Refined white sugar is not the deadliest poison…corn syrup is as much

On 24th Jan this year I had written a post on how refined white sugar is such a major issue causing major issues. As I had written in that post also, I have been trying experiments on myself on eliminating white sugar from my diet. I am not talking of overall carbs, just white sugar.

What I have noticed now after so many months of minimal white sugar, that the day I have sugar laden items like chocolate or cakes etc. I become lethargic. Especially if I have them in the night, my next morning is miserable.

Most of us Indians have a sweet tooth, so we like to eat sweets after every meal or atleast once a day.

Now the latest reports that I am seeing talk about people putting corn syrup in making sweets because it’s even cheaper than sugar in India even though it’s imported .

Now corn syrup is actually increasing your weight because it goes to the liver very fast and gets converted into fat.

So now not only are Indians having more cases of diabetes, they are also more obese than ever before. So while Covid is a pandemic which is visible and causes immediate impact, diabetes and obesity are slowly causing major health challenges which cause long term devastation.

So now not only do you need to monitor the amount of sugar in a food product but also the amount of corn syrup and fructose.

Till next time then….stay healthy.

Carpe Diem!!!

Our human brain

Breathing, Health, Human Brain, messaging

As I have written in my post a couple of days back, these days I am reading the book The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer by Steven Cutler. Steven does a lot of research for the books he writes. Some of his earlier books which I have liked a lot, jointly written with Dr. Peter Diamandis, include Abundance, Bold.

While the television and newspapers throw so much negative news all around us, if you read these books, you realise that the world is a much better place to live in today than what it was say 300 years back. And a major reason for that according to the authors is the fact that technology is playing such a major role in making this place a better place to live in.

As I mentioned earlier, Steven does a lot of research for his books. If you have been reading my blogs, you will also notice that I am always trying to find ways to improve the performance of my brain and my body. Whether its reading faster or breathing techniques which help build stamina, I am always looking for queer facts about this complex machine called the human body.

One thing which caught my eye today was the fact that our brain can only process about 126 bits of incoming information per second. The key word is incoming i.e from various senses to the brain, which interrupt the processing function of the brain. These bits need not be equivalent to binary bits (0,1) that technology folks look at since the brain works in a more abstract fashion.

This does not include the processing capability which the brain has, which is enormous. And that’s why people talk about being focused so that you are interrupting your brain with less inputs and doing more processing.

I don’t know about you, I have always considered myself to be easily distracted and I am not able to comprehend things, if they come too fast at me. For example trying to find my gate number for the flight from 5 screens of arrival and departure information.

Or if someone gives me too many food options from which to choose very fast.

I have to deliberately slow down the intake of information. In meetings to avoid such situations when too many people are speaking, I have to ask people to just be quiet and answer only the questions which I ask.

Today I realised this is not a problem only with me. Its a problem for al human beings. If our brain can only process so much information at a time, then for us to be able to influence someone we need to be able to give information in such a way that is simple to process and can get analysed. That’s where I guess charts look are understood compared to reports.

For a practitioner of marketing it means that are messages should be small simple sentences with more pictures, images.

Can you think of what other implications can this have for us in marketing. Pls write in your comments below.

Till next time then

Carpe Diem!!!

Vaccination

Health, vaccination

My wife and I got my second dose of vaccination done today. I am feeling quite tired , maybe because of the impact of the vaccine, so this post will be small.

The COVID-19 virus has changed the way all of us live. I am not sure when we will actually be able to move around freely without a mask. Everyday we hear of new mutations of this virus.

Having said that my feeling is that if enough build resistance to the virus, it’s ability to survive even after mutating will keep falling dramatically.

So while the whole word is talking about the 3rd wave, if we can concentrate on ensuring maximum vaccination, we might be able to atleast bring things in control.

Not sure if we will ever get to take long distance flights without being masked. Not sure if we can enjoy popcorn in a theater again while watching a movie.

If most of us can get ourselves vaccinated,

I do understand there are some who are oppose vaccination quite vehemently because they are illetrate ,as in India, or educated people who have different ideologies. We have to learn to handle both and move forward so that the virus does not get a chance to further expand.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education- Part 2

Breathing, education, Health, Marketing, Yoga

Today I will give you examples of how different people / companies have used education to create a massive amount of marketing pull for their companies.

Example 1 : Joe Polish , Dean Jackson , Dan Sullivan. Between the three of them they run 4-5 podcasts. Ilovemarketing.com, morecheeselesswhiskers.com, 10Xtalk.com, Cloudlandia etc.

The amount of knowledge they give in these podcasts and related YouTube videos is so amazing. I have utilized so much of that knowledge and because I saw their knowledge working for me, I also started buying some of their products .

Example 2: Baba Ramdev is a Yoga and Ayurveda guru in India . Ayurveda is the more than 7000 year science of using plants and herbs to heal the body. Using Yoga and Ayurveda Ramdev baba teaches how you can live a healthy life.

Whenever possible I watch his videos on YouTube and television channels like IndiaTV. Through these I have learnt so many breathing exercises to keep me alert and healthy as well as about plants and herbs that can keep me healthy.

Patanjali is the company which sells Ayurveda products which is associated with Baba Ramdev and he does show some of those products in passing.

But what do you think comes to my mind first when I have to buy AloeVera juice. You got it Patanjali. Simply because the other companies didn’t teach me the advantages of using AloeVera first, I always prefer Patanjali . Like me there are millions of people who have today made Patanjali a company with revenues of more than USD 2 Billion.

Tomorrow I will pick up some more examples from different fields where education has helped increase the business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!