Drink Air, Stay Fit
By Dr. Prakash C. Malshe, M.D.
Medical Specialist
Drink Air, Stay Fit – Yoga is increasing in popularity by leaps and bounds. Some proponents claim it to be the panacea of cures for every disease from amoebiasis to Alzheimer’s disease and from coronary artery disease to cancers.
Still, since yoga has been brought to us through the television channels, for most of us yoga means performing a few asanas and a few pranayamas. The internal cleansing procedures in yoga exemplified by vata-sara have been largely ignored, both due to their complexity and due to lack of medical knowledge in the yoga gurus.
Yoga gurus have been scratching their heads to arrive at the correct meaning of the ancient 12-step Suryanamaskara (Sun salutation), which has been debated for long.
Air is present in the human gut almost universally. Yet, medical books by and large have ignored its importance. The possible areas of interest being.
1.Obesity (with its resultant problems diabetes mellitus,
hypertension and atherosclerosis) and 2.Various gastrointestinal
disorders- are two of the major health concerns today, and the
author begs to point out that air drinking can be useful in both.
The present work attempts to see relevance in the ancient yogic practice of Suryanamaskara. In the author’s view, it is a maneuver to fill the intestines with air.
Further, filling of the intestines with air makes swimming much easier and more efficient, so much so that it is only on reading this book and practicing accordingly that swimmers will realize what they were missing till now.
The air taken-in by drinking passes down the gut and is ultimately passed out as flatus. (If someone is afraid of flatulence, my recommended reading is the collection of essays ‘Fart Proudly- writings by Benjamin Franklin you never read in school’ edited by Carl Japikse).
Obesity
While on this earth millions of people are starving about 20% of the population is suffering from obesity. This has become a global epidemic. The hazards of obesity are well known. Every newspaper and magazine carry articles on obesity. It is the forerunner of insulin resistance and diabetes mellitus, and is commonly associated with hypercholesterolemia, coronary heart disease, gallstone disease and osteoarthritis of the knees.
Sleep apnea is another complication in which the affected individual suffers from obstruction to the airway in the throat with resultant interruptions in the nightly sleep. So much can be the disturbance that the individual feels drowsy in the daytime.
Such patients are required to sleep with a machine which runs on electricity and provides respiration through mask attached to their mouth and nose when respiratory obstruction develops. So now we have to depend on machines even for breathing during sleep!
After all what is the treatment for obesity? Several medicines have been marketed in the last decade and people used them, but then how long can one go on taking medicines? Then there is fear of adverse effects. It also imposes an economic burden on the individual.
The most commonly suggested way is to eat less and burn more calories by exercise. Is this the only way available or is there an easy option in yoga? In the ancient Indian scripture Rigveda there is a mention that in the ancient times the rishis and munis used to eat air.
equ;% okrj’kuk% fi’kaxk olrs eykA ¼ ds’kh lwDr] _Xosn] 10]136]2½
‘”‘Munis eat air, wear cloths of varied colours and stay
dusty..’(Keshi Sukta, Rigveda,10,136,2.)
Is it possible that we eat less and still feel satiated? How did the munis stay comfortable without eating for days at a stretch?
Obesity is acquiring proportions like a global epidemic. Not only the developed countries but also the developing ones are all facing this problem.
Obesity is associated with shortening of life span and complications which make life difficult for the individual. In view of this, its prevention, rather than cure must be considered with utmost priority by health authorities the world over.
1.2.1. CAUSES OF OBESITY:
Obesity can occur as a part of a wider systemic
disorder, the list of which includes-
Genetic Syndromes: There are some well recognized syndromes which are known by the names of their inventors, such as the ‘Prader-Willi Syndrome’(PWS)1 , where there is deletion of some genes on the 15th chromosome or, in some cases, both the chromosomes of the 15th pair are acquired from mother only, the ‘Laurence-Moon-Biedl syndrome’ etc. Now-a- days great efforts are being done by researchers to precisely identify and locate the defective gene. Much success has already been achieved.
(b) Endocrine disorders: Hypothyroidism, Cushing’s disease
(c) Hypothalamic lesions: Damage to a certain part of the brain called the hypothalamus-which regulates appetite and feeding behavior and body weight-is rarely ever a cause of obesity.
All the above systemic disorders collectively make up less than 5% of the obese population. The rest 95% are people who suffer from what is known as ‘Simple obesity’. They have no genetic or hormonal abnormality. Their obesity simply results from an imbalance between intake and consumption of calories, or a slight disturbance of appetite and body weight regulation.
All the above systemic disorders collectively make up less than 5% of the obese population. The rest 95% are people who suffer from what is known as ‘Simple obesity’. They have no genetic or hormonal abnormality. Their obesity simply results from an imbalance between intake and consumption of calories, or a slight disturbance of appetite and body weight regulation.
It is also of interest that obesity is largely restricted to humans and animals which are domesticated or live in a zoo.
1.2.2. What is the cause of ‘Simple Obesity’
Fat is stored by the organisms to be used as a source of energy in times of food scarcity. Hibernating animals store fat before going in to hibernation and use this body fat as a fuel during the cold months. They emerge lean and thin. Non hibernating animals in most cases, maintain a constant body weight despite cyclic changes in the availability of food. Several studies have been conducted to find out why obesity occurs.
Twin studies 2 have been done to find out importance of genetic and environmental influences.
Experimental studies (in animals): In 1994 a naturally occurring mutant obese mouse was discovered.3 It was seen to have ob/ob genes. The product of the ob gene is a 16 kda protein (Hormone) called the leptin. The ob/ob mice were found to be deficient in leptin.
Injection of leptin in these mice produced satiety and reduced weight. For this reason, leptin was also called the body’s lipostat. Many hopes were pinned on leptin as a possible therapy for obesity. However, normal animals as well as humans cannot be equated with the genetic ob/ob mice.
In normal human subjects the leptin production is proportionate to the amount of adipose tissue present in the body. In obese individuals the leptin levels in blood plasma are already high 4
. For this reason, the possibility of leptin deficiency being a cause of common human obesity and leptin being used as an anti-obesity agent have become remote.
While leptin functions to maintain the mass of adipose tissue constant, it does not terminate an individual meal on its own. It is thought that it modifies the response to other chemicals e.g. the satiety peptides.
As is obvious, in obese individuals the large amount of fat stored in the adipose tissue, which can serve as a source of energy, does not suppress the desire to eat the daily amount of food. When a person becomes obese, despite the high levels of leptin the appetite continues to be vigorous.
Still, rather than giving up on the leptin theory and finding some other chemical (Or its lack) responsible for obesity, some author’s started viewing obesity as a case of leptin resistance.
1.2.3. Regulation of body weight:
A part of the brain known as the hypothalamus is involved in regulation of body weight, both in the short and the long run.
Certain areas of the brain-called the hypothalamic ventromedial, dorsomedial, paraventricular and arcuate nuclei are involved in appetite regulation. They are shown to have receptors for leptin.
The hypothalamic and other brain areas receive signals from the olfactory and taste receptors as well as from the oral mucous membrane, the jaw and muscles of mastication.
These impulses reach the brain via the different cranial nerves, the olfactory, lingual, trigeminal, glossopharyngeal and the vagus.
The importance of the filling of the stomach was clearly demonstrated in the earliest experiments which showed that dogs continue to eat endlessly if the food that they swallow is not allowed to reach the stomach. (Sham feeding).
READ MUCH MORE INSIDE…
1.2.3.1. Ghrelin
1.2.3.2. Satiety peptides
1.2.3.2.1. GLP-1
1.2.3.3. Other neurotransmitters
1.2.4. Determinants of body weight
1.3. CLINICAL FEATURES
1.4. COMPLICATIONS OF OBESITY
1.4.1. Mortality and morbidity
1.4.2. Psychological effects
1.4.3. Osteoarthritis of knees
1.4.4. Varicose veins
1.4.5. Hypertension
1.4.6. Hiatus hernia
And Much More Inside…
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