I know what you are thinking. This is not the kind of drinking you do in pubs and bars. ‘Drink’ here refers to all type of beverages. People who are trying to lose weight often forgot that almost half of their daily calories intake is in the form of drinks. People seem to have associated drinks with sweetness.

If it isn’t sweet, it isn’t a drink. When doctors suggest that they should start drinking plain water, their eyes almost pop and their jaws almost drop and would almost scream ‘where would I get my energy from?’ These people may have just gobbled a whole day’s worth of solid foods and yet still wondering where their energy would come from if they are to stop drinking sugary water now.

In this article, we will discuss how drinking contribute to weight gain and how a simple measure can help to lose this weight.

Studies have shown that almost 40% of our daily calories intake could come from all the beverages we take. By now, we should know that sugar in whatever forms will be converted into fat in our sedentary body. Our drinks are heavily laden with sugar. A standard size of carbonated canned drink such as coca cola contains almost 10 spoons of sugar which is equivalent to 140 kcal. A standard size of ‘teh tarik’ is 250 – 300 ml and usually sweetened with condensed milk and contains roughly about 100 kcal. Just imagine how much calories consumed if we are drinking about 6 to 8 glasses of ‘teh tarik’ equivalent per day. 

The word ‘detox’ comes from the word detoxification. It means removal or neutralisation of harmful substances. The word ‘detox’ however widely accepted in healthy conscious community as a process to cleanse the body of any unwanted substances.

Our body has its own process of detoxification. They are called conjugation processes. This happens mainly in liver. On top of that, in all of our cells, there are also mechanisms with anti-oxidants to neutralise all the toxins.

Of course there are many ways to help these detoxification processes to function better. Some of the ways promoted in the markets are not necessarily correct. However there are fundamental principles in detoxification which is cheap and do-able by everyone. Three of these principles of detoxification are discussed below.

The first principle is to drink plenty of clear water. Our body are made up around 70 – 80 % of water. That means, most if not all of the toxins are floating around in this water environment. This contaminated water must be removed as soon as possible and replaced with fresh and cleaned water.

Therefore it makes sense to drink clean and clear water instead of coffee, milk or alcohol. Our kidneys will concentrate these waste substances and excrete them in our urine. That is why the less water we drink, the more yellowish and smellier is the urine. That is because more toxic substances are in the urine. We should be drinking more water to the level that our urine is almost clear, signifying that our system is almost fresh with clear water.

Brain was initially thought as an organ with finite amount of cells. Furthermore, we were taught that once brain cells are dead, no new cells can be regenerated anymore. We were wrongly led to believe that after young adulthood, our brain can only go one way – degenerate.

Thankfully, we have known now through various observations and studies that our brain is indeed far from static organ. Our brain is not only able to regenerate, it also can mould, modify and re-model according to what and how we handle it. It has been said that our brain is the biggest muscle in our body. We can build muscles andamazingly we can build our brain too.

The fact that our brain is very flexible in its responses to our conducts has givenrise to the concept of brain plasticity. In our previous article we have understood that brain decides who we are. In this article, we will look how we can decide how our brain behaves and in turn decides who we are.

Obviously the first step in ‘deciding’ how our brain behaves is by avoiding substances which can directly kill our brain cells. Number one killers of our brain cells are definitely alcohol and sugar. We all have seen how an intoxicated person can behave in a very strange ways. Eventhough most of the time this effects is only temporary, frequent ‘poisoning’ will eventually make the brain injuriespermanent.This is often shown in the decreasing intelligence and odd behaviour of the affected person in their latter life.

Let me start with a scenario. A woman walks into a clinic complaining of insatiable hunger. She describes it as persistent desire to eat something throughout the day. She cannot exactly pin-point what is she longed to eat so much. Because she cannot be very specific of what she wants, she keeps eating various foods. However, it never seems to end.

She continues to have the uncontrolled desire to eat something. She eventually becomes overweight and soon develops all kind of obesity related illnesses. Yet she is still hungry for that unknown food and she has not been able to identify it.

The wise clinician examines her and performs a battery of test and found out that she was deficient in Vitamin D and Magnesium among others. She was promptly given various supplements including Vitamin D and Magnesium. Initially she was unconvinced, how can an overweight person like her having a deficiency in nutrition, she wonders. If anything, shethought she should be bloated with all the nutrition that she has been eating.

Fat person cannot be nutrition deficient, she argues. Eventually she relents. Within two weeks, she is back and exclaims her appetite has been zipped for good. All that hunger simply disappears and she is already losing 3 kilogram within two weeks. She thanks the doctor profusely and leaves the clinic almost glowing.