Pulse Beat

Prof Dr BM Hegde 13 April 2015

Death Due to Breathing

Some time back, a study showed that pollution in our capital city, Delhi, is killing its citizens, especially children. A similar study done in Bengaluru also showed that the southern city was inhospitable for children below five. The changes and the effect on their bodies carry on to adulthood; and now we know that evolution is primarily environmental and not genetic. Though the Delhi study could be criticised on many counts as not being perfect, the fact remains, even without that study, that these landlocked cities are becoming death holes as they are bursting at their seams with fossil-fuel wastes and other pollutants, like pollen in Bengaluru. Wake up Arvind Kejriwal, do something to save the children of the city which gave you all its votes!

Cancer and Its Environment

Cancer is a bunch of aimless, jobless, wandering mutated cells that eventually settle down in one organ or place in a human body. They are our own cells and are not demons from the outer world. Why our own cells become our enemies is a million-dollar question. The new theory of evolution gives credence to an old hypothesis about cancer being an environmental insult on our system. Hypoxia, acidic environment and cell necrosis are our enemies vis-à-vis cancer.

Given this background, chemotherapy, radiation and mutilating surgery do not seem to be the logical treatment for cancer. Logically, then, natural good oxygen supply by physiological breathing, avoiding acidic food and making the biggest environment of man, his mind, tranquil would go a long way in a preventing cancer and also in curing it.

‘Tobacco Does Not Kill’

How on earth does a politician suddenly become a scientist overnight? A member of Parliament (MP) has come out with such startling data from his ‘study and observation’. Initially, in the 1950s, even scientists were not convinced about the link between tobacco and mortality. Doll and Hill at Oxford did painstaking research to connect the two and thousands of lives have been saved from possible tobacco deaths. Even if the MP feels that tobacco and cancer and not related, he cannot deny that smoking will eventually lead to disabling emphysema that the smoker feels s/he is in hell on earth with incapacitating breathlessness.

Just a Slogan

‘Prevention is better than cure’ is a good business slogan to net more and more healthy individuals under the drug and intervention umbrella for the health of the disease-care industry. Health promotion is far better than cure and intervention at a late stage. Health promotion is to give the populace good food, clean water, sanitation, education, economic empowerment and female education for the good of the next generation.

When one applies disease statistics to healthy people, up to 25% of them become sick (false positives). That is why less people die in places with fewer doctors per capita and lesser specialists. Doctors going on strike had cut mortality and morbidity significantly in the past, in many countries! Let nature teach us our science and let us not teach our science to nature.

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