Good Morning Facebook!

Good Morning Facebook!
Nature's call in the morning? that ain't the first thing to be done! got to wait buddy, since our mornings start with Facebook! believe me, even the sunrise wouldn’t be so consistent. Well well, adding spices to the teens’ cooked up life, pushing the e-mails and chats into senescence, connecting the once-sole soul mates and tempting the entire age pyramid to step into its vast empire, Mr.Facebook (not Miss F.B. unless it was called faceshopping, facegarment or facegold) has emerged a giant tsunami sparing almost none. With this sudden forest fire unveiling, the G giants and Y messengers have been admitted into I.C.U.,hoping a good recovery. You familiar with "wherever you go, our network follows”, yeah? well, we become the honorable hutch dog, and it’s a "social” network here. Our untiring teacher's words which kept demanding us to open our book someday has finally paid off, we with much dedication, regularly open our facebooks everyday! and thanks to the god given mobile technology, making F.B. possible even in the middle of nowhere.

Zooming into the students’ community, we enjoy great intimacy with F.B., a very legal affair in the court of f’LAW.

A typical day for us starts with the F.B.news feed, carrying on with the daily routine, not even a few hours have passed by that we start missing F.B., check on it to ensure it is in sound health, no notification, comments or likes have been missed, this obsessive compulsion keeps us going for the rest of the day at a constant logging rate unless a spicy online conversation demands more frequent logging in. The day ends with a final check before dozing off, oh-oh picture abhi baaki hai dost! at around midnight we wake up (idiopathic) do a quick scanning for new items on wall and "probably" put up a status and then off to sleep!

When out of balance in mobile, low battery or dead signal, withdrawal symptoms start to appear which demands urgent logging in mostly from your buddy’s mobile, and if not met, progresses to panic attack, palpitations, and shock leading to multi-facebook failure.

Looking at the brighter side, from the time we noted down funny addresses and phone no's to contact someone, life has become much simpler and tracked down to just one trivial question "dude are you in facebook?"

You want to convey some announcement, some important news, some appointments? well here's a virtual loudspeaker, which caters a brilliant population in no time! Got terribly hit my boredom, want to play some mind boggling games, feel like poking someone, relieve your frustration? here comes the e-Spiderman F.B. your friendly neighborhood!

Like adding salt and pepper to the 'feed', we have the "status" and "like" ingredients in it, while some struggle more than they possibly could for any real ordeal in life just to pen a cool status earning decent no. of likes, some just like to meticulously investigate and scan the 'walls' of known and the unknown, these are the famous silent facebookers. Nevertheless when they learn that a teacher has stepped into the F.B. amphitheatre, experience a volcanic excitement, smash into the room with the hot news "He's in F.B.!"

Ladies and gentlemen, has the facebook drug taken control of our lives pushing us into a state of intoxication and dependence or is it just playing the ‘placebo’ effect on us? Well if I were to opine, I would get supergeeky, say that these facebook bacteriae can be equated with the normal flora in our body, which can turn into deadly superbugs only when our mental defense crashes. There are some entertainments which can’t be super ceded, for everything else there is Facebook!
So are you there in Facebook?



Facebook reaching heights in the matrimonial market

Water water everywhere, not much goes in!

Well, if air is like the very essential element to sustain life, water is the maintenance element! In the world where soft beverages rule, we have almost ignored water and forgotten that it is a drinking element. When i was in mauritius, i was invited by a family friend for dinner, chicken was served with coke. Not satisfied with coke, i reached out to drink some water. When they asked me why i wanted water to drink, i replied that usually we drink water with food back home and that is when they got shocked to death, retorting "are you kidding?"

Guys, we don't watch some random movie in the theater easily unless someone certifies it as a good one. Similarly, to reinforce our water drinking habits, i would like to share some benefits of the holy element. Apart from the best bet to quench your thirst, it has a lot of other actions. The best treatment for a sore throat would be to gargle warm salt water, the salt draws water from the throat mucosa and alters the pH making it hostile for the bacteria camping there. Even otherwise, gargling just lukewarm water normally before retiring to bed may prevent a sore throat next morning. People have tested and advised to drink water with honey first thing in the morning if you intend to lose some pounds. We easily get tempted by ice-creams, gulp in some before we recall that we are on diet! In that case, try a big glass of warm water down the throat,that may prevent the extra calories to deposit, also may keep your throat from getting an attack. Suddenly one wakes up in the middle of the night with pain in the back, rushes to the hospital, it turns out to be a kidney stone. The first treatment, drink a lot of water, what we call fluid therapy! It involves drinking huge amount of water in a little time, so that it flushes the stone out of the kidney. Then the patient is advised to drink a lot of water everyday to prevent stones in future. One should drink a lot of water especially in summer season, due to lot of sweating, to avoid dehydration.We may not be able to sense initial stages of dehydration, also the amount of water we take in is often not proportional to the loss due to the fact that we often take cold water which quenches thirst early or we just don't like the idea of filling up a whole glass of water to quench thirst. If we consume less water, lesser we would urinate and just like the plants get dried up when deprived of water, our urinary tract dries up inviting bacteria to camp and create infection, which causes burning sensation often. Just like the car engine needs oil, stomach when eating food secrets acid to digest and need water along for proper digestion. But the timing is more important here, some say drink water half an hour prior, a popular healer says drink water only after finishing the food. So the point is to avoid drinking while taking the food. While preparing bottle milk for the baby, we need to dilute the powder with proper amount, this is very crucial as thick milk may lead to indigestion whereas over diluted milk will not serve the purpose. With proper amount of water after every episode of vomiting, we can compensate for the water loss. This we just ignore because we think it's just the food which came out but what we fail to understand is that the water has come along too. Children suffering from diarrhea will need oral rehydration salt solution to compensate for the loss of water and salts. We shall imagine the human body as a blender which functions right with only optimum amount of water in it. Warm water enema is a good treatment which cleans our intestines and washes away some infectious bacteria. Anyone can take enema just like that. It is simple but ignored because of the obvious fact that it has to go through the rear. For people who are on diet but could not control their hunger can try drinking lot of water before food and wait for a few minutes. I said wait for a few minutes because our brain takes sometime to sense that our stomach is getting filled, if we do not give this time, then we would eat more than required before the brain realises we are full and end up with a non movable body and a bloated stomach, then we wonder how come we ate more than its capacity making it bulge ! Our brain need atleast 15 minutes to sense the fullness, so why not respect it's protocol ? Water even comes to rescue for cough and hiccoughs, though mild hiccoughs can be managed by looking up and holding breath for a while.

Even externally , water has its own benefits. If you take bath in hot water during summer, one can prevent heat rash which are common in the season. But a note of caution here, too much cold or hot water bath may lead to itching sometimes. Hot water bag is a very good therapy for joint pains, muscle aches and sprains. Guess what is the first thing to do when a foreign body hits your eye, start splashing tap water in the eyes for the next few minutes. The same is done for a dirty wound before doing a dressing. When a burn injury, better to put off fire by water than a blanket. As a matter of fact, when we open up the infected abdomen to operate, we always do a saline water wash inside ! Splashes of cold water regularly on the face would keep your skin dirt free. Of course, always keep in mind the scarcity of water in India, use it judiciously and beware of contaminated water, avoid using it both internally and externally. Also do not store water in those plastic bottles which are meant to be disposed after single use, you might end up with cancer! On a final note, remember the more water goes in, the more beneficial it is. Though water intoxication is caused rarely by a excessive drinking disorder, we need not worry about it. Optimum water is balanced with salts in the body, if the balance is disturbed, salt levels go high and cause brain damage. Bottles of soft beverages can get you diabetes but tons of water would only make you feel at ease.

False Issues on Smoking

FROM -THE HINDU-
The writer is a certified Allen Carr therapist and a practising doctor at Uforia Centre for Integrated Medicine in Bangalore.
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Smoking is the single biggest avoidable risk a person can take in one's entire lifetime. And yet, millions of intelligent people choose to take that risk every single day of their lives.

Why? Because of the false beliefs that smokers have about cigarettes that force them to continue smoking against their better judgment.

Myths and illusions

There are several myths and illusions about smoking, but here are some of the most common:

•Smokers do not have sufficient willpower and that's why it's hard for them to quit.

•Smokers have addictive personalities which make them different from non-smokers.

•Smokers have a self-destructive streak in them.

All of the above are false. Smokers will walk miles in the middle of the night if they run out of cigarettes, proving that they can be strong-willed people. Secondly, it is not the personality that's addictive; it's not even the drug (nicotine); it's the belief that you are dependent on the drug that's the problem. Thirdly, I say to smokers who think they have a self-destructive streak, “Let's test it out. Before you light your next cigarette, try jumping off the roof.”

Facts about smoking

Knowing the facts will help smokers to quit easily and permanently.

Fact #1: Contrary to their perception, smokers do not receive a boost from smoking a cigarette. Smoking only relieves the withdrawal symptoms from the previous cigarette, which in turn creates more withdrawal symptoms once the new cigarette is finished. In this way, the drug addiction creates a vicious cycle.

Fact #2: The “relief” smokers feel on lighting a cigarette, the feeling of being “back to normal,” is the feeling experienced by non-smokers all the time.

Fact #3: Contrary to popular belief, willpower is not required to quit smoking. This is because it takes no willpower to stop doing something that an individual has no desire to do, which is the realisation smokers come to once their doubt and fear about stopping have been removed (using cognitive therapy).

Tips to be “smoke free”

• Set your date and time to stop and carry on smoking as usual right up to that time. Don't try to cut down beforehand, because that just makes cigarettes seem more precious rather than less precious.

• Look forward to stopping. Rather than assume you are going to feel deprived and miserable, just look forward to finally being free.

• Remember, you are not “giving up” or “quitting.” These terms are negative. Who wants to be labelled a quitter? Instead decide that you are going to stop. You are going to be a non-smoker, not an ex-smoker!

• Never be fooled into thinking you could have “just one cigarette.” You will either return to smoking at your old level immediately or gradually build up to it over a period of time. Never think in terms of one cigarette, always think of 100,000.

• Avoid any form of substitution. If you replace cigarettes with chocolate — you'll gain weight and be miserable. Even the use of seemingly innocent substitutes such as carrots and apples creates a feeling of deprivation. Remember you are not giving up anything — you are getting rid of smoking. Looking for a replacement would be like getting rid of a terrible cold and wanting to replace it with the flu!