How should I react to Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in samanyabuddhi way???

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

-Wikipedia

As I am writing this blog post, more than 6,63,000 people have been confirmed infected world wide, it of which, more than 1,42,000 are now totally recovered and there has been more than 30,000 deaths. We can say that this disease (COVID-19) has become a pandemic. In many countries it has reached stage 3. The stages of the spread of disease are-

Stage 1- Where the authorities know who came from the affected countries and those persons should be quarantined and kept under watch for signs of disease.

Stage 2- Where the people migrating from affected countries come in contact with local people, like family members, friends, relatives or various service people but still the authorities can track those who came in contact with the migrants from affected countries.

Stage 3- Now the local people who came in contact with the migrants from affected countries mingling with other local people. Here because of the large scale of interactions the authorities cannot track the spread of infection and hence everyone is a suspect of infection.

Now let's have some thought about the virus.

What is a virus?

Virus is not actually a living thing. It is just like a computer virus. It only works when conditions are favorable.

A virus on it's own don't shows any signs of life, it doesn't consume food, doesn't make any energy, there is no chemical reaction happening inside, there is no movement, no breathing, nothing.

A virus generally is just an RNA (Ribo Nucleic Acid) which contains the generic codes for reproduction, some enzymes which helps in starting the reproduction process, these two are packed in a protein and lipid envelop. This protein envelop has some special proteins which acts as key to enter the host cell.

If there is a pen drive, which contains a computer virus capable of infecting windows 10 through some weak points of windows 10, and we keep the pen drive in a closet, then nothing will happen until we plug the pen drive in a powered on PC with Windows 10 operating system. If the virus I is plugged to a Windows 10 pc which is powered on then only the virus will get activated and start infecting the PC, then if there is an antivirus installed which recognises the activity of the virus then there are 2 cases 1) the virus may have capacity to overpower the antivirus program, in this case the virus will cause harm, make copies of itself in all connected devises or 2) the antivirus successfully deletes the virus files and there will be the end of the virus.

If we plug the pen drive in some Apple device then there will be no activation of the virus at all.

Similarly natural virus has these particular key proteins in it's envelop which opens the door of the host cell. That is every living organism has different proteins supported by cholesterol in it's cell membranes which only allows the required molecules to enter into the cell. These key proteins in the virus envelop are very particular about the host cell, for example HIV can only infect human lymphocytes, not any other cell or not the lymphocytes of a dog.

Once the virus key proteins opens the lock of the host cell door, a passive entry of the enzymes and RNA in the the host cell is triggered. The enzyme and RNA then quickly starts synthesizing the proteins necessary for making the virus copieas by using the cell machinery. The cell now become a zombie, it doesn't now perform it's intended role but instead starts acting as a virus factory. When the cell becomes full of virus copies, a self destruct mechanism gets triggered, which destroys the host cell, releasing the viruses. The new viruses released, starts infecting more cells, each one of them produce many more viruses. Now the infected person can spread the infection through his body fluids like cough(mucus)/saliva/urine/feces/blood/genital fluids as per the infection. (Cough/saliva in the case of COVID-19, which gets sprayed when the infected person coughs or sneezes. This virus is heavy, so it doesn't float in the air, it falls down and remains on the surfaces in the vicinity of the infected, when a healthy person touches such surface, it picks up the virus and if the person touches it's nose/eyes/mouth with such dirty hands without washing then the virus reaches it's destination and starts infecting.)

Now the virus defence is done by our immune system by various ways like- killing such infected cells and stopping the reproduction of the virus or making antibodies which binds to the virus envelop which prevents the virus from entering any cells i.e. our cells now recognise it as a foreign body and don't allow it to enter the cell.

This particular Novel Corona Virus infects our respiratory tract lining cells which causes dry cough, fever etc.

Now there is some time gap between the entry of the virus in our system and experiencing the symptoms of the disease. This period is called the incubation period. That is the person is infected but doesn't show the symptoms of the disease. To understand this incubation period let's take an example of Terrorists vs Nation-

Suppose a handful of Terrorists enter a nation with an intention of creating a terrorist organization by recruiting the citizens of the same nation, brainwashing them, training them and then using them against the same nation. You can understand that this process will take time before it starts showing it's existence. At first no one will notice the terrorist, the terrorist will then try to recruit, brain wash, train the members; till then some good citizen will notice that something bad is going on, he will raise the alarm, but the security system of the nation will also be sceptical about the alarm so it will just inform a local patrol to check it out, and then when the local patrol will confirm the situation, a countermeasure will be taken, it may involve a limited attack if the situation is not severe, but if it's too late then emergency will be declared in the nation and all the resources of the nation will be used to defend the nation from the terrorist threat. All of the normal public of the nation will only suffer if emergency is declared otherwise it will be a local affair.

In the same way, if things go too out of hand then only our immune system declares an emergency, all the resources of our body are diverted towards our immune response, that is, all energy is diverted towards the immune cells, all other gets less energy, hence we feel weakness, all other processes are slowed down e.g. digestion, hence we feel nausea, nose starts running, more cough is produced to flush out the infection, temperature of the body is raised to help our immune system function more effectively. We call all these, symptoms.

What will happen next?

There are two possible conditions-

1) Positive case- The spread of the disease will soon be contained, the number of the people getting detected COVID-19 positive will start decreasing. And it will end soon.

COVID-19 vaccine trials get successful and we don't have to fear it anymore, all the life returns to normal in a month.

2) Negative case (Worst case)- The disease keeps on spreading rapidly, exponentially. Almost all the population on the Earth will get infected, but is it the end of the mankind? Is it where all ends?

Certainly not.

Law of natural selection / survival of the fittest :

We all have learnt the law of natural selection, the one who is fit to survive in an environment survives, others who can't- die. This is the nature's way of weeding out the weak ones.

There has been many such natural disasters in the past like, ice age, droughts, floods, tornadoes, meteor strike, many epidemics, pandemics etc. But still the life thrive. Because the survivers are stronger and they quickly take up the vacant places.

This period is the live demonstration of natural selection / survival of the fittest.

We are observing a history in the making. We will tell the tales of how we survived the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown period etc. to our children and grandchildren.

Not everyone who is infected by Novel Corona Virus dies, many have recovered totally and many will. The mortality rate is much less than 10% globally.

So what we should do?

Preventive measures prescribed by Government of India-

PREVENTION

But on top of that one should try to keep his or her immune system healthy by-

1) Eating healthy food- Eat home cooked natural food, prefer protein rich and low carb food, practice periodic fasting like eating only once in a day and only water otherwise for the rest of the day-once or twice a week (do check what suits you).

2) Exercise- Exercise 2-3 times a week(more is not needed), exercise is something which pushes you a little(not more, otherwise you would damage something more and never return to exercise) beyond your normal capacity. Exercise should include yoga, cardio and strength.

3) Rest- proper and enough rest is very very important for our immune system. Deep sleep is the best rest. Always take required amount of sleep, listen to your body to determine how much sleep you need, because there are no standards, every body has different needs. For example I need 9 hours of sleep every day, 2-3 hrs less sleep in a week leads to symptoms of infection. Whereas some of my friends need only 5-6 hrs of sleep every day. If you catch any infection and show any symptoms like cough, cold, fever etc. do sleep much more than normal till you get well. When we sleep, almost all of our energy is used to fight the infection and we recover soon. But if we keep working then our immune system gets less energy and you can imagine what will be the results.

This is samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com so how can we not think about wealth and happiness?

What should we do for our wealth in view of the COVID-19 ??

I am an eternal optimist, all global share market indices are down 20-40%. So I think it's a great opportunity to purchase great businesses at discounted prices. Creat a diversified portfolio of great businesses. You can directly buy individual stocks if you understand what you are doing, or can buy index ETF (Exchange Traded Funds), or if you don't understand that much, you can buy a diversified mutual fund of a reputed fund house or an index fund of a reputed fund house. Invest your money in a staggered manner so that if market guess up from here, you have something invested and if it falls further, you will have money to invest. Such opportunity comes only once or twice a decade so don't let it go.

What should we do for our happiness in view of the COVID-19 ?

Many are ordered to work from home (WFH) by their employers, so make the best of it, your travel time is saved, invest this time in the family. Spend quality time with your family. Spend time on your hobbies. Learn something online, cook, paint, sing, dance, do what you like and enjoy. Do remember-

The POWER is when,

You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

So have a nice day.

Sumit,

The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

The magical language or is it really magical !!!

It's a pleasant Sunday morning and my one and half year old son is roaming around the house looking to do any mischiefs, playing around. He just finished his breakfast. He is happy because he loves the company of his mom and dad, and we are happily watching him roaming pleasantly while having our breakfast.

All this understanding is perfect, there is no doubt about it. Yet to understand it neither of us have spoken a single word. Isn't it amazing!!! Isn't it magical!!!

As usual my mind started wandering,
How can this happen? A perfect understanding without a word?
To understand this phenomenon let's try to find out any similar examples-
1) Yesterday I called my cars service centre to know about my cars maintenance plan. The telephone operator picked up my phone and said, "Good morning, Concord motors..."

In just four words what I understood is much more than what these words meant. From her tone of voice I understood that, this lady liked me calling her office, this lady thinks I am important, this lady had respect for her job, she really wants to help me out, she is confident that she will help me out. Apart from those four words wishing me good morning, confirming to me that I have dialled the right number, she said five more sentences just through her tone of voice. It was a pleasant conversation and I got the required information.

2) A few days back I have called an office whose telephone operator have said the exact same words, that is, good morning, ------ office, but from this telephone operators tone I understood that, I have bothered her, she is annoyed, she is not interested in listening me, she would have been glad if I haven't called. Turning our conversation in more like a war situation.

In both the examples, same words have been said but entirely different message is transferred.

3) There is one more example everyone just have seen, in the school or college days everyone have seen someone who never said that he or she loves a particular person but every one knows that he or she loves that person.

What is this magical language? How and when did we learn it? Can it be used to improve our day to day life?

We can see this language at work predominantly in the case of animals. Animals understand each others attitudes or even our attitude through this language. I always loved animals and my wife always hated animals. She always wonders how a neighbourhood cats always comes to me whenever hungry despite she is being the kitchen in charge!

This is called body language. We don't learn it. Or rather we don't need to learn it because we are bourn prewired with it. In computer language terms this language software is a default part of our operating system. That is why human baby can understand when his or her parents are angry, before learning any language. Or the baby's mother understands when her baby is hungry or angry or happy or what are her baby's likes.

Every animal uses this language. We too used it from ancient times. We have evolved from animals to human just recently. And we have invented the languages more recently. If we consider the lifetime of the whole life form on earth then after a long night we have invented languages just this morning and the morning is yet to finish. I hope you have understood how recent the invention of language is. Before that our ancestors were totally dependent on body language only. They used to convey the message only through gestures or some basic sounds like groan, moan, crying may be, hissing, humping etc. So this became a default and universal language of communication.

This body language is still a predominant language. 80% of the information we convey is still through the body language when we communicate face to face and that is why face to face communication is a very effective way of communication.

Who knows thousands of years from now human baby may bourn prewired with English or other languages too..😊

So now the most important question remains-
How we can use it to improve our day to day life?
As I said I love animals, there are always 3-4 cats living in my house, every cat had a different personality or rather every animal, just like we humans have, these cats are living with me since my birth, so I had a lot of time watching their activities, how they grow, how they behave, how do they communicate with each other or with humans or with other animals etc. And let me tell you, observing them is a kind of my hobby, it's a fun activity, especially when kittens are involved. Through observation I came to know that like us cats can also make faces, you just need to have a proper look at their face. So the fact is we live together happily despite having very different personalities our the language barrier.

Now you must be thinking why I am telling you all this instead of telling you how to improve our day to day life, so I am coming to it.

When I grow up naturally I got attracted towards girls, but as I approached I came to know girls speak something else and they want something else, or rather they don't even know what they want, and if I am saying something directly, then the girl is ignoring all what I said and concentrating on what is the hidden meaning of what I said. I always speak directly, I am a straight forward person and I was getting mad at what was happening.

If you are a man then you must have experienced it, that it is very difficult to understand a woman, you must have pondered over questions like what a girl wants? Or what a woman wants? Same thing for woman as they try to find out the hidden meaning.

So, a very difficult problem. I was thinking about it, laying on the bed, obviously cats around me, one licking herself clean, one asleep, one just starting at me lovingly simultaneously making the love sound.(those who have pet cats and who allow them to sit on the lap or close to our body can only understand this love voice, a kind of soft grrr grrr like breathing sound) I was thinking it I'd much easier to understand the cats, they are much simpler than humans, but what if humans are also simple to understand? If there is noise which is making the understanding unclear? What if the language we speak itself is the noise? It can be because despite knowing the language,I couldn't understood a girl. So I thought about giving it a try. And to my surprise,I was right, the next day was just amazing. There was no misunderstanding between me and any girl, I just blew up their mind. It is just that simple, trust me. Just remove the noise.

Now you must be thinking am I only thinking about girls? No, but yes at the beginning, then there was not that much need. And trust me, getting a life partner is a part of the happy life. All living organisms are here on earth to reproduce and keep their race alive and growing. It gives us an internal feeling of completeness, achievement, happiness, content if we find a right partner and have a healthy offspring. That's the reason that old folks always want to see their grandsons our grand daughters, three want to make certain that their genes are transmitted to next and then to the next generation. That is the reason we give best facilities to our children, we want them to succeed more than we did.

This is the main part of life and happiness, then again these are side effects of knowing and using this language. For example- this is the universal language, you can speak it with anyone, any gender, any country, even any animal. And you can convey your message quickly and efficiently, clearly.

There are many books written on the subject of body language, they claim to teach you the body language, they claim to give you highly effective tips, but none of them points that you already know the language. You just need to be aware about your capability. Every human or even every animal on earth comes prewired with this language.

Just remove the noise and everything becomes crystal clear. But watch out from those who are faking, who are lying in this language.

Try using this language and tell me your experiences..

See you soon..

Till then have a nice day..

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

3 most important aspects of living -

Yesterday, at the end of my lecture under workers education program, a couple of workers asked me about my philosophy of life, any suggestion for them.. As the time for lecture was already over I gave them short answers and promised to go in to the details next time for sure. The topic of lecture had nothing to do with philosophy of life.

This incident cranked up my thinking process. This blog samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com is made for the same purpose, that is to spread what I have learnt and experimented till date. Why everyone should do all the hard work that I did while learning? and we have this platform for blogging provided by the Google to leverage and multiply my learning. Many successful and unsuccessful personalities knowingly or unknowingly contributed to my knowledge or experiences. So it is not possible for me to mention everyone. But I am going to mention the prominent ones as I will go through.

Before you get bored let's come to the point- my philosophy for life (and this blog too), revolves around the 3 pillars-

1) Health
2) Wealth
3) Happiness

All three are interdependent, we can not chase one and ignore others or we can not chase two and ignore the other one. All three must come together to live a meaningful life, or some may say successful life. We can say these three pillars support our life. If one is weak our life collapses, or if there is imbalance in the dimensions of each pillar then we can not live a balanced life.
We must work on all three at a time to get the best out of life. It is not that difficult, once you start, you will start getting the results and you will do more efforts automatically. This is a positive feedback loop. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, your life will get bigger and bigger. The more you will get results the more will be the motivation.

To achieve this snowball effect, you must start now-

So here we go, one at a time..

1) HEALTH

Wise people say that, "Health is Wealth". It is true, if you are not healthy then you cannot enjoy your wealth or you will have to put a lot of conscious efforts to stay happy. Good health is the foundation for lasting wealth and happiness. Many studies have shown that healthy people receive more salary than weak people. Healthy people are perceived as leaders. The proof is, is there any physically weak actor doing a role of hero in super hit movies? Or which actors do you like? For examples the actors who played the character of James Bond like Daniel Craig, Pierce Bronson, Sean Connery etc.

Second advantage is that, a healthy mind resides in a healthy body. Generally weak and fearful people do illegal or unethical things, simply because they are trying protecting themselves from any imaginable attacks. While healthy people just know that they can deal with anything thrown at them so they just relax and concentrate on something important.

Now enough about the advantages of being healthy, there are lot of them coming to my mind, it will take month to write them down, and probably you also know many advantages and want to be healthy, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this blog.

Let's now think about how to become and stay healthy-

I recommend you to read my post, How to become Happy?? Then also read the post on Ageing and Anti ageing, then the language of exercise. These posts will give you the basic idea about how to become healthy.

I suppose that you have read the above posts. Now I will take you still deeper in the subject of health -

This pillar of health have 2 elements -

A) Exercise & B) Diet

This Exercise part is again divided in to two broad catagories-

I) Strength building exercise II) Stamina building exercise

Our body have muscle and bones arrangement, where muscle provides the force and bones act as lever and together they help us doing movements. These muscles which helps in the movement of our body are called as skeletal muscles. (they are attached to the skeletal or bones)

There are different muscles other than skeletal muscles, like our heart is made up of cardiac muscles, our digestive system also has muscles which does the movement necessary to mix the food with digestive juices and to push the food forward in to the digestive system. That is food is pushed from mouth to stomach to small intestine to large intestine and then out.(in between it gets digested)

Exercise has to do with working on skeletal muscles and cardiac muscles. Rest of the muscles also get strengthened as a side effect of exercise, because of increased demand from them and also the effect of growth hormones secreted by the glands in our body because of exercise.

Our muscles are made up of muscle cells. Muscle cells are made up of muscle fibres. These muscle fibres are made up of proteins.
There are 2 types of muscle fibres in our body - red and white. Red muscle fibres provide us stamina, that is they help us do repetitive movements like cycling, jogging etc. While white muscle fibres provide us explosive power, that is large force for small duration. For example lifting a heavy object. White muscle fibres produce their power without using oxygen, they develop fatigue very soon, where as red muscle fibres produce power with the use of oxygen, they can do the repetitive action for extended periods.

The ratio of this red muscle fibres to white muscle fibres is fixed for every individual genetically. But we have choice to develop the type of muscle fibres we require with the help of exercise.

To develop white muscle fibres we must do exercises which include lifting heavy weight with minimum repetitions. On the contrary to develop red muscle fibres we must do the exercises which include lifting medium weights with more repetitions. Cycling, jogging, trekking, circuit running, swimming also develops stamina.

I hope you understood the difference between I) strength building exercises and II) stamina building exercises.

Red muscle fibres also helps in producing explosive power but white muscle fibres can not work for extended periods. Red muscle fibres have this stamina because of their ability to store oxygen. Generally they can store oxygen required for the time of 6-7 seconds. After that if they don't get their oxygen trey start producing the energy without oxygen, thereby producing lactic acid resulting in to fatigue.

Further it is also useful to understand how our muscles get their oxygen -

Everyone knows muscles get there oxygen through blood. But there is much more going on. Oxygen rich blood is pumped from the heart through big blood vessels known as arteries. These arteries then go on branching and as they branch their diameter is reduced, also their wall thickness goes on reducing, this branching continues until the size of the blood vessel becomes more or less hair like. These hair sized blood vessels are called as capillaries. The oxygen and carbon dioxide transfer happens through these blood capillary walls. (carbon dioxide is generated in almost all the cells of our body when different constituents of the food we eat are burnt with oxygen to get the energy for doing required activities) These blood capillaries have very thin walls and are flexible to facilitate this oxygen and carbon dioxide transfer process.

These blood vessels and blood capillaries have network all over our body and they supply this oxygen rich blood to each and every cell of our body including muscle cells. They go through muscle bundles, but as I said these capillaries are flexible. So when our muscle is in relaxed condition, these capillaries remain open and are filled with oxygen rich blood, at this condition, oxygen from the blood is taken by muscle cells and carbon dioxide is given to the blood. So instead of oxygen now the blood contains carbon dioxide and muscles now have oxygen for approximately 6 seconds requirement. Now when these muscles are contracted to do some movement or activity, these blood capillaries gets compressed or squeezed, but o the one side, our heart is pumping the blood with a pressure (this pressure is known as blood pressure) while at the other side there is less pressure, so almost all the blood from the squeezed capillary goes to the low pressure side (out from the muscle bundle), there these capillaries starts converging, their diameter starts increasing, their wall thickness also increases, these blood vessels now has blood which is not under much pressure, therefore to prevent it from going backward, these vessels have non return valves at places, these blood vessels are known as veins. Veins contains the blood under low pressure so the walls of the veins are thinner than the arteries. Every time a muscle is contracted, blood is pushed in to these veins, these veins lead to heart. They are connected to the upper right compartment of the heart where this carbon dioxide laden blood is collected, this blood then pushed in to lower right compartment of the heart because of the arrangement of non return valves and movement of the heart. From this lower right compartment, blood is sent to the lungs.

Now in the lungs the blood vessels again gets divided in to small capillaries which are present near the inner membrane of the lungs. There are large number of air pockets in the lungs. These pockets provide huge area of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange membrane, through which carbon dioxide from the blood is released in to air contained in the lung and oxygen from the same air is taken up by the blood. Because of the movement of our chest muscles and a diaphragm which is present just bellow our lungs, this carbon dioxide laden air is exhaled out through nose and mouth and then normal air from atmosphere is inhaled for the next breathing cycle.

Now these capillaries again converge and take this oxygen rich blood to the upper left compartment of the heart. This blood then goes to the lower left compartment of the heart through the arrangement of non return valves and movement of the heart. Then this oxygen laden blood is pumped by the lower left compartment to the whole body. (Including itself, as our heart muscles can only use the oxygen provided by the blood running through them in the capillaries. The heart attacks is meany times caused by blockage in this blood supply system to the heart muscles. Because of which our heart muscles also known as cardiac muscles do not get the needed amount of oxygen.)

This circulation of blood goes on till our death. This is how our muscles get their oxygen. You must have understood now why our muscles starts aching when kept contracted. Many times it is very painful to keel a muscle contracted for just a minute. It is because muscles do not get oxygen in contracted condition, blood can only flow through them inside capillaries when muscles are relaxed. Cyclical movements helps in blood circulation. Muscle contraction pushes the blood towards the heart and make room for oxygen rich blood coming from heart. Many times people who has to sit in front of computer for extended periods because of occupation have swollen feet. Or after long journeys we have swollen feet. The remedy is to get up and take a small walk after each hour or even less if possible.

The blood gets this ability to carry oxygen or carbon dioxide because of red blood cells and red blood cells get it because of haemoglobin (an iron containing protein).

Therefore whenever you do your work out, your muscles start healing and growing, grown muscles also have more oxygen demand, this means more haemoglobin in the blood, more powerful heart, more blood pumping capacity of heart, more capacity of lungs is needed.

And you know that our body is a COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM.

Therefore to adapt to all this increased need our body responds by increasing all these supporting capacities. More muscle fibres are build up, more blood capillaries are formed, existing blood vessels increase their diameter( you must have seen professional body builders or actors with lots of visible veins all over their body), the size of the heart and strength of the heart also increases, each pulse becomes more powerful, so heart can now pump more blood with more force with each heart beat. As our skeletal muscles develops new and stronger muscle fibres and new network of blood capillaries, same thing happens with our heart.

All these changes are useful when we do heard work or exercise. But what happens to this increased capacity when we are not doing any hard work? At this time our heart rate falls much lower than normal simply because it can fulfil the requirement of body very easily when not doing hard work. Some sportsman has pulse rate as low as 30 per minute. That is less than half of the average human. Many divers have so much increased breathing capacity that they can hold their breath for up to 5 minutes while diving. Can you imagine doing it?

Our body is a superb piece of genius engineering of nature.

Respect it.

You must be saying we didn't touched the strength building and stamina building exercises much. We will do it in the next post. I think knowing our body and how it functions is important to get the full advantage of exercise.

Next post will be coming soon. Stay tuned..

And have a nice day..


Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

How to become happy??

Most of the people keep wondering about some people who always seem to be happy. Ever tried to be friends with them or know them better?
Well, I did. Most of the time I found they are just showing off that they are happy but inside they are all tense and worried and under pressure to maitain that false happy personality. But some  people are there who are genuinely happy. It seems like nothing is bothering them. How are these people stay happy?

Some people say money brings happiness, some even say that, 'Who ever thinks that money can not buy happiness does not know where to go shopping.'

One definition of happiness which I found usefull is, happiness is the state of mind where the positive thoughts dominate the negative thoughts over a much greater margine.

So the happiness is not connected to the materialistic possessions. These possessions may bring some happiness but not for long time. Quickly there charm fades away or we get used to them and the happiness because of them fades too.

I am a follower of lean system so I always keep on doing experiments so check out the things first hand (We will discuss the lean system some other time). So during some experiements I found that good health also has connection with happiness. If our health is good we stay positive towards the things happening around us. But if we are not at good health, sleep deprived, tired or ill then we start thinking negatively. We start complaining, nagging, irritating others etc.

The experiment I have suggested to friends is, take atleast 50gm of protein extra in a daily diet for a day, mostly during the dinner. (You can check out the protein content of food items on net and then eat what you like with the most protein content). For those who have no problem in gulping down raw chicken eggs, gulping down 10 raw eggs half an hour before the dinner works very well (Raw eggs are easy to digest than boiled or cooked). Then on the next day observe the difference in the positive or negative nature of the thoughts. You will find great difference, You will find yourself energetic, confident and full of positive attitude all day. You will take up any challenges thrown at you or just charge on the problems to solve them for ever (which you previously just used to avoid or neglect their existance). You day will be full of achievements and happiness.

This happens because the extra proteins heal up ur body in the night more than usual. So the next day you woke up healthier than normal. Hence the difference in attitude.

The purpose behind this experiment is to experience the happiness firsthand and to understand that happiness is not dependent on external things.

Once you understand this then whenever you will feel low or unhappy you will quickly think that 'My body and brain needs rest and nutrition, that is why I am feeling like this.' You won't blame external things. And doing this consiously again and again when you feel low and unhappy will become your habit. Which will result in a permanent change of attitude. This change of attitude is the base for further nurturing the happiness in your life.

Happiness is a habit and not any external phenomenon that happens to us. We can choose to be happy in simple ways.

Just try it out for a week and tell me your experience.

Of course this is not all about happiness. There are other aspects of happiness which we will discuss soon. Till then keep working on this new habit of happiness and enjoy.

Sumit
The POWER is when,
you use ODDS
to get EVEN..

Diet and peace of mind

I see all around that people are in search of diet advice from so called diet doctor or dietitian. These diet doctors prescribe certain fancy diet plans (crash diets) to gain or lose weight quickly. People also follow the diet plan religiously, actually people like hard to do diet plan in the beginning. If the dietitian throws words like keto diet, diet with no carbs, or fat free diet, cholesterol free diet etc. then people tend to get impressed by the dietitians advice. People associate the diet lingo with the competence of the dietitian and effectiveness of the prescribed diet. If a dietitian didn't use the healthy diet lingo then her will be perceived as lame or ineffective.

It is usual perception that if something is hard to do then the rewards you get after doing it must be great. Well, such a perception may have developed from our ancestors living in the jungle, because in the jungle, food won't get home delivered, you have to hunt for food, kill it, or gather it or dig it out, sometimes you have to cook it so that you can eat it. Also the food our ancestors had this way made a good healthy nutritious diet. Hence our ancestors were all healthy, if they weren't healthy then they would have died prematurely and we wouldn't have gotten a chance to come in to existence in this world.

Anyways, coming back to our topic, we think radical diets are more effective. Therefore when a dietitian or so called diet doctor when prescribes a crash diet in the name of healthy diet, we religiously follow it. We even brag about our diet plan with friends and family, we even advertise our diet plan on social media.

So the bottom line is we follow our diet plan thinking is a healthy diet plan, most of the people following such a crash diet plan also achieve their goals, some even overshoot their goals, they happily share their success story with friends, family and social groups. But what's next? That is the big question.

Then after that they slowly the enthusiasm diminishes and everything reverts back or rather overshoot the origional condition. Most of us wonder, Why this happens?

While having this so called healthy diet we forget one thing, i.e. adaptive mechanism of our body. When our ancestors lived in jungle they were dependant on nature's whim. Some times they used to get abundant food, while at other times they couldn't get enough food. So to survive such cycles of abundant food and less food their bodies developed an adaptive mechanism. This adaptive mechanism made them eat more foods when food was available in abundance and store it in the body in the form of fats, thereby increasing the body weight (becoming fat). Whenever there was shortage of food, their bodies used this stored supply of energy in the form of fats. Lost bodyweight and became thin in the process. Then again when body for abundant nutrition it quickly started building the energy stores (fats) to prepare for the next round of starving.

Now what the diet doctors do is, they design a low calorie diet, that is the person taking this low calorie diet don't get enough calories (energy) from the diet so his body starts using the reserve energy (the calories stored in the form of fats), so his body weight goes on decreasing. Our body also have another secret weapon to fight starving, it simply reduces the energy expenditure of the body. In simple words our body slows down chemical processes going on in the body so as to conserve the energy. Hence when a person starts a low calorie diet, first he loses weight quickly but then his body starts reducing its energy expenditure and then the rate of weight loss reduces. So it's easy to lose weight at the start of a crash diet but hard to lose afterwords.

So you have lost at least some of your body weight, it's better than nothing right?

Hold on, the real problem is coming next. What happens after this round of starving is, our body prepares itself for next round of such crash diet (starving). It starts encouraging us to eat more and replanish it's energy reserves as quickly as possible, it also does some over provisioning. Because our body wants to survive any draught (starving). Because of this over provisioning our body weight overshoots the figure it previously had. Not what what we wished for right?

Same thing happens if you want to gain weight. (That is if one is a skinny person, or body builder wants to put on muscle mass.) The person temporary gains weight and then when the efforts diminish, the body regains is original condition.

Then the question arises, is there any way to lose or gain weight? And the easy one? The answer is YES there is and it is up to you how easy you make it.

In most cases the reason of overweight or underweight it bad diet. So one has to follow a base diet (the regular diet), modify it to their own body and taste needs, that is eating more proteins and less carbs. Modify your diet in such a way that it is easy for you to follow for a long time. Don't include any fancy or costly stuff that is hard to get. People actually get infatuated by hard to get things, don't fall pray to this tendency. Once you formulate your healthy diet, continue it, modify it according to your taste. Diet is a continual process. You have to rebalance it, balancing means you have to adjust the ratio of different nutrients in it. Don't get discouraged, you will always find tasty, healthy and pocket friendly alternative. You can always improve. Just keep in mind some simple rules while designing your diet like- less carbohydrates, more protein, occasional fasting. Intermittent fasting is good for body, that is why fasting is included in every religion on this planet. And yes you must have cheat days included too.

That's it for now..

Sumit
The POWER is when,
you use ODDS
to get EVEN..