Modern Life Conveniences Causing Damage to Our Health?

Life styles of human being have changed hugely over the past two centuries. This started about two hundred years ago with industrial revolution. Use of oil and energy created another big change because these changed the pace of life fto very fast. These changes provided a lot of conveniences and luxuries but they have also changed our eating habits, which has adversely affected our health because our genes have been used to what our ancestors were used to for thousands of years. These conveniences have caused unintended consequences because of sedentary life style hence increasing risks to human health.

Let us see some of the changes that have damaged our health:

Over Abundance of Calories and Carbohydrates:
Few thousand years ago our ancestors lived on hunted food and gathered wild plants vegetables. This consisted mostly of protein and fat. Agricultural revolution brought us abundance of carbohydrate in our diet. High fructose corn syrup was added only 50 years ago. This is causing increased disease load in people with diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome.

Lack of Exercises:
Cars and means of communications are added to our lives just about 100 years ago. Fastest means of transport was horse or camel until then. Now we have become sedentary and non-active with cars and airplanes. Remote-controls fax and internet has made us even worse. Our daily walking used lot of calories in past, which has disappeared and those who are conscious of it now need gyms to work out.

Lack of sunshine and Vitamin D:
With facilities of air conditioning and fast transport our exposure to sun has been severely curtailed. In developed world a substantial percentage of us are hence Vitamin D deficient. This is causing a number of illnesses like depression, Alzheimer’s and cancers. Pundits say that Vitamin D is not only a vitamin but an enzyme that works on every cell of the body.

Radiation:
Our experimentation with radiation is also only about a century old when we started finding the radioactive isotopes. Our experience of radiation started with bombing of Japan in WWII and then three accidents in nuclear reactors since then. With such minimal experience we are thinking to embark on having major part of our need of electricity with nuclear power plants, which is frightening.

Genetically Modified (GM) foods:
We have embarked on this without enough experience and we do not know how it may hurt us. We need to know its long term implications before it is allowed universally.

Hormone supported animal rearing:
Major part of our meat and chicken now comes from farms where hormones and unknown chemical feed stocks are used to fatten the birds and animals. These substances are consumed by us every day with our food.

Chemicals and fertilizers:
These are now major industries to provide us food. The chemicals in the form of fertilizers and pesticides are ingested by us with our food on daily basis. Aside from that the chemicals produced in industries as by-products are disposed in water channels eventually consumed by humans through fish meals.

Possible ways to avoid damage to our health:

1. We should avoid excessive calories and carbohydrate to avoid diseases.
2. We all need to exercise regularly to keep fit, burn calories and avoid insulin resistance.
3. We need to make our own natural Vitamin D by exposing ourselves to sunlight for a few hours a day.
4. It is wrong to allow something in our food like GM foods, about which we do not know enough. We must discourage its use until we are sure.
5. Natural and synthetic chemicals are growing in number by millions. We should restrict use of unknown chemicals and of those known to hurt.
6. Radiation is a new issue from last century. We have accepted its use despite that we know it causes cancer. We need to have more information about it.

Our addiction to sweet taste (Carbohydrates and Sugars) 

“Let Food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” – Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)

We must use logic, reasoning and common sense to stop hurting our health.
Let us look at a few facts: Mankind has been living on this planet for many millions of years if you believe in theory of evolution or about ten thousand years if you believe in religious scriptures, from Adam and Eve until now. Either way, we see first mention of sugar in history 500 AD and not before. People used to eat all that was available on daily basis, hunted animals and birds to berries, plant leaves and berries.

So it seems that for thousands of years our ancestors must have had a moderate amount of carbohydrates in vegetables and berries but sugar from sugar cane  started only about 1500 years ago and that from beet just over a hundred years ago. Separated fructose is yet more recent innovation of 1960s from Japan and very quickly picked up by beverage industries because it is sweeter than sugar and yet cheaper than that.
Beverage and fruit juice industries made fructose so prevalent that sweet taste has not become only human weakness but probably turned into an addiction also. Hence sugars, which was not part of our diet for most of our existence on this planet has relatively suddenly become the main component of our calorie consumption.

Yet another fact is lost in history is that in 1931 Otto Heinrich Warburg was awarded Nobel Prize for the discovery of the fact that cancer cells thrive on glucose. Since then a number of alternate therapies of cancer have been tested with this discovery in mind with some success. Using Laetrile (bitter almonds and apricot pits), which contains Nitriloside is one of them. It is claimed that Nitriloside combines with Beta-Glucosidase, an enzyme within cancer cells and create Hydrogen Cyanide and Benzaldehyde, both of which are poisons. As these are released within the cancer, they kill the cancer cells. Nitriloside rich foods include apricot kernels, lima beans, sprouts, lentils, black-eyed peas, walnuts, brown rice, black berries etc. Another is Hydrazine Sulfate (HS) promoted by Dr Joseph Gold a research scientist of NASA. He promoted HS to stops glycogenesis (formation of glucose from protein) to starve cancer cells.

Despite that we know this relationship of cancer and glucose, our sugar consumption has grown four times per capita in the past one hundred years; some literature puts this increase to almost 400 times in last 200 years. Fructose syrup, which is recent innovation of 1960s, has taken up half of sugar's place in our intake.

All the serious diseases like Diabetes, Obesity, Cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer, ADD and Cancers seem to be increasing in same proportion as the increase of sugar and Carbohydrate consumption. And increased sugar consumption is directly related to our new life style indulging in fast foods, processed grains, Vit D deficiency, increased exposure to various chemicals and man-made radiation.

We must plan seriously to prevent the increasing disease load. We may not have a direct proof but there are no doubts that all the circumstantial evidence points to the increased sugar consumption as primary reason for increasing diseases load along with other factors for our present dilemma.

Sedentary life style taking toll of our health

ALL ABOUT EXERCISES AND THEIR BENEFITS

Consult your doctor before embarking on any exercise program

Modern Life Style:
One of the prices that we are paying for the modern life style is profound inactivity in our daily life. Industrial revolution brought in the system wherein people work for large industries and their corporate offices. Those who worked for themselves or in industries preserved the manual activities to some extent. But those people working in offices and shops gradually have gotten used to sedentary life styles. Other facilities like remote controls, garage door openers, and pilot lights in stoves etc went further in people taking to chairs and becoming couch potatoes.

 Our Genetics:
Our bodies are used to activities. In olden days there were no gyms and they were not necessary either because people would do enough activities during the day. They used hands and body muscle to do hard work. They walked long distances because the fastest ride was horse or camel. As the sedentary life set in late 1800s, people got used to inactivity. This probably has become the cause of many diseases like cardio vascular diseases, diabetes, obesity etc. We need to correct our life styles and get back to activities through sports or exercises to maintain our health.
 Popularity of Fitness clubs:
It seems that the fitness gyms started sometime around 1950s. By that time the sedentary life styles started creating adverse effects on the health. Public awareness increased with the medical advice. Those who were used to doing a lot of manual work did not need this. But those who were working in offices needed such facilities.
 Benefits of any exercises;
Exercise of any kind will help circulation of blood in the body and make you feel good. If nothing else a stroll or a walk in the neighborhood for about half an hour a day will help. If you are overweight or have tendency to be obese, or have diseases like coronary artery, blood pressure, diabetes, burning calories by cardio exercises and resistance exercises are important and makes your muscle better tuned for insulin by reducing insulin resistance.
 Objectives of work out and fitness activities:
To keep body active
To lose weight
To increase heart rate to a maximal level
To replace fat in muscle with protein
To reduce insulin resistance in muscle for utilization of glucose
 To meet above objectives usually two different types of workouts are suggested; Let us try and understand the details of such exercises.
 Cardio exercises
Purpose of this exercise is twofold,
a)      To burn calories: You need to have some goal of burning calories every day. I burn about 150 calories in about 20 to 30 minutes on a trade mill.
b)      To increase heart rate safely: This is important to understand thoroughly, because, you may do more harm than good. You must have a pulse meter on the machine and keep the heart rate checked. There is a generic formula that can be used by almost all. However, those with heart conditions must check with their doctors for their ideal maximum heart rate. Formula is 220 – your age = Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) that you may go to. With heart conditions you may want to stay below 90% of the MHR. If you are starting cardio now perhaps it is safer that you do not go beyond 80% of the MHR. For example I am 70, so 220 – 70 = 150 id my MHR. I stay at 120, that 80% to 135 that is 90% of 220.

In my personal case, while doing cardio exercise, after a little warm up, I start on the tread mill with maximum incline (which is usually 15) and a slow speed of 3 miles per hour. As my heart rate rises to my MHR of 120 to 135, I reduce the speed to 2.5 miles and then if necessary also reduce incline to keep the heart rate within that range.
I see many persons running at 5 or 6 miles an hour with zero incline. They may be training for marathon run. I do not intend to run any marathon and joints are vulnerable at high speeds of running. So, if 2.5 miles raises my heart rate to my MHR range with proper incline, I do not see any reason to run faster.

 Resistance exercises or weight training exercises:
Purpose of such exercises is to build muscle by replacing fat with protein in them. It is claimed that protein keeps on burning calories even when at rest. Whether that is true or not, good muscles surely make you look good and make you feel nice. More important though is the fact that the muscle fibers are made more sensitive to insulin and hence help you control your blood sugar and diabetes.
Objective: Build and Develop Muscles, Push weights, Pull weights, Lift weights: Any activity that you normally do for a little while is stretched over longer period becomes generally resistance or muscle building exercise.
PRECAUTIONS:
1. You must ensure that you do the activity only long enough to make your muscle ache or burn and no more. If it is prolonged it may cause tear of muscle fiber and hurt you.
2. You must also not to exercise the same group of muscles for about 48 hours, so that they have enough time to repair and regenerate the injury of stress from exercises.
 To achieve this you need to use maximum weight and do 10 to 15 repetitions in each set and do 3 to 6 sets depending on your fitness.
 Do you need to join the fitness clubs? ;
To accomplish your objective of becoming active, burn calories and have muscle training you do not need to join the fitness club, unless you are planning to be an athlete and compete in championships. However, it is true that if you go to gym, people working out there will motivate you to do your exercises daily. Same or similar beneficial exercise can be done at home with stretch rubber bands, dumbbells, weights, pushups and similar exercises.