Let’s talk about ORGANIC.

Robert Paarlberg’s new book on the food system is out today, and here’s an excerpt.

He’s not a fan of organic, and he makes some good points but misses others.

Here we go.

After therapy sessions, it is occurring to me how my parents and maybe most desi parents don't really grow as parents. For example, a person would be a very different to a baby and to a teenager because the needs and vulnerabilities are so different.

But here, I feel that growth for parents stagnants sometime around when a child is 12-13. None of our parents really talk to us about puberty and growing up. None of us are taught or can talk about relationships because of moral reasons. So what do you have?

You have parents who are still parenting their adult children like kids, not apologising to us but asking us to eat, reminding us to wear jackets, locking up cars. They care. But they are coming from a care where the parent is always concerned about keeping the kid safe and alive

which imo really reduces the kind of parental advice and care one needs as an adult. Because adults know enough about the world to no longer be infantilized but we still have parents who expect us to be the same children because they're still the same kind of parents.

This is why so many of our parental relationships are strained or just based on civilities. We're forced to hide a lot from them because parents refuse to grow as parents and acknowledge us as adults. How many of us are still lectured, have curfews, other restrictions?

12 things you should look out for before buying health insurance

A thread 🧵

It’s a good idea to make sure your health is protected under an insurance policy so that you don’t shell out large sums of money for hospitalization and treatment. But buying an individual health insurance policy can be daunting in itself.

Websites and policy documents can be overwhelming. There’s a lot of loaded terms, there’s a whole bunch of things that your policy may or may not cover. It’s important to know and understand the details though, so you’re not surprised later.

In this thread, we'll talk about the things you absolutely need to watch out for when buying an individual health insurance policy for yourself or your family members :)

If you take an individual health insurance policy and the insurance company offers to pay up to ₹15 lakhs during the year whenever you’re diagnosed with a disease or meet an accident, that amount is the 'sum insured'.

Ashtangha Yoga or the eight limbs of Yoga-

Many people think Yoga is just an Indian physical exercise but that's wrong. Yoga is a way to connect with the Supreme in Hinduism and attain Moksha(liberation).
The proper yoga as described in Hindu scriptures consists of 8 limbs:

1) Yamas- They are the 5 ethical rules of Hinduism. The 5 Yamas are:
i) Ahimsa: Nonviolence (this also includes not eating meat)
ii) Satya: truthfulness
iii) Asteya: non-stealing
iv) Brahmacharya: chastity, sexual restraint
v) Aparigraha: non-avarice, non-possessiveness

2) Niyamas- They are the 5 "do's". The five Niyamas are:
i) Shaucha: purity of mind, speech and body
ii) Santosha: contentment
iii) Tapas: austerity, self-discipline
iv) Svadhyaya: study of Vedas(Holy books of Hindus)
v) Ishvarapranidhana: contemplation of the Ishvara (God)

3) Aasana or the physical yoga-
Asana is a posture that one can hold for a period of time, staying relaxed, steady, comfortable and motionless. The aasana postures are believed to have been given by Mahadeva (Hindu God) himself. Hatha Yoga Pradipika mentions 84 aasanas.

@sbarnettARK Epigenomic biomarkers are becoming more established for #LiquidBiopsy and #CancerScreening, and we have seen the big players positioning themselves in this #epigenomics race recently.

Catching signs of #cancer early is crucially important to the disease management and survival rates, so the question is: how can we find out if there is something wrong going on early enough?

The first generation of high-throughput technologies was predicated on finding mutated (tumor) DNA in the individual's body (somatic), different from their (normal) DNA. Tumor/Normal (T/N) comparisons of the individual's samples, biopsies or ctDNA will indicate if there

are signs of cancer already underway. So why do we need #epigenomic profiling if we can do all this with the detection of mutations? Well, the argument is that if you can see sufficient mutated copies of DNA, cancer may already have progressed beyond the initial stages.

Then people asked the question: is there an earlier mark that we can detect for earlier stages of cancer before the Tumor/Normal mutations signal amps up? Here is where #epigenomics profiling took hold.