everyday. This has made a huge difference in his hunger pangs.We then moved to make sure his protein intake is sufficient enough to help him reach his goal of getting a toned body and along with this proper intake of fiber.

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Diabetes – (Die-in-bits OR NOT)

So I started writing this blog almost a year back and could not complete it in this one year because I felt everybody knows everything about diabetes and what was the point of repeating the same things over and over again. Then, I realized, that this World Diabetes Day instead of the same diabetes facts, what we really need is a real patient case and scenarios to make everybody understand how intense and life-threatening, diabetes as a disease can be.

I remember long back we had a worried parent of a 6year old come into our clinic saying that his son’s urine had ants in it. After taking a proper history we realized that it was not ants in his urine but sugar in the kid’s urine left on the commode which was attracting the ants. Few blood tests later the child was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. That’s Type 1 diabetes, the type which is most commonly seen in the younger kids. Basically, the pancreas barely produces any insulin in these kids which leads to sugar flowing through the blood and causing diabetes.

Diabetes is a group of metabolic disorders in which the person has high blood glucose (blood sugar), either because insulin production is inadequate, or because the body’s cells do not respond properly to insulin or both.

Causes can range from autoimmune destruction, heredity or positive family history, insulin resistance to various infections like pancreatitis. But, the main cause or the root cause of Diabetes especially type 2 which affects mostly the adult population has to be a poor lifestyle.

Diabetes-like we all know can easily go unnoticed, even when a patient has already been diagnosed. Because of this, unfortunately, many don’t pay attention to the possible terrible problems that can happen if your diabetes is not under control.

I remember a case at the beginning of my career, a 40year old man having diabetes for more than 10 years came to our clinic with a complain that he had wound on his foot which was not healing. He knew his sugars were high but still wasn’t taking care. We started him off on the required medicines and within 10 days of better sugars, the wound had healed. He had no memory of how he had hurt himself. After 4months the same patient came back with an even bigger wound but unfortunately this time it had spread so much that his foot could not be saved and had to be amputated.

Does it make sense being so careless with your health and losing your foot just because your sugars are not controlled?

diabetes 1

Let’s discuss the complications of uncontrolled diabetes which can affect almost every organ of your body. Most commonly Diabetes affects your heart, kidneys, eyes, feet and your nerves (neuropathy) at varying degrees. Apart from these, diabetics have a higher risk of infections and dental problems. It is difficult to say what gets affected first but easier to remember that if your blood sugars are not under control, you have set yourself on the path to trouble.

diabetes image 3

During my internship, I got a call from a friend that his dad had a heart attack and they were shifting him to the same hospital where I was working. Fortunately, that month I was posted in the ICU itself so I was happy that I was going to be able to monitor his dad. Just on the opposite bed, there was another man of the same age who had suffered a heart attack the morning before. Almost two weeks later, my friend’s dad was still in the ICU whereas the other man was on his way to get discharged. Another 2 weeks went by but unfortunately, we didn’t see much signs of improvement and eventually we lost him in the next few days. The only big difference between the two patients was that my friend’s dad had uncontrolled diabetes!!

Diabetes dramatically increases the risk of various cardiovascular problems, including coronary artery disease with chest pain (angina), heart attack, stroke and narrowing of arteries (atherosclerosis). If you have diabetes, you are more likely to have heart disease or stroke.

Your body and your health need a lot of care, attention and need to be your first priority not only at the time when you are sick but more when you are well. The point of this blog is not to scare you but to make you aware, and part of that awareness is knowing how to be able to help yourself. Follow the below tips and start your healthy journey today!

diabetes image 4

Tips to prevent or live well with diabetes

  • Maintain a healthy weight and look out for belly fat
  • Make healthy food choices
  • Be physically active (gradually increase everyday steps and try and reach the 10,000 target)
  • Monitor your sugar levels regularly and keep a check on your blood pressure
  • Get your full body tests done once a year
  • Sleep well and work to manage daily stress
  • Quit smoking
  • If on medications, make sure you take them regularly

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Save Your Lungs!!!

effects of smog

Recently, a sporty 6-year-old girl in Delhi complaint to her mother saying, “Mom, I feel no breath”. Now, this is alarming and also sad for the people in the capital city who are confined inside the four walls of their home. People are being warned from stepping out for workouts, cycling and runs.

A new study by the most reputed medical journal-‘Lancet’ in 2015 indicated that India topped the list of countries with pollution-related deaths, with 2.51 million people dying prematurely in the country that year due to diseases linked to air, water and other forms of pollution. India also topped the list of deaths linked to polluted air (1.81 million) and water (0.64 million). One-quarter of the world’s population now breathes unsafe air, according to the 2014 Environmental Performance Index (EPI).

Is this a new phenomenon for the Delhi-ites? No, the situation hasn’t changed in the last two years. It has only gotten worse from what it was, people claim. Delhi is indeed declared the most pollutant city in the world by the World Health Organisation and the people of Delhi are facing a public health crisis. The relationship between filthy air and poor health is frightening. Delhi’s bad air is already causing a spike in the people with asthma and reduced lung function. There is evidence of a spectrum of health problems, ranging from allergies and respiratory conditions, malformations, growth restrictions, all of which is a result of pollution.

Given this scenario, how do you save your lungs?

Lung Detox is something that Luke Coutinho, M.D., and master coach at GOQii recommend.

Particulates. Over time small particulate matter might damage your lungs permanently, making breathing difficult and forcing your heart to work harder.

Lung Detox Plan

-Previous night – soak 1 tbsp fenugreek (Methi) seeds in half cup water

-Wake up to 250ml warm water with lemon and a dash of cayenne pepper

-Drink the fenugreek water and chew on the seeds.
-10 mins later – 2 cloves of garlic crushed and consume with 1 tbsp raw honey or Manuka honey
Steam Time
-Boil some water, put into a large bowl, add 5-10 drops of pure eucalyptus oil or 1 drop peppermint oil, cover your head with a towel and do steam inhalation for 5 mins. Gentle deep inhalations and slow exhalations.
-Breakfast as normal, but add 300 ml fresh carrot juice with 1 tsp pure cold pressed coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil.
-Magic Lung breathing exercise (check method below)
-Post breathing exercise prepare a litre of the following concoction and have one cup warm.
Magic Tea –

  • 1 inch piece ginger /1 tsp dried ginger powder, cinnamon stick, ½ tsp basil/tulsi (fresh/dry), 1 tsp oregano dry (or fresh leaves), 3 peppercorns, 2 crushed elaichi, (optional , 1 -2 cloves crushed garlic), 1/4th tsp fennel seeds, pinch of ajwain, 1/4th tsp jeera (cumin)
  • Boil for 10 mins and simmer, strain and sip warm ( can add pure honey or jaggery to sweeten)

Lunch

-30 mins post lunch – 250 ml lemon water with a dash of cayenne pepper
-2 hours later – 300 ml fresh carrot juice with 1 tsp pure cold pressed coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil plus an evening snack
-30 mins later: Magic breathing exercise followed by a cup of lung tea concoction.
-Light walk or yoga
-30 mins before dinner: 250 ml lemon water with cayenne pepper
-Dinner plus 300 ml carrot juice as above

-Post dinner: 30 mins – one more cup of lung tea
-1 hour before bed – steam with 5-10 drops of eucalyptus oil for 5 mins
-Castor oil pack or rub (details below) for 30 mins

-Before bed – magic lung breathing exercise, meditate, sleep

 Magic lung breathing cleanse

Take a standing position. Keep your arms at your sides and your feet slightly apart. Relax.

  1. Take a few deep breaths and exhale through the nose.
    3. Now breathe in through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth until you cannot exhale any more. But do not stop here, because there is still air remaining in your lungs.
    Some of the air remains in the lungs and is not replaced as we breathe. Now, force your diaphragm to exhale all the air from your lungs with wheezing. Several times exhale through the mouth with a “ho, ho, ho ho, ”

Until you feel there is no more air in the lungs. At this point, you will feel you have pulled in your belly toward the spine.

Through the nose, slowly inhale fresh, clean air in your empty lungs. Fill your lungs with air completely, and then hold your breath for 6 seconds, counting them slowly.

At this point, the oxygen has filled your lungs.

Again exhale through your mouth until there is no air left in your lungs and repeat the “ha…ha…” to expel the stale air out of the lungs.

Repeat the whole procedure as many times as you like. Besides purifying the lungs, this exercise has another benefit: your stomach will eventually become strong and toned skin will look radiant with a glow as you have helped remove excess carbon dioxide.

Here is small video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTbbua0iOSU&t=) by Luke Coutinho M.D,  where he explains all about what lungs are and how they function and finally how can we detox our lungs and keep it clean.

A timely video, when people across the country are suffering from air pollution around them.

 

 

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