Hospital No More

One month ago, it was my mother. Three days ago, it was my grandpa.

People all around me are ended up in the hospital! No matter the age, be it 40 years old or 76 years old.

Both of them have mild stroke. Signs of numbness, chest pain and those symptoms of stroke. Two days ago when I visited my grandpa, the whole ward was full of stroke patients. When I looked at my grandpa, I thought that he’s better off than some other patients are that time. There’s patients who can’t open their mouth, can’t move their limbs. Can’t talk, can’t chew, can’t move and they can only stare at the ceiling, while my grandpa (a chicky old fella) was smiling happily while the nurses attend to him. He had a CAT Scan and the doctor found a blood clot in his brain, and said that he did not break down into a severe stroke this round is because he is HEALTHY and FIT! Well that’s because he exercise alot; he cycles everyday, and eat regular small meals.

I cried a few times while on the way to visit him and when I left the hospital. Because I know that he’s going to leave me soon. He’s the closest being I ever had since I was born. And to accept his absence is hard. I can only cherish the time he still have to be with me.

When both my mother and grandpa was hospitalised, they still continue to smoke! Smoke and smoke and smoke! If my grandpa didn’t smoke, given his diet and fitness, he’ll sure live to a ripe old age! But he lit his first cigarette while fighting the japanese when he was 16 years old. He’s 76 this year and that means 60 years of smoking! If I were to cut open his lungs, it’d be all black!

I’m a born anti-smoker. Cigarette packs are everywhere since I was born, but I never lit any of it. All I had was secondhand smoke, ever since I was in my mother’s womb. I wondered had it done me any irreversible harm during my development stages in her womb.

I’ll never ever marry a wife who smokes! If she picks up this habit while calling me her husband, I’ll file for divorce straight away. I don’t want my children to have the kind of parents whom I have. If I were to catch my sons or daughters litting a cigarette in my house, I’ll kick them out. I won’t accept them in my household. Well of course I’ll educate them how harmful smoking is. My house will be smoke-free! I won’t even draw a yellow rectangle for guests to smoke at!

People around me are falling. And that’s a sign for me to be reminded, to take action. To be reminded about how weak Man can be to demise from self-inflicted harm, to enjoy doses of physical thrills. To be reminded how short-sighted one can be, wanting to enjoy the effects now and does not concern about the consequences. To be reminded of how irresponsible one can be, to not take care of our own body and expose it to harmful stuffs, and also cause others to suffer.

We have to take action. Man can definitely do better than harming themselves! We need a healthy lifestyle. Because if we are to continue eating cooked food, taking drugs and smoking our days away as if there’s tomorrow; we don’t need any invaders to annihilate us. We’ll exterminate our own existence! I’m not exaggerating, I’m just reiterating for the laws of nature which simply states, “Only the fittest can survive in this world”. If we don’t strive for the fittest, we’ll die not trying.

In the modern world, ending up in hospital before one dies is seen as a norm. It’s always expected that way. But must that be the way we die? Must we die from diseases? Can’t we die healthily; a painless death? Given our modern lifestyle, we simply can’t die healthily. How can we not get ill or diseased when we continue to feed ourselves denatured proteins and deep fried unsaturated fat which we call ‘cooked food’, and sum up the meal with a cigarette? Even if our mind can take it, our body can’t!

I understand and experience for myself that temptations are hard to overcome. Especially when one lacks support. And that is why we are learning the lesson the hard way; to get sick and disease and die a painful death.

So I’ve a call for everyone, a call for you. That we need to support one another to live a healthy lifestyle. It’s hard to break away from old habit patterns because of the lack of support. Just imagine a man who eat ‘normal’ cooked food for twenty over years. And realise that it just deteriorate his body after each meal, and want to change over to eating healthy food. At work, if he and his colleagues were to lunch at a hawker centre, and this man orders a bowl of yong tau foo full of veggies while his colleagues are eating western food, chicken rice, laksa and so on… Worse is when he got condemn and mocked by friends for his diet. If the man is not strong enough, he’ll succumb to it. At home, he’s the only one eating salad and juice while the rest have their ‘home-cooked’ meal. In the contrary, if the colleagues felt guilty for eating unhealthy food and want to change over to a healthy lifestyle, he’ll join the man. If a group of health-conscious people live together, compliment and supporting each other to eat healthily, exercise together, inspire and motivate one another… If 1 man can influence 10 person, and this 10 person influence another 10 person, and so on, very soon, the old habit pattern of our past unhealthy lifestyle will become fade memories and our lives will change. The demands of unhealthy food will be at all-time low. The whole hawker centre may close down and left the yong tau foo store which becomes the richest and most popular stall! Juice cafe, salar bars, raw food restaurant will one by one pop up everywhere. Imagine a ‘chap cai peng stall’ (mixed vegetable rice stall) were to be converted into a mixed salad rice stall!

But as of now, that is just a dream.

Yes, there are many who are health-conscious. They are those who pay much more to take supplement pills, processed vitamins, pasteurized ‘low-fat’ yoghurt, calorie bar and so on… Yet, do you think those things are healthy?

The truth is, these are as bad or worse, than cooked food diet. The truth is that most of us are often misguided and are filled with misunderstanding. Sometimes it can be very ironic, as we mistake what is good for us as harmful to us. A simple concept is fat. Not all fats are healthy! Raw fats are pretty much in demand for body! Unsaturated fats are the bad ones which causes diseases. People avoid durian, avocado, olive oil annd other source of healthy fat which are essential to our body.

A few centuries ago, people start to believe that bacteria are parasitic and harmful. And pasteurisation came into the picture. So people pasteurise whatever they eat. Heating up everything. Yet they forget their basic biology; denaturation.

A leopard preys onto a zebra, and he immediately eats its flesh, when its still fresh, and all the nutrients and ezymes are still bioactive and healthy. The leopard eats it and gets stronger and healthier. Now on the other hand, on the next day, this leopard was caught and send to a zoo and was fed with cooked meat, the meat are tough, it loses its original taste and fragrance, its nutrients and enzymes are destroyed while cooking at high temperature above 40 degrees celsius. What its eating will then be just some byproduct meant to fill its stomach. It doesn’t make the leopard stronger and healthier.

Yes, you learn in Home Economics, or Food and Nutrition, Health Education, Biology or over the internet on what scientist had found out about food over the centuries. About certain food had certain vitamins, enzymes, minerals, nutrients which will benefit if eaten. Yes, it contains all those but once it’s cooked, all those will end up as byproducts, dead cells, to put it simply.

Well I just learn something in this semester module, Introduction of Microbiology, where in the last topic I learn about protein denaturation. Initially, a protein shapes in a coil form (Native Conformation), and when it undergoes denaturation, it loses its form and the coils entangled (Unfolded). And the byproduct is just like a mess of the inital protein structure(Coagulated). So the piece of juicing steak well-doned is just a coagulated piece of junk! On the other hand, if you were to break an egg into a glass and swallow it, the protein are still in its native conformation, and that means it still maintains its functional activities! So if you want to gain muscle, don’t eat beef or so-called healthy white lean meat after pumping iron, swallow down 6 raw eggs! Or even better eat raw organic meat!!!

The point here is – Education. Once we know what is good or bad for us. We’ll make our own judgment and decide our own healthy lifestyle. There’s many different ways to live healthily. Humans are ommivores by nature and we can indulge in all kinds of food, but the key here is, NATURAL. We have to back track towards a primitive diet, excluding rubbing two stones with fire and barbeque the meat over it!

And for the dream yet to be materialised as mentioned above, that will be the goal I’m working towards. I’ll tap onto my entrepreneurial strength to create history in the food & beverage industry! I’ll create my own food empire!