Category Archives: Health / Wellness

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR It is rightly said that mindfulness — a cognitive skill and practice — helps us to identify our hidden emotional patterns. It brings to the fore the light of awareness to freeing ourselves from their stranglehold, especially in today’s context, where our constant battles have little to do with actual situations, but much […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When Linus Pauling, the legendary chemist and two-time Nobel laureate, discovered that a specific heritable protein variation in a single component of haemoglobin protein complex resulted in sickle cell anaemia, it initiated a new era in biomedical sciences. Years later, the gene responsible for the haemoglobin variant was discovered — including an entire series […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR What has colour fluctuation in certain leaves got to do with the change of seasons? More than meets the eye and mind. The changes are collectively called biological rhythms — or, behavioural changes that may not be just passive responses to environmental variations. Such changes are driven by ‘endogenous oscillators,’ called biological clocks, […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR “For a happy-go-lucky girl, who was fond of being a ‘tomboy’ and prankster of the top draw, I was diagnosed with Stage-I, or early, cancer of the ovary at age 23. The disease, I was told, was fortuitously limited to a small area. But, the word, ‘cancer,’ came like a wicked shock. It […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Do we need nutritional supplements? Do they assure a ‘surge’ in health for individuals who are already healthy? Just like one size does not fit all, nutritional supplements aren’t for everyone. However, older, or elderly, adults and others with health and other issues may benefit from specific supplements. One should also not think […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR You know its import, don’t you? Or, so you thought. Either way, whether you are a parent, or an educator, you are right. It’s all about a new, or old, phenomenon that is gaining ground everywhere. A case of an entire subculture, without boundaries. What’s more, science, with all its good intentions, continues […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Picture this gloomy headline of a few years ago: “500 man-made chemicals found in a single cell of a ‘healthy’ 30-year-old.” It may not have stirred your mind one bit, coming as it did, perhaps, as just another entry in ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not.’ There was, however, a striking paradox in the […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Functional foods are natural foods that provide health-promoting and disease-preventing benefits in the body. Functional foods include whole, fortified, enriched, or enhanced foods, and dietary, or food supplements. The term, ‘functional foods,’ is used to signify foods and their components that offer health benefits beyond the scope of basic nutrition. Put simply, functional […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR You’d think of it as the most implausible miniature aircraft of all — with the unbearable ‘drum beats’ in your ear. You got the whole idea right — a hazard you’d not even ‘touch’ from afar, as it were. Now, the basics. With her brittle body, and spiky arsenal of wings, legs and […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR We all have a ‘natural’ proclivity to express anger — a reaction that symbolises aggression. The response, juxtaposed by bellicosity, denotes a reflex intent to internal and external stimuli. It is also an ‘impulse sortie’ that connotes powerful, combative feelings and behaviours. You’d connect it to the ‘fight-or-flight’ response — a biological reaction […]