NOURISH TO FLOURISH

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” 
― Hippocrates

Food nourishes us, emotionally, socially and physically and therefore has a great impact on our health. We love food and food is nothing less than a celebration for us, varieties of cuisines to fancy our whims, myriads of recipes to stimulate our taste buds, ingredients  basic and exotic to savor .From gourmet to fast food, Indian to Italian,  food is a part of Every occasions, happy or sad,  personal or community.  Our whole life revolves around eating food and it won’t be wrong to say we are what we eat, defines our personality; the foodie or the diet freak, the protein lover or a  fruit fanatic, organic mantra or a  junk dozer,  But one thing remains same; we all like our food to be tasty and appealing to impress upon our senses.

Food is not just something to be relished, but also a requirement of our body. Food that we eat serves as fuel to our body to perform all its various simple to complex function. Food is available to us, in various forms; fruits, grains, meat, milk, nuts, vegetables, oils  are all designed to assist the body in its diverse occupations; maintenance, and repair, growth and development. Each and every edible food in nature contains nutrients of importance like our vitamins, and minerals, proteins and carbohydrates, fats and fiber, which nourishes our body.

Each of these nutrients is critical to the body and the body requires them in varied quantities.  People often ask me, “Should we eat this? Can we eat that? , is it healthy?  And I always tell them that any kind of food available in nature is not unhealthy. It’s not food as we know that is unhealthy but our eating practices, our dietary practices that make it unhealthy. The error lies in the balancing part, we either eat too much or too little of one particular food and that gives rise to problem.

Let me give you an example to understand. Oil we use as a medium of cooking is important as it adds great taste to the food and more importantly is packed with calories and fat soluble vitamins. It offers a list of other benefits we will talk about it later. Oil, or any other source of fat is required by the body but we tend to eat fat or oil more than the body requires and can use it. This extra oil or fat then is stored in our body and subsequently leading to excess weight gain and in some cases blockages in arteries.

Similarly, nature offers us wide range of fruits, loaded with nutrients, phytochemical and antioxidants, available in great many colors and shades. However, we fail to make these varied fruits part of our diet. We eat same kinds of fruits or we don’t eat fruits at all. We eat chapattis made out of wheat day after day, wheat is good but we also have grains like ragi, jowar, bajra higher in one nutrient or other. There should be variety and a sense of balance in our diets.

When I said all foods are healthy, I specified naturally occurring foods and the junk food don’t come under the umbrella of healthy food. It is fine to indulge at times, as long as it doesn’t become a habit. We all need not be on any special diet unless required as in case of certain disease, all we need is eat a well balanced diet and be sure to be miles away from the rising metabolic and lifestyle related disease.

In conditions calling for special focus, diets can be modified; foods can be included and excluded depending on the conditions. In any disease, diet plays a very important role, along with the medical treatment because eventually you will stop your medication at some time; food is something you will always eat. Careful consideration and continued practice with proper guidance can help fight any complications, small or big.

To end, I would like to say our aim shouldn’t be to prolong life but to make living a better experience, full of memorable moments with our friends and family. We shouldn’t be the one at the window looking at the world dancing away; we should be the one dancing along.

“Wake up to a sunny mood

For labor never brood

Gently wish of a day too good

Pump up your engines with some food.”

To healthy living!!

 

HEALTHy- WISE

“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.” 
                                                                                                                ― Herophilus

We talk about health, we hear about health, we might know all about health or we might be totally ignorant about it. It’s a big world with lots of people and lots of people with lots of different ideas. For sum the glass is half empty for others half full.( I am sure you all must have attended some or the other life coaching sessions, so how u see it half empty or half full?) the definition of health is different for everyone; you and me included.

It can be freedom from a physical pain or cure from a disease. Some might aim for eight packed torso and others to just loose that rotund belly. There might be some starving to gain that “zero figure” and a scrawny girl eating to gain some mass. One thing though remains same we all want to be healthy, presentable and able to enjoy life and more importantly live it and not just survive.

We might have different definitions but the one widely accepted and truly defines the wholesomeness of health is the definition issued by world health organisation recognised better as WHO, is a physical, mental and emotional well being and not just absence of disease or illness.  An interesting definition makes us wonder, are we really worthy to call ourselves healthy?

Let’s look at the physical, the emotional and the mental selves as best of pals, misery of one upsets the other two. . A poor physical health for example manifests frustration, depression making one bitter and melancholic on the other hand a stressed and troubled mind wears out the body making it tired and over worked losing interest in everything worthwhile affecting the emotional state.

Health is wealth, the most precious of all treasure that needs to be preserved just as we keep our jewels and other valuables because dear friends you can always earn back the riches but not the blessings of a good health. All our talents, skills and ambitions will fail if we don’t have a good health to sustain it. Napoleon would have decided to sit back at home rather than fighting if he had achy joints or Columbus would not have discovered America if he was battling constipation.

 In recent times look at our celebrities, our actors they are always fit and more importantly healthy dancing and climbing and jumping of trains and cliffs. They choose to be healthy, take time to care for their health and so should we even though we don’t need to jump off the cliffs or trains. All we have to do is eat right, exercise light to be healthy and wise.

Internet is the vast sea of information on anything we want and through this blog I am going to and try my best to enlighten all the aspects of health and the ways to improve and deal for our own good. I will try to deliver the needful information in an easily understandable manner just in the way I do when I counsel my patients. I always explain to them in-depth about their disease or any other health complication so that they fully comprehend why and how do they need to confront it.

Being poetic and more than a little smitten with literature I have mingled quotes and little poetic verses with scientific facts to make it fun and easy to remember. Here check this out,

“Be happy, be healthy

Eat and run wild

To be young and Wealthy

Play like a child”

To healthy living!!