Diet: The Biochemistry of foods

Few facts about the major types of food:

Protein: requirement-5%-9% of daily calories, it's broken into amino acids.

• Lectin: proteins that bind to carbohydrates. The same features that lectins use to defend plants in nature may cause problems during human digestion, lectins break by pressure cooking. Common sources-tomato, potato, legumes

Hormones: In stress/long fasting (high cortisol+ adrenalin level+ maybe ghrelin which is hunger hormone)= Increases the intake of food high in fat & sugar. 

• Leptin- satiety hormone (should be high), hormone sensitive lipase (should be activated)
• tyrosine/dopamine-helps in motivation, risk taking

Fats: 

• Visceral (bad) & Subcutaneous (good), muscle burnt first then fat generally, Trans fat (synthetic) increases visceral. Liver exports some excess fat into free fatty acids which cause muscle insulin resistance, also some fat can't get out of liver & results in fatty liver disease. Fats & fibers don't trigger insulin.
• Gluconeogenesis occurs principally in the liver and kidneys; e.g., the synthesis of blood glucose from lactate in the liver is a particularly active process during recovery from intense muscular exertion.
• Saturated v Unsaturated: It means saturated with Hydrogen, in unsaturated there are double bonds and unsaturated/poly-unsaturated is usually good for us & has less shelf life. Fish oil has 5-6 double bond, omega-6 has 2 double bonds. 
• Nuts: Walnut has omega-3 & omega-6, all other nuts only has omega-6 only, soaking neutralizes phytates & enzyme inhibitors.

• Cooking oils: Olive oil is mono-unsaturated, Palm oil has saturated fatty acid, vegetable oil is guaranteed to be highly processed & processed oils have been pushed past their heat tolerance and have become rancid in the processing, cold pressed oils are good like avocado or walnut.

Alcohol:10% of it is metabolized in brain, 80% in liver, acetaldehyde> ROS (reactive Oxygen species)-damages protein+ acetate which eventually converts to VLDL. Fructose also has similar effects-video

Carbs/Insulin: 3 main types of carbohydrates are sugars, starches, and fiber. White sugar is 1:1 glucose-fructose, Fiber in fruit makes it easier to digest. Every calorie is not the same specially from sugar- Robert Lustig

• Glucose: They are simple carbs. Insulin escorts glucose into muscle cell, if fat in muscle cell increase then difficulty in glucose entering muscle cell. Most glucose stored as glycogen rest goes to pyruvate, converts into citrate & it enters mitocondria & after burning results in ATP, novo lipogenesis (new fat genesis) process-storing it as fat then it converts into VLDL. 20% of total made it to liver, 50% glycogen, ~2-3% VLDL fat. 
• Fructose: They are simple carbs. 100% fructose processed in liver, it forms xylulose 5-phosphate & that accelerates novo lipogenesis+ uric acid.
• Fiber: It's a complex carb. Fiber helps slow down the digestion process which allows food to slowly break down and not become sugar as quick. They help the body maintain blood sugars levels, so they will not spike.
• Starch: It's a complex carb, there are resistance & regular starch.  Unlike fiber, starch is slowly digested by the body and becomes blood glucose that is absorbed into the bloodstream
  
• Insulin resistance: cells start rejecting insulin to enter from carbs
• Glycemic index is a system of assigning a number to carbs containing foods according to how much each food increases blood sugar, <55 is good
• Avg blood glucose level (HbA1c/A1c)-should be below 5.7%, it tells if you're pre-diabetic/diabetic
• No more than 50gm sugar in a day for avg male, an ice-cream has ~21-22gm sugar/100 gm, carb: fiber ratio in food should be <5
• Sugar is as addictive as cocaine

Muscle: it has mitochondria, exercise means more mito so more energy burn

Cholesterol: fat-like substance made in the liver, and found in the blood and in all cells of the body. Cholesterol is important for good health and is needed for making cell walls, tissues, hormones, vitamin D, and bile acid

Vitamin D: it's actually a harmone because our body can produce it

Milk: Metabolic acidosis due to milk so we should drink fat-free milk, soy & oat milk might be more healthy & for sure more environment friendly than cow milk

Eggs: pasture raised is best

Glucosinolates: found in cabbage family, it detoxifies liver 

Ergothioneine: found only in mushrooms, anti-aging properties

Exercise: boosts brain activity

Endothelial cells: They're pivotal to applications related to wound healing, angiogenesis, inflammatory processes, blood brain barriers, diabetes and other cardiovascular diseases. Since the circulatory system lines the entire body, endothelial research is tied to many diseases, which are top-funded research areas. For this reason, dysfunction of endothelial cells has implications in diabetes, pulmonary diseases, inflammatory diseases, cardiovascular diseases

Intermittent fasting: Insulin retains sodium/salt, glucagon functions opposite to insulin which is secreted after few hours then ketone bodies. Fasting boosts mitochondria activity

Grains: whole grain means fibre+ bran+ germ

Nutrient partitioning

Evolutionary instincts: In nature poisonous things are not sweet so our brain started liking sweet.

Stem cells: the body's raw materials- cells from which all other cells with specialized functions are generated, organs can be developed with stem cells. The process of stopping cell division-cell senescent

• Epigenetics- mechanism which modify DNA or proteins around which DNA is wrapped. epigenetic mechanism inactivate genes (this is called Acetylation) which  makes cell age.
• Sirtuins are proteins in cell which modify epigenetic landscape-molecule NMN boosts sirtuin activity and reverses age 

Telomeres (2009 Nobel): protect the end of chromosomes (which is made of DNA) & DNA is inside cell nucleus, mitochondria doesn't work properly in old age, quality check in body which ensures the same also doesn't work 

Telomerase (enzyme): An enzyme in cells that helps keep them alive by adding DNA to telomeres (the ends of chromosomes). Each time a cell divides, the telomeres lose a small amount of DNA and become shorter. Over time, the chromosomes become damaged and the cells die.

Brain cells: glial cells cleans plaque in brain during deep sleep. brain plasticity- more tasks create more connections between brain cells

 
References:

Percent of GDP spent on food: US is lowest at 7%, India 35%-https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/this-map-shows-how-much-each-country-spends-on-food/

Intermittent fasting, hopkins article, snacking article, hepatic insulin resistence, gylcemic index

Chris Gardner-Stanford

Cancer study in China in 70's-Junshi chen and in 2005 another china study-Dr. Colin Campbell.

Mark Mattson (John hopkins): studied IF 25 years 

Fork over knives: Matt laderman/ Alona Pulde

Foods That Cure Disease: good carbs v bad, nitrates/nitric oxide (opens arteries)-ORAC foods-beet, vegetables, Predimed study

That sugar film

Fed Up

Lentils: Miracle of nutrition

Prescription: Nutrition 

Eating Our Way To Extinction

The Fantastical World of Hormones (with John Wass): Frederick Banting (founder of Insulin)

Bien nourrir son cerveau (french): It's about mind-food connection 

Ancient Human & Indian History ( stories from last 500,000 years)

Let's start the ancient history topic with these facts-Earth's age is 4.54 billion, dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago (there was 150 km crater created after KT extinction event around gulf of Mexico & dinosaurs lived for 165M years), Himalayas are 40M years old. Let's talk about apes- new world monkeys evolved around-26M years ago, chimp like ape Sahelanthropus existed around 7M year ago, then came the common ancestor of human & chimpanzee which existed around-6M year ago and apes started walking on 2 legs- around 3M years ago. 

1st Hominins existed around- 4M years ago named Australopithecus, the genus Homo dates back to about 2.5 to 2.8 million years. Homo habilis were the first species with homo name around 2.5M years and they left Africa 1.8M year ago. Another homo species around that time was Homo erectus (bone ex: Nariokotome boy)-they existed around 1.8M years ago, had smaller brain and long legs. Finally, the origin of our species (homo sapiens) is believed to be around 550,000 to 750,000 years ago and 700,000-30,000 years ago Neanderthals existed. Also, surprisingly, some earlier form of cooking was invented approximately 1.5M years ago.

Now, the sub-species of Homo sapiens- Homo sapiens sapiens/modern humans are believed to have evolved sometime between 160,000 and 90,000 years ago and later in Europe these two species coexisted for around 10,000 years (40,000-30,000 years ago), if these things sound really old then lets jump to relatively less ancient events, one of which was Toba eruption which occurred at the present location of Lake Toba in Indonesia, about 75,000 ± 900 years ago according to potassium argon dating which places it around 74,000-72,000 BC, after that the Homo sapiens in Africa were said to have survived by developing sophisticated social, symbolic and economic strategies that enabled them to eventually re-expand and populate Asia and specifically the Indian western coast. 200k years ago-6 human species existed and around 8000 BC all other species died out.

Now, around 55,000 BC huge migration started from India towards west, the evidence for that is the haplogroup F-M89 lineage- whose origins are tracked to India & 90% of non-African males have this haplogroup F-M89 lineage and another evidence for the same is the R1A1A haplogroup, whose origin is determined around 22,000 to 25,000 year ago in India and lot of western research papers also support this idea- this is the link for a Nature journal paper. First humans who settled in Europe were also around this time 40-45000 years ago 

The ancient history topic is incomplete without the mention of the last Ice age, which was around 20,000-14,000 BC and in around 11,000 BC, more than three-fourths of the large Ice Age animals, including woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant bears, died out. Agriculture was discovered around 9,500 BC the eight Neolithic founder crops – emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chickpeas, and flax – were cultivated in the middle east. Also, for timeline-the Pyramid of Djoser, is widely believed to be the oldest pyramid in the world, dates back to around 2630 BC.

Now, lets talk about archaeological evidences- In Bhirrana, Harayana, India lies the oldest archaeological evidence found in India which is as old as 7500 BC and also, the oldest literature in the world is believed to be the Rigveda and the evidence to prove it is it has the reference of Sarasvati river flowing which according to scientific evidence dried around 6000 BC so Rigveda is at least as old as 6000 BC.

Now, talking about the Indian influence on Europeans- Pythagoras (570-495 BC) came to India according to western sources & when he went back to Greece he became vegetarian and started teaching in Gurukul style, also in 9th century CE when the Romani language originated it is believed that it originated from Sanskrit, because the Abbasid caliphate took Indians to Europe & then they settled in Romania eventually (research on this done by author Ian Hancock). Another example for this is Eratosthenes (lived around 200 BC) who was a notable librarian at Alexandria and there he read all the work by Indian scientists & later, the great library was destroyed around 40-48 BC by Julius Ceaser.

Also, if we talk about Indian influence in Asia- around 400 AD a person named Buddhabhadra created kung fu (more on him here) and another example from south east asia is of the Chola dynasty (300 BC 1200 AD)- whose most notable King Suryavarman II built Angkor wat in present day Cambodia, which is the world's largest religious site even today.

Before Europeans started coming to India- misfortunes for Indians started happening from 1200 CE starting with the source of great historic and scientific knowledge- Nalanda university, which was burnt by Turkish Muslim invaders who were called Mamluks and according to sources Nalanda university had 9 million manuscripts at that time and the amount of books was so huge that it continued to burn for many weeks.

Also, let's talk about economics of pre-colonial time now- around 1000 AD, according to Maddison’s calculations, China and India together contributed 50.5% of world GDP and by 1600, that share had gone up to 51.4%, with China accounting for 29% and India 22.4% of world GDP. A hundred years later, China’s GDP had fallen but India’s went up to 24.4% of world output. By 1820, however, India’s share had fallen to 16.1%, if we compare this to recent times- US had contributed 16% of the world GDP in 2019. Also, an estimate from some sources is that British took 45 trillion from India in 200 years of colonial rule.

The Bollywood Shakespeare

Langda tyagi, one of my favourite characters of all bollywood movies, maybe a favourite of lot of people. So what makes this character so interesting, is it the story of the great shakespeare or is it vishal’s direction or is it saif’s acting which makes this character so alive or maybe it’s the combined effect of all three of them.

But vishal does not stop here, he adopts 2 more of the shakespeare plays and makes epic movies out of them. These 3 screenplays were so well written in Indian context that if you have not read the books, you will be awe struck by their story, you may get some goose bumps too. Vishal is such a good story teller he will bind you to your seat, till the end of the movie.

Also lot of credit goes to the great actors who helped vishal journey of making these 3 epics which are larger than life. Actors like Saif, Ajay, Irrfan, Tabu, Naseeruddin, Shahid, Pankaj etc. who has raised the standard of bollywood, above the mindless comedy and action we are so used to watch, actors who had dared to go beyond the common perception of the bollywood.

So was it not difficult to imagine hamlet in kashmir, macbeth in a mumbai mafia and othello in a UP village. It is no less than a work of a genius , a man who has a vivid imagination to put these stories and characters in such different Indian scenarios. Let’s see what he brings in our plate in future.

Kavi Atal Bihari vajpayee in full mood: A tribute

          How the mood swings happens in the life of a poet & how it influences their writings,

 perfectly depicted by Atalji :

                 

                  His famous poem on Pakistan & US, giving them a word of caution of
not to mess around with kashmir & India :

And this patriotic 'Bharat' kavita will definitely give you goosebumps:

For the marathi fans, geeth ramayan in marathi by atalji:

In the end, one of the Atalji's poem recited by Narendra Modi:

Any comments or requests are welcome :)

Will history be kind to Manmohan singh

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality at times of moral crisis"  will our ex-PM will be judged on the basis of these lines as the last 10 years of UPA has been considered as no less than crisis time ( and ironically that quote is by an Italian poet Dante Alighieri !)

Or Will history be kind to the world class economist, who first introduced economic liberalization in India in '91. The ethical economist who offered his resignation at the time of Harshad mehta scam when accused of 'sleeping through the scam'. What happened to him later that he couldn't resign or say NO to the UPA govt. when they were misusing/mishandling him?

He was known to be an apolitical person, who ate frugally, loved his fish & dal-rice, and someone who was never idle, spending most of his time reading. If there was one man qualified enough to be the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh was your man. It was his tenure during the PV Rao administration that made this low-profile, simple politician an extremely popular personality in the upper-class political circles; so much so that 13 years later Mrs. Gandhi handpicked this former academician to be the Prime Minister of India and made him puppet.

Forbes quoted him as the 'Underacheiver' while some quoted him as the 'Weakest PM ever' of India. He claims that his life is an open book but forgets to mention that half the pages of that book are empty (as silent as himself ) and the conclusion of which is written by Narendra Modi. Let's see how history treats our honorable ex-PM, for now let's give him a gentleman's farewell as he deserves it.