Be Well. Whole Well

Your actions hold the key to your inner self, or awareness. Being mindful of yourself, as philosophers testify, or as physicians now endorse, is a big step — it promotes prudence. So, what is good sense other than being fit, well-heeled, and sensible — all by yourself?

- Dr Rajgopal Nidamboor

The idea of ‘self’ is always visible, provided you make an attempt to see it. Most often, however, we are too preoccupied, or busy to observe it. Besides, there are too many distractions in life — so, we seem to lose our sense of self. One good way of becoming aware of oneself is by giving full attention at how you move and what and how you eat.

There is a saying in Eastern medicine: “If you have a good diet, of what use is a doctor? And, if you don’t have a good diet, of what use is a doctor?” So, you may just as well ask: what is ‘good’ diet, or what, in effect, represents a normal diet? This is as simple and complex as disentangling ourselves from our habits and/or getting any real perspective on what has become familiar.

In our jet-set age we seem to have far too much information and not just enough nutrients. Picture this — the glut, or the infinite enormity of research and popular material to learn from. As a matter of fact, one nutrition researcher is of the opinion that in order to keep pace with the volume of studies being published, one would have to read an article every three minutes, seven days a week. Put simply, there is no way even for a super-duper team of experts, writers, authors, and lay readers, to keep pace, although the fact remains that most of our research is related to biochemical nutrition.

BIOCHEMICAL NUTRITION

What is biochemical nutrition, you may well ask. It is the study of the molecular components of food and metabolic mechanisms of the body. In other words, it is the best thing medical science has been able to do — a ready catalogue of molecular nutrients, their highs and lows in a given population. Yet, notwithstanding all the gloss, the basic approach of biochemical nutrition is, paradoxically, shortsighted.