WHY DO WE GRAY WHEN WE GROW OLD?

Amar Nath Mukherjee

The natural somatic changes inevitably occur when we grow old and this change is so common as the ripe old apple or mango along with its changed colour drop into the ground at the end of association with tree.

None of us ever have enquired as to why it so happens; why the Mother Nature is so unkind to us at the fag end of our existence. Does it have any design to eliminate her creation faster or render maximum protection to the senile degeneration of the human being? To obtain the probable answer to this occurrence we must approach to the master craftsman, the nature itself.

If we have observed the life cycle of the trees and fruits around us, we must have seen that at the beginning, blossoms are subjected to cross pollination, following which the fruits come out with a green coating; this green coating is the chlorophyll. This chlorophyll acts as the cook of the tree who prepares food for the trees as well as pack sufficient food stock inside the fruits for the survival of its seeds, chlorophyll prepares food for the tree and fruits with the help of the manure and water which is drawn out from the soil, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the sun’s rays (for effecting photosynthesis); as soon as the preparation of food is complete and packed inside the fruit, the chlorophyll activity is no longer required, consequently chlorophyll ceases to exist over the fruits; now the fruit and particularly its seeds are required to be carefully protected from weathering effect like exposure to intense ultraviolet rays or any oxidative damage.

The nature gradually extends its protective cover for the survival of seeds within the fruit by producing coloured pigments like yellow, red, black, purple which are basically carotenoid, flavonoid and other phytochemicals which are extremely efficient to protect seeds from the external hazards of the environment.

This is exactly the reason for our taking a good amount of coloured fruits in our diet to efficiently effecting protection of our physiological system against oxidative damage as we are ageing.

Over and above the colouration of fruits is essentially required for transportation of seeds to wider areas where the birds and monkeys and other species who are attracted by the colours of the fruits which they eat and strew the seeds far and wide.

If we can extrapolate our inference drawn out of trees and fruits on our senile somatic changes, we shall find that the nature has generously extended the similar protection device to the mankind to alleviate the agony at the twilight of our existence in this world. The first thing visible is that our black hair become gradually white so as to protect us from intense light radiation, whiteness effectively reflects sun’s rays (Astronauts always wear milk-white space suits in their space journey to keep themselves protected from the strong radiation).

The skin start shrinking all over our body so that the entire surface area of the body is substantially reduced, sequel to which, the body’s heat exchange process with the surrounding is significantly reduced. The eyesight becomes weak, in a sense, it is good because our eyesight is inherently very strong to find faults of others and is almost nil to find the fault of our own (This is an injustice the nature has inflicted on us at the beginning); in view of this, with the diminishing vision human being shall be more indifferent to others’ inadequacies.

Similarly our hearing ability also weakened and we shall be able to hear only the matters we are solely concerned with and for the rest we shall be almost deaf. (This is the common complaint we hear from the near relative about the old person); with growing old our teeth start shaking or come out of the gum suggesting us not to take rich foods as the rich and inadequately chewed foods will cause digestive problem, hence this action is taken by the nature.

Now coming to the reproductive system of the body, as this system is no longer as efficient as it used to be in younger age and body is not in a position to withstand the rigour of super sexual activities, the nature substantially reduces the libido or the sexual urge so that one can infrequently engage in this activity mildly, causing no strain to the system. It is therefore inadvisable and absolutely inexpedient to override nature’s design to protect us at the fag end of our existence. On the contrary we should gleefully greet the advent of our senile somatic changes the nature brings about to ameliorate our ageing agonies.

__________________

WHY DO WE GREY WHEN WE GROW OLD?

Another piece of jewel, penned by Tatumoni, will be posted soon; a magnificent article that tells us about the changes mother nature brings about in our bodies through the terminal phase of our life to help us cope with the conditions.

MYTHS & REALITIES

Amar Nath Mukherjee

In our day to day activities, we decide our plan of action as per the ideas and various conceptions that we receive from our social and cultural interactions; during that process at times it becomes rather difficult to differentiate between Myths and Realities, moreover we prepare the actions and try to implement unmindfully resulting which of our actions are ineffective if not retrograde.

Hence it is absolutely necessary to consciously and logically dichotomize between Myths and Realities.

Listed below are some of those conceptions that we adopt in our lifetime:-

Myths	Realities
Nothing will happen physically and mentally once we regularly practice fitness actively.	Nobody knows what will happen to us tomorrow in spite of our having a regular fitness actively but we can surely and certainly reduce the risk factors of various diseases substantially but can not make it zero.
Since nobody can prevent and escape having physiological problems, there is no use practicing healthy lifestyle.	Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is essentially required so as to substantially reduce the intensity of any infliction that may happen, also to effect faster recovery rate and lesser medical dependence.
By practicing Yoga and Pranayam, all types of diseases can be cured, be it Leucoderma or Lymphoma.	No panacea has yet been discovered; Yoga or other systems of workout are meant for prevention of diseases and not for its cure; medical help is required for curing diseases.
Young persons need not practice healthy lifestyle since they are much less prone to diseases.	Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is equally important for all age groups because by maintaining healthy workout one can decelerate the ageing process consequent to which there is a marked improvement of the brain chemistry and body’s immune system will significantly be strong to ward off any psychosomatic problems.
No medicine is required for any disease, particularly Diabetes, Hypertension etc. once one engages in Yoga or other workout.	Diabetes mellitus , Hypertension, obesity can not be permanently cured but can be controlled, hence medical management, workout management and diet management will have to be adhered to for controlling the said pathophysiological symptoms.
A particular type of workout or Yoga is suitable for every one irrespective of the physical status of an individual.	Each one of us is invariably different constitutionally; hence one type of workout may not be suitable for everybody.
Moderate to intensive workout is good for maintaining good health.	Moderate to intensive workout threshold is at variance from one person to another, hence at no point of time one should exceed his comfort zone during workout; since to much of exercise is as bad as not doing anything.
Persons bulging belly is indicative of his affluence.	Perilous paunch is responsible for triggering many gastrointestinal and heart problems on the contrary.
Yoga or physical instructor knows best how much exercise one should do regularly for fitness maintenance.	Nobody knows how much is too much and what is inadequate workout, it has to be determined by a trial and error method; first one should quantify the time duration and also repetition of the body movements and gradually establish ones comfortable workout zone. Instructor can suggest various options suitable for a particular person.
One can remain healthy only by proper diet and medication as and when required.	For keeping a healthy body and mind, exercise is indispensable; with proper diet and workout one can be less dependent on medicines.
Brushing teeth once in the morning is enough for good oral hygiene.	Brushing twice after main meals and once massaging gums is desirable for maintaining good oral hygiene, which is essentially required for a healthy digestive organ and healthy heart.
Tons of theory is equal to an ounce of practice.	Practice with scant knowledge is an extension of ignorance; hence enlightenment on practice is absolutely essential for maximizing the benefits of the action undertaken.
Yoga and Pranayam are holistically enough for maintaining a good health.	There is absolutely no alternative to half an hour brisk morning walk.

______________

ANATOMY OF INDOLENCE

Amar Nath Mukherjee

The most nearest and formidable foe of mankind is Indolence.
Therefore it is extremely important to find out by dissecting Indolence physiologically and psychologically so as to find out its depth and dimension by which it jeopardizes the quality of our life.
Given hereunder a graphical representation of Indolence.

The representations have been made in two parts

(a) Psychological

(b) Physiological

Psychological

Fig. 1

The figure shows that none of the psychological attitude viz will power, enthusiasm or sense of responsibility is strong enough to counteract the dominant power of indolence.

Fig. 2

The figure above shows that if all or at least one mental attitude is strong, the indolence factor is bound to be subjugated.

Now the question is, how we can convert the situation shown is fig 1 to the situation shown in fig2

Let us see first, why we do not get enough enthusiasm to undertake any action / task conducive to improving our quality of life.

The answer is (a) Lack of visible incentive (b) Fear of failure.

These two factors drastically demotivate us against preparing ourselves for the action.

Lack of Incentive

In our day to day activity we are very particular in our profession since we get the tangible incentive in return whereas we do not intend to spend little bit of time for proper maintenance of our health doing some sort of workout because the benefits or the incentives that we get out of the workout are not visible nor we can achieve or perceive the benefits in a short period of time.

Similarly if we feel apprehensive of the failure at the outset we shall never be able to gather enough enthusiasm to initiate any action.

Sense of Responsibility

The sense of responsibility is a strong motivator, which we can only imbibe by getting ourselves, involved with the activity and also increasing our level of awareness buy associating ourselves with the society, actively engaged with certain activity.

Will Power

The will power can be boosted up by getting oneself exposed to congenial environment and also associating onself with a strong motivator who can effectively inspire us for the proposed action we intend to undertake.

Physiological factors causing indolence

Fig. 3

Indolence caused due to physiological problems must be a case for medical intervention; nevertheless, mild to moderate workout under the guidance of the physician is essentially required to get over the fatigue syndrome thereby causing acute indolence.

The nature has provided us with extremely invaluable and spectacularly designed body organs at the beginning of our life process but due to ignorance, improper life style and addiction, we systematically jeopardize our entire physiological system quite earlier than its natural decay.

But the tragedy is that every body wants to remain in a healthy and disease free life, but he can not take required action in this direction only because of his lack of will power, and all pervasive indolence that demotivates and deactivates the individual to perform to reach his earnestly desired destination perhaps the Anatomy of Indolence may help the reader to identity and insulate the cause so as to be able to address our negativity effectively.

------------- H -------------

PHILOSOPHY OF FITNESS

Amar Nath Mukherjee

It is extremely difficult for the people to put an idea into practice till the same is fully convinced and accepted in principle.

As such, philosophy behind fitness will have to be clearly understood so as to make it an integral part of our life style; in the absence of which we shall continue to be the victim of the multimillion-dollar pharmaceutical business cartel of the world. Basically the drug industry is an investment business dependant on the continuation and promotion of diseases. Hence in the final analysis it is found that our ”health illiteracy” largely contributes to our various ailments, premature deaths and incurable diseases.

In view of the above it is essentially important to get into the details of the fundamental principle of fitness, which is termed as its philosophy. Primarily the fitness - philosophy revolves around number of quarries regarding the physiological and physical activity of our body.

The following are the quarries, which need elaboration so as to comprehend the Philosophical concept of fitness.

Those quarries are as follow: -

A. What is fitness?

B. Why fitness is essentially required?

C. What are the physiological/ physical criteria of fitness?

D. How fitness is to be achieved?

What is fitness?

Any of our activity, which strives to make use of, our body parts to its optimum capacity available according to the age and one’s avocation. For example our body undergoes a gradual and progressive loss of its functional capacity, which can neither be stopped nor reversed nevertheless if we do not make use or avoid using our body to its optimum capacity we lose it even faster.

We have a large number joints to facilitate the proper movements of our body but by and large all our joints are not required to be used in our general day to day activity sequel to which our under utilized joints tend to become weaker and weaker, and at times, these joints get stiff and unable to move to the extent those are designed, consequently the muscle mass and its tone near the joints are gradually lost. Similarly, throughout the day we hardly require to take a deep breath or allow our heart to beat faster than its normal sequence, resulting which we gradually lose our lung’s air intake capacity; and when our heart is forced to beat very fast under a severe stressful condition i.e. under flight or fight situation, it conks out in extreme cases or prone to develop various problems.

Finally we shall observe that ageing and our inactivity largely contribute to increasingly intense malfunctioning of our body’s metabolic processes.

Therefore the fitness activity is that practice by which we consciously make use of all our individual body parts to their optimum capacity at least once in a day so as to ensure that those are not deactivated faster than our usual aging process mainly for their under utilization.

Mother nature is very strict in this respect, whatever she has given to us if not in use or underused she will snatch those without any mercy. It is always a “ use it or lose it” proposition.

Why the fitness is essentially required?

The moment we are born our body is continuously subjected to aging process. Under this process a small kid becomes a boy or a girl, gradually they become adolescent, subsequently become a full grown youth to finally become an old man or a woman. This aging process can neither be stopped nor can be reversed nevertheless this inevitable advance to our ripe old age can simply be slowed down and decelerated by our fitness activity, with the help of which one can remain trouble free from the usual ailments associated with our old age.

Moreover the body’s immune system will be working efficiently with the help of which we can ward off umpteen numbers of diseases in our lifetime. Our stress endurance level will also increase along with our fitness activity.

Therefore to respond to the query as to why should we remain fit, the answer is to decelerate the aging process, by which, we shall reap the benefit of remaining asymptomatic in spite of having our gradual degenerative physiological process as we grow old. Over and above with a low level of immunity in our body, due to the lack of fitness, we will not only be prone to various diseases but also our immune system becomes inimical to our body’s healthy cells attacking the normal tissues to destroy them and we suffer a large number of auto Immune syndromes.

Physical/Physiological criteria of fitness

A. One should have physiologically accepted norms of body

weight (Body mass index between 19 and 24)

B. The waistline measurement should be a couple of inches lesser than that of chest measurement.

C. All the major joints namely neck, shoulder, waist, hip etc should be adequately flexible.

D. All the muscles particularly back, abdominal, shoulder, hand and leg should be well toned.

E. One should not be gasping for breathing on small jogging or on climbing stairs.

F. Blood sugar level or Blood pressure should be either normal or
to be kept controlled to the normal level.

G. Regular bowel movement with formed defecation

H. Emotionally or mentally balanced so as to effectively handle the stressful situation.

How fitness is to be achieved?

To achieve desired fitness level the following workouts and the life style changes are imperative. We may define it as five subjects, which are to be taken care of. This is similar to our educational system wherein all the subjects will have to be passed so as to be declared promoted in the examination.

The fitness activity subjects are here as under: -

1. Cardio vascular conditioning

2. Stretching

3. Strength training

4. Relaxation

5. Diet

There are number of fitness exercise in vogue to maintain higher level of fitness but remember, no single type of exercise can cover the entire fitness subjects mentioned above.

Following are the various types of exercise, which are practiced by health conscious people.

· Jogging, Brisk walking Swimming, Deep and controlled breathing etc.

· Isotonic & Isometric exercise with instruments.

· Hatha yoga

· Calisthenics’

· Acupressure

· Tai chi

· Free hand Exercise

· Gymnastics

As stated earlier the benefits obtained in a particular type of exercise can not be derived by other type hence to achieve the over all benefit of the physical activity one must keep in view, the speciality of various work outs to incorporate judiciously so as to cover all the fitness subjects mentioned earlier.

For example brisk walking, jogging, swimming are excellent cardio vascular activity. About twenty minutes to half an hour should be devoted in this activity.

Hath Yoga is very good for stretching and selective circulation of blood supply in the body and also for flexibility. About ten to fifteen minutes can be devoted

Isometric and isotonic exercise are extremely good strength training work out. This activity is unique for maintaining muscle mass and its tone. About eight to ten minutes should be devoted.

Taichi mainly works on central nervous system and have a low influence on muscles. This exercise takes about one and half hours hence it may not be possible to incorporate in daily work out.

Free hand exercise is also for flexibility and over all blood circulation shavasana & dhyanasana i.e. corpse posture & meditation by which one can uniquely achieve a state of relaxation. In other terms the relaxation is an exercise in “ non- activity,” anyone who can master the art of relaxation remains relaxed in every stressful situation. If time permits twenty to twenty five minutes can be spent either early morning or in the evening on meditation for effective relaxation.

Therefore it is advisable to incorporate various type of exercise in our fitness activity schedule to cover all the fitness subjects mentioned earlier.

Daily workout of forty-five minutes covering all the fitness subjects is sufficient to maintain high fitness level of the body.

The last but not the least, our diet plays a very important part in keeping our body fit, our other fitness activity will go haywire if we indulge in indiscriminate eating habits. Hence balanced diet is essential for our body’s weight management.

To conclude I must say that every one of us wants a fit and disease free life as such we shall have to add power in our inherent will so that the desire can be put into regular practice, once we start practising fitness activity we need the dedication to sustain it and by which we shall be able to change our life style and this changed healthy life style will enable us to look after our body and mind in return our body will also look after us for our well being.

___ 000 ___