Hmm
1. Free health checkup by NUS Medical Society at a clearing in Toa Payoh Hub yesterday, the following conversation between me and a future doctor ensued.
A: Your blood pressure and BMI are normal. Are there any concerns you would like to raise?
Me: Yes. I have a habit of sleeping late. Is that unhealthy? I read somewhere that the liver detoxifies stuff only at 11pm at 1am. Should I be changing my sleeping habit?
A: The body is quite flexible actually. Your liver will adjust to your sleeping cycle. As long as you get enough rest you should be fine. Do you think you are getting enough rest?
Me: It depends on what you mean by enough rest.
A: 7 hours of sleep for most people.
Me: Ok yah I do get around 7 hours of sleep in general.
A: Then you should be fine.
Me: Hmm but I also read somewhere that the body produces melatonin only when it's dark in the night, and melatonin is important for one's immune system and it might reduce the risk of cancer too. By staying up late my body receives lots of artifical light. Is this an issue then?
A: As far as I know this shouldn't be an issue. The body produces melatonin under sunlight too. So getting more under the Sun might help.
Me: Hm ok. So I don't need to change my sleeping habit then?
A: As long you have a regular sleeping habit, and you are getting enough rest, you should be fine.
Me: Good. I should tell this to my Mother.
A: Haha. Ok. Any other concerns?
Me: Yes. I make it a habit to eat KFC once a week. Is eating fast food really bad?
A: Fast food is fine in moderation. In fact for most things we do, moderation is key.
Me: Why exactly is fast food unhealthy then?
A: Because it consists of mostly carbs and protein but very little other nutrients. But once a week is ok, as long as you eat healthily for most of your other meals.
Me: What do you mean by healthily?
A: 2 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruits.
Me: Ok. Do you not eat fast food yourself?
A: I do. In fact I eat Macdonalds twice or thrice a week.
Me: Wow that's even better than me.
A: Yea well I try to eat healthily for my other meals. Again, moderation is key.
Me: Suppose I want to increase my intake of food that happens to be unhealthy. Can more exercise compensate then?
A: To a certain extent. Exercise can help to get rid of fat that would accumulate in the body otherwise.
Me: What about cholesterol? The bad one.
A: As long as you do enough exercise now you can reduce the amount of cholesterol in the body.
Me: So I can eat unhealthily then, as long as I exercise too?
A: Like I said only to a certain extent. To be really healthy you have to eat healthily and exercise too. Cholesterol accumulates over the years, so even if you exercise regularly if you eat unhealthily you might find yourself in trouble when you're older.
Me: Ok. Thanks.
It's good to have all these free health screenings. It gives our future doctors some practical experience and helps remind the older people to live healthily. The open space in Toa Payoh Hub is a nice area too, and I enjoyed listening in to the young trainees interact with the old people, some of whom were intentionally jocular in some aged way. That tends to happen when a significantly younger person attends to a significantly older person. I sometimes wonder if this is so they can reassure, consciously or otherwise, themselves that they are still not that old.
I wanted to check my cholesterol and blood sugar levels too but unfortunately that was for the older people. Why is that so, I asked. Can't young people have high cholesterol and diabetes? Not enough supplies, they said.
2. I was having dinner with some philosophy peers, and 2 of them got into a heated debate over the nature of desires. I found it quite remarkable how a normal conversational topic over someone's future plans could so easily morph into a full-blooded philosophical debate, though I can't exactly remember how that was done.
The question here is whether we can actually form desires out of thin air. That is to say, if we can form desires that didn't come from previously existing desires. You might think that's straightforwardly true. A baby who doesn't know what a car is before grows into a young adult, sees a car, and forms the desire to own a car. The young adult couldn't have had the prior desire to own a car, because he didn't know what a car was. But perhaps we can say the young adult, when he was a baby, had already a latent desire to acquire social status. Combined with the belief that owning a car would give him social status, he goes on to form the desire to own a car. This way, we can say that his desire to own a car didn't come from thin air. It came from an antecedently existing desire.
Now, a baby clearly doesn't know what social status is either. But this doesn't stop one from having that latent, fundamental desire. Take food for example. Babies don't have a concept of food, but it seems quite clear they have a desire for food (well, for milk at least). This way, we can say that a baby has a latent, fundamental desire for food. In fact, the vast majority of us were probably born with that desire.
If the story told so far is right, then we are all born with a set of fundamental desires. Some of us have the fundamental desire to acquire social status, some of us not. A particular desire - like the desire to own a car - simply comes from those fundamental desires combined with beliefs we form about the world. If it's true we can't form desires out of thin air, then our fundamental desires constrain us. We can never act in such a way that can't be explained by the fundamental desires we were born with and our subsequent beliefs about the world.
3. I took a tour of a biology lab recently. I find that there's something deeply satisfying in spending much of your life holed up in a cosy, quiet, air-conditioned space contributing to the body of knowledge we already have.
A: Your blood pressure and BMI are normal. Are there any concerns you would like to raise?
Me: Yes. I have a habit of sleeping late. Is that unhealthy? I read somewhere that the liver detoxifies stuff only at 11pm at 1am. Should I be changing my sleeping habit?
A: The body is quite flexible actually. Your liver will adjust to your sleeping cycle. As long as you get enough rest you should be fine. Do you think you are getting enough rest?
Me: It depends on what you mean by enough rest.
A: 7 hours of sleep for most people.
Me: Ok yah I do get around 7 hours of sleep in general.
A: Then you should be fine.
Me: Hmm but I also read somewhere that the body produces melatonin only when it's dark in the night, and melatonin is important for one's immune system and it might reduce the risk of cancer too. By staying up late my body receives lots of artifical light. Is this an issue then?
A: As far as I know this shouldn't be an issue. The body produces melatonin under sunlight too. So getting more under the Sun might help.
Me: Hm ok. So I don't need to change my sleeping habit then?
A: As long you have a regular sleeping habit, and you are getting enough rest, you should be fine.
Me: Good. I should tell this to my Mother.
A: Haha. Ok. Any other concerns?
Me: Yes. I make it a habit to eat KFC once a week. Is eating fast food really bad?
A: Fast food is fine in moderation. In fact for most things we do, moderation is key.
Me: Why exactly is fast food unhealthy then?
A: Because it consists of mostly carbs and protein but very little other nutrients. But once a week is ok, as long as you eat healthily for most of your other meals.
Me: What do you mean by healthily?
A: 2 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruits.
Me: Ok. Do you not eat fast food yourself?
A: I do. In fact I eat Macdonalds twice or thrice a week.
Me: Wow that's even better than me.
A: Yea well I try to eat healthily for my other meals. Again, moderation is key.
Me: Suppose I want to increase my intake of food that happens to be unhealthy. Can more exercise compensate then?
A: To a certain extent. Exercise can help to get rid of fat that would accumulate in the body otherwise.
Me: What about cholesterol? The bad one.
A: As long as you do enough exercise now you can reduce the amount of cholesterol in the body.
Me: So I can eat unhealthily then, as long as I exercise too?
A: Like I said only to a certain extent. To be really healthy you have to eat healthily and exercise too. Cholesterol accumulates over the years, so even if you exercise regularly if you eat unhealthily you might find yourself in trouble when you're older.
Me: Ok. Thanks.
It's good to have all these free health screenings. It gives our future doctors some practical experience and helps remind the older people to live healthily. The open space in Toa Payoh Hub is a nice area too, and I enjoyed listening in to the young trainees interact with the old people, some of whom were intentionally jocular in some aged way. That tends to happen when a significantly younger person attends to a significantly older person. I sometimes wonder if this is so they can reassure, consciously or otherwise, themselves that they are still not that old.
I wanted to check my cholesterol and blood sugar levels too but unfortunately that was for the older people. Why is that so, I asked. Can't young people have high cholesterol and diabetes? Not enough supplies, they said.
2. I was having dinner with some philosophy peers, and 2 of them got into a heated debate over the nature of desires. I found it quite remarkable how a normal conversational topic over someone's future plans could so easily morph into a full-blooded philosophical debate, though I can't exactly remember how that was done.
The question here is whether we can actually form desires out of thin air. That is to say, if we can form desires that didn't come from previously existing desires. You might think that's straightforwardly true. A baby who doesn't know what a car is before grows into a young adult, sees a car, and forms the desire to own a car. The young adult couldn't have had the prior desire to own a car, because he didn't know what a car was. But perhaps we can say the young adult, when he was a baby, had already a latent desire to acquire social status. Combined with the belief that owning a car would give him social status, he goes on to form the desire to own a car. This way, we can say that his desire to own a car didn't come from thin air. It came from an antecedently existing desire.
Now, a baby clearly doesn't know what social status is either. But this doesn't stop one from having that latent, fundamental desire. Take food for example. Babies don't have a concept of food, but it seems quite clear they have a desire for food (well, for milk at least). This way, we can say that a baby has a latent, fundamental desire for food. In fact, the vast majority of us were probably born with that desire.
If the story told so far is right, then we are all born with a set of fundamental desires. Some of us have the fundamental desire to acquire social status, some of us not. A particular desire - like the desire to own a car - simply comes from those fundamental desires combined with beliefs we form about the world. If it's true we can't form desires out of thin air, then our fundamental desires constrain us. We can never act in such a way that can't be explained by the fundamental desires we were born with and our subsequent beliefs about the world.
3. I took a tour of a biology lab recently. I find that there's something deeply satisfying in spending much of your life holed up in a cosy, quiet, air-conditioned space contributing to the body of knowledge we already have.
4 Comments:
"Me: So I can eat unhealthily then, as long as I exercise too?
A: Like I said only to a certain extent."
WHY TAKE THE RISK. And so vague. Where is this extent?
Cos some nice food are unhealthy, and I want to eat those nice food.
It is indeed vague, though I don't expect anything more from a GP, much less a future GP. I would probably want a dietician or something for something specific.
Ok.
I did an internship in a biology lab. It was a fruitful experience, I had considered what you mentioned but the conclusions turned out quite contrary. Just remind me to bring it up at our next discussion or something. The part about what constitutes a healthy sleeping habit is highly controversial and still open to debate. And well, some people who have never had a problem with cholesterol levels in their lives can go on to develop problems with it for reasons entirely unrelated to their lifestyle. But it doesn't mean that you should dismiss the beneficial effects of a exercise and a balanced nutritious diet.
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