Monday 19 August 2013

Worry much?

Worrying takes up a major part of our daily lives. Whether its worrying about what to wear for the day , worrying about some college work or just about any irrelevant stuff. Speaking personally, I'm a big worrier ( a worrywart!). I can worry about just anything. If there was a Nobel prize for worriers, I'd probably win it. I have been a worrywart for so long, that not worrying about something makes me worried :P Just yesterday while I was preparing for a presentation that I was supposed to present in the class today ( which went quite well btw :) ), I found myself getting worried about the most trivial stuff ( trust me it is quite frustrating to be me sometimes :/ ). It was as if I was constantly mulling over insignificant stuff without reaching to a proper conclusion. After I was done with my presentation today, I realised how futile my worrying was. I wasted my time worrying about trivial stuff, when I could have probably done some useful stuff.
         And what's more, worrying is contagious! Once you're worried about something, you get the people around you worried as well ( sometimes! ). Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying worrying is entirely wrong. Worrying has it's own share of positive outcomes. It has been found out that a certain amount of worrying will prepare you for your worst. Though the amount of worrying people mostly do, exceeds the required amount leading to anxiety and various other physiological symptoms like shivering ,sweating ,increased blood pressure! To stop worrying, one must get to the root cause of the problem. Worry is , more or less, caused by anticipation of failure. We tend to associate our past failures with current circumstances which leads to worrying. And we don't know when to stop, I could go on worrying about any insignificant matter for as long as possible. Moreover, a worrier is seldom viewed as a person to hang around. It's so obvious, why would anyone want to be near a person who's always enveloped by worries and fears about situations which are yet to even occur? The sweet and simple solution to this is to stop worrying, and start living in the moment ( I know it's funny coming from me!:D ) . Enough for now, gotta get back to my daily quota of worrying :P

PS: I've played out the thoughts in my head , here you go!
( on the day before the presentation)
Me: How should I start my presentation, with a good afternoon or without? What should I wear? Should I carry some notes to refer while presenting? Will my voice be audible enough to the whole classroom ? I must complete preparing within 2 hrs at the most! I have a pharmacology test due tomorrow as well! I have no idea what those Anticancer drugs do! Taxanes,alylating agents,..OMG! Maybe I should stop worrying about this right now, and worry about the presentation instead, there's still time for worrying about the test!

As you can see, the presentation went well, but the pharmacology test? Yeah, not so well!
Inference: Stop worrying! :P Prepare for the best! Good day :D

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Keep those mobile phones away!

*Rant Alert*
 So if you can't make out from the topic already, I'm going to be writing ( ranting , rather :P) about the excessive use of mobile phones. Almost everyday, I see people wearing headphones staring away aimlessly with bored blank faces, people crossing roads with their eyes glued to their mobile phones. I mean seriously, what is wrong with people ? That text message you just received can wait till you're done crossing the road, it's not going to self-destruct like those Ministery of Magic letters in Harry Potter :P and even if it would be getting self-destructed, your life is much more important than some random text. My younger sister ( Voldy :P I so love to call her that! ), after getting back home from meeting friends, gets glued to her mobile phone to continue chatting . This incessant chatting makes her almost deaf and blind ( yes, blind :P). She literally walks around the house, holding her mobile phone in front of her face. I'm waiting for the day she accidentally bumps into a wall :P ( That sounds mean, sorry :P ) Getting back to the point, mobile phones have become an easily available commodity nowadays. It's a treat for all those mobile phone companies and mobile network providers, they're making huge profits. Though mobile phones have eased communication, they are excessively used. From oldies to kids, almost everyone owns a mobile phone these days. I think in no time, li'l babies will start owning their own mobile phones :D Gone are those days, when one used to be able to communicate through spoken words, now the communication is mostly via typed words on smartphone screens. And by Jove, the screen dimensions in the newer mobile phones! The basic idea behind invention of mobile phones is easy portability , that idea seems to be lost considering the sizes of the mobile phones these days. It's almost as if people walk around with mini computer screens. It would be almost difficult to differentiate between a tablet and a mobile phone :P The worst part is that people can't go a day without their mobile phones, they start feeling lonesome. Humans are becoming too much technology dependent. Furthermore the use of mobile phones has also been studied to have some harmful effects on the human body. Mobile phones use electromagnetic radiations which could have possible adverse biological effects. Aside from these possible ways to die, people come up with easier ones. Using mobile phones while driving ! Endless number of people have lost lives because of using mobile phones while driving. Please people! Stop being constantly glued to your mobile phones. I'm not saying stop using them completely, just use them less frequently. Instead of chatting with friends on mobile phones , go and actually meet them and chat ( if possible ). And lastly, please don't use mobile phones while driving or crossing roads, at least for the people who actually care about you. Enough ranting for now. Have a nice day :) 

Friday 9 August 2013

Resistance

Pharmacology. Yikes! We continue to have the much dreaded (but interesting!) subject in this semester too. And guess what, we have more of those dreaded subjects like Pharm.Chem, Pharmacognosy (which are quite interesting too, but need quite a lot of work to put in ). I remember trying to cram all those GIT drugs last semester. Histamine receptor inhibitors, proton pump inhibitors, antidiarrhoeals and so on. I remember making dumb sounding mnemonics to remember them, but in the end, it was all worthwhile. Pharmacology, as a subject is quite intriguing. So this semester, we will be studying the Anticancer agents, antimalarials, and last but not the least, the AMAs! We have started with the AMAs ( Antimicrobial agents! ) and though there are too many drugs (-_-') , they are quite fascinating to study about. From what we have been taught up till now, I can just say that- If you've been prescribed an antibiotic course, please make sure to not miss any dose, and please see to it that you complete the course! Once you start the course, the symptoms may disappear, but that does not imply that you've been cured! It just means that those nasty microbes are building up resistance, and missing the next dose would mean giving them a chance to multiply. Now of course, you don't want that, do you? Many people leave their courses midway, thinking that they have no symptoms and have nothing to worry about, but end up at the doctor's after few days. And now, treating this infection is difficult since the course given previously is ineffective. Resistance, the defence mechanism exhibited by microbes serves as an evidence to the theory of Natural Selection put forth by Darwin. The microbes are much better at evolution than us humans ( Sigh! ). Resistance shown by microbes is basically of two types: Natural and Acquired. Natural resistance, as the name suggests, is naturally present. The microbes are insensitive to a particular drug maybe because they lack a certain target site to which the drug selectively binds, or maybe because they lack some metabolic processes which the drug has the ability to inhibit. Acquired resistance, on the other hand, is developed by the microbe on exposure to antibiotics. There are certain mechanisms like conjugation, transformation, transduction and so on. The much prevalent Multiple drug resistance tuberculosis ( MDR-TB) infection is a glimpse of how acquired resistance works. The reason for this is of course, overuse or misuse of antimicrobials. People consume antibiotics like I consume chocolates ( which would mean 20 a day, JK :P) . So anyway, the purpose of writing this blog was just to spread the awareness that one must complete an antibiotic therapy and not miss any doses or leave it halfway, because the consequences maybe life threatening as seen in people suffering from  MDR-TB. Bye for now, gotta catch up on my chocolate doses. Missing them would be life threatening for me :P

Saturday 3 August 2013

Friendships Day

Today as I was walking towards the station for catching a train after returning from college, I busied myself with watching the surroundings, and could see colourful ribbons displayed in just about every shop on the lane. The shopkeepers were having quite a successful day since their shops were literally bursting with customers who were buying those colourful strips which had cliche lines written all over them like Best friends forever and blah blah stuff. So tomorrow is the so called Friendships Day. The day on which people get ribbons tied on their wrists, readily allow to get scribbled on their hands,T-shirts and even faces (ugh!). I returned home after an hour or so to see a bunch of those colourful ribbons lying on the table. Now obviously I wouldn't buy those sickly ribbons which had the power to mend or break friendships( I have seen and had quite a few of those experiences in the past -_-' ). So the person responsible for buying those was of course, my younger sister ( or as I'd like to put it, one of the many Voldemorts in my life, JK, NOT ). After learning that it was she who had bought them, I wouldn't want to leave a chance to argue and exhibit my big sister prowess, so our argument ensued! Don't get me wrong, I'm not against friendships or anything . It's just that I feel that to express our friendships, we don't necessarily need to tie flimsy ribbons on each others hands. Although I was no different a few years back. I remember thinking that mere tying of these bands would guarantee a lifetime friendship. But as I grew up, I understood the essence of true friendship, its hard to find ( if you happen to find true friends, make sure to not let them go :) they're too precious to let go off) and there's no guarantee as far as longevity is concerned. Friendships get broken quite easily. Anyway, I'm deviating from the topic! So what I was trying to get at was that instead of putting money into buying those ribbons,bracelets,etc, one can come together and donate that money to some charities or to people who need it the most. Once the friendships day is done with, those bands are either reused,stored as a keepsakes (I used to do that :P until my cupboard was raided by a certain Voldy) or thrown away! So if ultimately thrash is where they are going to land in, it's better to  put that money into something much more effective and long lasting. One can use that money to gift candies to li'l kids, or do just about anything to get a smile on someone's face. It could be anything, visiting the old age homes and making those oldies feel wanted :) One can collect friends and get support for the orphanages. So that's about it for now. Please forgive my bad English :P Bye for now! ^_^