Tag: Health

Cinnamon Challenge is Deadly – Don’t do it

By Anupum Pant

A couple of years back a dare game went viral on the internet through YouTube. It was called the Cinnamon challenge. Literally everybody was doing it. There were more than half a Million videos uploaded, of people doing that challenge. Although the popularity has declined to very low levels today, there still are people who haven’t stopped trying this fad out. Here is a tiny contribution, backed by solid science, from my side to help stop this deadly challenge.

What is Cinnamon Challenge?

It is a dare game where a person dared to do it has to attempt swallowing a tablespoon of cinnamon in under 60 seconds without vomiting or inhaling the powder. Seems easy, but is extremely difficult and people take it on their ego to take the challenge. Moreover it has some serious long-lasting health effects. On video it looks something like this – [Video]

The ill-effects of Cinnamon Challenge

Before I talk about what it can do to you, let me introduce to you Dejah Reed – A girl from Ypsilanti, Michigan who tried the challenge four times. For the first three times fortunately, she did not experience any lasting effects apart from a lot of coughing and spitting. The fourth time proved to be deadly. One of her lung collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Now she runs a website where she urges people to say no to Cinnamon Challenge.

What can it do to you?

Cinnamon is a healthy thing to eat in small amounts. Although ingesting a spoonful of cinnamon would seem  like a harmless thing to do, it can be really deadly. –

  1. Since it comes from the bark of a plant, it has cellulose. This substance can’t be broken by our bodies easily and can get lodged in the lungs to cause a permanent damage to your body.
  2. Talking about the instant effects, it can prevent oxygen from reaching your lungs and make you choke to death.
  3. The caustic nature of it can cause chronic inflammation on the interior walls of your respiratory system.
  4. Can cause pneumonia.

[Read more]

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Third-Hand Smoke is as Bad as Smoking

By Anupum Pant

Yes, third-hand smoke (THS)! I knew there was second-hand smoke that someone standing near a smoker could inhale and get affected, but never knew there was third-hand smoke. The worst part about it – It is as deadly as smoking a cigarette and effectively affects everybody, irrespective of your proximity to the smoker and his smoke.

So, if you are a non-smoker and the next time someone tells you that their smoking habit is none of your business, you need to tell them, actually it is. The third hand smoke is killing even the non-smokers.

What is third-hand smoke?

Since smoke is nothing but a collection of several tiny particles floating in air, it can get trapped in things like cloth fibers, hair and surfaces. This is the reason you always get that whiff of burning cigarette once a smoker without his cigarette enters a relatively clean room. It stays there, on clothes and objects, for a long time, even after the cigarette has been extinguished and is called third-hand smoke.

Interesting studies

1. Recently, researchers at University of California Riverside decided to study the deadly effects of third-hand smoke. They did the study on mice, exposed them to the kind of exposure normal human beings have to THS. Significant damage to livers and lungs of mice was recorded.

2. Last year, Lara Gundel, a scientist from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published a study on the effects of THS on Human DNA. Scientists exposed paper strips to cigarette smoke for 258 hours and ventilated air for 35 hours. After this, they exposed the compounds collected in that paper to human cells in petri dishes. It showed that THS can cause harm and mutation in Human DNA cells. It doesn’t stop at that. The potential to cause problems by THS can increase with time.

How it affects you

The thing about third-hand smoke that should worry you the most is, almost everyone comes in contact with it; at home, work, restaurants, bars, shops, etc… It is not like second-hand smoke where you have to inhale the smoke to get affected (equally deadly).

  • Smoke from cigarettes can collect over time on the walls and objects of a room; layer upon layer of carcinogenic compounds!
  • Cars, due to their small sizes and a lot of fibrous material inside can be the worst THS affected areas.
  • Someone smoking in some other room with a fan turned on can send a significant amount of particulates your way. These things can travel far, keep collecting in your room and can potentially affect every body.
  • Children and infants are the worst affected. As they touch objects and put things in their mouths, their tender developing brains can get affected by this more than adults (infants experience about 20 times greater effects)
  • Watch out for smoke rooms. You shouldn’t have a reason to go with your smoker friends in there.
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He Lives With No Heart Beating in His Chest

By Anupum Pant

Imagine this…
You are a doctor. A patient comes to you complaining of something and now you need to check his heartbeat. You plug the stethoscope in your ears and confidently move the probe to touch the chest of this patient, only to find that there is no heart beating inside that chest! In medical terms, isn’t this a dead man walking?

The answer is no, he is as alive as we are.  Medical technology has made it possible for a man to live without a traditional beating heart. Two incredible doctors, Billy Cohn & Bud Frazier, in the year 2011, replaced Craig A. Lewis’s lifeless heart with a revolutionary artificial device – A device that can replace your heart and lets the blood flow continuously – without a beat. By all criteria that doctors use to analyse patients, Craig is dead.

Side note: Do read about that scientist who died and came back to life – [Is There a Scientific Explanation for Everything?]

There is no beating when it works. Through a stethoscope, a doctor would probably hear a continuous whistling of blood sluicing through synthetic pipes and motors (I’m not sure about that). The two doctors had been testing it on cattle and it was their only hope to save Craig’s life. So, they decided to do it – replace his heart with this revolutionary device.

Related article: A heart that runs on nuclear energy – [Nuclear powered pacemakers for the heart]

Yes, technically you could say Craig A. Lewis is a heartless guy, but this is a serious leap in medical technology we are talking about here.

You cannot miss this very-short BBC documentary – “Heart Stop Beating” – where both the doctors talk about how they did something that had never been done before. [Video]

Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

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Practical, Impractical and Bizarre Ways to Lose Weight

By Anupum Pant

Here are some impractical, practical and bizarre ways to lose weight scientifically:

1. Practical – Switch to Smaller Plates [Study]

While it may sound like switching plates won’t help your diet, it actually greatly affects the way you see, and consume food. In the long run it helps you lose weight effortlessly.

If you don’t believe me, I suggest you look at the following common optical illusion – Tell me which one of the circle that is filled with black color, is larger?

You know the answer. Although they don’t look equal to our not-so-smart brain, both of the circles are really equal in size. But what does that tell you?

Moral: Think of the black circle as food. Put it in a larger plate and you think it is less food, and you don’t mind adding little more food to it. Whereas, if you use smaller plates, the amount food looks like it is a lot already. As a result, if you own only small plates, you won’t add more food. Who am I to tell you that little changes give big results.

It has been proven by scientists that using smaller standard plates will reduce your consumption by around 20% every time. 20% is not less!

Note: Similarly, if you want to drink less, you could try replacing your short and stout glasses with taller glasses. This technique is based on another optical illusion known as the T-Illusion – which says that we tend to over-estimate the length of objects placed vertically. See it for yourself. [link]

Other Good Ways: In fact, before moving on to the bad ways, you must know that there are several good ways to lose weight without even trying hard. For instance:

  • Drinking good amounts of cold water can help to some extent.
  • Or, you could try making it a rule to turn away and use stairs, every single time you come across an escalator.
  • When you are travelling in a bus, make it a rule to always get down one stop before your destination.
  • An apple before breakfast everyday can help you lose weight by making you feel full due to its fiber content. – [Source]
  • Just place a mirror in your kitchen or your refrigerator door. Yes, that helps. How? See this – [Video]

2. Bizarre – Excessive Gum Chewing? [Study]

Wait! Before you try this, let me tell you, this is one of those impractical / bizarre ways to experience severe weight loss I was talking about in the first line of this post. Since excess of anything isn’t good – backed by the fact that in ancient China people committed suicide by eating a pound of salt – chewing excess gum probably isn’t a good way to lose weight. I mention it just for the sake of information.

Sugar-free chewing gums contain Sorbitol – a laxative. Chewing these in excessive amounts – about 15+ a day – can cause serious weight loss and chronic diarrhea.

You’ll end up in the hospital if you try this.

3. Impractical – Don’t get Married. [Study]

Although deciding to remain single all your life is not so impractical for everybody, you could consider it socially impractical (at least in orthodox Indian societies).

Yes, studies prove that Married men were 25% more likely to be overweight or obese than single men or men in committed relationship (i.e. dating or engaged). – Thanks to UsefulScience.org

Now, go and subscribe the budding 59 Seconds channel on YouTube and buy the book. That is what I am doing…

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Darkness Is Good For You

By Anupum Pant

It is astounding how the tiniest things can affect your life greatly. Who would have thought that sleeping with lights on can change you into a completely different person, over time?

Sleeping with lights on, or simply not getting enough exposure to darkness can have long-lasting effects. Darkness is good for you.

Melatonin – The Darkness Hormone

Melatonin is a hormone found in all living creatures from the most basic ones to humans. Melatonin is produced in the pineal gland (a part of the brain), by the retina, lens and GI tract. Production of melatonin is influenced by the information received from the retina about the daily pattern of light and darkness. It is primarily secreted when the information of “darkness” is obtained by the gland.

Its Effects

Its levels vary in a daily cycle. In humans, it plays a role in the regulation of several biological functions. Three of its functions we are interested in here are – its effect on out mood, performance and aging process.

Aging, behavior and memory effects:
According to one study, in mice that were aged artificially, Melatonin had immense anti-aging effects. In a similar study, the combined effect of physical exercise and increase in of Melatonin concentration led to improvements in behavior, learning and memory.

Studies on humans have also produced results on similar lines. The hormone’s effect on mood, performance, memory and visual sensitivity were assessed among 14 healthy men in a study carried out at MIT. It was found that externally administered Melatonin had a significant but short acting sedative-like effect on humans. In terms of mood, it had a calming effect.

Anti-Cancer effects:
Melatonin causes cancer cells to self-destruct. The hormone also boosts your production of substances that make your immune system stronger. As a result, your system gets better at identifying and attacking mutated cells that lead to bad cancer.

Other effects:
Melatonin’s effect is not just limited to that. It plays a great role in decreasing Heart Diseases, Headaches, Diabetes and Osteoporosis too. And more…

Improving your Melatonin production

  • Avoid screen time during the last few hours of your day before going to bed.
  • Avoid using any sort of night-light or bed-side lamp. Sleep in complete darkness.
  • Avoid waking up abruptly due to loud alarms or bright light. Use a crescendo for alarms.
  • Sleep away from your phone.
  • Maintain a set light and dark, wake and sleep rhythm.
  • Most important of all, to optimize the production of this hormone, you need exposure to bright sunlight during the day. Unlike what just-the-headline suggests, it is important to note that you are not doing yourself any good by lying in darkness all the time. There has to be a continuous rhythm of light and darkness.
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Myths on Facebook – Negative Calorie Foods

By Anupum Pant

I have never felt the necessity to pay attention to diet related news/facts till date (now I do).
So, never in my life had I read the phrase “negative calorie foods”, until yesterday, when a friend posted the following “WTF fact” on Facebook:

Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it.

BS! I cried, and like with everything I read on the internet, I was skeptical about this too. Hence, I decided to investigate. Here is what I found out.

Negative Calories in theory

Theoretically, it is indeed possible for edible items to be negative calorie foods. It works this way.

The body takes more calories to process a negative calorie food item than it (the food item) provides to the body. That basically means that you can sit all day, eat celery, fill your tummy and still keep losing weight. Sounds too good to be true. Exactly!

A Myth

It has been proved once and again that the number of calories your body burns while processing food is tiny when compared with the calories in that food item. So, scientists haven’t yet found a truly “negative calorie” food item.
For instance, a stalk of celery provides 6 calories to the body, but the body expends only half of a single calorie digesting it. That is +five and half calories. As expected, It isn’t negative. In fact, none of the foods advertised have been conclusively proved as actually negative calorie foods. Except one, which again, isn’t really food.

Ice cold water is the only known negative calorie thing you can ingest. It needs more amount of calories to get processed in the body than it give the body.  Most of this energy expended by the body goes into warming up the ice-cold water.

Celery is still good

However, that doesn’t mean celery is not a healthy food item. When compared to other greasy things you could ingest, celery of course is a good alternative (if you are looking to eat healthy). In terms of calorie intake, you’ll be doing great by eating a lot of celery to fill your stomach. But, positive calories mean that you’ll not lose weight unless you get moving. No wonder, virtually every dietitian has a load of celery mentioned in his/her diet plan.

Also, note that, while it is a good food, it isn’t something you could survive on. If you are thinking of trying an only-celery diet, you should know that you’ll be depriving your body of several necessary nutrients by trying that. Consult an informed nutritionist before trying a diet plan.

Finding an informed Nutritionist

To confirm if it is a good nutritionist you are talking to, you could probably test them by innocently inquiring if celery is a negative calorie food item or not. If he/she LOLs and tells you that it is a myth, it would be a good idea to go to them for diet plans.

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What Do The Blind See?

By Anupum Pant

If you are here to judge me because you think you clicked on a completely nonsensical headline, well that is what headlines are for – To get you to open the link and read.
However, I have to tell you that this headline isn’t complete nonsense. There is more to the word blind than just the word alone. The word Blind in itself doesn’t completely define the exact state of a person’s visual ability. So the blind can see, or not, depending on the kind of blindness they are affected with.

Functionally Blind or Legally Blind

First, there is this thing called functional blindness. The functionally blind can see a bit, but not enough to do everyday tasks without hindrance.

Then there is legal blindness which classifies people having visual acuity below some point as blind. Even people with poor peripheral vision are labeled as Legally blind.

Some people might even have something called partial vision loss due to eye related ailments like glaucoma or cataract. The vision in such cases could be blurred or narrow.
In short, despite being classified as “blind”, people with functional, partial or legal blindness can see at least something. They can perceive light. But not all kind of blind people can perceive light.

Total Blindness

People who are totally blind cannot see. They see nothing. It is called NLP (No Light of Perception). For the people who can see naturally without making any conscious effort, the concept of being able to see nothing can be a very profound concept to grasp. Explaining the meaning of nothingness to a not-blind person is exactly the same as explaining the concept of color to a totally blind person. Experience of one sense can in no way be explained by referring to some other sense. It is a subjective experience.

Some totally blind people are able to map out a 3D image of the world through their eyes. They literally see through their ears. And this can be learnt. – Read more.

There are also some cases where even totally blind can perceive light to some extent. – Source

Is Black = Nothing?

Contrary to what most of us assume, the color black is NOT nothing. You’d assume that a person who is totally blind would see black, like you do when you close both your eyes. But seeing black is not seeing nothing.

Suppose, if you’d ask a totally blind person to describe the color black because you’d assume he always sees it, he’ll not be able to describe it. To experience nothingness to some extent, you can do this:

Close your left eye. Now you are seeing through your right eye. Focus of things with your right eye. But, what you are seeing with your left eye is nothing. It is not black. You see nothing.

Meet Tommy

Probably the most popular person here on the internet who can talk to you about total Blindness is, Tommy, who runs a splendid YouTube channel.

Tommy has been blind all his life. He makes great videos. If you haven’t subscribed to his channel, you must do it right now. The channel, on the whole, will give you quite an insight into the concept of No Light of Perception from a first person account of a Totally blind person. Here is one video of his which I loved. He talks about what colors mean for completely blind people.

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