Brain

A Japanese doctor said, ‘Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks.’

A German doctor said, ‘That’s nothing. We can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.’

A British doctor said, ‘In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks.’

A Texas doctor, not to be outdone said, You guys are way behind. We took a man with no brains out of Texas, put him in the White House and now half the country is looking for work.’

The EyeTee Heart

A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty , Narayana Hrudayalaya (Heart Specialist) Bangalore was arranged by WIPRO for its employees. The transcript of the chat is given below. Useful for everyone.

Qn: What are the thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart ?

Ans:
1. Diet – Less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil
2. Exercise – Half an hour’s walk, at least five days a week; avoid
lifts and avoid sitting for a longtime
3. Quit smoking
4. Control weight
5. Control blood pressure and sugar

Qn: Is eating non-veg food (fish) good for the heart?

Ans: No

Qn: It’s still a grave shock to hear that some apparently healthy person gets a cardiac arrest. How do we understand it in perspective?

Ans: This is called silent attack; that is why we recommend everyone past the age of 30 to undergo routine health checkups.

Qn: Are heart diseases hereditary?

Ans: Yes

Qn: What are the ways in which the heart is stressed? What practices do you suggest to de-stress?
 
Ans: Change your attitude towards life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life.

Qn: Is walking better than jogging or is more intensive exercise required to keep a healthy heart?

Ans: Walking is better than jogging since jogging leads to early fatigue and injury to joints .

Qn: You have done so much for the poor and needy. What has inspired you to do so?

Ans: Mother Theresa , who was my patient.

Qn: Can people with low blood pressure suffer heart diseases?

Ans: Extremely rare

Qn: Does cholesterol accumulates right from an early age (I’m currently only 22) or do you have to worry about it only after you are above 30 years of age?

Ans: Cholesterol accumulates from childhood.

Qn: How do irregular eating habits affect the heart ?

Ans: You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body’s enzyme release for digestion gets confused.

Qn: How can I control cholesterol content without using medicines?

Ans: Control diet, walk and eat walnut.

Qn: Can yoga prevent heart ailments?

Ans: Yoga helps.

Qn: Which is the best and worst food for the heart?

Ans: Fruits and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil.

Qn: Which oil is better – groundnut, sunflower, olive?

Ans: All oils are bad .

Qn: What is the routine checkup one should go through? Is there any specific test?

Ans: Routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol is ok. Check BP, Treadmill test after an echo.

Qn: What are the first aid steps to be taken on a heart attack?

Ans: Help the person into a sleeping position , place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum casualty takes place within the first hour.

Qn: How do you differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble?

Ans: Extremely difficult without ECG.

Qn: What is the main cause of a steep increase in heart problems amongst youngsters? I see people of about 30-40 yrs of age having heart attacks and serious heart problems.

Ans: Increased awareness has increased incidents. Also, edentary lifestyles, smoking, junk food, lack of exercise in a country where people are genetically three times more vulnerable for heart attacks than Europeans and Americans.

Qn: Is it possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy?

Ans: Yes.

Qn: Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems for the child. Is it true?

Ans : Yes, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities and you may not have a software engineer as a child

Qn: Many of us have an irregular daily routine and many a times we have to stay late nights in office. Does this affect our heart ? What precautions would you recommend?

Ans : When you are young, nature protects you against all these irregularities. However, as you grow older, respect the biological clock.

Qn: Will taking anti-hypertensive drugs cause some other complications (short / long term)?

Ans : Yes, most drugs have some side effects. However, modern anti-hypertensive drugs are extremely safe.

Qn: Will consuming more coffee/tea lead to heart attacks?

Ans : No.

Qn: Are asthma patients more prone to heart disease?

Ans : No.

Qn: How would you define junk food?

Ans : Fried food like Kentucky , McDonalds , samosas, and even masala dosas.

Qn: You mentioned that Indians are three times more vulnerable. What is the reason for this, as Europeans and Americans also eat a lot of junk food?

Ans: Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately, Indians are vulnerable for the most expensive disease.

Qn: Does consuming bananas help reduce hypertension?

Ans : No.

Qn: Can a person help himself during a heart attack (Because we see a lot of forwarded emails on this)?

Ans : Yes. Lie down comfortably and put an aspirin tablet of any description under the tongue and ask someone to take you to the nearest coronary care unit without any delay and do not wait for the ambulance since most of the time, the ambulance does not turn up.

Qn: Do, in any way, low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count lead to heart problems?

Ans : No. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity.

Qn: Sometimes, due to the hectic schedule we are not able to exercise. So, does walking while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house, work as a substitute for exercise?

Ans : Certainly. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair and sitting helps a lot.

Qn: Is there a relation between heart problems and blood sugar?

Ans: Yes. A strong relationship since diabetics are more vulnerable to heart attacks than non-diabetics.

Qn: What are the things one needs to take care of after a heart operation?

Ans : Diet, exercise, drugs on time , Control cholesterol, BP, weight.

Qn: Are people working on night shifts more vulnerable to heart disease when compared to day shift workers?

Ans : No.

Qn: What are the modern anti-hypertensive drugs?

Ans : There are hundreds of drugs and your doctor will chose the right combination for your problem, but my suggestion is to avoid the drugs and go for natural ways of controlling blood pressure by walk, diet to reduce weight and changing attitudes towards lifestyles.

Qn: Does dispirin or similar headache pills increase the risk of heart attacks?

Ans : No.

Qn: Why is the rate of heart attacks more in men than in women?

Ans : Nature protects women till the age of 45.

Qn: How can one keep the heart in a good condition?

Ans : Eat a healthy diet, avoid junk food, exercise everyday, do not smoke and, go for health checkup s if you are past the age of 30 (once in six months recommended) …

India @ 60th Independence Day

 

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

– GEETANJALI – Rabindranath Tagore

 Thanks Heath!

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side!!

Move from one job to another – but only for the right reasons.

It’s yet another day at office. As I logged on to the marketing and advertising sites for the latest updates, as usual, I found the headlines dominated by "who’s moving from one company to another after a short stint", and I wondered, "why are so many people leaving one job for another? Is it passe now to work with just one company for a sufficiently long period”?

Whenever I ask this question to people who leave a company, the answers I get are "Oh, I am getting a 200% hike in salary"; "Well, I am jumping three levels in my designation"; "Well, they are going to send me abroad in six months". Then, I look around at all the people who are considered successful today and who have reached the top – be it a media agency, an advertising agency or a company. I find that most of these people are the ones who have stuck to the company, ground their heels and worked their way to the top.

And, as I look around for people who changed their jobs constantly, I find they have stagnated at some level, in obscurity! In this absolutely ruthless, dynamic and competitive environment, there are still no short cuts to success or to making money. The only thing that continues to pay, as earlier, is Loyalty and Hard work. Yes, it pays! Sometimes – immediately, sometimes – after a lot of time. But, it does pay.

Does this mean that one should stick to an organisation and wait for that golden moment? Of course not. After a long stint, there always comes a time for moving, in most organisations. But, it is important to move for the right reasons – rather than superficial ones, like money, designation or an overseas trip.

Remember, no company recruits for charity.

More often than not, when you are offered an unseemly hike in salary or designation that is disproportionate to what that company offers its current employees, there is always unseen bait attached. The result? You will, in the long-term, have reached exactly the same levels or maybe lower levels, than what you would have in your current company.

A lot of people leave an organisation because they are "unhappy". What is this so-called-unhappiness? I have been working for donkey’s years, and there has neverbeen a day when I am not unhappy about something in my work – environment, boss, rude colleague, fussy clients, etc. Unhappiness in a workplace, to a large extent, is transient.

If you look hard enough, there is always something to be unhappy about. But, more importantly, do I come to work to be "happy" in the truest sense? If I think hard, the answer is "No".

Happiness is something you find with family, friends, may be a close circle of colleagues who have become friends. What you come to work for is to earn, build a reputation, satisfy your ambitions, be appreciated for your work ethics, face challenges and get the job done. So, the next time you are tempted to move, ask yourself "why are you moving" and "what are you moving into”?

Some questions are

  • Am I ready and capable of handling the new responsibility? If yes, what could be the possible reasons my current company has not offered me the same responsibility
  • Who are the people who currently handle this responsibility in the current and the new company? Am I as good as the best among them?
  • As the new job offer has a different profile, why have I not given the current company the option to offer me this profile
  • Why is the new company offering me the job? Do they want me for my skills, or is there an ulterior motive?

An honest answer to these will eventually decide where you go in your career – either to the top of the pile, in the long-term (at the cost of short-term blips), or to become another average employee who gets lost with time in the wilderness?

Dr. Gopalkrishnan Chairman – TATA Sons.

What, exactly, does yoga do for you?

Yoga postures are not only a series of physical poses, they are also exercises in mental awareness. The yogi is deliberate in every movement, feeling and breathing into every muscle. Only through conscious awareness of one’s own body can tensions be felt and, once felt, they can be eliminated by a systematic yoga program. More is involved in asanas than just the promotion of physical health. Through yoga postures one can improve one’s mental outlook, achieve a more harmonious emotional life, and develop expanded awareness and consciousness. Yoga postures not only improve physical health and give stability to the emotional system, but they also create positive mental attitudes.

Asanas (yoga postures) promote the free flow of energy throughout the nervous system and assist in the elimination of toxins and poisons from the joints and other body parts, where these foreign elements tend otherwise to settle – sometimes permanently. These asanas exert beneficial pressure on various glands and internal organs, flushing and stimulating them. Even a small amount of practice can produce amazing improvements in one’s general health. For these reasons, yoga is growing in popularity in the west, and growing very rapidly. Asanas are well on their way to becoming a fad.

The asanas emphasize relaxation as well as making one aware of tension. A yoga pose is not “done” because the physical position has been assumed. It is the breathing and the holding of that pose that develops the physical strength and calms the system. One acts always from a center of poise and calmness of mental and physical relaxation. One must never strain or force into any pose.

Additionally, bodily postures are associated with certain mental attitudes. When one is discouraged, the body tends to stoop forward. When feeling stubborn, a person may jut his chin forward. Suppression of natural feelings can be indicated by holding in the upper part of the chest. Even the pattern of breathing is affected by one’s mental attitudes. Just as mental attitudes affect the body, so also can bodily postures affect the mind. Tense stomach muscles can induce mental anxiety, and a bent spine and slumped shoulders can induce moodiness. Yogis make use of these relationships, and by inducing physical relaxation create serenity in a worried mind. Working on oneself physically to influence the mind is a simple undertaking. For example, change the breathing pattern and one’s mental state may be changed as well.

http://www.tristathorp.com/movement-yoga.html