health - Best Places of Interest

May 16, 2025 Literature/ Art/Music/Education, Book reviews

3 Books I Read for Personal Growth

Reading is one of the best ways to expand knowledge, challenge perspectives, and dive into subjects that shape our lives. Recently, I explored three fascinating books covering health and philosophy. Each offers unique insights into the world around us. I discovered these while recovering from a knee injury.

Here’s a look at what I learned from these books.

*1. Magnesium and Its Benefits**

Magnesium plays a crucial role in our overall well-being, yet it’s often overlooked in daily health discussions. The book I read about magnesium dives deep into its importance for bodily functions. It covers everything from muscle and nerve health to sleep and mood regulation.

**Key Takeaways:**

– Magnesium is essential for over 300 biochemical reactions in the body, including energy production and heart health.

– It can help reduce stress, improve sleep quality, and support bone health.

– Many people unknowingly suffer from magnesium deficiency, leading to symptoms like fatigue, anxiety, and muscle cramps.

– Including magnesium-rich foods like nuts, seeds, and leafy greens in daily meals can naturally boost levels.

This book was an eye-opener on how small nutritional changes can make a big impact on health. If you’ve been feeling sluggish or stressed, magnesium be the missing link!

*2. Thriving Beyond Fifty- Will Harlow

*3. Life Is Short and so is the book -by Peter Atkins

Philosophy often reminds us to embrace the fleeting nature of life, and this book does exactly that. Through thought-provoking reflections, it explores themes of time, purpose, and how to make the most of every moment.

**Key Takeaways:**

– Time is the most valuable resource—we should spend it wisely on things that truly matter.

– Living with gratitude and mindfulness can enhance daily happiness.

– Fear of failure often holds people back; embracing risk can lead to growth and fulfillment.

– Prioritizing meaningful experiences over material possessions leads to a richer life.

This book was a powerful reminder to live intentionally, appreciate small joys, and focus on what genuinely brings fulfillment.

That’s a fascinating pairing of titles!

Thriving Beyond Fifty by Will Harlow seems to be a practical guide. It focuses on health, mobility, and well-being for those over fifty. It emphasizes natural strategies to avoid pain and surgery. This approach aligns with the wish to make the most of one’s time and physical capabilities as life progresses. The title suggests that life is advancing quickly at that stage. Yet, there is still ample opportunity to thrive.

It sounds like a collection of impacting thoughts. It is designed for quick reflection. This encourages readers to focus on what truly matters in their limited time.

These two books are interesting in how they engage with the concept of time. They explore how we choose to live within its constraints. One focuses on extending the quality of our physical time. The other encourages maximizing the meaning and impact of the time we have.

Key takeaways from “Thriving Beyond Fifty”!

Consistency in physiotherapy sounds like a crucial element for maintaining flexibility and mobility as we age. The book provided valuable insights into specific issues like knee and ankle problems. It offered practical PT solutions.

It makes perfect sense. A book focused on thriving in later years would emphasize proactive and consistent care for our physical well-being. Our bodies are our vehicles through life. Maintaining them allows us to experience that life more fully and actively. This is true regardless of age.

The “sit and stand up from a chair” movement is often referred to as a chair squat. It is a cornerstone of functional fitness, especially as we age. It targets several key muscle groups essential for daily life, including:

* Quadriceps: The muscles on the front of your thighs, are crucial for straightening your legs.

* Hamstrings: The muscles on the back of your thighs, are important for bending your knees and extending your hips.

* Glutes: The muscles in your buttocks, powerful hip extenders that contribute significantly to standing up.

* Calves: The muscles in your lower legs, which help with ankle stability and pushing off the ground.

* Core: The muscles in your abdomen and back, which offer stability and control throughout the movement.

Incorporating chair squats into your daily routine can offer many benefits, such as:

* Improved Lower Body Strength: Making everyday activities like getting in and out of chairs, walking, and climbing stairs easier.

* Enhanced Balance and Stability: Strengthening the muscles around your hips and knees contributes to better balance and reduces the risk of falls.

* Increased Functional Independence: Maintaining the ability to do these fundamental movements independently is key to a higher quality of life.

* Greater Flexibility in Hips and Knees: The controlled range of motion involved in chair squats can help keep and even improve flexibility.

It highlights the importance of foundational movements and how consistently practicing them can have a significant impact on maintaining physical ability as we age, aligning perfectly with the title “Thriving Beyond Fifty.

Excellent addition! The goblet squat is a fantastic variation that builds upon the basic squat and offers some unique advantages. By holding a weight (like a dumbbell or kettlebell) close to your chest, it encourages:

* Improved Posture: The weight in front helps to counterbalance your body, naturally promoting a more upright torso and preventing you from leaning too far forward. This can translate to better posture in everyday life.

* Increased Core Engagement: Holding the weight requires your core muscles to work harder to stabilize your body throughout the movement. This strengthens your abdominal and back muscles more effectively than a regular bodyweight squat.

* Greater Depth: The counterbalancing effect of the weight can often allow individuals to squat deeper with better form, leading to a more effective workout for the glutes and quads.

* Enhanced Quad Activation: The upright posture often leads to greater activation of the quadriceps muscles.

* Accessibility: It can be a good progression for those who find regular back squats intimidating or have limitations.

Combining chair squats with goblet squats in your routine provides a well-rounded approach to lower body strength and stability. The chair squat focuses on the fundamental movement pattern needed for daily life. The goblet squat adds an element of load and enhanced core engagement.

*Final Thoughts*

Each of these books offered valuable insights—whether on health or the deeper meaning of life. Reading diverse subjects keeps curiosity alive and broadens perspectives.

Sources-

Magnesium: What Your Doctor Needs You To Know: Including: How to Fight Diabetes, Have a Healthy Heart, and Get Strong Bones!
Thriving Beyond Fifty- Will Harlow
Life is short and so is the book

Kash Pals

Kash Pals loves to read, write and travel, DIY, Coffee, Music, Photography, Family, Friends and Life. She believes as you move through this life…you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life- and travel- leaves marks on you.

Golden Oriole

Functional Food and Beverages: Is it the future of Human Health?

The food and beverage industry is ever evolving. It is also an industry that is directly related to human health and wellbeing. The diversity of the industry has a new and growing trend these days and that is the concept of functional foods and beverages.

It is also a fact that people these days are more prone towards adopting natural and convenient ways to improve and maintain their health. While food industries and manufacturers are responding to this growing demand by bringing into the market, ever increasing numbers of new and unique functional food and drinks products.

What actually are functional foods and drinks?

In simple terms, functional foods and drinks are dietary components or foods that are manufactured to provide additional health benefits on consumption beyond the basic nutrition that is inherently there in foods. These food and beverages aids in taking better control of one’s health as each one is meant to provide specific health benefits.

dietary supplement, functional food — Image is for representational purpose only
IC: fanaticcook.blogspot.com

Dietary supplements or functional food and beverages have biologically active components that imparts health benefits or you may say desirable physiological effects. So, in short, a functional food or drink is a health food that claims to have health promoting or disease preventing properties in addition to the natural supply of nutrients.

The term which was first used in Japan in the 1980’s is now fast emerging and gaining wide recognition amongst all health conscious people around the globe.

So, to sum up we can say that functional foods are not eaten or drunk for the sake of taste or any emotional or traditional reasons but are consumed for their practical health and energy values.

What are the types of functional food and beverage products available in the market? What are their health claims?

In general, functional foods are the ones that included biologically and scientifically processed foods that are fortified with health promoting nutrients. Fermented products with live culture are termed as probiotics, example is yoghurt.

Functional beverages are ready to drink products that are non-alcoholic and may have non-traditional ingredients like herbs, amino acids and vitamins. These beverages are meant to promote energy, immunity and heart health.

Real fruit juices are functional foods. — IC:agrofoodprocessing.com

Functional drinks are preferred more and in demand, as these are ready to drink, easy to carry and convenient in addition to them promoting health.

All functional food and drink products have labels pasted on them telling us about their health benefits and the reasons why we should have them. For example there are certain cereals that claim to have extra fiber and having food with extra fiber can help in reducing the risks of developing certain cancer types.

Also concurrent health issues keep on influencing the market. People these days are very inclined towards fat loss and weight management, heart diseases, gut health, cancers, diabetes and more. The possible means and ways to defend one-self from these health hazards leads to the use of more nutritious and functional foods and drinks.

Functional foods and drugs have been categorized in four types and these are: Whole Foods, Fortified Foods, Enhanced Foods and Enriched Foods.

The health benefit of each type is labelled on the product packaging along with its effects on our body. Say for example, calcium fortified juices is said to reduce the chances of osteoporosis and probiotic enriched foods and drinks are good for gut health and helps keeping it healthy and functional optimally at all times.

Understanding the current trend in India

In the modern era, there has been a growing attention on alternative ways to prevent and treat diseases. Neutaceuticals is one thing that is used extensively for the purpose. The term – Neutaceuticals refers to the link between the two domains – nutrition and pharmaceuticals. The human micro biota plays a vital role in maintaining health. Neutaceuticals have the ability to change the human micro biota for health benefits.

The global nutra-ceutical industry is one of the rapidly growing industries in the world today. Presently, United States, Japan and Europe accounts for almost 93% of the total industry and as these regions are approaching maturity, the current focus is one the emerging markets like China and India.

The growth and popularity of the industry in India is pretty fast and all can be attributed to health awareness and inclination towards nutrition. The Indian lifestyle is rapidly changing. With more preference of processed foods, sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy food choices, it has led to many lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardio vascular diseases and poor gut health. As a consequential result, Indian consumers, particularly the upper middle class and the high income group are preferring nutra-ceutical against prescribed drugs. They have slowly started to understand that food alone cannot fulfil their requirement of all vital nutrients and hence they are adopting to functional foods and supplements for disease prevention and healthy living.

To give consumers what they want, the food industry continues to innovate with new functional food and beverage products. The growing trend and the numerous benefits that we can reap out of these food and drink varieties makes us obviously think that functional food and beverage might be the future of human health.

Dr. Prakash Chandra Bhatt is the founder of Billion Cheers and Fermentis Life Sciences, a passionate research scientist with doctorate in pharmaceutical biotechnology from Jamia Hamdard University. His expertise lies in developing innovative products and processes by application of biotechnology, nanotechnology and fermentation technology. He is a proud recipient of Young Scientist Award and research grant from the Department of Science & Technology of Government of India.

He says, “Being a biotechnologist by profession I am convinced that microbiome is the most significant part of our body and plays a key role in our health. I believe that the focus of the future research for human health will revolve around microbiome.”

May 11, 2019 Lifestyle

Mother’s Day Special: Health secrets you should know for your own well being

It is human nature to put the best foot forward to be successful and achieve what we have planned for ourselves and set as our tasks. We want to do everything possible to make it happen, no matter what we think or act like. And the best part – we feel very happy and highly motivated and encouraged when we see it happening with positive results.

But in the pursuit of all, almost all of us miss out on a very important aspect of our life – our health. If we see around, more than 90% of the people neglect this important aspect of life and it is especially women who neglect it the most. It is sad, but it is true that what we all say – Health is Wealth, but in actuality, we overlook it, in reality, the most. We have become so busy achieving our targets and goals in life that we only look into our health when we fall sick or when it badly needs attention.

Discovering the secrets of total well being

Although called secrets, these are not actually secrets that we all know about. These are, in reality, lifestyle habits that we might have dropped some in between or have neglected midway. With the advancement in medical science and many breakthrough discoveries, almost all major diseases have been bought under control and perhaps many have been eradicated from the face of this planet. But, our modern-day lifestyle has become the biggest health challenge for us. A sedentary lifestyle, high levels of stress, unhealthy eating and other lifestyle habits have propagated modern-day diseases like heart ailments, stroke, obesity, hypertension, diabetes and many others. Women in particular face the biggest challenge as they not only get neglected, they neglect themselves as a mother by themselves also.

In this article, an effort has been made on the occasion of Mother’s Day to make people and mothers aware of the simple yet very effective secrets that we do know but hardly care to adopt in our daily lifestyle and live a life full of good health, happiness and wellness.

Mothers of today need to be more wary of these secrets as the challenge is bigger for them. They have a more vivid and wider role to play in modern society – a mother, a wife, a housemaker, a businesswoman, a colleague, a worker and whatnot.

Mother’s Day gives all of us a chance to salute the eternal blessing of nature to mankind – motherhood. To all the mothers around the globe, we feel proud of you all.

Let’s look into these secrets one by one:

Always try to maintain a healthy body weight

Managing weight is one of the most crucial aspects of total wellbeing and mothers need to be more careful with the same. Being heavy or overweight can just be the start of a magnitude of health problems like diabetes, hypertension, heart problems, strokes, cancers and much more. More to it, maintaining a healthy weight ratio ensures that you never have issues with health problems like asthma and osteoporosis (more common in ageing women). And, for all of it, you need to have a healthy balanced diet and regular physical activities or exercises. A diet that is enriched with the goodness of all five core and essential food groups – proteins, carbohydrates, healthy fats, fibres and vitamins and minerals.

Eat the food that you love

When we say eating well, it actually means eating what we love, what we enjoy eating. But, the secret here that needs to be discovered and understood is eating in moderation, because eating is good but eating excessively can actually make you feel terrible, even if it is your favourite food/s. Mothers, in particular, have to ensure that you eat the food that you like. The best way to moderate the intake of food is to focus on the food that you enjoy eating and eat at least three square meals in a day. Eating nutrient-dense food makes you feel good. This way you will enjoy your food more and stay away from overeating.

Always stay physically active

We don’t realize that physical activity is as important in keeping our brains healthy as it is for our bodies. Physical activities increase the protein, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF that helps promote the health of our nerve cells in areas of the brain that is linked to memory, learning and higher levels of thinking. Mothers in general avoid this as they are so involved with their babies and other chores.

Researchers say that people who are obese or overweight can still add years to their life by doing regular exercises. It does not matter how busy or how heavy you are. If you want to live healthy and live longer, you need to devote time daily towards some sort of physical activity.

Sleep and rest well

It is important to work and so is equally important to rest and sleep. It is during sleep our body gets all the time to repair, maintain and recapitulate itself. It is important that we give all these valuable seven to eight hours to our bodies every day. When we get good and proper sleep and rest, we feel more energetic and rejuvenated. Our working and thinking abilities are highly enhanced and we become more productive.

Mothers find it difficult to rest and sleep. It is always beret that they sleep with their baby. This might sound a little awful but if you do not do so, you will never get the amount of sleep your body needs.

Manage stress

Stress is today’s most dangerous and silent killer. It destroys us mentally as well as physically and we don’t even notice or realize the damage it can cause to our overall wellbeing. However, saying so, in the modern day lifestyle, stress is almost inevitable to be avoided, we must adapt to techniques to release and manage it. Yoga and meditation are perhaps the most effective ways out of stress, but simple adoptions like listening to music, reading books or even playing with kids and socializing are good stress management techniques that we all should imply in our lives.

Managing stress for mothers is all the more important as it can impact the growth and development of the baby in a great way. Learning how to manage stress is an art that we all as humans should master.

In short, we all must learn to – eat well, move more, stress less, and love more. It is a simple yet very effective secret that unfolded for a happy and healthy life.

The article is authored by famous Dietitian Sheela Seharawat. She is the founder and chief mentor of Diet Clinic Health Care Pvt. Ltd. Also, she is one of the youngest successful entrepreneurs of India.