In one of my previous health posts I talked about continually focussing on new challenges in the journey of better health. After being driven by external indicators on our body (like dresses), then we are driven by indicators a layer below those (naked body), then we are driven by those a layer further below (organs like heart, kidneys, pancreas, brain etc.). Now it's time to dig deeper!
The whole point of seeking knowledge is trying to increase the odds of survival in odd times. The more variables we uncover the more we discover that we have lot more to uncover! But we can atleast try to make sure we can rationally handle the ones we uncover. Health science progressed a lot. The role of genes in health is quite an integral part of our intellectual heritage now. There's a lot to discovered about genes but one thing is sure about them: they are programmable, that is they are Turing tapes of a non-deterministic Turing machine. Their states can sometimes be non-deterministically changed (mutations) but they are pretty much "rule oriented". The rest of the body is like the console system (input/output device set) for the basic computations happening on those tapes. The important point is that we can write input onto those tapes. In fact without this ability the concept of evolution is infeasible! Let's try to see what we can do try to write good stuff (stuff that helps us survive) onto those.
First we should not write bad stuff! It is known that carcinogens can seriously screw up the tapes that screws up cell dynamics which can lead to cancer. So obviously don't smoke and in a bigger picture be friendly to the environment both in terms of recycling and using Nature friendly energy sources like hybrid cars, electric trains or in the worst case if you have to rely on gas use mass transportation or pool up. Don't stick to your cell phones all the time! Use them reasonably. Use hands-free devices and keep them a bit far when you work. Do not consume "diet stuff" in excess. It's good to take safe sides on such issues.
Now about writing good stuff. It is well known that writing bug free programs is very hard. So it's not a good idea drying to actually manipulate the genes using some kind of external agents (excluding the cases where it's treatmental for immediate survival). The best programmer of genes so far is Nature itself. What we can do is "ask" Nature to do the job for us. Let's say if we want to write a certain piece of code with which we can be naturally smart, we just constantly try to do smart things consciously and then it will be embedded into your genes by Nature over a period of time. If we want to be naturally peaceful practicing medidation would have the same effect. Beware that period of time might be a really long! But good thing is we at least don't make them worse in such a way. To see the effects of such really long-term plans we have to try to make sure humanity survives!
Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Friday, May 02, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Health: Portions
Almost as if I am compensating for having such a long gap in my health posts: here's a quick sequel to my last one.
Disproportionate amounts of food intake in terms of quality and quantity can be detected with the following litmus test. The ideal reaction from eating should be turning active not turning sleepy. Sleepiness is a sign of drop in metabolism. Eating ideally should increase metabolism not decrease. Both, over eating and under eating (like being anorexic) trigger this and such repeated training of drop in metabolism will have serious short term and long term consequences. In the short term ones productivity goes down because of various reasons like lacking attention span etc. Serious health issues can show up in the long run, like organs getting damaged because of constant "under performance".
Not giving into the "call for sleep" by consciously doing something active is not a solution as that will result in negative consequences again both in the short and long run. Fighting sleep is not encouraged. What needs to be consciously adjusted is the portions of intake: both in quality and quantity. Quantity is easier to control but what is important is taking care of the portions of quality nutrition intakes. Eating labeled food is a very good practice in this regard.
Disproportionate amounts of food intake in terms of quality and quantity can be detected with the following litmus test. The ideal reaction from eating should be turning active not turning sleepy. Sleepiness is a sign of drop in metabolism. Eating ideally should increase metabolism not decrease. Both, over eating and under eating (like being anorexic) trigger this and such repeated training of drop in metabolism will have serious short term and long term consequences. In the short term ones productivity goes down because of various reasons like lacking attention span etc. Serious health issues can show up in the long run, like organs getting damaged because of constant "under performance".
Not giving into the "call for sleep" by consciously doing something active is not a solution as that will result in negative consequences again both in the short and long run. Fighting sleep is not encouraged. What needs to be consciously adjusted is the portions of intake: both in quality and quantity. Quantity is easier to control but what is important is taking care of the portions of quality nutrition intakes. Eating labeled food is a very good practice in this regard.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Health: Food and feelings
After a real long gap in the series of my posts on health since my last one, I intend to discuss some connections I experienced between food and feelings.
The connections between eating patterns and emotional states are well studied in society. Usually the results that are most popularly known are the ones that say how having emotional instability instigates eating disorders. To mitigate eating disorders psychological advice is usually used to reduce the perception of insecurities and induce the perception of one's purpose. Leaving aside serious medical conditions the most common eating disorders are usually because of bad habits.
Alright now comes my main thesis on the connection between food and feelings. Actually this kind of correlation is preached by many spiritual communities, but I wanted to write this because I thought I experienced this especially because of long enough exposure to good American food after eating in India for 20 years. See, I see a chicken-egg relationship between the two. Feelings are produced because of various chemical reactions inside our bodies. Food is one of the biggest modes of injecting new chemicals and triggering chemical reactions inside our bodies. So if ones feelings are bad it might actually be because of the food intakes he is having. The short term effects are pretty clear, for e.g. taking sugar shots drives you a bit crazy, consuming alcohol makes you drowzy. What goes undercover are the long term effects (besides clogging your physical infrastructure like plumbing).
Food is supposed not just to provide nutrition but to provide it in an efficient way. The more efficient way the food fuels us the better our emotional and physical state will be. Signs of inefficient fueling is too much stubborness in adapting tastes to less spicier and "less tasty" foods. Taste is too abstract and subjective that it has to be controlled by us, not control us. So for better health, both physical and emotional, we need good and efficient food and of course with better health the good food habits get reinforced in turn.
A general note: Cultures that control abstract and subjective issues typically produce leaders. Cultures that are controlled by abstract and subjective issues typically end up as followers as they can be "controlled by leaders". Think about it, isn't it obvious from history and differences between western and eastern cultures.
The connections between eating patterns and emotional states are well studied in society. Usually the results that are most popularly known are the ones that say how having emotional instability instigates eating disorders. To mitigate eating disorders psychological advice is usually used to reduce the perception of insecurities and induce the perception of one's purpose. Leaving aside serious medical conditions the most common eating disorders are usually because of bad habits.
Alright now comes my main thesis on the connection between food and feelings. Actually this kind of correlation is preached by many spiritual communities, but I wanted to write this because I thought I experienced this especially because of long enough exposure to good American food after eating in India for 20 years. See, I see a chicken-egg relationship between the two. Feelings are produced because of various chemical reactions inside our bodies. Food is one of the biggest modes of injecting new chemicals and triggering chemical reactions inside our bodies. So if ones feelings are bad it might actually be because of the food intakes he is having. The short term effects are pretty clear, for e.g. taking sugar shots drives you a bit crazy, consuming alcohol makes you drowzy. What goes undercover are the long term effects (besides clogging your physical infrastructure like plumbing).
Food is supposed not just to provide nutrition but to provide it in an efficient way. The more efficient way the food fuels us the better our emotional and physical state will be. Signs of inefficient fueling is too much stubborness in adapting tastes to less spicier and "less tasty" foods. Taste is too abstract and subjective that it has to be controlled by us, not control us. So for better health, both physical and emotional, we need good and efficient food and of course with better health the good food habits get reinforced in turn.
A general note: Cultures that control abstract and subjective issues typically produce leaders. Cultures that are controlled by abstract and subjective issues typically end up as followers as they can be "controlled by leaders". Think about it, isn't it obvious from history and differences between western and eastern cultures.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Health: New challenges
After you push your health conscience to be at subsconscious level, what's next? You know we always need some thing in conscious mind to keep us busy. Infact the central assumption for the entire progress of mankind is that we consciously keep focusing on something new. Well let's stay focused on what's new to focus on, in the journey towards better health. Here are two reeaal challenging tasks you might want to focus on.
These two are new challenges that you have to focus on for progress in your journey.
Link to previous health post.
- Rock hard abs absolutely rock and are hard:
In my opinion both huge and tiny people are trying to do the same end thing (it's just their pathways are different). Both of them try to look proportional and look the best they can. Initially when they start working out the sizes of the dresses are good inidicators for their progress. But after they start looking fine in dresses some start being content. But the naked truth is that they should aim for looking good naked. What are the challenges you have to face? The main challenge is toning muscles and especially the hardest part is toning abdominal muscles and even harder is to handle the lower abs. The main thing ofcourse is to get rid of the fat and build core muscles so that the abs look firm and in shape. My point is not to give advice on how to get that done as you can find lot of information thanks to Google and those who put the information up (Sample link that my friend and health guru Reagan gave me). My main point is to wake up those who are content just because they think they look good enough now when dressed. - Look good underskin:
Now what about those who already look good naked. Here's a pill that will wake them up too:) If you have fabulous abs and defined chest, biceps etc. you might still not look your best if you have troubles inside. Make sure you look sharp by solving puzzles and keeping your brain warm. Take time to meditate so you can give a peaceful presence whereever you are. Do YOGA type exercises to keep your deep-internal glands work properly. What I mean for e.g. is, you can keep your heart pump blood well by cardio-workouts but what can you do for pancreas and thyroid glands work properly. YOGA has some workouts for such subtle benefits which are very notorious for not motivating people until they get hit.
These two are new challenges that you have to focus on for progress in your journey.
Link to previous health post.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Health: Working Whenever Wherever
After you reach your desired goal in terms of look, feel and numbers. It's time to keep the achievement tuned and take yourselves to even higher levels but not so consciously. By continuing working out regularly we definitely keep on training body but not just for change but to embed the changes to deeper levels of consciousness like may be subconscious level. For example when we workout for a while (about 2 years) and eat properly our body automatically signals us of any kind of atrophy or over indulgence. We need not push ourselves to go to gym. Think about it. Do you push yourself to brush your teeth, take shower etc? You might skip may be once in a while, but not to the extent that you start hurting your teeth or skin right.
The point is that the workout should slowly become part of your daily activities and then become part of your nature call system. The theory of evolution hints about hardwiring good traits in us to survive. It has been benefiting us: think about vision, while a baby can see right from the moment he is born, we don't have computer vision close to vision of even an ant. Today's state-of-the-art learning machines cannot even be compared to a human baby. It's hard to compete with evolution but if we work hard (and survive long) we can synergize with it and benefit from it.
Here's the conclusion of this health post. Workout so regularly that you imprint the mechanisms into your DNA and hence contribute towards better evolution of future generations in terms maintaining better health. You don't have to complain of not having facilities to workout. Workout with whatever you got, just a simple skipping rope, or stairs, or walking roads should be able to serve the purpose of keeping you fit. Don't you sleep whenever wherever if you need to, automatically. Don't you find something to eat whenever wherever if you are hungry. Don't you clean your mouth (brush) whenever wherever if your breath smells bad. The point is push the act of workout to those basic levels of conscious that you keep yourself fit even without much concern and stand as an inspiration for many to change. So as popular advise goes, move from being inconscious-incompetent, to conscious-incompetent, to conscious-competent and finally to inconscious-competent.
Link to previous health post.
The point is that the workout should slowly become part of your daily activities and then become part of your nature call system. The theory of evolution hints about hardwiring good traits in us to survive. It has been benefiting us: think about vision, while a baby can see right from the moment he is born, we don't have computer vision close to vision of even an ant. Today's state-of-the-art learning machines cannot even be compared to a human baby. It's hard to compete with evolution but if we work hard (and survive long) we can synergize with it and benefit from it.
Here's the conclusion of this health post. Workout so regularly that you imprint the mechanisms into your DNA and hence contribute towards better evolution of future generations in terms maintaining better health. You don't have to complain of not having facilities to workout. Workout with whatever you got, just a simple skipping rope, or stairs, or walking roads should be able to serve the purpose of keeping you fit. Don't you sleep whenever wherever if you need to, automatically. Don't you find something to eat whenever wherever if you are hungry. Don't you clean your mouth (brush) whenever wherever if your breath smells bad. The point is push the act of workout to those basic levels of conscious that you keep yourself fit even without much concern and stand as an inspiration for many to change. So as popular advise goes, move from being inconscious-incompetent, to conscious-incompetent, to conscious-competent and finally to inconscious-competent.
Link to previous health post.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Health: Optimizing constraints
After you have walked the steps through childhood (don't know pretty much about health), adoloscense (obsessed with certain aspects of health, like looks) in the journey towards better health, time would come to start being more like adults:) Let me explain what it means.
A society invests most power and authority in the age group in which one is considered adult. There is a valid reason for that because that's the best productive stage for most people. Because people want many variety of things in that stage they are forced to try to make optimal decisions if they need to get all those and in the process they fulfill the needs of others as well since humans are very symbiotic in relationships.
So in any journey it makes sense to call you an adult when you are at a stage where you have to optimize several constraints and you will face this stage even in your journey towards better health (ofcourse if you are on the journey for long enough). What are the typical constraints you would have to optimize?
This listing thoughs seem non-algorithmic is nevertheless useful for achieving balance (optimization of several constraints) as it provides cues for verification of balance. Walking on the line of balance is an art and there are several ways of achieving it. It is undeniable that there is nothing arguably right or wrong in art which is nevertheless very important.
A small note about making optimal decisions:
Humans always make optimal decisions but only relatively, based on what they perceive. That is every human being makes a locally optimal decision. Greedy strategy doesnot always work towards global optima but as you start being more like an adult your optimal decisions tend to be like global optimas because of the reason I explained, in second paragraph, about this age group being very influential in society.
Link to previous health post.
Added the link on September 25, 06 11:00AM
A society invests most power and authority in the age group in which one is considered adult. There is a valid reason for that because that's the best productive stage for most people. Because people want many variety of things in that stage they are forced to try to make optimal decisions if they need to get all those and in the process they fulfill the needs of others as well since humans are very symbiotic in relationships.
So in any journey it makes sense to call you an adult when you are at a stage where you have to optimize several constraints and you will face this stage even in your journey towards better health (ofcourse if you are on the journey for long enough). What are the typical constraints you would have to optimize?
- Money: Don't spend an outrageous amount on nutritional food, on gym fees, personal trainers, fancy short-cut health plans etc. Try to invest money like try to build a gym of our own.
- Social life: Don't overfill the buffer of health benefits. Spare time for your other aspects of life as well and that is the key for longer term benefits.
- Time: Even a 30 min workout (including changing, stretching etc.) will start working for you and hence be smart.
- Health: Of course never let your effort for balance drag you back into your old habits.
This listing thoughs seem non-algorithmic is nevertheless useful for achieving balance (optimization of several constraints) as it provides cues for verification of balance. Walking on the line of balance is an art and there are several ways of achieving it. It is undeniable that there is nothing arguably right or wrong in art which is nevertheless very important.
A small note about making optimal decisions:
Humans always make optimal decisions but only relatively, based on what they perceive. That is every human being makes a locally optimal decision. Greedy strategy doesnot always work towards global optima but as you start being more like an adult your optimal decisions tend to be like global optimas because of the reason I explained, in second paragraph, about this age group being very influential in society.
Link to previous health post.
Added the link on September 25, 06 11:00AM
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Health: Dodging injuries
One of the most important preparations you have to make for a journey is to make sure you avoid bad sideaffects, injuries etc. In this post I try to give some tips on dodging injuries on your journey towards better health.
Link to health posts so far.
Edited: August 28, 06. 11:07 AM.
- Workout has its own costs. It not only requires tremendous amount of dedication but also has ethics to be followed - the ethics to be responsible for your body. Just because you are dedicated and going to gym everyday you cannot do whatever you want to at the gym.
- Make sure you have sufficient knowledge of what you are doing with weights or cardio machines. READ instructions, ask the personal trainers, ask the experienced people, read from magazines. .
- Don't be adhoc in the type of exercises you do. Make sure you concentrate on all regions of your body - roughly speaking upper, middle and lower body. .
- Give sufficient time for the body to recover after exerting it.
- Make sure you strecth different muscles for relaxation after working them out.
- Have plenty of water around you and drink before even you feel thirsty. Believe me dehyrdrating experience could be really nasty.
- Take special care of your joints, especially knee joints.
- Injuries can be checked using RICE.
- When lifting heavy weights make sure you have someone monitoring you. Minor mistakes here could result in fatal or lifelong injuries.
- Based on my friend, Reagan's advice, a good heuristic for judging a right weight for you is that you should be able to do atleast 4 reps and atmost 8 reps.
- Generally speaking there has to be balance between using your body and being responsible for your body.
Link to health posts so far.
Edited: August 28, 06. 11:07 AM.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Health: Faring well on the plateau exam
Once you start your journey towards betterment you are tested by Nature for your patience, balance and dedication as those tests are needed to judge if you are really worth the end result.
So don't feel bad if you are experiencing plateau regions in your progress. Infact it's time to put in more effort to pass the test since it's exam time! Here are tips on how to do well:
So don't feel bad if you are experiencing plateau regions in your progress. Infact it's time to put in more effort to pass the test since it's exam time! Here are tips on how to do well:
- Realize that it be a surprise test! For some people this might come early for some later.
- Since it's a surprise test regularly check if you are on a plateau. Use proper ways like measuring waist line, measuring weight only in a reasonably periodical way, being realistic (by getting statistics from various expert sources) in expectations etc.
- On the plateau:
- Increase workout for atleast by 30 mins to your regular time.
- Add more enduring exercises (like fat-burn or more repetitions) at the cost of perhaps reducing some impacting (like high-range cardio or heavy weights) ones.
- Cut down on the weekly cheating from once a week to once in two or even three weeks depending on how long is the exam. You will know when the exam is over. Because instant result (like in GRE).
- Unlike in some exams shortcuts don't work:) Think of it as a defence work where you are tested for real accumulated worth instead of your ability to be worthy. This is not an entrance exam it's like a midterm or even final (I don't know yet:))
- Don't look at others' progress or strategies too much. Why? Because their question paper could be different and you would be wasting your energies for negative results.
- This is an untimed exam. You won't be forced to finish. If you quit in between luckily no loss except for the benefit of opportunity cost. You would atleast be where you are. But this is not a great thing to do.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Health: Breaking the habit
There is a famous saying: Humans are creatures of habit. Maintaining health is part of human activity and hence is a habit. But there is also another famous saying Old habits die hard. The two sayings together indicate us potentials as well as traps. First saying indicates we can achieve things by habituating them and once done they are hard to break.
So for better health, we have to break a lot of habits like
Though this post is intended to be a sequel to my health posts the power of habit is true for many aspects of life.
So for better health, we have to break a lot of habits like
- Being lazy (eg. not workingout regularly)
- No physical activity immediately after eating (eg. sitting comfortably after eating)
- Underestimating calorie facts about food (eg. when nutrition facts are missing)
- Being embarrased for looking at nutrition facts (eg. when buying or eating)
- Being embarrased keeping track of your diet (eg. among friends)
- Eating to reduce stress (eg. eating chips, nuts)
- Eating when not needed (eg. not skipping dinner for an extravagant lunch)
- Not considering snacks as a significant intake (eg. ignoring a pretzel/banana)
- Qualifying food based on taste instead of nutrition facts (eg. Pepsi/Diet pepsi)
- Not paying attention to popular warnings about health (eg. obesity/smoking)
- Mishandling of achievements (eg. stopping workout for no reason because you know you can workout)
Though this post is intended to be a sequel to my health posts the power of habit is true for many aspects of life.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Health: King of nutrition
As a continuation to my health tips, I want to talk and point to benefits of Protein the King of nutrition.
Eating smart is one of the very important things to do in maintaining good health. It is very suprising because to be good these days, we have to do pretty much any thing smart:) Protein has tremendous benifits in helping weight management. I personally experienced the benefits. Your hunger remains controlled among many things. It is very hard for vegetarians to get good source of protein. By good I mean equivalent to that we get from non-vegetarian diet. But food technology research has progressed very nicely and we now have protein isolates that can be consumed, even gratifying your palate. Soy protein, whey protein, milk protein isolates come in delicious low calorie bars. Whey protein is also available as a powder form. Among all kinds of proteins WHEY protein seems to be the best. Here's a link to benefits from WHEY protein.
Eating smart is one of the very important things to do in maintaining good health. It is very suprising because to be good these days, we have to do pretty much any thing smart:) Protein has tremendous benifits in helping weight management. I personally experienced the benefits. Your hunger remains controlled among many things. It is very hard for vegetarians to get good source of protein. By good I mean equivalent to that we get from non-vegetarian diet. But food technology research has progressed very nicely and we now have protein isolates that can be consumed, even gratifying your palate. Soy protein, whey protein, milk protein isolates come in delicious low calorie bars. Whey protein is also available as a powder form. Among all kinds of proteins WHEY protein seems to be the best. Here's a link to benefits from WHEY protein.
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