Dr Tirtha Mendake

11/16/2022

"For some mothers, the pressure to lose weight quickly, combined with inadequate medical support and care postpartum, can be a toxic, even dangerous mix – one that can make birth injuries worse and healing harder. It can also take a toll on both mental and physical health in one of the most vulnerable, sleep-deprived, emotionally turbulent periods of life.

I’ve seen people who started up exercising just a week postpartum who then had issues with cervical and uterine prolapse because they went too hard as well as had increased bleeding," says Lincoln, who is also author of the book Let’s Talk About Down There: An OB-GYN Answers All Your Burning Questions… without Making You Feel Embarrassed for Asking. "I’ve also had birthing parents who were breastfeeding but who cut down their calories too drastically and their milk supply tanked."

After having a baby, mums are barraged with the pressure to return to their pre-baby bodies. It’s having an insidious – sometimes dangerous – effect.

02/03/2022

here are five aspects of our food that influence our digestion and nourishment.

• Temperature – Warm food is easy to digest compared to foods straight from the refrigerator or even at room temperature.

• Taste – Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, pungent/spicy and astringent are six tastes we feel on our tongue. Each taste triggers the release of specific digestive enzymes.

• Energetics – Every food adds to either the cooling or the warming effect in our body. Both have their purpose and must be maintained in balance.

• After taste – is the post digestive effect of a particular food and emerges after 6-8 hours after meal. It affects our excreta and tissues

• Attribute - The inherent attribute of the food will decide if it will work for or adversely to our tendency.

In my future posts on digestive wellness I will break down these concepts further so you can identify the various contributory aspects of your food and include them in your meal consciously.

02/02/2022

Never push yourself
This mantra could be a useful tool for those who wish to live to their optimum potentiality in all walks of life.

Much has been said about going against the current. Everything that truly works for us moves with the current in harmony with us, not against us. So, if we feel ourself pushing too hard in any direction, let us STOP and INVESTIGATE.

Most often we assume that we must reassess our goals, perhaps aim lower, or push even harder, what if it is not about our ability, but about our direction? What if it is not about reassessment but about realignment? Staying healthy is not about pushing ourself with difficult goals, but about finding harmony within us and with our environment. Health is about strengthening our constitution with mindful eating and living.

01/27/2022

Did you Wake up refreshed today?
Waking up refreshed is a sign that your body has repaired itself and is ready for the day with a booster immunity.

The first sign of an adequate sleep is that you have woken up refreshed and do not need any external booster like caffeine. Waking up tired almost every day is a sign that something inside your body is asking for attention. Inadequate sleep contributes to sugar and hormonal imbalance, high blood pressure, depression and anxiety.

While sleep duration of 7-8 hours every night is very important, it is equally necessary that you sleep soundly and wake up refreshed. Waking up tired means your body has not been repaired during the sleep.

A cumulative effect of inadequate sleep can be a cause of health concerns in later life. Find a way to sleep soundly, adequately, and naturally every night.

01/26/2022

How do we perceive Taste?

If we did not have Taste Buds in our mouth, a raw potato would taste no different than a delicious steak or a leather purse.

Taste buds are gustatory organs located in the groovy external surface of the tongue, soft palate, pharynx, larynx, and upper oesophagus. The receptor proteins sense food particles and the receptor cells in the taste buds convert the chemical signals to electrical signals. The neurotransmitters carry the electrical signals to the brain for taste perception.

Adults have 2,000 to 5,000 taste buds. The sensory cells in the tastebuds are replaced every 2 weeks.

About half of our receptor cells are designed in varying degrees of sensitivity to different basic tastes. Each cell has a specific taste palette and a unique sensitivity profile. A particular cell might be most sensitive to sweet, followed by sour, salty and bitter, while another cell may have a different sensitivity profile. The roundedness of taste is produced by the meeting of all the taste profiles from different parts of the tongue.

The other half of the sensory cells are designed to react to only one basic taste in varying degrees of intensity. They inform on the intensity of the taste – HOW sweet or bitter is our food.

Assuming 6 basic tastes and 10 levels of intensities, we can experience more than a million flavors. Combined with the senses of touch, temperature, and smell, the flavour possibility is near infinite.

**Our perception of taste plays a crucial role in our gut health. **

01/22/2022

Four Stages of Sleep
A typical sleep episode begins with a short NREM 1 stage, progressing through NREM stage 2, followed by stage 3 and finally to REM. We cycle between stages of NREM and REM through the night.

1. NREM STAGE 1 (VERY LIGHT Sleep) - Transitioning from awake to asleep
2. NREM STAGE 2 (LIGHT Sleep) - Body temperature drops, heart rate begins to slow, slow-wave sleep may occur
3. NREM STAGE 3 (DEEP Sleep) - Blood pressure drops, breathing rate drops, deep, slow-wave sleep occurs
4. REM STAGE 4 (DREAM Sleep) - Eyes move rapidly, vivid dreaming occurs in state of muscular paralysis

01/21/2022

Eat with all your senses for digestive wellness
Traditional Cultures across the world insist on the multisensory perception of eating. The wholesome sense of flavour of food comes from its combined experience through all our five senses.

SMELL - The ‘whiff‘ triggers our flavor sense even before we see the food. We have all salivated to the aroma of fresh or the smell of cinnamon or pot roast in the house during Christmas.

LOOK - Visual aspects of our food like color, gloss, evenness, shape, and texture stimulate a gustatory response. This offers a cue to our digestive system.

TASTE – Our tongue is laced with cells that respond to the taste of our food and alert our brain and gut for the subsequent course of action.

SOUND – The Auditory contribution to salivary formation and secretion is subconscious but crucial. We usually experience these in form of the crispy, crunchy, and crackly sounds we hear while biting and chewing.

TOUCH – Certain cultures stress on using fingers to eat food. We feel the texture of food with our fingers, tongue, teeth and palate. We develop our texture palate as we grow.

Each of our sensory perceptions of food trigger the neural control of salivary formation and secretion. These sensory triggers slowly and gently ignite our digestive fire. The more elaborate our sensory experience, the better our digestion and sense of satiation. The more satiated we are, the less we crave for unhealthy foods and in between meal binges.

01/20/2022

Why do teenagers tend to make irrational decisions?

Irwin Feinberg, Profession of Medical Psychiatry at University of California found that the human brain reaches maturation in the early twenties. Science may have confirmed it only recently, but parents of teenagers have known this all along.

Complete maturation in the brain enables rational thinking and critical decision making, until then they will have a brain that takes irrational risks and makes poor decisions.

So, while we may be driven up the wall by our teenagers, we must remember that their bodies are still in the process of maturation. A large part of this maturation happens during their sleep. It is not surprising that we find our teenager grown a up a little more after a night’s sleep.

01/19/2022

WHAT IS GLUTEN

Gluten is a complex mixture of proteins, mainly gliadin and glutenin, stored in the grain along with starch. Gluten stores carbon and nitrogen for germination of the seed to form new wheat plants
Gluten is found in Wheat, Barley, Rye, Bulgur, Spelt, Semolina, Kamut or Oriental Wheat. Wheat is the most widely consumed source of gluten in America, through breads, cakes, bakes, and pasta.

The viscoelasticity (stretchy) and cohesiveness(binding) in the wheat dough which allows it the baking gymnastics like rolling, tossing, spreading, twisting, and molding, is a result of gluten. The rise in the dough due to yeast fermentation, water retention in the bread, is all due to gluten.

Wheat is composed of 85% carbohydrates and 10-15% protein. 80% of that protein is gluten.

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01/18/2022

Brain functions during sleep

Our brain undertakes a variety of functions when we are asleep.

During sleep our brain nourishes many functions, including our learning ability, memory, and decision making. Sleep repairs our psychological health, recalibrates emotional brain circuits, enables us to navigate next-day social and psychological challenges with a composed calm.

Research shows that while dreaming we release certain neurochemicals that soothe (even heal) painful memories and allow a virtual reality space where the brain merges past and present knowledge inspiring creativity.

Hence, in order to keep our mental abilities in optimal health, it is imperative that we sleep soundly, naturally and adequately every night.

01/17/2022

Drinking water during meals
Drinking water during meals is such a subjective thing! The concern here is the temperature and quantity of water you are drinking. A few sips of lukewarm water will not hamper digestion but gulping down water at any temperature is not advisable.

The digestive juices break the food down for digestion and absorption. Drinking water in large amounts dilutes the juices which may interfere with digestion. Consistent hampering of digestion weakens the gut.

Weak gut may cause obesity and other issues related to digestive dysfunction, which may further cause sleep disorder. I see many patients complaining of insomnia actually having digestive issues at its root.

Ideal is to wait for 30 minutes after meals, so the digestive juices function optimally. If you must, then take SMALL SIPS OF LUKEWARM WATER during meals to aid digestion and absorption of food.