Its been a month since my dad’s passing and as mom and I continue to reminisce about his life and reconcile with his loss, I am realizing that life has taught me an important lesson.
Both Dad and his younger brother were tall and heavy and both had acid reflux issues (thanks to their maternal genes). But how their health unraveled took two contrasting roads.
1. Extreme acid reflux can simulate cardiac issues and this happened for both. Cardiologists did angioplasty on uncle but treating arterial blocks do not stop acid reflux. Uncle lost faith in treatment. Bypass surgery was recommended for dad after 20 days so I figured if he can survive for 20 days, his health can be managed without surgery.
2. Both developed swelling on their hands and feet. Uncle’s condition was apparently not treated. Dad’s cardiologist kept asking about his bypass surgery and ignoring the swelling. So I googled to find out why the swelling was happening. Any issue that affects the working of the heart reduces blood flow to other parts of the body. When kidneys receive lesser amount of blood the body assumes there is not enough water so kidneys start accumulating water, first on the feet and then on the hands. The condition is called edema. Finally when water enters the lungs it becomes pulmonary edema. Then the only treatment left is bypass surgery. Dad’s cardiologist was trying to force bypass surgery on him by leaving the swelling untreated. I immediately changed the cardiologist and consulted a nephrologist who prescribed a diuretic which forces water in the swelled up areas to be released from the body through urination. Uncle refused bypass surgery, water had to be pulled out of his lungs, he developed paralytic stroke and eventually passed away.
3. Dad reduced salt intake drastically after misunderstanding cardiologist’s instruction. I was unfamiliar with the ensuing condition but realized something was wrong with him. Took him to hospital for checkup and found his sodium level freefalling. In another two days he would have had ended up in coma.
4. Dad’s new cardiologist advised me to treat acid reflux at home and not to take him to hospital as acid reflux bouts can seem like cardiac issue and he would end up in the hands of cardiologists.
For the past 10 years, I have been mostly at home and especially in the last 6 years, largely due to market conditions. This gave me the opportunity to try doing different things which led to starting a home based cloud kitchen and in a way fulfill dad’s lifelong ambition to start a restaurant. I forced dad to go to the gym which improved his health drastically. When he suffered stroke like symptoms I chose to take him to a physician nearby who checked him and told me his nerve functions were fine and he was suffering from weakness due to muscle loss caused by protein deficiency. Though he fell a couple of times nothing happened to him and mom and I ensured he never fell down again especially in the bathroom. Broken bones never heal completely in old age, restrict movements which reduces immunity and makes body vulnerable to other diseases. Dad had normal blood sugar and I ensured all his body organs were working well and his blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium and magnesium and vitamin levels were normal. Circumstances prevented me from pursuing a career in medicine but my fundamentals in biology and human anatomy are strong and I read a lot on both.
I did not earn a lot of money in the past 10 years but I was able to save a lot of money on dad’s treatment. If I hadn’t been at home. he may have underwent bypass surgery which could have ruined his health. Most importantly, he was able to live a disease free life, eat and do everything he wanted to and go peacefully. I could not have bought him this with all the money in the world. Is it possible to become successful without having a lot of money and everything that comes with it? I guess it is.
It has been a week since the sudden demise of my dad (at 72 years) and through our bereavement mom and I have had a lot to contemplate about his life. As a person, he was outright, outspoken and honest, a little too much for his own good. As a caring son and loving husband he was peerless and as a father he was borderline maniac. Nothing I did ever impressed him. He always believed I could do better. Grow more than his 6 foot 90 kg frame for starters. I have been literally hounded and abused for being a poor eater. Other than a chronic acid reflux issue and vitamin deficiencies, he was disease free. All organs, blood sugar, blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium, magnesium were stable and in good condition. In 2021 he started going to the gym but loss of protein made him quit. This post is not to eulogize his life though.
Dad and his mom were endowed with extremely good genes. Grandma was also completely disease free. Both were addicted to sweets and drinking sugary water of Indian sweets and still their blood sugar never went up. Grandma went silently in her sleep in 2010. After a bout of acid reflux, dad developed slight respiratory problem and I took him to hospital. ECG, brain CT scan, chest x-ray all came out normal. He was given sedation to sleep and was sleeping soundly when silent cardiac arrest took him, just like his mom.
What I have learned from their lives is, as they grew older they found happiness in two things. They were able to eat and do mostly anything they wanted (dad had to take medication for acid reflux). Both dad and grandma loved animals and both kept in touch with the people they loved. Dad was a jovial man and loved cracking jokes all the time inside the house and with his friends, even the ones from his childhood days in Calcutta. Many of dad’s friends are far younger than him but all crazy like him.
People I talk to are surprised that disease free people can die. Prana or the life force that runs through our body is the cornerstone of all ancient healing methods like yoga and acupuncture. More prana means better health and less prana means weaker pulse and weaker immune system making us vulnerable to diseases. No matter how healthy we are when there is no more prana left in our body we die.
Many cultures believe in rebirth after death and rebirth depends on karma of our past lives and the state of our mind when we die. Dad had his share of regrets but I hope a good death in this life will give him a much better next life.
According to NASA website, “Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.”
NASA’s definition of global warming is misleading for a very specific reason. It is placing the primary responsibility of global warming on fossil fuel burning. While it is true that releasing trapped carbon in fossils back into the atmosphere has led to the greenhouse effect and increase in Earth’s surface temperature, global warming has to be understood from a much larger perspective.
From the smallest microorganisms to the blue whales, every living being generates and emits heat from its body. We consume food, break it down for providing us energy and release that energy as heat into our surroundings when we do our activities. In order to understand Earth’s surface temperature, we have to first select areas in all geographic locations, measure heat generated by every organism except humans in those areas and extrapolate the results to find out the total heat generated by all animals except humans over a specific period of time. There is a good reason to exclude humans from this exercise.
Except the animals that live in packs, all other animals try to keep distance from their own kind and from other animals except during breeding time. Being territorial about food is one reason and the other reason is, as population density increases, heat released from their bodies become amplified. Understanding body heat is easy. In a room cooled by A/c, the room will be moderately cold when there are more number of people and as more people leave the room the remaining people will start feeling colder. Also, greater population density results in faster spreading of diseases. Predator-prey relationships and diseases are two major ways how nature enforces population control on animals. So measuring the population of each animal and the amount of heat released from the body of each animal would give a good account of how much heat animals contribute towards Earth’s surface temperature. This is another reason why population control in nature is important because population control will ensure heat released from the body of animals will not significantly add to Earth’s surface temperature.
We have not only broken all laws of nature we have done lot more things that are mind boggling and incomprehensible. Earth is 70% water and 30% land of which 10-15% land is habitable. 8 billion and growing human population is jostling to live in this small percentage of land. Our perpetually increasing population density is amplifying all our body heat and to add to this, any disease could manifest into an epidemic and pandemic in no time. But it is not just our body heat that is contributing to Earth’s surface temperature. Every single creation of ours, from the smallest light bulbs to mobile phones to the largest aircrafts and rockets are burning fuel and generating heat. We are not just polluting Earth with heat generated from carbon emission, we are also creating heat from sound, light, breeding different types of cattle and poultry for our dietary needs and many more types of pollution and every type of pollution is generating copious amounts of heat all of which adds to Earth’s surface temperature. Simply put, the most significant and largest pollutant we are creating is heat.
To add to all of this, we are cutting down trees and destroying forests. Trees absorb harmful rays from the Sun and when they are gone, those harmful rays also end up heating Earth. So there are two ways in which Earth is getting heated now. Earth is getting bombarded by more harmful rays from the Sun and by the increase in Earth’s surface temperature and we are contributing significantly in both.
When we speak about climate change we have to take all of these into account. In our rich history, there is a great example of climate change if our population decreased suddenly and consequently, forest grows back. The Spanish Inquisition in the Americas in the 16th century eradicated 90% of the local population due to wars, famines and epidemics and forests grew back in the millions of hectares of human settlement areas. Research points to a global temperature drop in the 17th century which adversely affected Europe resulting in famine and epidemics and this is being correlated with what had happened in the Americas a century earlier.
All conversations about climate change largely revolve around carbon emission and the need for carbon neutrality. This is not just a very narrow way of looking at global warming but also a misleading one as well. Our exploding population and everything we are creating are all adding to global warming. Population control is no longer the solution. If human species has to survive, human depopulation is the only way. Most of us will have to die for some of us to survive. Otherwise, receding forests and increasing human population will increase Earth’s temperature to a point where Earth will become uninhabitable. But, long before it goes that bad, something else will happen. There is a natural disaster that will happen if Earth gets heated up like it is getting now – Earthquakes. Oceans when heated up will cause underwater earthquakes resulting in tsunami. There are ancient tribes that believe the world has been destroyed completely 3 times in the past and the 4th one is imminent which will be caused by cataclysmic earthquakes.
We need broader conversations about climate change caused by all the heat created by us and the consequences leading to global awareness programs with the clear message that Earth is already overloaded with us and can take no more of us. Without this, all conversations are useless.
News of layoffs from Silicon Valley heavyweights and the startup world are grabbing headlines and eyeballs each day now. Professional social media platform LinkedIn is inundated with posts from laid off employees expressing anguish at the way they were locked out of company premises and office computer networks abruptly. There are several reasons for what has been happening but it would be better understood by first looking at business fundamentals and other underlying factors.
All companies aspire to grow their revenue and profit margins Year-On-Year (YOY) and this is the mandate of their top executives. Business strategies are created for both revenue generation and cost saving (money saved is money created) based on market analysis and macroeconomic conditions. This results in the initiation of projects which when executed results in the development of products, services, etc which can either be commercialized and monetized to generate revenue or used internally to increase efficiency and thereby reduce cost to companies. Bigger companies will have multiple projects and startups will be mostly working on developing a single product/service. Now, there are business evaluation methods (NPV, IRR) to establish if a project can be successful but there can be hurdles during project execution, introduction of similar products/services and other market changes, changes in macroeconomic conditions and availability of funds that can fail the project and failure of companies in case of startups.
There is a business evaluation model called PEST which is used to analyze macroeconomic conditions to determine the success or failure of a business initiative. PEST stands for Political-Economic-Social-Technological. PEST was later extended to PESTEL to include Ecological and Legal factors. Ecological can be largely divided into two factors – natural disasters and diseases. Companies have traditionally ignored ecological factors during business evaluations. The first time I came across ecological factor becoming relevant was after the devastating Mumbai flood in 2005. A client that had outsourced its IT operations to a service provider based out of Mumbai asked for a disaster recovery (DR) team to be set up in Bangalore. But diseases were completely ignored.
When the COVID pandemic struck in 2020 and countries went into lockdown, supply chains got massively disrupted. Companies were forced to modify their strategies and operations with immediate effect or close down. As the lockdowns extended, many of the ongoing projects became reduntant temporarily while new business opportunities started coming to the fore. Online home delivery and educational platforms popped up and thrived. Hiring increased substantially to implement and support new projects. It was evident that lockdowns had to end or would cripple economies of countries but where companies seem to have grossly mistaken is in their assumption that businesses would not or take a long time to return to pre-covid situation. My understanding is, if businesses had done their evaluation by considering ecological factors and specifically the factor of diseases and understood the implications, the world would not have had to go through what it had to for two years of the pandemic.
It is well known that majority of projects initiated by companies and majority of startups fail. Companies try to absorb employees in failed projects into other projects whereas startups are left with no option but to let go off their employees. But organizational consolidation amid fears of impending economic recession, disruption caused by Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising inflation and interest rates have resulted in the layoffs we are seeing now. There are different categories of employees that have been impacted now.
1) Employees on bench – Employees who are not assigned to projects or are out of projects and yet to get new projects are assigned to bench where they are trained on new technologies and topics while they continue to receive their monthly salaries. Normal practice is, most employees on bench get assigned to new projects and those who don’t are let go after a specific period of time. When layoffs due to consolidation is initiated, bench employees are the first ones to be affected.
2) New/recent joiners – When projects slow down or become redundant, new/recent joiners get impacted first when projects are shut down or team sizes are trimmed.
3) Senior employees – Yes and no surprises. All companies expect their employees to upskill themselves along with increasing experience and move up the ranks. While it is true that the corporate pyramid becomes thinner with increasing height, employees who choose to do nothing or continue staying in specific roles become redundant with time and replaceable. In a previous job, I have seen experienced people of a specific skill being let go and people with less experience of the same skill being hired to fill up those roles. Senior resources are needed in projects only till the time the projects become stable and all information is documented. Then projects can be run easily with a couple of senior people and team members with lesser experience who need to be paid far less salaries. This is also a way for the companies to reduce expenses and make the projects profitable. Moreover, new graduates are leaving colleges with the knowledge of latest technologies and who need to be paid only a fraction of what the senior employees are being paid. This is also making senior employees redundant and expendable.
Top executives are needed for businesses to ride through the storm so they will not be let go off now. In the recent past, some companies were offering high severance packages for top executives to take voluntary retirement because new and young leaders bring fresh perspectives into leadership roles.
It is important to note here that as employee headcount increases the number of internal staff in human resources, facilities and other departments also increase. These employees play no part in revenue generation and add on to cost to the company. Employee reduction also results in the reduction of internal staff count.
Do we need to fear or worry about layoffs? Lush green forests dries out in the summer heat and just a single spark of fire is needed to burn it to the ground. All that smoke and heat, in turn. rises up and brings rain. From the ashes, life springs up again. Life is cyclic and this is the Universal truth. Difficult times force us to introspect and is the time for reality check. These are the times which help us to understand if we want to learn something new and get back into the market or find our true passion and set our lives in a new direction. Any transition is difficult and no one is living happy, peaceful and stable lives which is what everyone is aspiring for. Challenges will come in everyone’s life at some point in time. Overcoming them and moving forward is what makes us truly successful.
It all started post World War II when businesses slowly got back on their feet, from the manufacturing sector & into the government sector. Work hard on 8-10 hour shifts through the entire professional life, save as much money as possible & the dream was to own a house by retirement. Owning a car was status symbol. When banks made enough & more money they started giving out loans for houses & cars & flipped the dream. Now everyone is vying to own a house & a car before they are 30. A few underlying factors subtly changed:-
1) Saving money in banks changed to repaying loans to banks. It didn’t matter if people couldn’t save for a few months but if repayments on home & car loans get stuck for a few months, banks could simply take away both. Living with that thought in itself creates stress.
2) Saving money for 30 years is commitment without stress but repaying loans for 30 years is lugging stress for the best part of our lives. Now it is simple enslavement to the corporate sector, house, car & everything else bought on loans.
3) More salary means more money goes on to taxes. Add inflation, repayment of loans, supporting aged parents, providing children with quality education & a host of other needs & salary hikes that are insignificant when compared to the ever growing financial needs means people are being forced to moonlight in a second job or run some gigs in parallel to their regular jobs. Add the stress of having to hide their other sources of revenue from their employer.
4) When this entire ecosystem of stress got built, people were sold another dream. Insurance. Keep paying insurance premium & it will take care of medical expenses when people get sick. So now there are hospitals & treatment & no one cares about not getting sick & having wellness centers. The best part of all this is, banks now sell insurance. The entity that is the major contributor to the stress in our lives is taking more money from us with the promise of taking care of us when we are sick. It is a different thing that insurance helps with cashless treatment only in cases of planned treatment. For urgent health issues, we have to pay first & then chase the insurance companies for months who in turn will keep finding ways to reduce insurance payment as much as they can.
Barter system between time & remuneration has existed from the beginning of human civilization. But now, we are having to trade both time & health for money. I see houses everywhere with only aged parents living in them. Their children have all gone to other places, bought houses and settled there. Then there is investment on real estate, taking loans & buying houses/apartments to save on taxes. On a planet with 10-12% of habitable land area we are building far more than we need. Human needs are already spiraling out of control, if we do not see what we are doing to ourselves all the talk of mental health is not going to make sense. Working in night shifts has completely disrupted our circadian clock and is making our body a haven for all kinds of diseases to thrive and spread. Our species is simply going to implode in the not too distant future.
More than a month back, as Dad was walking towards the gym for his cardiovascular workouts one morning, he suddenly became unsteady and ungainly. He had been complaining about general weakness and fatigue for some time. In a couple of days his left side became weak and was unable to move his left hand and walk properly. I took him to a physician nearby who is a M.D and is in his late 70s-early 80s. He did some basic checks on dad (he has all sensations intact on his arm and leg), checked his BP (perfectly fine at 110/80), Dad doesn’t have diabetes (his blood sugar is always less than normal though he can still eat voraciously and devour sweets), so the doctor told us to do some lab tests the report of which was all clear. Then the doctor, suspecting stroke because of possible blood clot in dad’s brain prescribed couple of tablets to make his blood thinner and dissolve the clots and another tablet to improve his nerve functions. Then he told me to improve dad’s diet and take him for physiotherapy sessions. A doctor I know who was the senior doctor at a government hospital and is pursuing P.G in general surgery now told me the weakness could be because of Vitamin D deficiency (Dad hates sun after he had a severe bout of migraine) and asked me to put dad immediately on high dose of Vitamin D tablets once a week and daily calcium tablet.
Dad slowly started feeling better but wasn’t confident about going for physiotherapy sessions so I looked up on YouTube and started basic exercises to strengthen his arm and leg. Then people who know us started getting to know about dad’s condition and were shocked that we did not consult a neurologist and did not do his brain scan. Couple of days back, he finally agreed to go for physiotherapy. The physiotherapist we went to was agitated and demanded us to meet a neurologist, do a scan and then meet him. So I went back to the first doctor and he laughed before prescribing for CT scan. Yesterday we did the scan and everything was fine in the report. The doctor told me dad may have had a Transient Ischemic Attack (TSA) which lasts for a very short period possibly because of minute old clots mentioned in the report. Dad is going to take a while to be back to normal but he has already started moving his hand and is walking better now. The weakness he was complaining about could have been because of Sarcopenia, a condition where people lose skeletal muscle mass and strength due to ageing.
Then the doctor told me something insane. People no longer believe in physicians and clinical diagnosis. They just run to specialists every time they assume something is wrong with them. On top of this they ask for scans and lab tests to be done. Headache for two days and people go on Google, start reading things with no understanding of human anatomy, diseases and their diagnosis and go to doctors suspecting brain tumor and asking for scans to be done. They no longer care or believe in physical examination and diagnostic abilities of doctors no matter how experienced they are. This is what is Googlopathy.
The other doctor whom I spoke to threw a different curve ball at me. A regular doctor or physician could go wrong with his/her diagnosis but it could quickly earn bad reputation for specialists that’s why they are left with no option but to recommend lab tests and scans for every medical issue. We are on herd mentality behavior now where we blindly believe we can be cured only by specialists who charge high fees, do frequent consultation and prescribe tons of tablets, scans and lab tests. Our mindset has changed into believing that when we spend more money on something we will be getting more in return. The specialists are essentially tricking us into exploiting this mindset we have.
Even the regular doctors and specialists are practising Googlopathy now. I had taken dad to a nephrologist in a private hospital a few years back for suspected kidney weakness because his feet were swelling intermittently. The nephrologist, probably in his late 30s-early 40s took his mobile tablet, searched on a website (probably webmd.com) and asked us to do 10 lab tests. I was horrified. With my extremely limited knowledge of medicine and treatment I could have done the same. He did not even bother to ask what dad was experiencing, if he had other health issues, etc. I did the tests and took dad to a nephrologist who was working in a government hospital and was much older (in his 60s). He glanced at the lab report, cast it aside and said older people will develop slight swelling on their feet because of ageing which can be safely ignored.
I told dad the doctor we consulted was experienced enough to send him to a neurologist if he suspected dad had suffered a stroke. The confidence with which he told dad to go home was extraordinary and it came from his wealth of experience which no technology can match. The so called alternate treatment methods such as ayurveda and homeopathy have treated people for hundreds and thousands of years only through diagnosis by understanding the symptoms. Sadly, even those doctors are gravitating towards scans and lab tests now because it makes diagnosis quicker and easier. Our abilities to create and use technological devices is killing our natural ability to do clinical diagnosis.
This degradation is not limited to the field of medicine. Technological devices are destroying all our natural instincts and abilities. Birders use binoculars to identify birds at long distances. Birds are found in specific habitat, the way they perch is different and the shape and size of their wings is different which we can see when they fly. Birders should train themselves to identify birds using these aspects. Doing something the easy way does not mean it is always the best way. Our preference is to eat tasty food but no food in nature is tasty and animals choose food for nutrients not for taste. Our craving for taste has allowed unhealthy food industries to thrive and destroy our health. If we are topping this up with Googlopathy and consuming medicines at will we wont be needing an asteroid strike or nuclear war for our extinction. A bed ridden relative who passed away last year was being fed 17 tablets in the morning (17 you read it right). The line between amusement and horror blurred momentarily for me when I saw it.
This is about my dad’s journey from an active to sedentary lifestyle which almost took his life, 8 years of wobbling health and how he is transforming himself now. He is 6 feet tall and had developed a hefty physique with heavy eating and an extremely active lifestyle from his younger years. He always believed that eating heavy is the key to staying healthy and did not reduce his food intake with advancing age. To add to this, we moved from our ancestral house where he was very active to a sedentary lifestyle in our new house. He developed Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) induced heartburns which culminated in a cardiac arrest in 2013. Though he recovered, his health didn’t go back to how it was before. To top it off, he developed additional ailments.
He was advised to follow a salt restricted diet but he misconstrued it as a ban on salt and I started observing radical changes in his behavior. Turned out his sodium level was fast decreasing and in another couple of days, he may have ended up in coma. He had also developed swelling on the back side of his palms and feet. Cardiac conditions could result in decreased flow of blood to the kidneys and the brain would signal the kidneys to start retaining water. Because of the false alarm, water starts getting accumulated first on the hands and feet resulting in the medical condition called edema. It was then that I checked dad’s medicines thoroughly and found out that the medicine for edema, called diuretics which forces the excess water out of the body through urine was never prescribed to him. If left untreated, water will start getting accumulated in the lungs leading to the condition known as pulmonary edema which would have forced dad to undergo bypass surgery. The cardiologist never even referred dad to a nephrologist to get his kidneys checked. To top this off, dad had to visit him once every fortnight and he kept asking me when we are doing dad’s bypass surgery. I understood that his sole objective was to make money by forcing the surgery on dad. I immediately consulted another cardiologist, he referred dad to a nephrologist, was immediately put on a course of diuretics and the swelling went off. Now this cardiologist, whose father is well known in the city as the poor man’s doctor removed some of the tablets prescribed by the previous cardiologist and told dad only to visit him if he develops any further issues. Patients are one source of income for every doctor so how many doctors would tell his patients not to visit him unless it is necessary? Though we didn’t know at that time, dad’s younger brother had similar gastric issues and he underwent angioplasty after he developed cardiac issues but it did not solve his gastric issues. He lost trust in the doctors, stopped taking medicines, eventually water entered his lungs, he refused to do bypass surgery, suffered a stroke and passed away at the relatively young age of 66 years.
Dad’s dream of setting up a restaurant never materialized but the emergence of online food delivery partners helped him set up a home based cloud kitchen in late 2019. Another cardiac arrest, though at a much smaller scale hit him again in 2020. Doctors kept advising him to walk on flat surfaces but where would he find flat surfaces other than at home? He couldn’t go out of the house anymore. I finally realized that medication and care alone was not going to help him. He had to become physically stronger again to handle the heartburns which in turn will make him mentally stronger. So I told him that if he wanted to be ambitious at this stage of life and run a business, he will have to put priority on his health first and persuaded him to join a gym for cardiovascular exercises. But making him invest himself in it was important so I made him buy walking shoes. He couldn’t even walk for a minute when he started on the treadmill but he slowly started picking up and started working out on the air glider.
When I dragged him and embarked on this journey 7 months back, little did I know it was going to become probably the most important project of my life. Dad didn’t have any hope of regaining his health so I gave him a milestone, kicking out the tablets he has been on for the past 8 years. He was taking 4 tablets, 2 for blood pressure, a blood thinner & one for cholesterol. I didn’t know how much time it could take, but I woke up at 4 in the morning 5 days a week, pushed him out of bed and into the gym. I also had to figure out the most effective workout schedule for him. Last week he started complaining of headache after taking tablets for blood pressure. I immediately got him checked without taking tablet and it was 110/80, the same as mine. Checked again the next day morning without tablet and it was 130/80. Then I took him to his cardiologist and it was 135/80. Blood pressure rises as the day goes on and falls as dusk approaches. One glance at his ECG report and a cursory check of his heart using the stethoscope was enough for the cardiologist to stop one tablet for blood pressure. The headache has vanished. One tablet down and it is a momentous achievement in such a short span of time. Another 6 months and all other tablets could be gone too. Doctor also said he need not worry about his kidneys as he is active now. He used to feel a bit shaky when walking and that has reduced after he stopped the tablet. He used to get heartburns while cooking when we open our cloud kitchen but not anymore. He was always fearful that reducing food will make him weak. I have put him on a diet of banana and papaya in the evening which has improved his digestion and decreased heartburns considerably. Now he knows that he has to eat healthy and keep working out to get rid of the tablets to become fit.
He is navigating through the treadmill and air glider easily now and I have put him on the machine fly to make his chest and back muscles stronger.
Now I am contemplating upgrading him to weight training exercises slowly. So how about a new milestone? Participating in a body building competition for 70+ guys? He is aghast at the thought. I asked him how many people can do what he is doing so why not be ambitious about it? Looks like my project may have just started after all.
I am writing this to let the world know about the importance of staying fit throughout our lives. My mom started going for morning walks after dad started going to the gym. She has lost weight, started feeling better and her thyroid condition has improved. It is also important to understand that the medical system we follow only treats us when we are sick. Hospitals are not wellness centers and very few doctors advise us to live healthy lives and prevent diseases. Ironically, cardiologists check the condition of the heart by making patients undergo treadmill test (TMT) but they do not advise patients to work out on treadmill every day. We have been living our lives as we used to, none of us have got infected with COVID or any other disease and we are yet to take our vaccine shots. Goes to show how important daily routine, exercises, healthy food and mental health are to maintaining a robust immune system which in turn will protect us from diseases.
We have all been conditioned to believe that our value is in the money we have, our jobs, size of our house, size and number of cars, quantity of gold we possess, etc. and our social status is measured by these parameters which forces us to chase them our entire lives. What we conveniently forget or ignore is, we are social animals and what is truly important for us are health and relationships. Only when we have these will all our accomplishments truly make sense in our lives. We don’t really have to take any extra effort to improve our lives, we just need to understand this one simple fact.
When established norms and widely accepted views are questioned and challenged, it has become normal to call them conspiracy theories. The term conspiracy theory has a predecessor. Heresy. Anyone opposing the views of the Church were branded as heretics and burned on stakes. Apparently more than 50,000 women who opposed the patriarchal rules of the Church were branded as witches and burned on stakes during the Dark Ages. One of the most famous ones is Nicolaus Copernicus who was admonished by the Church for his heliocentric theory which displaced Earth and put Sun at the center of the Universe. The most famous conspiracy theories that have been going around for the past several decades are about aliens and UFOs.
Two conspiracy theories have taken hold of the world from the time the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
1) The COVID-19 virus was released from the virology lab at Wuhan in China and it did not jump from the bats to us as we have been repeatedly told 2) The objective of the COVID-19 virus and the vaccines for it is part of the depopulation agenda, to wipe out most of our population
I have been getting bombarded with messages on social media about these for quite some time now so I finally decided to take an objective look at them. We know Copernicus was ridiculed and his work was banned for a few centuries before sensibility dawned on the scientific community as knowledge about science progressed. So it doesn’t matter if what are called as conspiracy theories are true or not. Throughout our history, majoritarian views have always been opposed and we have fought relentlessly for dissenting voices to be heard. An opposing view to an established norm allows us to look at the other side and maybe change or improve the existing situation.
So, Was the COVID-19 virus released from a lab? I would rephrase the question and ask “has our medical and technological knowledge become sophisticated enough to create and release a new virus from a lab?” We do have enough knowledge now to splice up our genes in the lab, not all genes but we are on the way. We are working on repairing defective genes which means we can get rid of genetic diseases. This means we must have developed the capability to manipulate and alter the genetic structure of at least some of the organisms. Medical community would endorse the need to play around with microorganisms so that new medicines and vaccines can be developed to fight potentially new diseases. But there is a catch here. Medicine is a profit making industry. Creating new medicines and vaccines is innovation for pharmaceutical companies. There are two problems with it.
1) The medical system we follow now is treatment based and not wellness based. Prevention is better than cure no longer holds water now. We have become too busy to worry about our health. Health is wealth has become wealth is health. There are hospitals and we have insurance policies. So we live with the belief that when we fall sick we will be adequately protected. The reality is nowhere near to it. Our immune system is and has always been our first line of defense. The caveat with the immune system though is, it needs to be constantly engaged with the natural elements. That is the only way it can learn about new diseases and variants of existing ones and develop immunity against them. Medicines and vaccines are boosters for the immune system, a tiny external intervention for the immune system to learn about new diseases and protect us faster.
2) When we fiddle with microorganisms and alter their genes in labs, no amount of safeguards are enough. If the virus manages to escape in any way, it will mutate immediately when exposed to nature. A disaster in the form of an epidemic can start off any time. Because of our global proximity now, it can become a pandemic in no time like we have seen in the case of COVID-19.
So can we mutate and create a new virus in a lab? Yes. Will we release such a virus into nature? We could. After atomic and chemical warfare, biological and cyber space are the new means of waging wars. Was this done with COVID-19 virus? We may never know. If yes, would there be a possible intent? Read on.
Now, is there something called a depopulation agenda? Well, apparently there was. Noah’s story of the Ark is not just a Biblical story. We need to understand a bit of history here. The authors of the Bible have borrowed heavily from ancient Babylonian texts which in turn were written under the influence of even more ancient Sumerian tablets. This is recorded history. Our history goes back even further than this. It is called pre-history. How do we know this? Ancient texts all over the world are written in verses. Pre-history was information handed down to the next generations orally because writing wasn’t invented at that time. What is created as a verse can be recited and sung. Its far more easier to remember and reproduce a story as a song than a remember it as a story.
I guess most people know of Noah’s story. Noah is the Biblical name the name is different in different ancient texts.
So the story goes that the creator Gods of humans left Earth and sent angels (watchers) to watch over our activities and report back to them. Our lifestyle became wayward with time, we procreated randomly creating genetic diseases among us, our population increased manifold and we caused huge destruction to nature. To add to the woes, the angels became enamored with the beautiful women, procreated with them and the children born to them became giants. When the Gods finally got wind of what was happening on Earth, they were enraged. They banished the angels from heaven forever and decided to cleanse the planet of us. So Noah was chosen and tasked with building a boat to house a pair of every animal. Then the world was swept over by floods and everything was destroyed. The plan was to eventually kill Noah and his family , but one God took pity and gave us another chance.
The situation we are in now is eerily similar to Noah’s story. Massive population, random lifestyle, genetic diseases and wanton destruction of nature. We are 7 billion now and the way we are growing we will likely add 2 billion more in another 20-30 years. The planet cannot handle anymore of us. More depletion and destruction of nature will trigger a full scale mass extinction event. Natural disasters will wipe out every living being as nature seeks to restore her balance. It is imperative that our population on the planet decreases significantly. A war will be nuclear this time and will destroy the planet completely. The only way out is large scale mortality through diseases. Here’s a small story to illustrate how larger population is detrimental to our survival.
This is a cat that comes home for food but doesn’t stay and is not domesticated. He came home sick last week. He isolated himself from all other cats, refused to have food and slept for two days. He banked on his immune system to fight off what had afflicted him and used all the blood in his body to power his immune system. He started having food only when he felt better. If we were doing this we wouldn’t be needing lockdowns. But we can’t because we cannot isolate ourselves completely from others because of our huge population thereby making everyone vulnerable to contagious diseases. This, along with the fast depleting natural resources has made our ever burgeoning population the biggest risk for our own existence and is a significant reason for our increasing mortality rate.
Most people above 60 years have comorbidities and life threatening health issues. A large population of people between 18-45 years are leading sedentary lifestyles. Their lives revolve around A/c houses to A/c cars to A/c office buildings in cities every day. Add poor eating and sleeping habits to this with little to no physical activities. These two groups of people have very poor immunity and are vulnerable to any new disease.
So is there an overwhelming case to depopulate ourselves? Yes. Nature controls population of organisms primarily in two ways: 1) Predator-prey relationship 2) Diseases. Our population increase began when we exited nature’s predator-prey food chain which was accentuated after we found ways to treat diseases. Through population control nature imposes the “survival of the fittest” rule on all living beings. Only the healthiest animals procreate and take their species forward. The whole exercise of yearly migration of animals is not just a journey in search of food. Only the ones that survive all the odds during the journey will return home and reproduce. The survival of the species is always important than the survival of an individual and it applies to all organisms. If our massive population has become a threat to the survival of our own species and of the planet then the only option left is to downsize it. Was the COVID-19 virus released intentionally to depopulate us? We may never know.
But the increasing oddities on the ground are hard to ignore. Manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines are demanding indemnity from any adverse short term and long term outcomes of administering the vaccines. That in itself is a huge question on the credibility of the vaccines. Masking, sanitizing and social distancing have to continue even after taking the vaccines, the reason given being current vaccines may not protect us from new variants of COVID-19 virus. If this assumption is true, we are all vulnerable to new variants of small pox, TB, etc. All the vaccines we have taken from our childhood are useless. I asked this to a doctor and all he could do was to smile.
Moreover, this is a video of a new mask that is being developed to protect us from COVID-19 virus. Sneezing is our biological response to foreign substances in our respiratory system just like vomiting is for our digestive system. When we sneeze we instinctively cover our faces. So the first line of defense for contagious respiratory diseases is masks. Governments have imposed using of masks on all of us without specifying what type of masks will protect us from the virus. Use of random masks will not protect us from any diseases. The logic behind making a mask for protection from viruses like COVID-19 is very simple. Either destroy the viruses on the inside or outside of the masks. Why did no government take the initiative to build such masks? Why did they start vaccination drives with vaccines the efficacies of which are not yet clear? Finally, are we saying it took us two years to come up with a mask and less than a year to make vaccines?
Ironically, if some among us were to indeed execute a depopulation program, it wouldn’t be the healthiest and strongest among us. Rather, it would be the ones with money and power, the ones who have the means and the wherewithal. It is money and power that decides how strong we are in society now and not our immune system. If the healthiest among us become casualties of the depopulation program and only the wealthiest among us with lesser immunity survive, where will this lead the future of our species to? Looks like a high octane topic of debate.
I am hoping that the COVID-19 pandemic and the two conspiracy theories will start entrenching in all of us the need to improve and strengthen our immune system and the realization that only a strong immune system will make us healthy and protect us from diseases. About the rest, let the debates and flow of social media messages continue.
I had a very interesting conversation with a friend (who is going to read this) about whether COVID-19 virus is a zoonotic virus or a man made virus. There are many articles and videos that have been circulating on social media proposing to provide evidence that the virus was created in the virology lab at Wuhan, China. What my friend is worried about is, if these allegations turn out to be true, it means we have interfered in nature and tampered with the natural evolution of a microorganism. He wants strict regulations on biological testing similar to the ones imposed on nuclear and chemicals testing so that we do not end up engaging in a biological war with one another like the atom bombs in Japan and chemical warfare in Vietnam. My answer to him was in 2 parts.
1) Human interference in nature
We started interfering in nature when we started cutting down trees to build our houses. We did not pause to wonder why animals are not doing the same. Rather, in our arrogance of having superior intelligence we looked down upon the supposed lower intelligence of animals. We never wondered from where did we get this ability which no other living being on the planet has. Nature will never give the intelligence and ability to any living being to destroy nature’s ecosystem.
Nature is a closed ecosystem which means everything that is born or created within it will or has to return to it. Animals build nests using items available in nature which gets recycled by nature after use. When we die our bodies are recycled by nature. Fully knowing this, we created tar, concrete, plastic and a zillion other things nature cannot recycle and knowing that nature cannot recycle our waste, we keep forcing it on nature which nature has duly started returning to us during natural calamities. So we have come a long way to worry about human interference in nature now.
2) Tampering with the natural evolution of a microorganism
My friend believes biological testing in labs is essential to understand about microorganisms so that we can build medicines and vaccines to protect us from them. First of all, every organism in nature is in continuous evolution. So there is no end to biological testing. Why are animals not doing the same? This is not about higher or lower levels of intelligence. Nature has a sophisticated and effective way of handling this situation. Immune system. Diseases are simply conflicts between organisms of higher and lower orders. All living beings when exposed to nature will constantly be under the attack of microorganisms. Immune system keeps learning about more microorganisms and becomes more robust in protecting us. So we do not need to test microorganisms in labs for our protection from them. The bigger problem with this is, not everyone will have good intentions. These genetically modified microorganisms could be stolen and released into nature. We will have no control over them once they are in nature and consequences could be catastrophic. We have found ways to splice genes in lab and now we are working towards repairing genes in human genetic structure that cause diseases. I am all for it because it can cure genetic diseases like diabetes permanently. But any lab experiments that can potentially involve nature has to be strictly forbidden. Even if COVID-19 is a man made virus and we let it out into nature, did it affect nature? No animal died because of it. 3 million humans and counting have died. Every time we go against nature, the consequences will come back to bite only us.
Most importantly, it is inconsequential whether the virus is natural or man made because in either case it has broken the glass houses we have been living in for so long. This goes back to the conversation I had with another friend (who is also going to read this). Every aspect of human life has become untenable in nature. Our food habits have become extremely inorganic and unhealthy, our sleep cycle has vanished and our entire lifestyle is in disarray. We are no longer in communication with nature because of which our immune system gets to learn nothing and has literally become idle. One virus of moderate virulence has raised a question mark over the survival of our species itself.
Diseases are one of the ways in which nature controls population of every living being. So death is inevitable. Greater the size of population higher the mortality rate and more number of reasons to die. If diseases don’t kills us, accidents, murders and so many other reasons are lurking. We do not even know if we will wake up from our sleep the next day. Common reasons for death during sleep – silent cardiac arrest, brain hemorrhage.
But we are “existing” in a blissful fantasy world. We take housing loans and agree to pay EMIs every month for the next 20-30 years. In interviews, candidates are asked ” where do you find yourself in the next 5 years or what are your professional goals for the next 5 years”. Education is linked to profession which is linked to money which is linked to social status. Health has become irrelevant. We take insurance policies and swagger around in arrogance that when we fall sick, the policies will take care of us. Health is wealth has become wealth is health. We rush to hospitals where we get treated when we fall sick. Note : Hospitals are not places that ensure we do not fall sick. Doctors do not take us off tablets and tell us how to become healthy naturally. We no longer seem to remember that prevention is better than cure. Moreover what diseases are doctors and hospitals curing us from anyways? We are given medication that suppress diseases. There is still no cure available for even common cold. Google and see the classifications of headache. There is a type of headache called stress headache the cause of which medical community has no clue about. This is how little the medical community and doctors who treat us know about human anatomy. Medication for pain simply interrupt the signal to the brain that indicates pain so we stop feeling pain. This is called workaround in other professional jobs and cannot even be considered as treatment. Suppressing a disease and keeping it inside the body long enough can result in the genetic information of the disease getting encoded into our genetic structure. This is how genetic diseases are created and passed on to future generations, thereby making the entire species unhealthy. This is what has happened to us which animals with their lower intelligence avoids by identifying and abandoning/killing unhealthy offspring.
Even more ironical are the facts about medication and vaccination. Diabetes is a genetic disease and medicines only help to keep it under control. Can pharmaceutical companies manufacture medicines and vaccines to repair our genetic structure? Human body is tuned to absorb vitamins from nature and food on its own. I have read about people in western countries who live on diet of vitamin tablets completely ignorant of the fact that human body is incapable of absorbing vitamins from tablets properly. I have heard of people suffering from Vitamin D deficiency in India which is literally unbelievable. I can understand this in the colder western countries where there is less sunlight but in a tropical country all it takes is soaking our body in sunlight for a while. We are all made to believe that medication will cure us and vaccines will protect us from diseases. In reality, medication and vaccines are top ups for our immune system, a miniscule external intervention which provides more information for the immune system to fight diseases and protect us. If our immune system is already weak, medicines and vaccines can never protect us on their own.
These are the reasons why keeping ourselves healthy is so important for the survival of our species. We have no control over diseases and death. The healthcare system we have does nothing to protect us from diseases. All we can do is to stay healthy, maintain a good immune system and hope that it will protect us from diseases. We cannot run away from nature, live inside concrete buildings and hope to have a good immune system. People are being kept under lockdown now and are being told that staying at home will keep them safe from COVID-19 virus when the reality is governments are completely unprepared to handle a health crisis. Staying at home without enough physical activity and away from nature can drastically affect our immune system and make us vulnerable to other diseases. It is mind boggling that almost the entire human race has become so ignorant about themselves, about nature and have become so gullible to live in such an artificial world.
There is a business evaluation model called PESTEL which evaluates uncertainties in the business environment such as political situations, economic conditions, etc to find the associated risks that can impact business prospects. The 2nd E in the model is for evaluating environmental factors which includes natural disasters and diseases. Very less importance is given to this as I came to understand from the experience of a local businessman. Even though some corporate companies do give importance to natural disasters, diseases are largely ignored. We saw how much companies have struggled after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and it has taken a year for employees to get used to working from home.
Just like fever is our immune system’s indicator that a foreign organism has entered our body, nature sends out signals when there are changes in its environment. Animals understand signs of natural disasters in advance and are able to protect themselves. We have lost that ability somewhere along our evolution. I do not know how useful is our higher intelligence if it does not even help us to survive in nature. I do not know if we are too late to break out of the glass houses we are living in and return to nature, but it is never too late to try.
Dr. Shankara Chetty, a doctor of Indian origin living in South Africa has done what should have been done at the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. He has conducted clinical diagnosis to understand the different stages a COVID-19 patient goes through & has treated more than 4000 patients without hospitalization & oxygen requirement.
What has helped him conduct the study are two reasons.
1. He lives in a community which has no access to hospitals nearby & had to place their trust in him.
2. He has limited access to medicines so he had to find out the best treatment method based on the medicines he has access to.
He instructed everyone to approach him as soon as they got symptoms of cold & fever. When he started treatment, he observed that health of patients improved by the 3rd/4th day & for some, fever reappeared on the 6th/7th day. They started experiencing dyspnea (breathlessness) in the next 1/2 days. As soon as patients started reporting reappearance of fever, he put them on steroids to prevent dyspnea. He is attributing dyspnea to allergy in the lungs (caused by the creation of large amounts of cytokines). Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has adopted a similar strategy & has revised its guidelines for COVID treatment. Patients no longer need to panic, they just have to observe themselves & report any changes in their condition to doctors immediately. Starting to lose smell which was identified by the Delhi government last year as the marker to test for COVID infection could be the indicator leading to dyspnea.
A contagious virus having high virulence and also having a high rate of recovery is an anomaly. High rate of infection of a virus like small pox always leads to high rate of mortality. All the panic and fear was created because no proper clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 virus was conducted because of which people could not be educated and made aware of the symptoms and the need to observe themselves. People need to be quickly made aware of this so that they do not delay in consulting doctors as soon as they have symptoms of cold and fever and starting medication.
The takeaway from the doctor’s diagnosis is not about the medicines he used. Medicines and their dosage could vary depending on demography, people’s immunity, etc. That is for the doctors everywhere else to figure out. What he wants everyone to look at is his treatment timeline. Steroids have been in use for COVID treatment but when it should be administered for best effect is what he has addressed. Reporting recurrence of fever in the first 7 days is crucial for further treatment. His diagnosis is a blueprint for doctors all over the world to use to treat COVID in the best possible ways.
Ranjeet Menon's Blog 