C B Ramkumar – O N V

So often have we flippantly observed that just sitting around is killing us, and guess what this may just be the truth. New research is proving this point quite convincingly.

We come back from work and decide that because we have been working so hard, we need to ‘just sit around for sometime doping nothing’. What we have not realised that most times we are ‘just sitting around’ at work too. Yes we are exhausted because our brains were working nonstop and this also consumes a lot of calories and this is what has led to exhaustion. But the ‘sitting around’ in the office for long periods of time (defined as longer than 20 minutes!) is more harmful.

So here is the deal – walking every 20 minutes of your waking hours is better than exercising for an hour in a day and then sitting around! Shocking facts isn’t it.

Terry Small in his blog (http://www.terrysmall.com/bb_71.asp) enumerates this and talks about how sitting around is not good for our brains as well. “Scientists and medical experts believe that sitting is not great for you and your brain. Prolonged sitting is bad for your health.”

He goes on to say that it is not an alarmist notion that this may be just killing us. Research show that long bouts of sitting causes serious physiological responses related to chronic disease and a shortened life span. The University of Queensland found that people who stood up frequently had lower levels of C-reactive protein (a marker for blood fat). They also had smaller waistlines. It was the frequency of standing not the duration that counted.

One study found that a woman s risk of developing metabolic syndrome increased 26% for every extra hour of sitting. Prolonged sitting in an upright position can strain your back resulting in chronic pain. Blood clots are another risk of being inactive. None of this is good for your brain. You and your brain were meant to move.

Standing for just 2 hours during an average workday can burn an extra 280 calories. In a year, that might provide a weight loss of 20 pounds…wow this must be surely be an incentive for us! Standing while you work improves concentration by increasing blood flow to the brain. Many who stand state that their thinking is clearer and they have an increased ability to pay attention and focus.

Travis Saunders, a researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa has been doing some pioneering work in Canada. His work examines the effect of sitting on children, most of who are glued to their computer screens of playing computer games. The syndrome is the same for children and adults. “People who sit for six or more hours per day – the vast majority of us – are 40 per cent more likely to die within 15 years compared to someone who sits less than three hours a day” according to him. The articles quotes a ‘12-year study of 17,000 Canadian adults found that those who spent most of their time sitting were 50 per cent more likely to die during the follow up study than those that sit the least.’

And what is most disturbing is that recent research also shows that exercising, even vigorously, several times a week won’t postpone early death if we are sedentary the rest of the day. Please read more details of the research here http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Sitting+sending+grave+early/6107045/story.html
So what do we do now?
• Taking shorter breaks to stand up and stretch (or to walk). Maybe set a timer.
• Do what Steve Jobs did often – have your meetings standing up. Whenever he had some important discussions, he usually took the person for a long walk and it always proved effective
• I do this quite often – stand up when talking on the telephone.
• Consider a standing desk – in Bangalore we have a lot of stand up restaurants!
• Here is my favourite – set up a small pedal device near your feet at your desk, so that you can keep pedalling gently ever so often.

So let’s quit sitting around and live longer.

Today is a new beginning. I just feel this way today….a renewal that is intimate
and full of emotion and passion. And several hints of this sense of renewal
continued to happily punctuate my day. (continue reading…)

I am glad the Diwali season is over. This is the same me who was waiting for the Diwali season!

I am guessing many out there feel the same way as I do. So why this feeling now? It was so much fun, meeting friends, having big meals together, lots of wine, lots of singing and dancing. In fact where I live (Adarsh Vista in Bangalore), we have a beautiful community of about 200 residents, and I am lucky as I live on a street which is a cul de sac.

We had a nice karaoke party on my street for Diwali which went on pretty late. So much fun, so much laughter, so much wine, so much food, so much…..Every night since that night has been a late night, as the celebration continues. I suspect it will be over this week end and life will come back to normal.

After all this I ask why this feeling of ‘Oh enough, I want normalcy again’?

I believe that there is only so much that the senses can take for a period of time. Besides losing sleep, which is fatigue in itself, there is only so much we all can take. All the fun, food, wine and laughter are pure sensory titillations, and like all sensory titillations, we get ‘fed up’ soon.

I am sure our memories are still fresh with events like this. A favourite song that we swore we love so much. We listen to it for hours and days on end, and then one day we drop it and it is not so favourite any more. A favourite dish we crave for and we order huge quantities of it and after eating half of it, we are fatigued and it is not so favourite any more.

So it is clear that anything that is purely sensorial is bound to get us fatigued very soon. While this seems like a home truth and nothing we did not know, why do we still succumb to it and expect it to give us an eternal high? Why do we still expect lasting happiness and a permanent sense of euphoria from it?

Nothing new in this sentiment. We all know that there are things we should not do, but we still do. Smoking tops this list. Alcohol consumption comes very close on its heels I guess. In fact the BBC Health segment recently published a notification ‘Doctors say the government’s alcohol guidelines could be improved to ensure they do not sanction daily drinking’. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15415713)

The Royal College of Physicians said the liver needed time to recover from more than just a small alcoholic drink. It advises two to three alcohol-free days a week and 0-14 weekly units for women and 0-21 for men. Sir Ian Gilmore, special adviser on alcohol and former president of the RCP, said: “In addition to quantity, safe alcohol limits must also take into account frequency.”There is an increased risk of liver disease for those who drink daily or near-daily, compared with those who drink periodically or intermittently. In an interview with Radio 4′s Today show, Sir Ian added: “If someone drinks one drink a day, one small drink every day of their life, they’re most unlikely to run into harm. But if you are going out and having a lot to drink then you should perhaps rest your body.”

So while we continue to contemplate and try to figure out why we indulge in spite of knowing the harm it does to us, what Sir Ian says makes sense. He is advocating moderation.

And this is my favourite subject when it comes to life style issues – moderation.

I believe that if we are able to moderate our lives, then everything can be enjoyed. I am not sure that I will ever stop consuming alcohol. However at one time I used to have a drink every day, and it used to be at least 3 to 4 whiskies or some such hard spirit. Now, I prefer wine and that too not every day, but a couple of times a week. A Sunday afternoon beer, lunch and sleep are part of the mix. And I am thoroughly enjoying this sense of moderation.

And I believe I have arrived at a good mix.

And what this also gives me the liberty to do is to indulge once in a while. During Diwali! And the beauty about this moderation lifestyle is that, your body will send you a signal the moment you go overboard, and this communication with yourself is fantastic. It is almost like a gauge that you can read, a perfect MIS system, which will definitely tell you when you have indulged beyond what your body likes and can take. Of course some embarrassments will have to be endured – the capacity to consume copious amount of food and alcohol come down drastically, which requires some patient explaining to dear friends.
But at the end of the day, this is better than not being able to listen to your body, and suffer the consequences of indulgence.
I recommend moderation, because it is truly an enjoyable way of life.

We are always interested in the attitude of people towards health, especially when it relates to non communicable diseases (NCD) or lifestyle diseases. Our interest is in this category of illness because while allopathy has effective management protocols for NCD’s and it is unable to get to the core reason on why the disease formed in the first place.

When you have diabetes, allopathy has a variety of drugs and delivery methodologies to manage the disease, if you have serious arterial blocks allopathy can deliver a bypass surgery, which my just save your life. If you are struck with cancer, allopathy can bust the bad cells using radiation and chemo therapy.

In all these cases, allopathy is managing the disease. While the bypass surgery will definitely give you a new lease of life, it is only a bypass surgery – meaning it has merely bypassed the problem, and the surgery has not addressed why you had the problem in the first instance. And this is the same issue with all life style diseases – diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, allergies, obesity, some autoimmune diseases and some types of cancer.

And the good news is that people are becoming more and more aware of these diseases and health in general. In a recent issue of ‘Campaign India’, a piece of research done by J Walter Thompson reveals some interesting insights, while they list the top 10 changes that are happening in the whole category of health in relation to consumer attitudes and behaviour. I want to detail some points that caught my attention.

Of the top 10, number 3 is titled ‘Agenda for the healthy’: Healthy people want more health; it is not just the sick who seek health. Health is regarded as an area of investment, maintenance, prevention, improvement, so it engages the healthy. Number 4 talks about how ‘Health is serious investment’: Health is expensive, whichever way you look at it: alternative medicine gurus, battery of diagnostic tests and checks, expensive products, nutraceuticals, pricey gym memberships, special gear, personal trainers; the works!

The offering at the Soul Spa in Our Native Village seems relevant when we read number 7, which talks about how ‘Psychic health on the rise’: There is a re-discovery and renewed appreciation for meditation, yoga, AOL, discourses, vipasana, visiting the shrines in the mountains. A wide range of people of all ages and occupations embrace myriad ways to de-stress and attain a work-life balance. Step back and see things in perspective, is a rising need. Much of this activity is done in a group with family or friends joining a yoga class together or attending lectures – each one supporting the other.

Number 8 is the ‘Impact on holidays and leisure’: Holidays too have a health agenda: it is no longer fun, sightseeing and shopping that holidays are for, but also detoxing, de-stressing, chilling out, switching off (literally), escaping to nature. People want to plug out so they can plug in back stronger.

Point number 9 is my favourite, as it almost reflects what happened to my life! ‘Middle age course correction’: There is an ‘aha’ moment of transformation in people’s lives. Something that triggers a new devotion to leading a healthier life. That changes lives in a holistic sense, sweeping in its wake food, drink, exercise, socialising, holidays, groceries, shopping or entertaining. Evangelicals are born, post this trigger moment.

The fact remains that this ‘aha’ moment of transformation better hit all of us sooner rather than later. Our approach to health has to shift. It has to become preventive and proactive rather than curative and reactive. This is the only way we will ensure that our quality of life remains good – without any debilitating dis-ease.

Our attitude to health needs to shift, for our own sake…quickly.

I have been in the corporate world for over 2 decades. And then I got out of it.
Looking at it from the outside gives me a great perspective of the world. Having
been in it for this long, also gives me the right to be judgemental also, and I
think that the corporate world in general and Corporate India is specific is
dumb. (continue reading…)

This is the view of smart intelligent corporate CXO’s and the intelligentsia in general. Stress is for those who do not know how to cope with life. ‘They have weak life skills’, is the judgement passed by corporate HR honchos, when they see one of their wards ‘loose it’ at work. ‘Stressed out’ means you have to have a mental break
down and get admitted to the hospital…unless this happens, you are fine and ‘coping well’ with life. (continue reading…)

“Look how they have made him an ordinary human being”, were the distraught words filled with anguish, sadness, and despair from my mother. She was referring to her God – Sai Baba. She had been following the news articles that reported finding a treasure trove of crores of rupees, gold and diamonds. Not wanting to be politically incorrect, all these articles leave the ardent devotee with unanswered questions – why did ‘God’ horde all this money? (continue reading…)

Whenever I had a profound experience, especially during my meditation, yoga or breath work sessions, I told myself that I was inching towards a higher awakened state of consciousness. I remember when I was going through my Reiki and Pranic healing courses and after the different levels of the Art of Living courses, all delivered phenomenal experiences. And because of these experiences, which did cause a shift inside me, I continued to diligently practice what I learnt – meditation, the Sudarshan Kriya, yoga, etc. (continue reading…)

We are all used to looking at the big stuff – stuff that
deserves to be looked at, because it is the big stuff that makes the
difference. Nobody is supposed to sweat over the small stuff, and we are
constantly mentoring our people in this way of thinking. And rightly so. Because
this is the kind of thinking that will help you grow into senior positions, help
us take bigger responsibilities, help us grow broader shoulders to take on more
weight, broaden our thinking. If we focus on the small stuff, we lose
perspective on the big picture. All good stuff.
(continue reading…)

After a hard days work, as I head home, the first welcome is from my two dogs, wagging their tail, excited to see me come back home. In fact they recognise the car even as I approach the drive way. It just feels so good.

(continue reading…)