I reproduce hereunder an interesting Article written by Columnist Shampa Dhar - Kamath, in "The New Indian Express" about the confusion of non-medical man on the changing trend in medical discoveries. I request the Doctors in our Tamil Brahmin Forum to comment on this.
Regards,
Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.
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Salt is dead; Long live salt (The New Indian Express - 17 July 2011)
Shampa Dhar-Kamath
"Salt is the killer. Er, no, it’s not. It’s sugar you must avoid. Oh sorry, salt is the killer, but only if you have more than three grams a day while simultaneously downing less than 1,000 mg of potassium daily. Oh, are you shunning the salt shaker because you’re hypertensive? Listen, we have it on good authority that anyone who thinks that salt has anything to do with high blood pressure is delusional. Don’t you know that studies have shown that people who consume 14 grams of salt a day have a lower median blood pressure than those who have about 7.2 grams a day?
So stop worrying about salt, and watch your sugar intake instead. No, don’t bother with brown sugar anymore. Yeah, yeah, it’s unrefined and all that but it also has just as many calories as the white stuff. Plus, the much-touted bonuses of iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium are insignificant nutritionally.While you’re about it, forget everything you’ve heard about eggs too. Yes, we know that we told you to go slow on them because of the fatty acids and cholesterol that they contain. But we’ve changed our mind. Instead, we bring you the heartening news that eggs are packed with the goodness of 11 vitamins and minerals in glorious amounts and are also one of the few food sources of vitamin D, the lack of which can give you anything from brittle bones to cancer. So knock them back, and don’t stinge on the yolk: it contains heaps of calcium, zinc and magnesium, and lashings of vitamin A, copper, B6 and magnesium. A few yolks a day in fact keep the cataracts at bay.Could you also pipe down about the fresh fruits? They may come in handy if you’re looking for a shot of vitamin C but other than that, there’s no need to be gorging on five portions a day. You don’t want to be seen as a glutton, do you? Just have five dainty tablespoons of dried fruit instead. Better still, make one portion a shot of juice. No, it’s not unhealthy for you. Stop living in the past. It’s too complex to explain about complex sugars right now, but just wait a few years, and you’ll see we were right. We busted the drink-water-through-the-day myth, didn’t we? Sometime in the 1940s, someone recommended that the human body be watered with eight glasses of fluid a day. Over time “fluid” turned to “water” and gorging on H2O arose. But now you know that you need to drink water only if you’re thirsty. And even then, a beer can do the trick. More effectively, probably. One last thing, before we go. Please try and forget that we told you that thinner people are healthier than fat ones. Because—as you should have learnt from the ugly duckling—it really is what’s on the inside that counts. Scientists now know that a lot of thin people pack a lot of fat around vital organs like the heart, liver or pancreas. What’s worse is that these lanky-frankies, without the warning signal of a protruding belly, are lulled into a false assumption of good health. Just like you, poor non-medical man, are gulled into believing that science is an omniscient art."
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