Bhardwaj Hospital

Major Causes for Increasing Number of Diseases.

Good Afternoon! I’m Dr. A.V. Shaunik. I am a practicing laparoscopic General Surgeon in Noida, Bharadwaj Hospital. I also go to Delhi. I’m keenly interested in nutrition and wellness. So, I’m talking about the diseases that are taking place today. The major cause of these huge increasing amounts of disease whether it is Heart, Cancer, Diabetes, lung diseases like Asthma, Bronchitis, Obesity. In all these diseases, the problems or the causes of this are the free radicals and these free radicals which are coming from the large chemical intake in the terms of pollution and the chemicals in the food that we eat, also pollution in the houses, from the detergents, the cosmetics that we use.

The other thing is the less amount of nutrients in the food that we take because they have been depleting over the years. Now, what are the methods of treatment for this? There are certain things which are required. To handle this –

1. Good exercise. By good exercise, you mean, minimum, a walk for an hour in a day. If possible, minimum three to four days in a week. If not, all the days in a week. When you walk for an hour, the walking should be brisk but as fast as if two people are walking, they can talk to each other comfortably. It should not be less than that not it should be faster than that.

2. Having the right positive attitude. Now, right positive attitude is very very important. It reduces stress. How we can develop good attitude is by good reading, reading the positive books number one and second thing is by doing yoga and meditation can help both in the exercise part and in the attitude part.

3. What is very important is rest. Rest should be minimum six to eight hours for an average adult every day.

And then, very important is the nutrition, the food that we eat. The nutrients in the food have been depleting so I will try to bring out few points which can be done.

1. When we are talking about food, no processed food should be eaten. All processed foods, all tin foods should be avoided.

2. The foods have to be in a balance. When we take the macro-foods that is protein, carbohydrates and fats, the balance is 40-30-30. 40 percent carbohydrates, Protein, it should be 30 percent and 30 percent is the fat. So, what is important is, that this balance is maintained. In other words, as per WHO, a protein intake is very low. It is half. That is 30 grams in a day for a meat eater which should be a minimum of 60 grams in India and for vegetarian, it is not more than 25 to 27 grams. So, we have to increase a protein intake. Fat is again very very important. We need to increase the fat.

When we talk about increasing the fat, we are talking about good fats. What are the good fats? Good fats are omega-3. Omega-3 is especially the non-vegetarian omega-3s. Then, there is desi ghee. Desi ghee is again a good source of good fats and good omega-3. Then, we talk about the fruits and nuts. Nuts again become very important. Walnuts, almonds again, good sources of protein, good sources of omega-3. Plant based omega-3 - flaxseed, alsi, teesi.

Then, we must take in a lot of vegetables and fruits. The fruits and vegetables should be organic, multi coloured so, different colours of fruits, vegetables that should make up our diet. So, when we are talking about the fruits and vegetables, what is important is the organic fruits and vegetables. Then, the certain herbs which are very very important which should be added to our diet that is, haldi, dalchini, green tea, grape seed extract. These are very potent antioxidants which help in good health and also in prevention of disease.

If there are any other questions which, any of you would like to ask, you can always get back to me on the Lybrate website itself or contact me at my clinic. Thank You!


 

Lybrate - Dr. Aditya Vikram Shaunik talks about managing the Increasing Number of Diseases.

Good afternoon. I am DR. AV Shaunik. I am laparoscopic general surgeon. Practicing here in Bhardwaj hospital and have keen interest in nutrition and in wellness. So today we are talking about diseases, why do we have so many diseases and they are increasing on daily basis. In fact the major worry is the heart disease and 30 million people are suffering from this disease in India and 50 million people are suffering from diabetes. There are more than 3 million cancer patients in India . More than 5 lakh people die due to cancer every year. Then we have lung disease, asthma and bronchitis.

Stress is the major cause of the disease factor and increases obesity. So these are the problems which are taking place in adults as well as younger age group. Now the question is that why we have all the diseases? And what can we do about them? What needs to be understood in all these diseases is that they are caused by free radicals. Free radicals are unstable particles which are produced when metabolism is taking place in the body, so they are countered as antioxidants and they balance the free radicals. The problem is that there is a gap between the free radicals production and the balancing which is taking place by the antioxidants. Now what causes free radicals .Free radicals are basically the pollution, chemicals which are coming into our body, all these chemicals which are in the air or in the food insecticide, pesticide, urea, DAP.

Now all these in the body get converted into free radicals and which is being unstable when they hit the DNA of the body. It will cause cancer if it strikes the LDL and is known as bad cholesterol. It oxidizes the LDL and this oxidized LDL will enter the free radical and will damage artery walls to form fat deposits in the vessels which causes heart disease. The same way these radicals will cause inflammation in the bronchi in the air passage of the lungs. It gives rise to bronchitis, asthma. Now these are free radicals and the counter is to the antioxidants. Antioxidants are in food, vitamin and minerals. Over the years, a chemical attack is free radical attack and has worn out. Roughly, the free radical attack goes up to 500 times.

What has happened to our food? The food which our grandparents were eating in 1944, has no longer the same nutrients. Today you will have to eat nearly 8 to 10 tomatoes to get the same copper content which we supposed to get very easily in previous years. So since the nutrients have depleted more than 15 times and the free radicals attack has gone up by 500 times, so there is a major nutritional imbalance. This nutritional imbalance which has taken place is known as the nutritional deficient and this is the main cause of diseases. How do we take care of these diseases? To do this we will discuss this in the next clip.

If there are any questions which you would like to raise you can contact me on the Lybrate website itself, by SMS, by talking to me, by coming to my clinic in the Bhardwaj hospital. Thank you