disposable income vs discretionary income and the alarming trend!!!

Disposable income is income you have left behind after you pay your taxes.

Discretionary income = Gross income - taxes - all compelled payments (bills)

This discretionary income is the income you use for saving for the future and spending today.

Now look at your electricity bill among the compelled payments for example

I paid 1768 for 760 units in 2011 and 3335 for the same amount of units in 2012. Now my discretionary income has reduced dramatically. This is alarming, is it not.

The money I have to save or to spend has reduced even though I have not consumed any more electricity.

Now add the increase in your spending on other utilities and essentials. Groceries, gas, petrol and diesel etc

Worrying is it not!

food for your thought!!!!

look at this link to understand this better

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Warm regards

Chockalingam

quality of life vs standard of life and knowing the difference

I want an ipad since it would be nice to have one, eh!!

I have a mac and iphone 3 both more than six years and i want to have new one of both and i can buy them.

I want to watch the latest movie in my LED when the dvd version comes out and i can buy both led tv and a blue ray player

I do not want to wash my dishes and i would buy a dishwasher

Can i have the house of my dreams built and yes i can and i can do all the above, no problems,  money does not seem to be an issue!!!

This is the standard of life i desire and i work hard to reach there and earn my dreams!!!

But this is not the same as quality of life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can i walk up stairs without pain and feeling breathless

can i walk along the beautiful beach for half an hour and enjoy the nature

can i wash my own back by reaching without having pain

can i go and play a game of tennis

can i bend down to pick up my child without my back hurting

this is what we are talking about, the quality of life

next time we meet, talk about our quality of life and not the standard of life.

Warm regards

Chockalingam

lack of flexibility of joints, the commonest reason for pain

I see quite a lot of patients who have pain in the arms, legs, back and neck. most of the pain is due to lack of flexibility of joints due to our current style.

Sitting on the floor , squatting, bending etc are activities one did as a child and yet we have forgotten how to do now.

most pain can be relieved by keeping all the joints of our body move through full range.

one can start with simple exercises as shown in the link below

warm up,cool down and keep flexible by AAOS

or you can do the full Yoga or Pilate exercises.

I will brief on some of the simple yoga exercises in the blogs to come

Warm Regards

Chockalingam

how to reach "feeling of enough" when we eat. tips on how not get overweight and obese

Reaching a feeling of satiety is when we stop eating more. obviously if we eat more, stomach gets filled and we say enough. however the stomach is a big bag. it can hold quite a lot of food before we reach the sense of enough or satiety.

hence the only way we can control our weight and keep ourselves fit is to fill our stomach completely with the right kind of food.

one example is to reach 400 calories with oil, it will fill only the bottom pit of stomach. to reach the same amount of 400 calories with chicken , we need to fill quarter of the stomach. with these methods, the stomach does not get filled and we would like to eat more.

however if we fill the stomach completely with fruits and vegetables, entire stomach gets filled and we feel satisfied. yet the calories we have is only 400 calories.

hence please do not reduce the amount of food we eat, but eat plenty of right food.

the reason is that we can only say enough if the top part of stomach gets filled with food. hope this helps

This blog is courtesy of my friend who deals with obesity who taught me this concept

please see this picture if the above description is not clear by clicking this link in your browser

http://www.google.co.in/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=2133&bih=959&tbm=isch&tbnid=gOzFXyaeWCc6CM:&imgrefurl=http://www.powerofhealthylivingllc.com/blog/2012/12/do-you-want-to-speed-weight-loss&docid=8ERnbDjCzktgoM&imgurl=http://powerofhealthylivingllc.com/sites/default/files/%252520calorie%252520density.jpg&w=403&h=287&ei=GVs9Uf9jg4yuB5L0gaAD&zoom=1&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=138&tbnw=194&start=0&ndsp=73&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:104&tx=43&ty=53

warm regards

chockalingam

Rest, rust and trust!

I saw this written on the back of a bus "If I rest then I rust"

Then I thought of this phrase which sounds good

"If I could trust then I can rest"

hope you like it

Chockalingam

Heel pain prevention and Orthopaedic treatment.

Heel pain is common in India. It is as common as having back, knee and shoulder pain.

Often this is attributed to lack of flexibility in the foot, aggravated by walking on very hard floor.

Walking outdoors or in surfaces with variation in the terrain helps us to put all the joints of the foot to use.

Hard floor which may look nice and easier to maintain, limits the weight transmission to some aspects of the foot.

Heel then takes the brunt of our weight on to the hard floor.

What to do to avoid heel pain?

Wear any cheppal indoors when walking on hard floor

Keep doing some flexibility exercises.

Go to these links and do the exercises

http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00310

More important spend some time walking on uneven surface on bare foot, may be go out for a walk in a pair of good trainer shoes.

Sometimes this pain can be refractory and you need to see an Ortho Surgeon.

We now have facilities to treat this pain with the proven treatment methods using injection or endoscopic methods.

I will write on endoscopic method of treatment in Orthopaedics in the future.

Warm Regards

Chockalingam

advantage of surgery to fix the fractured bone

The concrete of our body which when heals from a fracture takes time.

During this time, the patient will have pain and loss of use of the part of the body.

This is acceptable to rest the building which is being repaired for few weeks before you start using it

But for us, pain remains partly even with plaster and rest.

Loss of function of the part of the body for few weeks was acceptable in those days, but people want to return to normality as quickly as possible

The drawback of not being able to use the leg or the arm is immense, understood by the person who has fractured it

Thus surgery helps to fix the bone and keep it still. This relieves the pain and helps to start using the arm or the leg and so on.

I will share some examples in the future blogs

Bye for now

Warm Regards

Chockalingam