Friday, 13 July 2018

Mind and health synchronization

During last few decades, I have noticed that, diseases related to stress and life style have increased tremendously. Occasionally I have also experienced the same but analysing the 'Mind-health synchronization': I am overpowering them.

Mind and health synchronization

Actually, stress related diseases first originate in one's mind then affect physically. It's our belief system, attitudes, habits or situations that lands us in mental instability results in poor mental health.

Some of the major warning signals of poor mental health are:

- Continuously unhappy
- Always worrying
- Mood swings
- Depression
- Disability to be with people
- Often get upset- if routine is disturb

And can cause multiple aches like regular insomnia: a sleep disorder, lethargy: a fatigue syndrome, or obesity, where no many times physical cause is detected.

All of these have direct impact on mental,  social, and physical health, due to which a series of hormonal changes occur. Many endocrine glands in the body get disturbed includes thyroid, parathyroid,  adrenal, ovaries, testis, pancreas,  pituitary and hypothalamus. It also found that stress also affects autonomous nervous system disturbing bodily functions like digestion and respiration, deteriorating our health.

Need to control over this, we have to check out for our cortisol levels. Cortisol is a ‘stress hormone’ that our bodies release in response to anxiety in mind; over prolonged periods, higher cortisol levels have been linked to a wide range of health derangements like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, a lowered immune response, arthritis and various other diseases including depression. Apparently our mind can make one sick or speed the healing process by stress management: poor or good, correspondingly.

It's important to note that "mind" is not synonymous with brain which we often think to be same. Instead, the mind consists of mental states such as thoughts, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and images. The brain is the hardware kind that allows us to experience these mental states. Each mental state has a physiology associated with it—a positive or negative effect felt in the physical body. For example, the mental state of anxiety causes you to produce stress hormones. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes can positively or negatively affect our health and body.

Now we understand 'mind' plays a vital role in promoting or deteriorating one's health.

On the other hand, what we do with our physical body: what we eat; quality and quantity, how much we exercise, even our posture can impact our mental state positively or negatively. 

Thus Mind and health synchronization is very much important to work on as both have an interrelationship between them. 

If we can strengthen this connection positively and understand it, we can conquer stress and related diseases. This can be achieved by empowering inner self by meditation and yoga like therapies as well as by paying attention to the inner world of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, visions to connect with the outer material world in better way and importantly, it will build up a good health and mind sync.

All of us can lead  to a successful happy and healthy life by having a positive mind outlook that not only can improve quality of life but also give our health a boost and this is what 'mind and health synchronization'. 


Thursday, 5 July 2018

Awareness about plastics and single use plastics



Nowadays, What's app is successfully crawling the message of 'plastic ban' over an environmental awareness and I am sensibly happy for it because I have already implemented it, a year back. Though I am trying hard enough, it's really difficult to get out of this 'plastic world' completely. 

Plastics are synthetic polymers of organic origin and have enormous 'easy to use'  properties like light weight, water proof , transparent as well as available with all colour shades, non-corrosive, easy to mold in various shapes and sizes, resistance to shock, low electrical and thermal conductivity, good durability, low cost, easy to manufacture and many more. Thus how we are addicted to the convenience of plastics and made them part of our everyday life: at home, work places, automobiles, construction areas, medical fields and other sectors. 

Eventually our convinient plastics are presenting many problems. As plastics are made from petroleum, a crude oil product by heating and catalysing the monomers like ethylene and propylene into polymers like polyethylene and polypropylene; which are not found in nature and thus there are no organisms capable of decomposing or degrading it over thousands of years, letting them polluting the environment at staggering rate. Beside this, plastics are flammable and can not be safely burnt releasing toxic chemicals in to environment which can be responsible for health hazards like cancer, birth defects, impaired immunity and many other ailments. Plastics are killing  animals and birds as they eat plastics products by mistake.Plastics are also when seeps into water bodies like river and oceans, they adversely affect aquatic life as well litter up our beautiful shorelines.

Coming to the solutions, landfill sites provided a good option where all the waste is gets desposed off and mostly of it is plastics. We produce millions of plastics every year and more than half of it goes to landfills as waste from all over the world, thinking as our planet is large one but it is not that large as we think it is. We are sharing it with billions of people, altogether contribute to plastic waste at an alarming rate and we can not escape from the consequences of throwing away that much of plastics which take hundreds of years to break down. Obiviously, it would end in making our planet as 'plastic planet'.

So what are other options ?

For the sake of a good environmental profile, we also have 3Rs :- Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, well known waste management programmes.

Reduce is about cutting down the amount of waste that we are making. Example: Use washable dishes instead of paper plates and cups.

Reuse means opting out different ways to use waste and avoid throwing it all put. Example: plastic cup and containers can be reused to store things or can become a part of art and craft projects.

Recycle is a method of using the trash for remaking new products from it and using them again. Example: Having work places with recycling partner to collect and Recycle plastic products and we just need to encourage them. 

As we produce hundred millions tons of plastic every year, most of which can not be recycled or need effective recycling unit so it's obvious that we need to use less plastic, move towards sustainable products and services and come up with technology that recycles plastic more efficiently. 

Being more specific about plastics awareness, I like to turn your heads towards 'single use plastics' for now.

Single-use plastics, also known as disposable plastics, are intended to be used only once before they are thrown away or recycled. These includes plastic bags, disposable cutlery, bottles, straws, containers, coffee stirrers, soft drink and water bottles and most food packaging. Single-use plastic is everywhere. In a matter of mere decades, it has seeped into every corner of our lives.


Awareness about plastics and single use plastics

We think it’s normal to use a single-use plastic water bottles, take-away coffee cup, fruits, vegetables or other food products wrapped in disposable plastic packaging, and most popular 'a plastic bag' – but now we need to say big ' No' to them.

You know, Fossil fuels (petroleum products) take millions of years to form, then they are mined and manufactured into single-use plastic items, and transported to us, simply to be used for a couple of minutes before being discarded into environment for nothing to do over next thousands of years.

So here is point, protest the single use plastics to protect our environment for the future as we all have 'the power of revolution' and better knowledge of our actions, and their consequences.