Category Archives: Health / Wellness

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 […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Nature clings itself together with the divine element, or dynamics, in us — to augment the dignity of our righteous and harmonious actions. “There is,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “a particular affinity between the processes of nature and the capabilities of man. Nature provides a suitably large and impressive background against […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Integrating complementary and alternative medicine [CAM] with conventional medicine, which is termed integrative medicine, aims to combine the benefits of the two approaches to create a more holistic and effective healthcare system. This approach recognises that conventional medicine [viz., medications and surgery] and CAM therapies [viz., acupuncture, Ayurveda, homeopathy and herbal remedies] can work together, […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Our brain is the seat of intellect. It regulates and maintains balance and stability in a zillion bodily processes and systems. To pick a few examples — the rhythmic beating of your heart, blood pressure, transfer of oxygen into the blood stream, the extension and contraction of your lungs and regulation of innumerable […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR You know it. That’s great — being thin is the best element you could have on their CV. Wait a minute. You may be wrong. Because, when you look around and ‘picture’ successful people with big waistlines, you’d possibly know the truth. Big waistlines represent good fortune and prosperity. The longer the belt, […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR The Chinese have, for long, created a perestroika of sorts. They use acupuncture for stroke victims, among other conditions. The big question. What makes such a ‘needle-centric’ therapy so unique, effective and, sometimes, a wonder to modern scientific thought? Wait a moment. Acupuncture, defined as a go-between orthodox and fringe medicine, is a method […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Just think about it. What makes us ‘hit’ the floor each morning and reach out from sleep to awareness, from emptiness to existence and from dream to reality? It is energy — of our mind and body. The equation is remarkably specific. We need body energy to move in the physical sense and […]