MyLifeYoga

It has been long known that in countries where the socio-economic gap is high, the poor die sooner. The risk of dying also increases if one is in an unhappy job situation or having a stressful life at home. There have been many studies that have shown that being overweight or obese increases our risk of dying sooner. But when these studies are adjusted for socio economic factors, then the relationship between weight and risk of death becomes surprising.

Now being overweight or obese carries the same risk as “normal” weight people. In fact being overweight carries a slightly less risk. The underweight and those who are morbidly obese have substantial risks of dying sooner. This is a huge surprise!

Let us understand this better:

1. Body Mass Index or BMI is determined by dividing your weight in kilogram by the square of your height in meters. If you do not want to do the math you can use this calculator to find your BMI.
2. Those with BMI less than 18.5 are considered underweight and those with BMI over 35 are considered morbidly obese. Both these group have substantial risks of dying sooner. The low BMI people will improve their life expectancy by gaining weight and those with BMI above 35 should plan to lose weight.
3. Those with BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 are considered “normal”. While those with BMI between 25 and 29.9 are classified as “overweight”. If you have a BMI between 30 and 34.9 then you are classified as “obese”. After adjusting for socio-economic factors, the risk of dying is same for those classified as “normal” and “obese”. The risk of those in the “overweight” category is slightly less than compared to the other two groups.
4. If you are sedentary, then irrespective of the weight group you belong to, your risk of dying is increased substantially. In such cases if you add a daily 20 minute walk at a relaxed pace to your routine, you can make substantial gains to your life expectancy.
5. If the circumference of your waist is more than the circumference around your hip then your risk increases. Thus if your “gut to butt” ratio is over 1 and if you are man, and over 0.9 if you are a woman, then your risk of dying is increased.

So what are the takeaways? Continue reading →

Richard St. John spent 7 years doing 500 interviews talking to successful people to find out what made them successful. He distills this into eight secrets in this fast paced three minute talk. This is one of the most popular TED talks ever and is worth watching and sharing. The key message for us is that success happens not due to ambition or ego. It happens when you shut the ego out and let passion take over. When the ego is away, work becomes fun and you can have a great time working hard. And because successful people are able to focus on one thing and work hard persistently they become good at what they are doing. This is a big driver of success. Because the effort is outside the context of the ego it becomes a way to serve others. It now becomes easy to push yourself hard to take you beyond where you could imagine you could go. Also great collaboration occurs outside the context of the ego and good ideas flow and mature in such an environment.

Related: Six Things To Put On Your Do-Not-Do List

It is said that for many who attain enlightenment, the experience is so complete and overpowering that they do not want to come back into the world of duality again. Many are simply happy to pass away in this state of Samadhi. Yet others continue to live, but they do so silently and anonymously without talking about their experience to others. But luckily for us a small minority chooses to talk about its experience.

It is said that after attaining Enlightenment the Buddha’s first impulse was to abide in the effulgence of Bliss without turning back to convey the incommunicable to mankind.

Then he reflected, “Some there are who are clear sighted and do not need my teaching.”

“And some whose eyes are clouded with dust who will not heed it though given.”

“But between these two there are also some with but little dust in their eyes, who can be helped to see; and for the sake of these I will go back among mankind and teach.”

So the question before us is: Are we among those whose eyes are clouded with just a little dust, and who can pay heed to the message of prophets and saints of the past who spoke for our sake?

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Credits:This has been written by Raj Shah and edited by Ketna Shah.