Impact of Technology on our Health

By Manjori Sanyal

https://youtu.be/Fn4Pkbkymd0

Hi, I'm Manjori and I'm here from Baikampadi to talk to you about the impact of technology on health. I wonder if Baikampadi has already become a big name in the international arena for health, education, technology, good students, great teachers, delicious food, peaceful beaches, medium sized businesses, juice junctions, parks and so much more to be labelled as a lovely community. I have lived and grown up in Mangalore for many years and now again after a break, I’ve picked the outskirts of then - quiet and now - flourishing city to enjoy parenthood.

While we were young and in Mangalore, Dad used to always say that good health and money are essentially just the residue of a life well lived. He made me believe that there’s nothing too philosophical about life. It's simply the time spent between fresh wake ups, eating a sumptuous breakfast - it's after all the same thing as going full tank before a long drive! Then, it's about self-grooming, appreciating the body in which our conscience, soul, feelings and everything sacred resides. The bathing ritual, the cleanliness of the bathroom and the clothes, our closet and shoes, our perfumes and toiletries, our makeup, bags which carry our essentials, the thoughts that linger in our minds, the music we listen to, the plants in our balcony, our pets, the smile with which we greet and remember our parents, friends and family are all the very core of that life that can be well lived. These are the foundation blocks for what lies ahead in the day. For some, it's the travel to work. Personally for me, it's the most energizing part of my 24 hours. The reason behind that is - one of my jobs needs me to walk past a half constructed road with gravel, potholes, and lots of lovely construction labourers, friendly neighbours and small shops. It's about 10 minutes’ walk to the school I'm volunteering at and those 10 minutes are when I video call my mum in Kolkata. She's the most beautiful lady in this entire universe. Her body had taken shape about 85 years ago and because of her arthritis pain she sits on a wheelchair in her retirement villa waiting to see me. That’s not the only time we talk in our 24 hours, but the glow on our faces is the most admired thing for all those who cross our paths at that time, every morning. The true indication of great health is in that aura we carry around us; the very essence of our survival. It’s not easy to be healthy. Imagine tungsten. It’s known to be the strongest metal but is used as an alloy. Same way, our health is the most important aspect of our existence but it’s an enabler of a plethora of other realities. Mum still says, health is wealth - It’s the foundation of all strong structures. But then again, it’s a habit; something that’s inculcated by the parents and then just happens as a ritual growing up, eventually being in a position to keep passing it on.

Technology plays a significant role in the way we live. This statement is true. And we all know it because if we look around right now, we’ll see that we can easily make a list of five hundred to a thousand things and more of items that haven’t reached us in their natural forms. There was some technical influence in catering to our requirement and that had altered the true nature of the item in sight. And what can also be noticed is that most of the technology is associated with the use of computers in some way or the other. We can root it back to its previous stage through bar codes, unique identification numbers, manufacturer information, if food – the ingredients, shelf life and utility. The proper meaning of the word technology has inclined to associate communication in way too many aspects of it. For instance, right now I am awake very early in the morning as I am an online teacher to students of various age groups residing in America, Canada and Texas. I love studying and curating personalities as an educational consultant but I am not an early riser and definitely not someone to wake up this early to exercise my body, but I would for my mind. I believe the morning is another fantastic stage of the day when the cognitive growth and knowledge distribution is at its best. It’s like a prayer getting answered in entirety. I’ve only recently come out as a full time teacher after struggling to find a way into the industry from the cut-throat competitive world of corporate, dollar management firms; digging their roots right through the heart of politics, information management, complex systems and niche practices. School, children, time tables, predictable questions and answers, planned life of school environments have always flown through my dream catchers. The entry into the EdTech world, parallelly has led to a direct enhancement of my mental health. I’m more like my mum, with regards to spending time being creative with words, but my sister and my dad would wake up to sculpture their minds through their bodies. He used to play badminton between 6 to 8 am and my sister practices yoga around the same time. I believe everyone has a different way to tune their bodies, minds and souls to the vibrations of nature. I believe that health indirectly proportionate to the way we believe in God and its existence too. When we’re gifted with a child, our first words go out to the universe thanking divine forces for bringing all the magic into making another human being. We pray for good health, peace and harmony, a great life and lots of success and those prayers never really stop till the very end. It’s also true that we allow technology to enhance and control our health. Just like how we have that unbeatable trust in God for keeping us healthy, we have trusted technology to do the same for generations now.

So, today, I'm here to lay the foundation of a thought of consolidating all the health related information in one single app. It’ll have the mental health, spiritual health, the physical health and also the health of the environment around us. I also believe that our physical existence in this planet is only a phase. There’s a lot more than just the body while it is alive. There’s a lot more use of the flesh and blood, bones, skin and everything else when it starts to decompose. Because, that’s the true return to the nature we used during the time we were alive.

Currently, we're in a reactive stage or we're reacting to specific health issues. Example, when we get a heart attack, that's when we go to the doctor. When we get high cholesterol or BP, that's when we remember the hospital. But that’s not what we do for our cognitive health. We enrol our children to schools whether or not they need it. We assume that they don’t know anything and need other people qualified to explain to them the theories and practicalities of life. We also keep saying that mothers are the first teachers and home is the first school. So basically we fill our children’s minds with fake realities and hypocrisies. When Covid happened and the world was close to extinction, we held on to our dear ones and paid little attention to the exact same schools. Now, after the two years of a gestation period those kids have emerged from their burrows.

How proactive are we at estimating our health needs then? What if everything was used to its fullest capacity for not any monitory returns but only for the fun of a fulfilling experience?

For instance, two of my students want to be airhostesses. But one of them, the 14 year old, said that her mum gets really worried about her traveling places. So, we brainstormed and thought of a few things that could be done. One was to give up the idea of being an airhostess and do what her mum tells her to do because that’s what good kids do. They listen to their parents. If they do, their parents don’t get worried and they have no stress related ailments. The next option then is that use all the available resources to make sure that mum doesn’t get stressed out. So what we thought about was, what if there was a system through which her mum could know about her mental and physical health on a 24/7 basis. At any time, her family, her favourite people would be able to access one simple app and use the technology to know exactly how she was doing. Right from what she ate/consumed and how that was reacting to the nerves and cells in her body, what impulses were being sent to her brain and how it reacted, what her emotions looked like and how much effect that was having on her physical attributes, what might cause it hard for her to continue to stay in the body and if she seizes to breathe then how long will it take for her to be completely decomposed to become a part of nature in a way that new plants can grow off her!! The entire life cycle of a human being basically! All that recorded into technology.

Many people have different ambitions in life. Mine is to be the perfect cadaver! I want to be dissected by researchers and anatomists in KMC, Mangalore and have the perfect pieces of organs under my skin so that students can use each cell in me to learn how to be the best versions of them. That would be reaching the pinnacle of being a successful teacher. For a lot of other people, different things matter. I believe that the society we live in now marks the true marker of success in the following

1. Going to a great educational institution

2. Having a very creative future plan

3. Know how to solve their problems.

Why not touch base on the mental health situation prevailing in our own societies. It's an elephant in the room that no one really wants to talk about. So, not having a mental health condition or knowing exactly how to deal with it would be another indicator of a life well lived. We all go through anxiety, depression or sadness which impacts our physical health. We do have ample devices like heart rate monitors, ECGs, devices to check foetus development like the ultrasound machines, not to mention the x-rays that we've used for generations now. We use laser hair treatments; we use endoscopy to see the insides of our bodies. Dental surgery would be impossible without the expensive, state of the art technology. All this and so much more are the influences of technology in our existence. What’s really more interesting is to know the science backed up by morals to enable a better lifestyle. I say this to a lot of my colleagues at moralscience.com, my brainchild that Moral Science is the new trend catching up in the world of education. There’s a huge opportunity to capitalize on this science through technology. It’s not just scientific but is also proved by mathematical formulae for centuries together. For instance, a plus b the whole square is equal to a square plus b square plus 2ab. Whatever be the numbers we punch into the variables this formula will derive the correct answer. Similarly, if a can be substitute a, with truth and b, with integrity then squaring it will result in the same amount of success and loyalty. If I should break it down even further to spread the joy in explaining then it simply means that the amount of success, that can be calculated as money earned, respect and dignity in the society, social connections and followers are all equally related to the amount of truth in our hard work we put in, which is nothing more than integrity.

The future plan!? Well, I’m curious to know what people think about ‘death’. That’s really far into the future as I would like to think. So the insurance companies have come up with strategies on how to be financially viable to those who plan their future. What are the other plans? Well, maybe think about the amount of intellectual property that can be well documented and left behind for generations to come. I can’t, not think of Rabindranath Tagore or Shakespeare; legends like Manusmrithi and Kautilya as pointers of lives well lived! I’m still researching about Manusmrithi and Kautilya but what’s significant here to notice that technology has succeeded in preserving their knowledge over the body they lived in!

What I want to talk about now, is about this one time, not so long ago when someone very close was infected by the terrors of Covid19. It was the use of the most advancing technology, the Oximeter that helped monitor the oxygen levels in her body. Due to the lockdown visiting doctors was impossible however having video calls for the same was imperative. She was diagnosed by physicians from KMC and the quick and easy use of technology has successfully kept her alive today. Another example of how technological advancement has kept someone else I know, alive and thriving is my mum. That lady had about 20 brain tumours and wasn't getting detected. Only bits and pieces of her were shutting down. Like she couldn't see properly, her ability to talk, move, swallow, digest and even breathe was getting hampered. It was the MRI scans in Manipal back then, in the late 90's that helped discover a very unique type of tuberculosis of the brain and then continued injections and advanced levels of steroids helped her recover. With the ever growing levels of pollutants in the air, nebulizer use is becoming more popular than we want it to be, but thank goodness for the technological advancement because of which we can easily have our lung cleared out of mucus and congestion. Having babies through IVF treatments, getting a pacemakers to regularize cardiovascular functionalities, getting plastic surgeries after a nerve-wracking accident or burn, liposuction to deal with obesity, drafting hair for baldness, cataract operations to regain vision and visibility, knee cap replacements to walk comfortably again, hearing aids, prosthetic limbs for less fortunate to move with ease and discover dignity in mobility are just a few examples of how our life is interlinked with technology.

The food we eat today consists of probably just point 1% of home-grown and self-made ingredients. Everything else is manufactured by technology in machine operated environments. It's brought to us via technologically advanced transport systems. Even our plates, glasses, spoons and forks are man-made. The amount of nutrients that exists in the food we eat is written on the packets and that information is derived by the microbiologists working tirelessly in labs located globally. Our very DNA is altered by the impact of technology. The radiations of microwaves, the infra-red emissions of TV remotes, the algorithms of mobile phones are now our biological signatures and it’s not going to stop at all. Instead we're ourselves becoming more like robots. In my opinion Ma Durga was an intelligent scientist that made the first robot from naturally occurring ingredients. She named it Ganesh. And I’m sure she did that because she needed something to assist her family. There were just so many occasions when her husband was too busy working long hours. She needed something to help her people, her humongous family where if we, for argument’s sake consider the entire human race as her kids. That was artificial intelligence with naturally decomposable ingredients at its best! And was proved by having the head replaced! That’s the true use of technology according to me. With little or no training, the vital component of the robot was replaced. That’s utility! And now, we’re in that phase of celestial development where each one of us, all her family members per say have access to various forms of that exact same robot. But, we’re simply playing with it as a toy. We are sharing a lot of knowledge and the best part now is to try becoming better versions of ourselves through this technology that’s here to stay!

The ease of record keeping and data management via chipping plants and animals of vast sanctuaries or in the husbandry industry works wonders. A lot of humans are chipped too. And why not? It may be looked down upon currently but, probably in a few years, authenticity can be measured with no human interference. It could be traded as NFTs and with block chain technology our physical, mental and cognitive health care could only see advancement by adapting to newest technologies. India is a cradle of civilization. The scientific nature of medicine, surgery, and treatment, even concepts of meditation, healing, yoga and massaging has emerged from the ancient studies that are coded into our culture and traditions. The Vedas and Upanishads are flooded with theories and practicalities that have proved to enhance health. It's just the matter of becoming in one with the solution. It's about opening ourselves and accepting that we win when technology does. It's to walk past these fears of failure and stepping into an obsession with self-care that will make us healthy inside out. Our biggest enemy is ourselves. It's our inabilities to recognize our own niche is what drags us into turmoil of bad health. Staying happy, calm and positive is the essence of a great, long and a wonderful life. Getting connected to oneself needs zero technology. The secret of ecstasy is self-praise and self-love through prayer and self-respect. There's just so much an external influencer can achieve, the technology we're so amazed by. In reality, we have a start and a finish date. It’s how we live in the middle of those 2 numbers is what makes the vastest difference. Technology is an enabler and it’s just smart to make the most of all the available resources to have a great life. I hope you enjoyed reading this just as much as I did, writing it. Thank you and have a great day ahead!

By Manjori Sanyal