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.

3 Important Aspects of living - DIET

This post is in continuation with
1) 3 most important aspects of living
2) No. 1 Misconception about great health

So till now, we have learnt about ageing, anti ageing, the language of exercise, misconceptions about exercises etc.

Out of the 3 pillars of our life, the #1 pillar, that is health is divided in to 2 parts-

Exercise and diet, until now we have learned basic things about the exercises, also you must have read what do I do when I fall ill?, if not then do read.

So now comes the diet part. We will definitely learn more about exercises, but exercises and diet go hand in hand so let's learn some basic things about the diet.

One of the advantage of learning about the diet is to become free from the misconceptions about the diet, like many people or organisations make big claims about their crash diet course, follow our diet plan and lose this much pounds or lose inches etc. Many times there person following these crash diets do achieve the targeted weight loss or weight gain or inch loss or fat reduction, whatever.. But his or her body sustains to much fatigue and many times fall ill and in the process of recovery from the illness returns to the point where he or she started and realises the waste of money, time, mental piece etc. Or even if he or she doesn't fall ill, sooner or later reverts to the original condition, wiping out any achievements in weight loss or gain or inch reduction etc.

If you really want to achieve the good physique then you must understand how your body works, how to feed it, how to keep it healthy. You yourself should care about your body, if you don't care about your body then how can anyone else care? How can you hand over your body to someone else just like that?

The hard fact is the people running the slimming centres are not doing it for charity. They are doing it for money, the slimming centre is their business. They are doing it because people think they need it and hence approach them. Slimming centre people themselves must be aware of the fact that they are not actually helping people becoming healthy but its a tough world out there, if they don't show results quickly, their customers will go to the next slimming centre which gives quick results in whatever way possible. And there will always be a next slimming centre, if not there now then sooner or later it will be there.

People generally go after INSTANT GRATIFICATION, that is we want instant reward for our actions, if there is no instant reward then we get discouraged and start finding other instantly rewarding options. But we must remember what investment legend Warren Buffett said-

You can not get a baby in one month by making nine women pregnant.. Some things just takes time...

You must be thinking why I am quoting investment legend in the post about diet? This is because there are some basic rules or we can say models which are common to all fields. And delayed gratification is one of them. We will talk about these models also known as mental models in future posts for sure.

So back to the topic, as the second world war was ending researchers at the University of Minnesota began a legendary experiment on psychology and physiology of human starvation. The subjects were 36 people with different body types. They were semi starved, given a diet of 1600 calories per day of typical European diet consisting of whole-wheat bread, potatoes, cereals and considerable amounts of turnips and cabbage and a little amounts of meat and dairy for 24 weeks. Only 17% calories coming from fats, what todays nutritionists will consider low calorie and very low fat diet.

What happened to these people is very interesting, it is also a lesson for is to understand the working of our body. It will crack the assumption of the proponents of crash diets to lose weight, or the weight loss advice which simply neglects the presence of hunger.

As per the study-

The men lost an average of a pound of body fat a week over the first 12 weeks, but averaged only a quarter-pound per week over the next 12, despite the continued deprivation. And this was not their only physiological reaction. Their extremities swelled; their hair fell out; wounds healed slowly. They felt continually cold; their metabolism slowed.

More troubling were the psychological effects. The men became depressed, lethargic and irritable. They threw tantrums. They lost their libido. They thought obsessively about food, day and night. The Minnesota researchers called this "semi-starvation neurosis." Four developed "character neurosis." Two had breakdowns, one with "weeping, talk of suicide and threats of violence." He was committed to the psychiatric ward. The "personality deterioration" of the other "culminated in two attempts at self-mutilation." He nearly detached the tip of one finger and later chopped off three with an ax.

After the period of starvation ended, they were allowed to eat more, but then again in controlled manner, groups were formed to assess the effect of increased calories intake, one group was allowed to eat as much as they want, the people of this group ate huge amounts of food, they consumed up to 10,000 calories per day. They recovered their weight and fats very rapidly. And after 20 weeks they amassed 50% more body fats than what they had at the beginning. Researchers call it 'Post Starvation Obesity'.

Ok, so the simple thing is that it is often harmful to go for instant results. It is not good to neglect our hunger, if we starve ourselves then our bodies physiological response will be the stronger, unsurmountable feeling of hunger. That is why I always say, our body is a Complex Adaptive System, our body wants to survive and reproduce, and it prompts us to do whatever is necessary. So we must first ensure and fulfil what it wants and provide it in suitable ways.

As you must have understood from the University of Minnesota experiment, weight reduction or inch reduction is not a one time job. Whoever followed crash diets, his or her body thinks there is deficiency of food in its environment, so the bodies response to this situation is a strong feeling of hunger, day and night, so that the person can eat as much as possible. Along with this our body also reduces our metabolism rate, that is the rate of chemical reactions happening in the body which are responsible for repair, growth, heat generation etc. Our body starts saving more and more calories we consumer and amassing it as fats under the skin and around vital organs(which is dangerous). This response remains for extended periods of time after the crash diet or the starvation has ended.

So how to do it then? You must be asking.😉

As I have just said, it can be done by understanding our body, it's needs and fulfilling those needs in a proper way. Maintaining a healthy body is not just a one time job, it is a way of living life, exercise and diet are part of a healthy lifestyle, so the earlier you incorporate them in your life the better. Further just incorporating exercise and diet is not enough, you must know why and how they work otherwise you may damage your own body.

You must have heard many times in the ancient scriptures about the rules of life, the basic rule is-

Know thyself...

Or Atm-Gyaan...

This rule is there in almost every holy scriptures all around the world.

So you must understand how your body works, what it needs, and you must supply what your body needs. This is the basis of the right diet.

What nutrients our body need?

The nutrients we need can be classified as follows- (as you are reading this blog,I assume that you are not illiterate, you must have gone through school, where you must have learned the basic nutrients our body needs, so this is just the revision.)

1) Carbohydrates- (Also known as Carbs)
These are the polymeric form of sugars (the sugar we use for sweetening the food is chemically known as sucrose), when sugars gets attached to each others forming a chain, it is called polymer. The sucrose is a dimer, that is made up of 2 sugar molecules.

The biggest source of carbohydrates is the grains, tubers etc. As you just read, carbohydrates are the polymeric form of sugars. They must be broken down in to individual units before they can be used by various cells of our body or even the absorption by our digestive system is only done when they are broken down in to individual units. Depending on the complexity of their molecule, they take different amount of time to get broken in to individual units of sugars by the action of digestive juices. As they get broken down, they get absorbed by the digestive system. Depending on the time they take for digestion, carbohydrates are classified as Fast carbs or Slow carbs. Fast carbs generally have individual units of sugars present in them, for example fruits have individual units of sugars present in to them, so they get absorbed in to our blood readily and can be used directly as an energy source directly, without the need of any chemical processing. While slow carbs are digested slowly, therefore they provide a sustained stream of carbohydrates to the blood for hours after consumption. Wheat provides slow carbs while rice is a source of fast carbs. Some instant energy drinks contains fast carbs, they readily get absorbed by the digestive system and provide instant energy. But my thinking is that, use of such instant energy drinks should be avoided because they mask the real problem, that is fatigue, why we had fatigue and felt the need to consume instant energy drink? Further they also reduce the bodies own stamina to avoid fatigue.

Anyways, The excess carbs are converted in to a polymeric form known as glycogen by the liver and are stored by the liver, these reserves are used whenever required. The famous hormone Insulin governs this process and keeps the required level of sugars in our blood stream.

Carbohydrates are used as a primary source of energy by our body. Carbon dioxide, water and energy are the aerobic oxidation products of carbohydrates. (Aerobic means- with oxygen) When anaerobic oxygen happens, then lactic acid as an added product is formed, which is mainly responsible for muscle fatigue.

Our brain can only use sugars as an energy source. Almost all other cells can use fats as an alternative source of energy.

Almost all the food items we eat contains carbohydrates, so there are generally very rare chances of lies consumption. Rather patients having high blood sugar needs to control the intake of carbohydrates.

My purpose of writing here is to tell you the normal working of our body, if your body is not working normally because of some reasons, then you have to find those reasons and bring it to the normal. Many times we ourselves knowingly or unknowingly interfere in the working of our body thereby resulting in to a disease.

As Warren Buffett says-

Whenever you find yourself fallen in to a pit, the first thing you should do is, stop digging..

Again I am quoting this greatest capital allocator on earth because many psychological rules are applicable in any field of our life.

2) Minerals-
Our body needs different kind of minerals like calcium, zinc, iron etc. for various activities in the body. For example calcium is needed in the construction of bones and cartilages in the body, then iron is needed in carrying and storage of oxygen, other minerals are part of different hormones which govern different chemical reactions in the body or they even participate in certain chemical reactions occurring in our body.

As you go towards artificial ways of living like eating food grown on chemical fertilisers, grown from hybrid or genetically modified seeds, drinking RO purified water etc. makes our diet deficient in minerals. (when you start increasing the yield of crops by forcing them to yield more by some ways like hybridizing or genetically modifying or application of enzymes etc one must ensure the supply of all nutrients in right proportion which is seldom done, usually what farmers does is, they supply only the yield increasing nutrients through chemical fertilisers, and not the other nutrients which have less effect on the yield of crop, this scenario makes the yield more in quantity but less in quality, that is less in nutrient content.)(RO filters filters out all the dissolved minerals in the water, making it pure but simultaneously reducing the mineral content.) Drinking water is the biggest source of calcium apart from dairy and meat products. (RO also filters out all the pathogens from drinking water, thereby reducing the ingestion of pathogens, resulting in to less infections, resulting in to less action for immune system, resulting in to weak immune system, such people quickly catch infection when they consume normal water.)

The more you are closer to the nature the less are the chances of mineral deficiency and catching of infections.

3) Fats-
Fats or vegetable oils or various kinds of animal oils are fats. They have very high calorific value, almost double the calories than carbohydrates. They are used as an energy source and a kind of protective covering to insulate our body from atmospheric temperatures and physical shocks. Some Viral organs like kidneys, liver etc. also have a covering of fatty tissue (adipose tissue) to protect it from mechanical shocks.

Fats cannot be used by brain cells (neurons). Mainly fats are burnt by our skeletal muscles for their energy needs. The muscle repair and growth mechanism mainly used fats as a source of energy, this is a very long lasting process and consumes large amount of fats.

Muscles performing aerobic activity also starts burning the fats when supply of carbohydrates starts diminishing. (aerobic activity means, repeated movements, like cycling, walking, jogging, aerobic exercises etc.)

Now a days we eat to much of fast food or snacks, which are very rich sources of fats. There is a good news for the readers of this blog- You have very less chances of fats deficiency ever happening in your life...😊

This is because educated people are generally ingesting much more amount of fats than they can metabolize. Therefore fats starts accumulating over the vital organs(which is very dangerous), below the skin, in the blood, the cholesterol level increases which is a kind of low density fat, ask this resulting in to various diseases like- obesity, fatty liver, heart disease, heart attacks, choked blood vessels, joint pain(as they are unable to bear increased body weight, psychological stress because of their looks, you can imagine others..

So as far as carbohydrates and fats are concerned we educated people don't have to worry about their deficiency. Rather we need to keep check on their intake or make sure, they get metabolised in our body as soon as possible.

Fats play a major psychological role in our diet. Fats give us the satisfaction or the feeling of full stomach. That is why we feel full very quickly while eating deep fried food items.

4) Vitamins-
Vitamins are vital amines, amines means proteins, vital means very necessary. Three are special kind of proteins which are necessary for normal functioning of our body. They act as special molecules necessary to bring about certain biological reactions in our body. They act as catalyst for different biological reactions, our they are part of different hormones our enzymes. There are different sources for different vitamins.

There are two classes of vitamins- water soluble and water insoluble. As the name suggests, the water soluble vitamins are soluble in the water while water insoluble are not soluble in the water. Just remember that there are two classes of compounds, polar and nonpolar, polar have positive charge at one part of the molecule and negative on the other part of the molecule. While nonpolar do not have any charge on any part of their molecule, that is they are neutral. Polar compounds can dissolve in polar compounds only, for example water is polar and sugar is polar therefore sugar dissolves in water, similarly salt is pillar so it dissolved in water, but oil or fats are nonpolar so they don't dissolve in water or water don't dissolve in oil or fats, but different fats or oils may dissolve in each other.

Similarly, water soluble vitamins are double in water while water insoluble vitamins are soluble in fats or oils. We can ingest vitamins in dissolved form only, so the simple logic is we get water insoluble vitamins through oil or fat containing food and water soluble vitamins through water containing food. Simple isn't it?

These water soluble vitamins can't be stored in our body. The excess quantity is continually lost through urine. Therefore we need to ingest these vitamins every day.

Whereas fat soluble vitamins are stored in the fat tissue to some extent. And they are supplied to the place where needed in dissolved state in the fats.

Water soluble vitamins are B group of vitamins and vitamins C. Vitamins C is present in mainly citrus fruits, like lemon, orange etc. While B group is present in most of the raw fruits and vegetables. I said raw because this B group of vitamins degrade quickly at moderately high temperature. Therefore no B vitamin is present in the cooked food.

There is one another source of vitamin B- there are millions of bacteria living in our intestines, these are friendly bacteria, they digest some amount of food which we can't digest, and convert it into useful and absorbable products. One of such product they make is vitamin B. These useful bacteria gets killed when we consume antibiotics. At such times we quickly develop vitamin B deficiency. We must need to take vitamins B complex pills or eat more raw fruits till those useful bacteria are grown again.

5) PROTEINS-
Protein is the most important nutrient, proteins are the building blocks of our body. If we consider the total amount present in the body then protein comes just after the water. Proteins are there in every cell of our body, DNAs and RNAs of cells which contains all the hereditary information are made up of proteins, the antibodies that our immune system makes are special kind of proteins, all hormones are also made of proteins, all receptors (sensors of our body) are made up of protein molecules. Proteins are everywhere in our body. Our muscle fibres because of which we can do various movements are made up of proteins. Our heart muscles are also made up of proteins. We burn the fats in the structure made up of proteins. Proteins can also be used as a source of energy.

So as we are now aware of the importance of proteins, let's get to the sources of proteins-

We hear a lot about the protein content of different ingredients of food or the protein content of the different food items itself. But there is one more parameter related to the nutritional value of this protein content. Even if a particular food item we eat have protein content then it is not possible to our digestive system to digest all the protein content in the food we ingest. Further there are different kinds of proteins our body needs, apart from these proteins, there are other proteins present in the food, some of which we can convert in to usable proteins, others we can do nothing about. There are also some proteins which are readily absorbed in our body and used directly without any processing.

Amino acids are the basic units of proteins. Proteins are made up of combination of different amino acids. We need the amino acids in a particular ratio. So the food items can be ranked our evaluated with this amino acid composition and digestibility.

Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) is a method of evaluating the protein quality based on both the amino acid requirements of humans and their ability to digest it. The PDCAAS rating was adopted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) in 1993 as "the preferred 'best'" method to determine protein quality.

Now I think we have learnt which are the nutrients needed by our body and what function di they perform.

Now let's discuss about how to get them -

How to formulate the best diet for yourself?

You have to formulate your own diet for yourself because you yourself have to eat it, taste it, bear with it, enjoy the nutrition it provides our not provides, and stick with it. You can also change it as per your requirements our taste. The 'taste' and 'satisfaction' are a very important parts of the diet as we have learnt about what happened to the subjects of University of Minnesota. So it is vicarious learning for us.(learning from others experience). We must not do the mistakes done by others.

Now you must have understood that proteins are the most important nutrient our body needs. This is the clue to formulate the best diet you can. We have to formulate our diet around the protein, because the food items containing proteins generally have vitamins(because vitamins are a special types of proteins), fats, minerals, carbohydrates etc. Therefore we don't need to worry about the other nutrients. (in case you are an athlete and taking sports supplements, like whey protein isolate, then you must take other ingredients in your diet) But for a normal person who is doing exercises for maintaining good health sticking with the protein is a good idea.

The easiest way to formulate your diet is search the internet for protein content of your favourite items, which are readily available. And make a list starting from the food item with highest proteins(also consider protein digestibility, because some items like pulses have low digestibility, like pulses generally have around 50% digestibility, that is only 50% of the protein available in some pulses gets digested, while raw egg have 93% protein digestibility.)

My take is I prefer eggs and meat, their digestibility scores are around 70% to 90%. But the other days I like eating peanuts, or dishes made with peanut, cheese, other dairy products etc.

For a normal human protein requirement per day is around 50gm, but for persons doing workout our for athletes the protein requirement can be 1.4 to 1.6 gm per kg of body mass. But with such people, some protein is also used as a source of energy, therefore the total protein requirement can go as high as 2.2 gm per kg of body mass.

Our bodies adaptive response-
There is one interesting thing about the food we like- Our brain have a mechanism which decides our liking for food items. Our brain accesses our need of nutrients, it also assesses the nutrient content of various food items. Whenever there is deficiency of certain nutrients in our body, our brain automatically develops liking towards the food items which have those nutrients. It prompts us to consume those items and rewards is with the feeling of pleasure and happiness when we consume those food items.

Because of this process even if we don't like certain food items because of their taste, once we consume them in sufficient quantity so that our brain registered their nutrient content, we start liking it whenever we need those nutrients. Generally we need proteins in large quantity so we like those food items which have more protein content.

So even if you don't like certain protein rich food items, just east them for a while and you will start liking them. To give my own example,I never liked egg in my childhood but when I started exercising and studying I understood that chicken eggs are the most complete source of all the nutrients, if eaten in raw form then we get all the above nutrients and they are readily absorbed in our digestive system and then in blood and then used where needed without any chemical processing by gastric juices or liver.

Order of eating-
Other important thing is whenever we feel hungry, it is the sign that our gastric juices are ready. Our stomach secrets acid which is necessary in the breakdown of proteins in to the amino acids which are then absorbed in the intestine. The supply of this acid is the most when we are hungry and gets consumed as did is digested. Therefore if we eat protein rich food items of our diet in the beginning then, they get digested easily and with more efficiency, and the items we eat in the later part of the lunch gets competitively less quantity of acid for digestion. Therefore you should arrange the eating order of food items accordingly.

Water-

Water is the most essential ingredient our body needs. It imparts flexibility to our body cells, it performs the function of carrier of nutrients, it is the medium of digestion, it is the medium for almost all chemical reactions happening in our body, it performs the role of temperature regulation, it performs the role of medium for excretion (urea and other waste compounds formed in the body are excreted via urine in the form of aqueous solution.) Without water we can't live for long, in the deserts we can't even live for one day without water.

Water management system of our body-

Our body is expert in the water management. It had sensors sensing the water content of the body, prompting us to drink water through the feeling of thirst.

There is a hormone called Vasopressin, which regulated the water reabsorption in the kidneys.(our blood is first ultra filtrated, the resulting aqueous solution contains too much quantity of water and some other nutrients which have small molecule size, like salts, some proteins, glucose, vitamins B other than urea and creatin, out of these compounds the useful one's are reabsorbed when the solution goes through a long capillaries along with water.) The quantity of water to be reabsorbed is decided by the concentration of vasopressin in the blood. More the vasopressin, more the reabsorption of water and concentrated will be the urine. That is why we see dark coloured urine when do not drink enough water or conversely we excrete water white urine when we drink excess water.

How much water you should drink and when?

It is a debatable topic of how much you should drink water in a day. Some prescribe drinking large quantities of water, even prescribing large quantities of water while having lunch.

But I am of the opinion that by drinking large quantities of water, you are overloading the reabsorption mechanism of kidneys which reabsorbs the nutrients from the ultrafiltrate. Secondly you are not using the mechanism of water retention, that is the secretion of vasopressin hormone. As you must have understood that our body is an adaptive system. So it responds to the situation of abundant water by getting rid of it as soon as possible. Therefore the person who has habit of drinking more water will be in trouble if he don't get water for some time, because his body will quickly excrete the water because of the habit. You can experience this condition easily, just drink a lot of water about one and half day and then stop drinking it. You will urinate a lot even after you have stopped drinking water and will soon start feeling sleepy or energyless in just one to two hours. You can quickly recover from this condition on drinking water and again feel normal.

So I am of the opinion that drink as much as water as you feel like drinking and when you feel thirsty. Because our body knows what it needs and when it needs. Just listen to your body.

How much water should we drink while having a meal?

A simple point is, water reduces the concentration of food along with gastric juices. Chemical reactions usually have higher speeds at higher concentrations, some reactions can only take place above certain reactant concentrations only. Therefore it is necessary to keep the concentration of reactants high so that the chemical reaction can take place easily. And digestion of food involves various chemical reactions. So think about it yourself.

Another point is, water reduces the concentration of any water soluble compounds, reduced concentration means less osmotic pressure(osmotic pressure is the tendency of dissolved compounds to move from higher concentration towards lower concentration.)

Further water occupies space in the digestive system until it gets absorbed. So this place is unavailable for the food which results in less consumption of food itself.

That is why I am of the opinion of ' Do not drink water from half an hour before having the meal to an hour after having the meal(may be one or two gulps after the meal to clean the throat and food tube.)'

How many times in a day should one eat?

Some people say you should eat something every two hours.

I think it is better to eat two to three times a day. Some special operations commandos only eat once in a day. Trust me I have tried it without any bad effects, for first few days you feel hungry but then your body adjusted with it. But it looks odd and everyone notices it. So I eat three times a day.

You may say that gym trainers, fitness trainers told us that you need high amount of nutrition so you must eat after every two hours. But it doesn't really matter how many times you eat, what you eat and how much you eat, how much you digest, that really matter. Our body adjusted with house many times we are eating. If we are eating after every two hours then if we skip one meal then we start feeling weak and hungry, but if you are eating only once or twice per day and still following your workout then you won't notice any change in your energy level even if you are 2 to 3 hours late in having your meal or even skip a meal.

Your body develops endurance, which is very important to good health.

I have seen many gym goers drinking energy drinks and protein drinks, eating energy bars while doing their workout, our even drinking a lot of water. I don't understand what is the use? On one hand you are doing exercises to increase your strength, toughness, stamina, endurance, and then on the other hand you are trying to help the supporting systems. If the supporting systems are not strengthened along with your muscles then how can your muscle perform when the need arises?

Think about it..

See you later..

Till then have a great day, also have a great diet...😊

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.

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..