Dr BM Hegde, whom Nani Palkhivala had called a "cardiologist with a heart", on what it takes to stay healthy

Prof Dr BM Hegde

“There is no science of man,” wrote Nobel Laureate Alexis Carrel in his celebrated book Man: The Unknown. Modern medicine, even today, nearly 85 years after the death of conventional science, following Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, is buried in the linear science of Newtonian physics which believes that man is made up of matter obeying certain deterministic predictability patterns. That was long before the new awareness that atoms are made up of smaller sub-atomic elements. Even now, doctors urge their patients to have a routine check-up when they are apparently very healthy, in the fond hope of finding diseases in their pre-symptomatic stages, to help them get treated before the disease damages their system. In their enthusiasm to keep their till moving, the medical world has started disease-mongering. Treating illnesses alone is not such a lucrative business. Going after people who are well simply means that the entire population becomes our patient, on any given day. Doctors cannot live without patients; but patients can live without doctors for sure!

The medical establishment is after ‘treating’ pre-diabetes, pre-hypertension, etc, which are only illusions. The best pre-condition is pre-death. Every one of us suffers from pre-death. The risk factor here is being alive. The longest risk factor intervention trial in the USA, the MRFIT study, showed at the end of 25 years’ follow-up that while risk factors (sugar, BP, cholesterol, etc) could be controlled with drugs, the final risk (death) can NOT be changed! MRFIT study also showed that the absolute risk reduction is no different in the ‘drug-treated group’ compared to the ‘lifestyle modification alone group’.

Charles Schaarshmidst wrote the first textbook of medicine in 1773 in Vienna, erstwhile Mecca of medicine. He wrote that the best strategies for healthy life are:
•    Change of mode of living,
•    Tranquillity of mind, and
•    Drugs, rarely ever, if ever
This could be rewritten today as the best advice in view of the latest development in physics, the king of sciences. A word or two about the change of mode of living are in order here. There are five dangerous enemies of good health. They are: tobacco smoking (tobacco in any other form), alcohol even in small amounts, sedentary living like laziness, over eating, and finally negative thoughts like anger, pride, super ego, hatred, jealousy, and hostility. One who wants to remain healthy should avoid these five like deadly poison. Hard work never kills. One should love what one does to avoid distress. A good night’s rest to recharge one’s battery is an added asset. If you get up refreshed, do not fret and fume about the exact number of hours of sleep. I do not know how much sleep one needs. If you have sleep debt, which is daytime sleepiness, you have not had your required quota.

Worrying about the micro-nutrients and the chemical composition of meals, etc, is a stress. Eat, in moderation, what you love to eat. What your ancestors have been eating for eons is your best diet, not what the Mediterranean people eat or what the Polynesian Islanders eat. Also, consume as much raw food as possible. The less one eats, the longer one lives. Fruits and vegetables should be the sheet anchor of one’s diet. Small meals at frequent intervals are ideal. Lessen the calorie intake as you grow older. Daily regular walk for an hour is needed for good health. Clean water, in good quantities, is a must as the body molecules are 95% water but by weight body in about 75% water. A good daily dose of sunshine is your best tonic.

Predicting the future is impossible in any field; leave alone in human health! Regular periodic check-up (routine screening) is dangerous, to put it mildly. Medicine does not define normal. It talks of averages of a Gaussian distribution of any parameter, say, blood sugar. The average is then equated with normal. This creates false positives to the tune of 5%-25%. If 100 healthy people go for a check-up and if 25 parameters are checked on each of them, a minimum of 125 patients come out of every 100 healthy human beings that went in. In short, anyone who goes for a check-up becomes a patient: never to become healthy again!

Newer discoveries in physics showed that matter and energy are two sides of the same coin—a duality. The human body is but the human mind in an illusory solid shape. Everything in this world, including you and me, radiate a unique energy signature. This new science, nullifies our idea of organ-based diseases which we started imbibing from the time of Vesalius 450 years ago. All organs have cells and atoms that have their unique energy signature. The human body is a colony of 50-100 trillion happy cells that did exist as unicellular organisms with their minds for millions of years before getting together as this multi-cellular colony, the human being. Fritz-Albert Popp, a German physicist, has been able to map all our cells using his bio-photon camera. He defines “health as a state where the cells are vibrating in sync with one another; disease is when they fall out of sync!”

The latest development of science has now accepted the definition of ‘whole person healing’ (WPH) for future. Time has come to abandon the disease era of medicine. We have to concentrate on the whole human organism for the future management of illnesses. The new definition of health is “enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate.” This comes close to the definition of health in Ayurveda, a much more scientific art of healing which followed quantum physics long before physicists discovered quantum physics. In the 21st century, looking for a diagnosis and treating organ-based diseases would result in under-treatment, over-treatment or even mistreatment. In essence, the present system that we follow is, at best, useless and, at worst, dangerous!

Good health includes physical, psychological, environmental, social and the spiritual aspects of one’s existence. In its negative definition, health is not the mere absence of physical (bodily) illness. Many people who are physically unwell could still be creative and enthusiastic. They do contribute to their surroundings what little they can. Stephen Hawkins, the great brain in modern physics, is an example. He cannot even lift a little finger because of a rare muscle-nerve disease. He teaches physics in the Cambridge University, despite his physical disability and is universally acclaimed to be an authority in his field. He has defied the predictions of medical science completely. On the other hand, one could have robust physical well-being but could be a menace to society because of one’s psychological, spiritual, or social misconceptions. This is a serious social disease.

Health, in short, is the holistic development and well-being of the human organism living in symbiosis with Nature. Everything in this universe—the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the surroundings in which we live, the society and the culture thereof, our friends, our family, our job, our colleagues, the atmospheric temperature of the place where we live, the planets in the cosmos, our religious beliefs, the monetary economy that we practise and, above all, our all-pervading consciousness, which is a tiny part of the universal consciousness—matters at the end of the day, to keep us healthy.

The human body is not a machine made up of parts called the organs. It cannot be mended by treating the damaged organs alone. The human body works as a whole, in tune with Nature. The dynamic system that the human body is that it follows the rules of non-linear systems like any other system in the universe. Dynamic systems do not follow the linear laws. Man’s body follows the Doctrine of Probabilities of Blaise Pascal. The Cartesian model of the body working separate from the mind does not hold good in human physiology.

In fact, the mind does not reside in any organ of the body. It resides in every human cell at the sub-atomic level. The organs of the body work in tandem. The various rhythms of the body follow one another. They are all subservient to the most dominant rhythm—the breathing rhythm. If one knows how to breathe properly, one could help keep one’s body in good health. This is the essence of the ancient Indian system of Yoga and Praanaayaama. Except the human menstrual cycle all other rhythms of the human body are under the control of one’s breathing, the most dominant rhythm (mode-locking in physics). In fact, one should learn to breathe properly, which, in essence, is to reduce the breathing rate to the minimum and try and breathe through one’s diaphragm, so-called belly-button breathing. Every child in school must be taught how to breathe healthy and also to keep the mind tranquil by meditation. Neither of these has any religious connotation and is not anti-religion either. Meditation is just to sit in absolute silence with eyes closed for a minimum of 20 minutes.

Uncertainty is the only certainty. Birth and death are not in our hands. However, modern medicine has the power to comfort even the worst pain and is capable of consoling even the advanced cancer patient expecting to die any minute. This was the motto of medicine as enunciated by Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine: “Cure rarely, comfort mostly, but console always.” One should consult one’s good family doctor, a friend, philosopher and guide, at the beginning of any symptom to understand the problem and then, only then, to plan any treatment option in partnership with one’s family doctor.

Your health, therefore, is in your hands. If you make up your mind to take care to preserve health, you could certainly succeed in being healthy as long as you live. It is impossible to postpone death or be immortal. A happy mind would help to keep the body healthy. Healthy body is the result of a happy mind that follows altruism as its motto. Disease is an accident. Even a person in robust health could be struck down with the most dangerous disease. As in any other accident, the incidence could be reduced by following certain safety rules. Diseases could be kept in abeyance to the extent possible by following the rules in this write up. In conclusion, you CAN be healthy, if you mind your mind to remain healthy.

“The best six doctors anywhere,
And no one can deny it,
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air, exercise and diet
These six will gladly you attend,
If only you are willing,
Your mind they’ll ease.
And charge not a shilling!”
— Wayne Fields

Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS. He can be reached at [email protected]