Category Archives: Health / Wellness

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR To cut a long story short, our stress response originates in and is co-ordinated by the brain. Long before a stress response takes place in us, we perceive a threat to our well-being. This may involve all manner of conscious and unconscious thoughts, beliefs, memories, and emotions. It is also obvious that several […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When the Austrian paediatrician, Clemens von Pirquet, MD, first used the term, allergy, in the early 1900s — from the Greek allos, for altered state, and ergon, for reaction — to illustrate excess physiological responses to substances in the environment, the fascinating expression caught the fancy of the world. Today, allergy is, doubtless, the most clichéd […]

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 The quintessential discovery of hypnosis is attributed to Franz Anton Mesmer, MD, the ‘non-conformist’ 18th-century Viennese physician. Mesmer, it is now evidenced, used a method similar to modern hypnosis, or hypnotherapy, with the sole intention of removing neurotic symptoms. Mesmer discovered that when he applied magnets on some of his patients, their psychological […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR While music has been a historical hit parade, since ancient times, modern science testifies to the fact that some of the networks in the human brain seem to be solely dedicated to music. This has prompted neuroscientists to rethink their ideas on the nature of intelligence. To highlight a common example — listening […]

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 “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 […]