Soma Purana

Consume a variety of foods: We don't exactly know what nutrients we need. Consume an assortment of foods. Keep an eye on portions: Applies to only some foods like pizza, rice. You can eat all you want vegetables and fruits. Eat plenty of produce: Make it as colorful as possible - green, orange, red, blue/purple, yellow. Includes legumes (beans, lentils, peanuts). Eat whole grains: whole wheat, oats, barley. Replace white rice with brown rice. Limit, limit, limit!: Try to cut out refined flours, and sugar please. Use splenda instead of sugar in coffee. Enjoy more nuts and vegetable oils: Walnut, almond, pecan. Canola oil and olive oil. Shun trans fats: cut out cookies, donuts, all bakery products, sweets. Keep sodium down: Cut down salt. Use sea salt instead of table salt. Watch your Calcium and Vitamin D: Drink some milk (D fortified). Get a few minutes of sun, not too much. Cut out liquid beverages: This includes soda and juices too!

I started Bikram Yoga at Plainsboro studio on January 6th 2013. Today is 4/19/2013 and I have gone to yoga EVERYDAY since the start. I completed 100 days of Bikram Yoga in a row on 4/16th. Bikram yoga is 90 minutes long and is done at a temperature of ~105 deg F which is pretty hot. The Bikram postures are tough. There are 26 postures which are done in sets of two. 13 are standing postures and 13 are done lying down. Standing postures require tremendous strength in legs and thighs. There are some standing postures that are still very difficult for me. But, I am seeing some improvement everyday. Before I started Yoga my LDL was 148. Two months after I started Bikram, it had dropped to 108. The huge drop in LDL may be a coincidence, I would know after the next blood test. I have outstanding teachers. Mishel, Mori, Meredith, Heidi, Jess, and Jen. Mishelle and Mori drive you, provide lots of guidance to make corrections, but I love it. They just want you to practice yoga correctly.

In India, men sometimes get upset when they getting the girls and blame the mother of having some deficiency. Sex of the baby is determined by whether she carries two X-chromosomes (then it would be a girl) or an X and Y (then it would be a boy). Mother's egg always contributes ONLY X-chromosome. A man, on the other hand, can produce sperms that have either an X or a Y-chromosome. Sperms compete to fertilize the egg, and it is pure chance whether   a sperm with X or sperm Y enters the egg. X-chromosome is three times bigger (155 million base pairs) than Y-chromosome, so Y-chromosome is slightly lighter (not 1/3rd because there are 22 other chromosomes that are of equal length in both the egg and the sperm) and should be faster in reaching the egg. One would expect more boys conceived as a result.  Boy babies are only slightly (1.2%) more likely than girl babies, however, because male fetuses are less likely to be carried to term than female ones.

Mutations are considered bad. only about 24 mitotic divisions occur from the fertilized egg that starts a little girl's embryonic development and the setting aside of her future eggs (which is done long before she is even born). No matter what the age of the mother, she transmits only about 15 new mutations to her offspring. The sperm of a man, in contrast, are the descendants of at least 400 mitotic divisions since the fertilized egg that formed him. A man continues to add one to two new mutations every year.  So, A 25 year old man contributes ~25 times more mutations than the mother (mother's age does not matter) to the baby. A 40 year old man contributes ~30 times more mutations than the mother (mother's age does not matter) to the baby.

Humans think, that is why we are humans. Thinking and thoughts are part and parcel of human existence. By concentration, or meditation, we may be able to suspend or reduce the rate of thoughts. Once we are out of meditation, we are back to being full-fledged “thought” creatures. We have some control on what those “thoughts” are about, not 100% control. Senses aid in what we think. Sometimes thoughts about some thing or event or person or topic just gushes up uncontrollably. There is no point in squelching the thought, instead, it is better to acknowledge the thought and let it run its course. While we may not be able to control the thought, we are able to control whether and how we translate the thought into action. We ARE responsible for our actions; we cannot say, well the thoughts drove me to do it. We are all kind of schizophrenic – I, as X, think. I, as Y, can do lots of things. Observe what, as X, I am thinking,  Judge what, as X, I am thinking,  Decide wh

Human body requires a blood pH value between 7.35 and 7.45 (slightly alkaline) in order to function properly.  Zero is the most acidic a solution can be, and 14 is the most alkaline.   The pH of food  before you eat it  does not always determine the pH effect it will have on your body  after you digest it . For example, lemons are highly acidic fruits on their own. But lemons actually raise pH levels after digestion, which means that they help bring your blood pH back into balance, and are therefore considered an alkaline food. The point is not to completely eliminate acid-forming foods; rather it is about BALANCE. To maintain balance, about 60 to 80% of your diet should be alkaline foods. The key alkaline-forming and acid-forming foods my family consumes are as follows. Highly Alkaline Forming Foods sea salt, pumpkin seed, lentils, onion, sweet potato, lime, lemons, nectarine, watermelon, tangerine. Moderately Alkaline Forming Foods Apricots, spices, pepper, ginger root, b

Just completed "Introduction to Engineering Mechanics"with distinction taught by Dr, Wayne Whiteman of Georgia Institute of Technology. This course was primarily about drawing Free Body Diagrams (FBD) and determine force and moment reactions at any point in a 2-D or 3-D object in static equilibrium under forces and moments. I had learned this as part of my BE decades ago. This was a good revision and also I appreciated the power of FBD for the first time.