Podium Talk

Caffeine as a naturally occurring drug has a very rich history. It has travelled around the world in mysterious ways through coffee beans. It originally required specified equipment to brew, but with the invention and popularisation of instant coffee, it has truly reached the masses. While many drink coffee and derived beverages for enjoyment, it has physical benefits too. Athletes and any other population can reap the performance boost that caffeine provides. The way in which it works is fascinating. Caffeine moves through the blood into the brain (only a few molecules are able to cross this barrier). Once in the brain, it attaches to receptor sites of the molecule called adenosine. Adenosine is responsible for the perception of tiredness and fatigue. Since caffeine molecules have blocked the sites, adenosine is not able to attach there and thus the feeling of fatigue is alleviated. This is exactly why people drink coffee to pull an all nighter before an exam. Caffeine has been found...

Sugar has been around since centuries, and it looks like it’s here to stay. However since the ingestion of sugar was found to be responsible for fat deposition and has been linked with increased risk of lifestyle diseases, we have tried to find alternatives to it. Because, let’s face it. This is one addiction that has plagued the entire world in one swoop. Saccharin was the first artificial sweetener to be discovered, which was purely an accident. This is what led to the revolution to hunt the perfect sugar substitute. Artificial sweeteners were advertised as a very comfortable way to lose weight in the 19th century. It was used in sodas first, and later trickled down to other sweet foods and beverages. It promised to take away the calories from the sweetness making indulgence completely guilt free. This sounds too good to be true. After various research and medical organisations put forward their concerns regarding the safety of artificial sweeteners, the government imposed certain re...

There are people who believe that exercise alone can help you lose weight as long as you don’t ‘overeat’. This view is evident by the sheer number of people who purchase gym memberships specifically for weight loss. Whilst physical activity is beneficial, there are a myriad of risks involved when people follow the advice of gurus who aren’t educated about the anatomy and physiology of the human body. At the other end of the spectrum, there are believers in nutrition who could swear by its effectiveness in weight loss. It’s easy to blame a particular macro, be it fats or carbohydrates. It’s much harder to back that claim with evidence. Does that mean we leave everything to chance and do whatever we feel is right? Absolutely not. Looking at the basics of nutrition content, a low carbohydrate diet has been shown to help with maintaining a low energy uptake, which in turn will reduce your weight (As carbohydrates and sugars are well known to be empty calories). Although fat was given a bad...

Are you losing weight for likes and comments on the transformation post that you would upload on your social media, only to regress a few weeks later? Do you want to just let it be; or quit the weight loss program? Of course not. Nobody will agree to either of these. Although reality paints a different picture about the adherence and dropout rates, despite fully knowing the risks and dangers of obesity. Adherence and compliance are crucial in successful obesity management. It refers to the behavior of an individual relative to the medical and professional advice including diet and lifestyle modifications, and physical activity participation. Many individuals don’t end up completing their journey. It’s not an easy process as it is, and a few additional factors make it worse. You might be wondering why are we talking about the negatives at all, but trust me. Knowing about the reasons will help you relate and understand that you’re not alone here. Mental stress, anxiety, body shape concer...

Long before Christiano Ronaldo refused to promote Coke and claimed the superiority of water to the world in front of the press at the Euro 2020, we knew about the calorie-dense nature of sweetened beverages. Despite providing no nutritional value to our diets whatsoever, sodas and soft drinks continue to be in high demand almost everywhere. Most of its credit goes to shrewd marketing and obviously to global sugar addiction. A can of coke contains roughly 130 calories, whereas water has none. To expend just one can’s worth of energy, one would have to run for 15 minutes. That will help only if you don’t make poor diet choices again on the same day. It should be obvious that avoiding the consumption of sweetened beverages would help you lose some weight, and you might have already been advised to do so on numerous occasions. It’s a no-brainer that replacing these beverages with just water would reduce the total energy consumption in a day and thus help you to put yourself in a calorie de...

The kind of skepticism that can help us from being misled by research with radical and bold claims on topics of nutrition and its health outcomes. What is the perfect diet? How about keto or paleo? Vegan or carnivorous? It’s not that easy to answer. I doubt it is something we even have the answer for. The thing about nutrition is that it is extremely difficult to control diets for a significant period to note their effects. It’s even harder to monitor the consistency of nutrient composition of the same food at different times and places, not to forget about the tedious task of measuring the net weight (which can be either wet or dry weight). Even if all of this is taken care of, we need to understand that different people process the same food differently. There are just too many variables. Many studies are done on a particular population, concentrated on a certain geographic location and supposedly consuming a particular type of diet. You can see how this hardly counts as scientific. ...