We are familiar with the fact that cheese has lots of fat, is high in calories and cholesterol. However, it was surprising to read that we can get hooked to it! Yes, that’s true, not only cheese, we can get hooked to milk also. Maneka Gandhi says that dairy products contains opioid- a chemical that gives a feeling of well-being, calm, intense feeling of pleasure followed by drowsiness. According to the article the milk protein contains opiate. I did some research and found out that milk actually contains morphine.
As milk digests it releases mild opiates called casomorphins. This comes from the breakdown of the milk protein casein. When milk is converted to cheese, most of the water is removed thus leaving behind concentrated casein and fats. So this will contain maximum opiates. But why should mammalian milk contain opioids? Dr. Neal Bernard- founder and President Physicians committee for responsible medicine gave the reason that opiates from mothers milk produce a calming effect and also helps create the mother infant bond. Casomorphins also have other effects like- it slows down intestinal movements, and has antidiarrheal effect. (the reason why excess cheese consumption may result in constipation) Now, isn’t this strange, that something that we have been told since childhood is good for health is actually something that can make us an addict?
0 Comments
This is something I wrote in 2010.. after my experience as a principal in Jay International School, Rajkot. Think of a teacher…what is the image that comes to your mind… A dignified, erudite person with a passion for his/her subject… Well! Sorry to say… you are not of this era! That was decades ago when teachers not only augmented the intelligence of their students but also contributed to character building and overall development of students. However, today this particular species seems to be fast becoming extinct. Why… Lets analyze….
Parents send their children to high fee structured schools with the hope of “good education” along with various other activities. Getting admission in one of the best school is now more of prestige issue. So when they get admission in an esteemed institution they are on top of the world. However, their balloon of happiness soon bursts when they realize how the syllabus has changed. A grade III student needs to know the names of all the bones of the human body, the detailed climatic conditions about all the continents, history of America etc. etc… So…. now what? Tuitions of course! Send the child for tuitions and relax!!!! But, how many of us know what’s going on in these tuition classes? Well…why bother if my child is getting good marks in school? How does it matter if some of them running these tuition classes are not even graduates? Oh really?… But, they make my child LEARN things and he/she gets excellent grades in school. Isn’t that what we want? What’s wrong? Have we ever thought about how much our child understands the topic taught? Understanding……??? Then what’s learning? What’s the difference between the two? Understanding….Learning…. Knowing…. God! Why get into all this? My child is amongst the toppers of the class so why should I bother about learning and understanding? As far as my child gets marks…. UNDERSTANDING can go for a TOSS! This is one side of the story, what’s on the other side? In the school! Why are things not going as it should? Teachers are the pillars of the school; with good teachers a school can create wonders. However good teachers are not so common now. So what’s making good teachers an endangered species? Teaching requires three main qualities- knowledge, communication skills and aptitude. However, knowledge hardly seems to be criteria now (there are commerce graduates teaching science and science graduates teaching English, that’s another story altogether!), with many diploma and other professional courses, graduates in pure subjects are rare. Communication skills are the most important. Ha that’s perfectly fine isn’t it? But wait, Hold on… it’s not communicating to the students…its all about communication with the management. If you can convince them that even though you don’t have the knowledge you can make the students learn, you get are a teacher! Aptitude? If you have good communication skills and can handle technology fairly well that’s all you need. Who cares if you have the aptitude to teach….??? After all, it is easy to trick students. Who from the management has the time to visit the classroom, to see what’s going on there. So now………. KNOWLEDGE can go for a TOSS! That’s not the end of the story. These teachers now have to safeguard their jobs. So students get important topics and questions before the exams. Here lets not forget the contribution of tuition teachers; who make the students learn these topics. So, almost the entire class ends up getting above 90% marks. Wow! Great isn’t it? The students are happy, the parents are happy, teachers are happy. So now why would the management have a problem with that! All are happy! According to a famous proverb- “A good teacher teaches; a better teacher demonstrates and an excellent teacher motivates.” An inspired and dedicated teacher can make even the most monotonous/ serious topic interesting. Oh…but can a teacher without proper knowledge motivate or inspire? Thus, slowly this new different species of teachers are now replacing the good old species….. The trend now is, as far as my child gets marks and has swimming, horse riding, music, dancing etc. in the school, why bother about education? So ultimately……EDUCATION can go for a TOSS! Who is to blame for all this? The school? The parents? Or the society? Yes the society…there is a preconceived notion even today that there is nothing beyond being a doctor or an engineer. It is very difficult for a child to pull away from this and think of some other career, leave alone being a teacher! Even if the child does think of something different, they have parents, relatives, neighbors etc.. to convince them out of it. Teaching is not considered as a career option at all. Ask a child today about their ambition and you will hardly have anyone of them saying.. “I want to be a Teacher”, unless the child is in kindergarten. Without this change in the society … EDUCATION WILL GO FOR A TOSS! Let’s not forget that…….it is not a doctor, or an engineer, or a chartered accountant or a lawyer, but it is only a TEACHER who can contribute to building a civilized society and a better nation. Let us change the mindset that medicine and engineering are the only valued professions and help preserve this endangered species of good teachers before they become extinct. BY Jo Carlowe [BBC knowledge Feb 2017] All of us are aware that technology is adversely affecting our brains. We are relying more and more on our mobiles and laptops. This article gave the details of how technology is affecting our brain and bringing changes in our life.
Jo Carlowe starts with the warning by Plato in 370BC, that Greeks’ “trust in writing” would “discourage the use of their own memory”. Now it is more than writing we have storage for everything from phone numbers, addresses and pictures to important documents, everything is just a click away. So how is all this affecting our brain and changing our brain? Brains change when we use a smartphone or computer, also when we use a pen, a screwdriver or any other tool- mow the lawn, play golf or cook dinner. It is not “Is technology rewriting our brains?” but rather “How are our brains adapting to living in today’s screen first, always online networked world?” J Carlow has highlighted how certain factors like attention span; mood, memory etc., are affected by the technology. I have given some excerpts from the article. Attention span- incessant bombardment and the need for instant answers have eroded our ability to focus.
Something else that I found interesting was about multitasking; if we do one task at a time it uses different regions of the brain to focus on one task. Learning while focusing on one task uses the hippocampus, which stores ideas and creates rich flexible memories. This allows us to compare old ideas with incoming data to put what we learn into context, leading to deeper understanding. Even though all of us are aware of the effects of excessive use of technology, we are not looking into the deeper and the long term effects. These effects have just started showing its symptoms and will soon show up as a disorder in our children if we don't take proper precautions now. |
DeepthiThis page gives my reviews on books and articles read by me or any other issue that I pen down. Archives
November 2022
Categories |