On the road to healthy living

There isn't any fear of Artificial Intelligence taking over the human race. Not just yet, anyway. Because it appears that we are going to beat them to it – by killing ourselves with our lifestyle. We have been so clever at figuring out how to do it that entire economies have been sustained by our growing belief that ill health is an inevitable state of life.

Which is why when Alice Mohan, dietician and counsellor at the Apollo Al Khaleej HeartScan and Medical Centre, says in all earnestness "Inadequate intake of water is the root cause of all illnesses today," we do a double take.

You heard right, she affirms, even those diseases for the cure of which multimillion-dollar funding falls far short of desired inputs are merely your body's way of saying something is not right here. Unfortunately, we do not take the distress signal seriously until we get into serious trouble.

But it is never too late to get started and here, for our benefit, Alice Mohan tells us how making some small but fundamental changes in our lifestyle can turn us into a healthy race.

Kidney stones
A common ailment in this part of the world, particularly in the dry hot summer months when the concentration levels of toxic build-up in our bodies is too high to get cleared because of inadequate consumption of water. Drinking enough water to produce two to three litres of urine per day is the preventive action against kidney stones. So how much is enough? Fill up three 1.5-litre bottles with water and have it in the course of the day.

Ideally, have about six glasses of your daily requirement first thing in the morning because that is the time when your body is ready and waiting to detox and requires a little help in doing a good job of it. If you are not already having six glasses of water, do not jump start on this right away.

Begin with just two glasses of water and gradually add on one glass at a time when you are comfortable with the intake. A sudden increase may lead to symptoms of nausea and vomiting.
Does the fluid intake include tea, coffee, soft drinks and juices? "Would you think of having a bath in any of these?" responds Alice Mohan disarmingly. "If they do not do a good job of cleansing your exterior, how do you imagine they would be good for cleansing your insides?"

Since the salt content of the tap water is high, if you consume tap water, you could boil the water and strain off the salt crystals and then purify it with any process, recommends Alice Mohan.

Avoid excess of calcium and oxalates contained in foods such as peanuts, chocolates from cocoa beans, leafy vegetables and strong, brewed tea. While most of us are rather fond of the cup that cheers, it is better to make it an infusion (boiling water poured on tea leaves) rather than a brew (tea leaves boiled in water for a long time) and in any case limit it to not more than three cups a day.

The latest fad of a green tea that claims to eradicate adipose tissue and cure constipation works on the same principle of cleansing the body of toxic build-up and impacted waste product. Provided you follow this therapy with sensible, balanced nutrition, it is beneficial.

But if green tea is all you expect to survive on, you are in for trouble. Any restrictive diet will have only short-term effects and one that deprives the body of essential nutrients can turn out to be actually damaging in the short and long run. If you have a predisposition to kidney stone build-up, cutting down on salt and protein food will greatly help your system to steer clear of the causes.

Why vitamins are vital for your heart?

Certain vitamins like C, E and B complex may reduce the incidence of heart disease and, imbibed through normal food, are perfectly safe. Vitamin C found in green peppers, citrus fruits and coriander, helps reduce the build-up of cholesterol in your arteries. Vitamin E reduces the incidence of heart attack and cancer. As a bonus, it also slows down the effect of aging. Vitamin B complex and folic acid are helpful in protecting against heart disease. These vitamins reduce the levels of homocysteine, a molecule in the blood associated with increased risk of heart disease.

Antioxidants, available in plenty in red grapes and other red-coloured fruits and vegetables, are useful in eradicating the free radicals that are the bane of a healthy body.

Chew on this!
In our minds, we equate weight loss with eating less and eating less with feeling deprived. Ultimately, we succumb to the need to compensate and over-indulge ourselves. This cycle can be broken by two measures – reducing the portion sizes and by chewing slowly. One portion is, more or less, one serving. You can, of course, take it to mean a heaped serving or a flat one. But you cannot stretch it to mean two of something is equal to one serving.

However, you can still feel that you have had your share by chewing each morsel slowly. Doctors recommend masticating one morsel at least 54 times but take it to mean that the food must become absolutely soft, pasty and mushy before you swallow it. This gives you the additional benefit of optimum absorption of the nutrients. Also, chewing food well and eating slowly gives you time to intercept messages from your brain on how satisfied or full your stomach feels.

Which, in your hurry to polish off a meal, you may totally ignore. You'll be amazed at the results – just half the quantity may make you feel satisfied and happy. This will also mean that you will eat smaller meals more frequently, say three major meals and two mid-meal snacks, rather than filling up in two big meals because overloading your system can lead to big-time problems. Eating a heavy meal can trigger off heart attacks even, especially in people who already have heart disease.

It was seen in a study that the risk of heart attack jumped four times in two hours in people who had a large meal. Particularly, big fatty meals can affect the heart adversely by impairing the function of the epithelium, the inner layer of arteries. Also, eating and digesting food boosts blood levels of hormones that raise blood pressure and heart rate. Insulin levels after a large meal can decrease the normal relaxation of the common arteries.

Stress and anger
We can never stress enough how harmful anger can be to our well-being. If we could only see the actual changes wrought in our blood chemistry by anger, it would convince us that anger is our worst enemy. Nevertheless, we continue to court it. The best antidote to anger is a calm state of mind at all times – something that no pharmaceutical company has as yet brought out in a capsule. Practising relaxation techniques like yoga daily will help us relax quickly when confronted with a stressful situation.

Occasionally, taking time off from the daily grind will also help greatly. But for those times when you feel the situation getting out of control and want a quick remedy to avert stress, Alice Mohan has a homegrown remedy – just chew a pinch of sugar.

Sugar hinders the work of the hormone that produces stress. This it does by activating the hypothalamus and pituitary glands with the help of the adrenal gland situated just above the kidneys to produce corticosteriod which is de-st