Are you one of those individuals who works through the night? Do you spend
too much time hooked to the computer or the television till the wee hours,
compromising on your sleep?
Beware — apart from leaving you red-eyed, weary and dozing off in the
middle of an office meeting, lack of adequate sleep can also result in heart
disease, obesity, diabetes and other stress-related disorders.
"As our lives get busier and we try to cram more and more activities into
our already-packed schedules, we sacrifice our sleeping hours," says
consulting dietician Priti Apte.
The amount of necessary sleep varies from person to person, with some
breezing through their days on just a few hours’ slumber and others needing
10 hours of sound rest. "If you feel fresh after five hours of sleep and
complete your tasks with ease throughout the day, five hours is enough for
you,’ she explains. "But most people need around seven to nine hours of
sleep and it’s necessary that the person meet this quota for a healthy
life."
"Regular sleep keeps the mind alert and the body healthy, so that one can
complete one’s daily tasks. It also ensures proper distribution and
digestion of all nutrients in the body," says Priti.
Apart from the fact that lack of sleep has a dire effect on general
wellbeing and health, creativity and mental alertness, people who are unable
to sleep properly at night tend to be weary most of the time and lack the
ability to concentrate.
Housewife Kunika Malhotra, 32, complains that she has problems coping with
minor hassles, gets irritated easily and cannot tolerate noise. Kunika has
been trying to juggle her husband’s late working hours and her children’s
early morning school preparations for some time now and can barely squeeze
in five hours of sleep every night.
"I always think that I will catch up on my sleep over the weekend, but that
has never happened," she says.
According to general practitioner Dr Manoj Bhise, this is not the solution.
He explains, "What one needs is regular, consistent sleep — over-sleeping
once in a while to reduce the backlog won’t help."
Apart from psychological effects, lack of sleep also has an adverse effect
on one’s physical health. Dr Bhise informs us that a sleep deficit may put
the body into a state of high alert, increasing the production of stress
hormones and driving up blood pressure, a major risk factor behind heart
attacks and strokes.
The newest study on obesity, conducted by Columbia University, is the latest
to find that adults who sleep the least appear to be the most likely to gain
weight and to become obese. Says Priti, "Researchers have found that even
mild sleep deprivation quickly disrupts normal levels of the
recently-discovered hormones ghrelin and leptin, which regulate appetite.
Adds Dr Bhise, "Patients who do not get their daily dose of sleep also
complain about aching muscles and hand tremors, apart from drowsiness during
the daytime."
Other health problems brought on by sleep-deprivation include, dizziness,
hypertension, memory loss, nausea, fatigue, dramatic weight loss or gain.
Erratic sleep schedules also throw the digestive system for a toss, often
leading to constipation.
Says software engineer Mandar Bhave, "I have a US-based client and I was
working through the night most of the week. As a result, I started suffering
bouts of severe headaches and then one day I just collapsed in the office
due to heartburn. The doctors also diagnosed the formation of an ulcer in my
stomach. My body clock was all erratic thanks to irregular, inconsistent
rest. The first thing my doctor advised was to get eight hours of regular
sleep."
Though most of us know well enough that our bodies need sleep to rest and
recuperate, we continue to reduce our rest time so that we can squeeze in
the increasing demands of our lifestyle.
It’s about time we started listening to our bodies and turning in for a good
night’s sleep everyday. # – Prahladananda Swami – 22/9/08

A prominent cancer researcher’s warning to limit cell phone use has
rekindled anew the longstanding question over mobile-phone health risks.
The media is abuzz with news of the memo from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman,
director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. He sent it to
faculty and staff Wednesday, saying, among other things, that children
should use cell phones only for emergencies, since their developing organs
are the most likely to be sensitive to possible effects of exposure to
electromagnetic fields. Dr. Ronald B. Herberman
In his 10-point advisory (see below), Herberman also urges adults to keep
phones away from their heads and use speakerphones or wireless headsets.
He suggests that people try to avoid constantly carrying their cell phones
on their bodies and also try not to keep the devices nearby at night under
the pillow or on a nightstand. He even warns against using cell phones in
public places like buses because it exposes others to the phone’s
electromagnetic fields.
Herberman notes that the precautions have been reviewed by UPCI experts in
neuro-oncology, epidemiology, and neurosurgery, as well as the Center for
Environmental Oncology.
The tumor immunologist’s words are grabbing widespread attention both
because of his professional position and because they contradict numerous
studies that don’t find a link between cancer and cell phone use.
Herberman said his warning was based on early findings from unpublished
data.
"Recently, I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking
long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including
cancer," he says. "Although the evidence is still controversial, I am
convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to
share some precautionary advice on cell phone use."
For anyone concerned about possible health repercussions of cell phone
use, many of Herberman’s suggestions are easy enough to implement and
minimally disruptive at most. Still, the topic can prove daunting to
consumers.
Read the New York Times article.
Practical Advice to Limit Exposure to Electromagnetic Radiation Emitted
from Cell Phones
01 Do not allow children to use a cell phone, except for emergencies. The
developing organs of a fetus or child are the most likely to be sensitive
to any possible effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields.
02.While communicating using your cell phone, try to keep the cell phone
away from the body as much as possible. The amplitude of the
electromagnetic field is one fourth the strength at a distance of two
inches and fifty times lower at three feet.
03.Whenever possible, use the speaker-phone mode or a wireless Bluetooth
headset, which has less than 1/100th of the electromagnetic emission of a
normal cell phone. Use of a hands-free ear piece attachment may also
reduce exposures.
04.Avoid using your cell phone in places, like a bus, where you can
passively expose others to your phone’s electromagnetic fields.
05.Avoid carrying your cell phone on your body at all times. Do not keep it
near your body at night such as under the pillow or on a bedside table,
particularly if pregnant. You can also put it on "flight" or "off-line"
mode, which stops electromagnetic emissions.
06.If you must carry your cell phone on you, make sure that the keypad is
positioned toward your body and the back is positioned toward the outside
so that the transmitted electromagnetic fields move away from your rather
than through you.
07.Only use your cell phone to establish contact or for conversations
lasting a few minutes, as the biological effects are directly related to
the duration of exposure. For longer conversations, use a land line with a
corded phone, not a cordless phone, which uses electromagnetic emitting
technology similar to that of cell phones.
08.Switch sides regularly while communicating on your cell phone to spread
out your exposure. Before putting your cell phone to the ear, wait until
your correspondent has picked up. This limits the power of the
electromagnetic field emitted near your ear and the duration of your
exposure.
09.Avoid using your cell phone when the signal is weak or when moving at
high speed, such as in a car or train, as this automatically increases
power to a maximum as the phone repeatedly attempts to connect to a new
relay antenna.
10.When possible, communicate via text messaging rather than making a call,
limiting the duration of exposure and the proximity to the body.
11.Choose a device with the lowest SAR possible (SAR = Specific Absorption
Rate, which is a measure of the strength of the magnetic field absorbed by
the body). SAR ratings of contemporary phones by different manufacturers
are available by searching for "sar ratings cell phones" on the internet.
# – Prahladananda Swami – 10/8/08

The reason garlic is so toxic: the sulphone hydroxyl ion penetrates the blood-brain barrier, just like DMSO, and is a specific poison for higher life-forms and brain cells. We discovered this, much to our horror, when I (Bob Beck, DSc) was the world’s largest manufacturer of ethical EEG feedback equipment. We’d have people come back from lunch that looked clinically dead on an encephalograph, which we used to calibrate their progress. “Well, what happened?” “Well, I went to an Italian restaurant and there was some garlic in my salad dressing!” So we had ’em sign things that they wouldn’t touch garlic before classes or we were wasting their time, their money and my time.
I guess some of you who are pilots or have been in flight tests… I was in flight test engineering in Doc Hallan’s group in the 1950’s. The flight surgeon would come around every month and remind all of us: “Don’t you dare touch any garlic 72 hours before you fly one of our airplanes, because it’ll double or triple your reaction time. You’re three times slower than you would be if you’d not had a few drops of garlic.”
Well, we didn’t know why for 20 years later, until I owned the Alpha-Metrics Corporation. We were building biofeedback equipment and found out that garlic usually desynchronizes your brain waves.
So I funded a study at Stanford and, sure enough, they found that it’s a poison. You can rub a clove of garlic on your foot, and you can smell it shortly later on your wrists. So it penetrates the body. This is why DMSO smells a lot like garlic: that sulphone hydroxyl ion penetrates all the barriers, including the corpus callosum in the brain. Any of you who are organic gardeners know that if you don’t want to use DDT, garlic will kill anything in the way of insects.
Now, most people have heard most of their lives that garlic is good for you, and we put those people in the same class of ignorance as the mothers who at the turn of the century would buy morphine sulphate in the drugstore and give it to their babies to put ’em to sleep.
If you have any patients who have low-grade headaches or attention deficit disorder, they can’t quite focus on the computer in the afternoon, just do an experiment – you owe it to yourselves.
Take these people off garlic and see how much better they get, very very shortly. And then let them eat a little garlic after about three weeks. They’ll say, “My God, I had no idea that this was the cause of our problems.” And this includes the de-skunked garlics, Kyolic, some of the other products.
Very unpopular, but I’ve got to tell you the truth.
From Nexus Magazine Feb/Mar 2001.
Source: From a lecture by Dr. Robert C. Beck, DSc, given at the Whole Life Expo, Seattle, WA, USA, in March 1996.
# – Prahladananda Swami – 3/7/08