The Glass Wall - Musings from India travel

We drove to the Cineplex on a hot January afternoon.

Chatting, animatedly. Us four.

People in the thousands on the sides of the road, just milled about. Shopkeepers if you could call them that, showed their wares on tattered cloth, some spilled out directly onto the asphalt. Rickety thelas -a far cry from the elaborate cappucino carts, (they call them "thelas") going up in swank urban areas - crowded the roadside. Pedestrians too jostled for space.

They all breathed the exhaust from our cars and the dust from our tires. They suffered our horns. They would not move out of the way! We had to get to the Cineplex in the Mall on time. The movie you know.

We did not hear them.

We chatted animatedly, us four.

Our air was conditioned, cleaned and filtered. Our ears, our lungs, our noses were protected by the glass windows of our car. We were safe. Our hearts protected. Was it not just a movie we were watching, though the glass? It felt like it.

We chatted, animatedly. Us four.
We had cool, clean air in our car that our driver drove, and cool filtered water to drink. Let them drink coke. We were different. Them and us. Paths, theirs and ours. Fate, theirs and ours. Different. Separate.

Community, in the movie. We did feel it. Yes, we did.  Though there were only 5 other people beside us four in the conditioned air, in the plush seats.of the large theatre. Not our driver. The car needed watching.

Emotion, we felt it. In the movie. We could feel, in the dark. We shed tears in the dark.

In the car, on the road again, we sat in the light coming through the glass.

We chatted. Animatedly. Us four.

The driver earned his family's daily bread. Quietly.

Outside, a silent movie, played on.

21 Bum Salute - We Gotta Go Too

When you gotta go , you go. Just down the hall to your bathroom, sit down with aplomb on the throne and shortly thereafter flush IT down. You give not thought to what happens to the shit laden water. Neither do most cities in India . Seventy per cent of the total municipal sewage and effluent from over 900 cities and towns are being discharged untreated into rivers which are a major source of drinking water, a recent study by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has said.

This is the shit (and toilet paper) from those of us with the luxury of flush toilets.

But millions worldwide do without adequate sanitation. But they gotta go too. And that gives us the 21 Bun Salute easy to see steps from the multi - million dollar state legislature in the Lal Kothi area of Jaipur just as day begins. There as in urban slums worldwide people hope to salvage what dignity they can by sitting in open fields to go, hoping for the help from the morning haze. Others both male and female, end up having to go when they gotta go, often in the full glare of the harsh midday sun, with nary a bush to hide behind. The 21 Bum salute.

But why should we care.

India 2010

Ideas to blog in more detail about from our just concluded trip to India
Going to the Dogs,
Horn Yuddh
I Gotta Go...
The Glass Wall
Sad Shopkeepers..inside the plush Cineplex
Trash Advertising - just LAY-ing around.
Asphalt Nation
Where will the cars go
Us and them - the story of cars.
Horn bajana - Gaali dena
Bengaluru -The first Street Lights in India this metro still has Air Horns in the city.

singing for fun is motivation for doing more for the world

Happiness is singing to 70's music and strumming my air guitar, vow I love it .
Motivates me to do more for the world.
Like the doctor who was fired in Panama city for disparaging donuts!
America dies on Dunkin.
Wrote a comment on NYT Well blog today.
Tell Ten People and then ten more.

Mind wandering in "sudden death" class, how can we prevent it

My mind was wandering in my "sudden death" class...prevention prevention prevention!!.....

How did my mom learn about cod liver oil? My mother grew up east of the the Kyber Pass. She was the top student in her class in Kohat in the North West Frontier Province of undivided India..
Where oh where did she learn about that stinky, ugly stuff. I cried and held my nose. Daily! She wouldn't take no for an answer. Momma made me drink COD LIVER OIL.

I was daydreaming. Now I was too senior to be kicked out of class, a welcome change indeed from my 8th grade Physics class at St Xaviers, Jaipur. Would it not be better to prevent sudden cardiac death than waste health care $$ on ACLS?

ACLS is when EMT's, nurses and doctors work frantically to revive you after you suddenly fall dead. Skill, teamwork and luck improve your odds of being brought back to life successfully. Luck especially. So, if you must, have a witnessed cardiac arrest around a trained provider who has an automatic electronic defibrillator (AED) on hand and he can "shock you" as quickly as possible.


And then, as I looked around the room at the class - ironically studying death - and I thought how many of us eat McDonald's fries (McDonald’s french fries just got fatter ), smoke dried plant matter,
eat farmed salmon loaded with carcinogenic stuff.(organochlorine contamination in farmed salmon),
do not eat N Dakota flax all the while hoping to get lucky when we get Ventricular fibrillation.
Could we change? Before we get shocked. V Fib, is treated with a DC electric shock. V Fib and V
tach are the most common and - if-they-find-you-and-shock-you-quickly - reversible cause of sudden death.

Could we just ignore the marketing/brainwashing and try change what we eat?

Dietary omega-3 fatty acids stabilize the myocardium electrically, resulting in reduced susceptibility to ventricular arrhythmias and a marked decrease in risk of sudden cardiac death and reduction in all-cause mortality. Oily fish is good for you.. even the Wall Street Journal and JAMA agree on this one!
Trans fats increase sudden death. Omega 3s reduce it.
Brain Blockers-Trans Fats reduce IQ. Omega 3s increase it  so VEGETARIANS can use Flax(Ulsee) or chia seeds, walnuts, hemp, and other sources.

New York is right says Dr Willett of Harvard in banning Trans fats.
But how did my momma know this stinky stuff was so good for me?!

Nutrition is more than laboratory science. Nutrition is us smart humans listening to the wisdom of our elders, learning from observation of nature, and not getting blown away by marketing and the dollar menu.

My momma was smart. Thank you momma!

Doctor Vinod's Wellness Blog: Impact of adolescent overweight on adult mortality

Doctor Vinod's Wellness Blog: Impact of adolescent overweight on adult mortality

Bigger male breasts. Are more male breast cancers coming?

Most young men that I see for infection problems are obese. Because of higher estrogen levels they all have significant amount of breast tissue.

With increased obesity rates more males with breast tissue are among us.

Will we end up with an epidemic of male breast cancer 3 decades from now as these young men reach the age at which women get breast cancer?

Male breast cancer numbers presently are low. Am cancer society estimates that 1720 new cases of male breast cancer will be diagnosed in 2006 and 460 men will die from the disease. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_1X_What_are_the_key_statistics_for_male_breast_cancer_28.asp?sitearea=

Most obesity is related to sugar drinks.http://www.cspinet.org/liquidcandy/

One more reason to avoid all regular and diet pop. Glad Bismarck schools passed this excellent pop policy last year.
Dr Vinod