Since then a few people had asked me whether there are any positive effects of watching videos.
Sure. Why not?
I still believe that reading books are 100 times better than watching videos. However, in some cases, videos have an edge over books. For example, if you are trying to grasp some complicated concept, perhaps watching a video will help you initially to an idea about that.
It is not like you should abandon watching videos. In fact, in today’s time, it is not very practical. My suggestion only is to keep the ratio of reading: watching videos up to 60:40 or at least 50:50. Read more, watch less.
Videos can be a great source of learning, entertainment if you choose them mindfully.
Of course, everyone has their own taste. Here I am going to share with you my top 7 Video Channels (Streaming/YouTube). Because I think video streaming platforms or YouTube Channels have richer content, I am excluding Television from the list.
The day I found this one, I literally thought ‘this is what I was looking for’
It is a place to stimulate your intellectual quest.
Curiosity Stream is an online video streaming service, just like Netflix or Amazon Prime video. But here you will get to see high quality documentaries on various subjects like Science, Nature, History, Arts, Humanity, etc.
The range of topics in each section are wide, ranging from space to psychology (Science), from ancient history to modern history. The best part is all the documentaries are informative and engaging. The subscription fee is just INR 1437 (20$ per year), much less than Netflix.
If you have a curious mind that looks to unravel different mysteries of nature, you should definitely check out Curiosity Stream.
This is a YouTube channel which takes an interesting and complex topic and explains it in a simplistic way. The best thing is, of course, their content backed up by amazing research and great storytelling.
Occasionally, they post all their research on a particular topic on their website kurzagesagt.org. You can rely completely on their content. The kind of illustrations and animations you will see in their videos is very unique. If you want see an example of how to make complex thing simple and effective, watch this channel. A sample video I am posting below-
Another reliable YouTube Channel to expand your knowledge on diverse subjects. The channel is run by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
He mainly posts a science video every week. This channel can answer your questions which always baffled you, like why vegetables have different colors? why blue is so rare? etc. You can request to make a video in case you want answer of something. Video lengths vary from 4-15 minutes. I enjoy this channel and hope you will too.
Another of my trustworthy channels that make short animated educational videos. The range of topics is very diverse. It covers almost everything. You will surely gain something after watching their videos. If learning new and exciting things about humans, nature exhilarates you, watch Ted-Ed videos.
Here you can listen to the ideas of different leaders of the globe. The talks are usually 10-17 minutes. It is like listening to all the experts of different backgrounds. Your thought process will change if you consistently listen to different people on this channel.
It is definitely a thought provoking channel. Do watch
This list would be incomplete without a bookish channel. This channel is run by an Indian girl. Here you will find videos on book reviews, book recommendations. I have read many amazing books after hearing her recommendation. Thanks to her.
And yeah, she doesn’t only make videos on books but also on productivity and student life, how to become a freelancer, etc. Overall, I found this is really worth your time whether you like books or not.
These are my favorite channels. If I have to watch videos sometimes, these are the places where I turn. I feel all of them really make sound, reliable, and knowledgeable content in an entertaining way.
Do check out these channels. I am very hopeful you will find them worthwhile to watch.
I can’t emphasize more on the fact that your life will change once you stop or reduce watching television. It is really an idiot box (although a few good channels perhaps exist).
Read great books and watch quality channels. I promise your perception about the world will change. And the change will be a better one.
“Our view about the the world is shaped by what we read and what we watch”
What is the first word come to your mind after hearing the word ‘Virus’?
Disease, infection, infectious, harmful, etc. right.
What if tell you there are viruses that can cure our diseases.
Haven’t heard before! But there does exist such viruses, which are friendly to humans.
Just like there are god bacterias, there are good viruses.
These bacterias are known as ‘Bacteriophages’ or ‘Phages’meaning bacteria eaters.
These are good because ‘Bacteriophages’ are extreme enemies of deadly bacterias which has the potential to kill us. Believe it or not but phages are the most deadly beings on the planet.
Phages were discovered independently by two researchers Frederick William Twort at the University of London in 1915, and Félix d’Herelle who confirmed the finding and coined the term bacteriophage in 1917.
Below are some mind boggling facts about phages-
They are the most abundant microorganism on the planet. Much more in number than the total number of bacterias present. To give you an idea. They are everywhere, in soil, in water, in your body. Just your bare hand contains more than 10 billion phages. That’s a huge number right. The pie chart below depicts the number of phages compared to rest of the microorganism
Abundance of phages
Phages are 100 times smaller than bacterias. Under a normal microscope, they are not visible. You need an electrone microscope to see them.
The human gut contains almost one million billion phages. Whereas just one ml seawater contains one billion phages.
The most fascinating thing is that phages do not affect humans but only bacterias. Unlike other viruses phages can be a great weapon for us to fight with deadly bacterias.
How does a phage look like?
Bacteriophage Structure
This is how a typical phage looks like. A head, a neck and a tail depicted in the above structure. Their genetic material is contained in a prism shaped head, surrounded by a protein capsid.
Like any other virus phages need a host cell in order to reproduce and become alive. When alone they are equivalent as dead.
Image of a phage under electron microscope
How do phages kill deadly bacterias?
Phages are very specific in killing bacterias. What I mean is a particular type of phages can only kill a specific set of bacterias not all types of bacteria.
In order to kill a bacteria, phages first bind to the bind to specific receptors on the bacterial cell surface with their tail fibers and create a hole, a process which, along with attachment, is coordinated by the base plate.
Next, a rigid tube is propelled out of the sheath, puncturing a hole in the bacterial cell membrane through which they inject their genetic material (DNA or RNA, double or single stranded).
From here, there are two ways via which phages can kill the host cell. One is known as lytic cycle, where after injecting (DNA or RNA) into the host cell, the phage genome synthesizes early proteins that break down the host DNA, allowing the phage to take control of the cellular machinery.
The phage then uses the host cell to synthesize the remaining proteins required to build new phages. During this process, the host cells gradually become weakened by phage enzymes (known as endolysin) and eventually burst. The whole process looks like the image below-
Different stages of lytic cycle
In another way, known as lysogenic cycle allows a phage to reproduce without killing its host. Following the injection of the phage DNA into the host cell, it integrates itself into the host genome, with the help of phage-encoded integrases, where it is then termed a prophage. The prophage genome is then replicated passively along with the host genome as the host cell divides. Something like shown in the below picture-
Different stages of lysogenic cycle
This process does not kill the bacteria directly but then under the right conditions (UV light, low nutrient conditions), the prophage can become active and come back out of the bacterial chromosome, triggering the remaining steps of the lytic cycle and kill the bacteria.
How does a phage decide whether to enter the lytic or lysogenic cycle when it infects a bacterium host cell?
One of the major factors is the number of phages infecting the host cell at once. Larger numbers of co-infecting phages make it more likely that the phages will use the lysogenic cycle.
This strategy may help prevent the phages from wiping out their bacterial hosts by toning down the attack if the phage-to-host ratio gets too high.
Because phages need a host cell to reproduce, they don’t want to run out of hosts. Thus, the tendency to flip to lysogeny at high abundance might have been favored by natural selection (explaining why phages are in such huge numbers).
But why are we suddenly interested in bacteriophages?
Although discovered first in 1917, we never paid enough attention to phages and there is a reason behind that.
In the earlier days, just a single cut in your body could have killed you. Bacterias were the culprits. We didn’t have any answer for them. People then moved their attention towards phages and successfully cured bacterial diseases by applying phages as weapons.
However, in 1928 Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin and everything changed. We invented antibiotics and they were so effective against bacterias that we forgot about phages.
We became so habituated with antibiotics that we used them more and more for less and less serious causes. We lost respect for the little monsters (bacterias) and the weapon (antibiotics).
As a result, with time bacterias started to become immune against our invented weapon (antibiotics). Today there are hundreds of bacterias which are resistant towards most of our antibiotic. They are known as ‘multi drug resistant bacteria’.
Once we feared that soon there might be some bacterias that will be resistant to all our invented antibiotics and we will again go back in time, where a simple cut can kill us. Sir Alexander Fleming warned us-
“there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.“
We have already created such monsters known as ‘Superbugs‘. And believe it or not but they can wipe out human existence.
In fact, according to a survey, by 2050 superbugs could kill more humans a year than cancer. The days when a cut or cough or simple infection could kill you or your loved ones are coming back.
In such circumstances, scientists again turned their attention to forgotten tiny phages. In fact, phages are perhaps better than antibiotics to combat with bacterias.
Because antibiotics are like unguided missiles. It kills everything (good and bad bacteria) that comes within its range. But phages are very specific, they are like guided missiles.
By now, you already know how phages kill bacterias (discussed above).
In fact, there are many instances recently, where doctors have used phages to treat patients successfully.
You might be thinking, won’t bacterias develop ways of defending themselves?
They will evolve against phages too. But wait a minute, phages are also microorganisms, so they evolve too. There is a constant war going on between phages and bacterias from billions of years. Fortunately, phages won the battle almost all the time.
And even if bacterias become immune against phages someday, we will still be able to win against bacterias. It has been found that in order to become resistant to even just a few species of phages, bacteria have to give up their resistance to antibiotics. It’s like attacking the enemy with two different classes of weapons.
This has already been successfully tested patients who had no other hope left. Bacteria have no answer to the combination of phages and antibiotics.
But why don’t we hear more about phages in medical science?
Unfortunately, although there is a growing interest among scientists about phages but treatment via phages is still in an experimental state. Pharma companies are reluctant to invest in phages to a great extent. As a result, it has not become part of medical treatment. There is no official approval yet.
But things are changing, in recent years phages are getting more and more attention. Research is going on to see how safe phages are if we inject them from outside.
We better do more sound research on phages and make them a part of our medical treatment before superbug kills millions of lives all over the globe.
It might sound weird but injecting the deadliest being on the planet into the human body might save millions of lives. And who knows one day your doctor might write you a prescription for phages along with or instead of antibiotics.
An informative video on this topic-
Please, never use antibiotics mindlessly. Do remember what Sir Alexander Fleming said-
Have you ever been in a situation where your family has asked your opinion before taking an important decision?
Although you were right at what you have suggested, your family neglected your suggestion and took exactly the opposite decision just because the majority of your family members support the opposite idea. Your knew from inside that what you said was absolutely correct and the wrong decision made is going to hamper your family in the future but you can’t do anything.
This exactly depicts the meaning of this article, where you represent medical science and your family members medical industry.
If anything fascinates me most in this world, that’s humans. I mean you think about our creature sometimes deeply and I am sure you will find the same thing too.
In fact, there is a ecologist named Ellis Silver, who argues that we, humans, are not originally from earth but from somewhere else. We are a foreign creature here. He has written a book also on this named ‘Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence’. You can read it if you wish.
Whether you believe him or not but humans are pretty strange. There is no denying about this
Look at other animals, birds, or any living creature. Among all of them, we have advanced most from the time we exist. We rule the world (you can say perhaps) but instead of all the advancements we are our lives are not advancing to that extent.
In pursuit of becoming happier, we are becoming miserable. We try to become healthier, but we are becoming prone to new diseases. Something is fundamentally wrong don’t you think?
Ask your grandfather (or even your father) about their lifestyle when they were young. You probably can’t imagine your life like that but when you listen to them carefully, you will be amazed that they were somehow more healthy and content in their lives instead of not having the luxuries of today’s world. Perhaps your grandchildren will experience the same thing.
All of us want to live longer and in quest of that, we have built a super special healthcare industry. And no doubt we have been successful in eradicating a lot of deadly diseases.
Antibiotics are one of the greatest discoveries in medical science. Vaccination has been a great weapon for us. Once deadly small pox, Diptheria, yellow fever, polio are almost gone from our planet.
The number of different organs that can be replaced in the human body is extraordinary.
Latest development is the stem cell therapy. Scientists believe that stem cell therapy can change the face of human diseases and alleviate suffering.
Take a pause and think again, instead of all this, are we healthier today? Are we living longer?
You know the answer is a big no.
So what is wrong with us? Is there any loophole in our healthcare industry?
But our medical science research upon things and then they prove facts.
How can there be any loophole?
Remember medical science is just like that younger family member who knows he/she is right (the example given at the beginning of the article) but there is an entire industry, who are the majority in number dictates everything in healthcare industry.
Why does this medical industry most often take decisions which are not aligned with a healthy life?
Because they want to make money. It’s a huge business for them. And it’s called fear business (or a business out of ignorant/innocent people).
Think about it, what does a business person want?
More customers, more revenue right. If people are not falling sick, if people are feeling great about their bodies then who will go to them.
Mind it, when I am mentioning medical industry, I am not talking about medical science. Science gives us facts upon extensive research, investigation for a prolonged time. So chances are high that science won’t misinform us or even if they do sometimes, they correct themselves in the future.
But how many of us really aware of the latest findings of medical research?
Very few, unless you are very enthusiastic, fitness freak or studying in such a specialization. Whenever we face any problem regarding our health, we consult a doctor with the hope that he is the expert in his domain and knows the solution.
But alas! in todays time even some doctors are ignorant about latest medical science and many of them utilize their patients as an instrument to earn money. Many of the doctors represent the ruthless dacoits of earlier times.
There are thousands of stories about how doctors cheat with their patients. They have collaboration with pharmaceutical industries and pathology labs. So they ask their patients to go through hundreds of tests and recommend them to take a variety of medicine even if they don’t need. Most of the hospitals are just merciless butchers.
There is a term called ‘Disease Mongering’ which means the practice of extensive tests and treatments done by your doctor to make you feel sick. It’s a practice to make money out of healthy people. Whoever has visited today’s super speciality hospitals must have experienced this.
Cartoon describing ‘Disease Mongering’
In 2011, there was an article published in ‘News Week’ named ‘One word that will save your life‘. If you are serioos about your health then please read this article once.
This article talks about new research which shows how extensive medical tests and treatments in hospitals do more harm to our body than good.
So, what is the way out for us who are not so aware of what new medical science is suggesting?
How can we protect us from these ruthless dacoits or merciless butchers?
Suppose there is an aquarium in your home with healthy fishes dancing and moving from one side to another. But with the passage of time, the water in the aquarium gets contaminated and the fishes start falling sick.
Now, what will you do?
You have two options-
Either you take out the fishes, treat them and put them back in the contaminated aquarium.
2. Or you replace the contaminated water with fresh water.
In todays hospitals you can expect the first option to be applied. But if you are smart you will choose the 2nd option. To get rid of a disease you have to remove its root, not its symptoms.
When you say ‘I want to cure this disease’, you should heal your body through the fuels you are putting in your body. Medicines are meant to use only in emergency situations when you need some relief. You should not think of medicines as permanent solutions.
How many times you have seen any animal falling sick?
Very rare right. Does their biochemistry inside the body is better than us?
I don’t think so. They don’t disturb their bodies chemistry by putting any foreign element.
“Nature has created us, so the power to heal us is within nature itself”
Enough of discussion. What’s the solution/conclusion?
How healthy is our body depends on two things.
What we eat
What we think
Your life will change when you start eating foods that are aligned with nature’s choice.
Before that, what to avoid completely? Below is a summarised list. I am not going into details as these are established facts and you can research about all of them separately.
1. Refined Sugar:
It’s equivalent to poison. It does almost nothing good for our body and responsible for most of the diseases.
2. Caffeine:
You are thinking, it gives us instant energy, refreshness. It’s too acidic in nature and not good for our body. Even if you want to, maybe once per day is probably ok.
3. Table Salt:
A small amount of salt is required for maintenance of good health but that need is fulfilled from vegetables. You don’t need extra table salt to fulfill that.
Moreover, when taken in little excess it is responsible for a plethora of diseases.
4. Fried Food:
The frying and prolonged heating of foods lead to the formation of free radicals. We know how damaging these free radicals can be. Especially avoid those deep fried foods.
Avoid eating micro-waved foods. Microwave exposure causes a significant decrease in nutritive value.
5. Fast Foods:
Oh, man! these are equivalent to garbages. If you care about your health even a little bit, stay away from these garbages. All shit things like mono sodium glutamate (MSG), aspartame (artificial sweetner) are found in so called fast foods.
Now there are few things which we are used to eat maybe from our childhood but in reality, they are not as good as we used to think. Some of them are like-
6. Refined Cereal:
White flour and polished rice are the two most widely used refined cereals in our day to day food. The outer husk is removed from wheat and rice while during refining. The outer husk is the major source of vitamins, minerals, and fibers. Your body has to work much harder while absorbing such refined cereals. Gluten present in them also causes problems in many people. Avoiding them completely would be impractical for most people, but surely we can reduce their intake.
7. Milk:
I know this one surprised you. This one surprised me too. To be honest there is no direct evidence that milk harms our body.
Well, this a debateable thing at the moment but many experts believe that milk is required during infancy (talking about cow or buffalo’s milk) when the infant is not able to take any other solid or liquid food, but milk is not meant for lifelong use.
No animals except human beings continue to drink milk lifetime.
With age the enzymes which help in the digestion of milk become inactive in some people, as a result some component of milk get glued to various parts of the digestive system, resulting in overall blockage of the system and prevents the absorption of nutrients in the body. And don’t worry, even if you don’t drink milk, you will not become calcium deficient.
Still, I am arguing about whether you should drink milk or not. You observe your own body, research by yourself and find out what’s best for you.
You might be thinking about what to eat then?
First of all, don’t believe in any particular type of diet. Our biochemistry is so complex that it is impossible to micro manage it. Therefore, we should return to the pattern of eating to which our bodies have been adapted over millions of years.
I found an excellent chart describing how much and what should we consume daily. Hope you will find it useful.
Our body is the best manager of its biochemistry. Don’t interfere by putting unnecessary toxic things into the body.
Our thoughts are another important factor for good health which we often ignore. Every thought you have have a powerful impact on the cells of your body.
Positive high vibrational thoughts can purge your body diseases and negative stressful thoughts can confer your body a series of diseases. Your frequency determines your life.
Just remember
“Hospitals are not about health, but they are all about diseases.”
