For a long time, I have been following the work of SHARAN-India and its founder, Dr. Nandita Shah. But the clincher came for me during the Covid madness. Early on, based on the data from the Diamond Princess, I was clear that whatever it was, it was not much of a threat, unless you were already old and sick. As a healthy 70-year old I was not too worried about it. I was more interested in the 83% of people who did not get it in that confined space. That told me even more: it was not very contagious anyway. Trying to calm people down even with those numbers did not work very well. Those were the days.
At some point during this period, Dr. Nandita Shah made a video, which I think is a classic, because it really explains a lot about the body’s innate capability to heal from many sorts of injuries.
This video is one of the best ever done about the treatment of Covid patients. And yes, of course it was a scandal that many options for early treatment were being actively suppressed, such as hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Ivermectin, not to mention the idea of keeping your D3 levels above 50 ng/l which reduces the risk of bad Covid by 80% or a plant-based diet which reduces the risk of moderate to severe Covid outcomes by 73%. All of these are illustrative of the body’s own capability of preventing, or recovering from such challenges. and in the end what does not kill you makes you stronger, as the saying goes. For you are gaining immunity once your body overcomes the challenge. The jabs did the opposite, and made things worse, not better, by undermining the immune system.
#WFPB on Bangla Bazaar
Since 2016, I taught cooking classes at St. Helena’s School, in the cafeteria. Of course in 2020 we were rudely interrupted by the Covid mania. But, by 2019 we had also certified Neerob Restaurant for Plant-Based dining. In the pre-covid years, we also did “Dinners for Doctors,” every six months or so. Usually in a buffet format and with a presentation by a doctor or other healthcare or nutrition professional.
Several of us also attended the annual Preventive Cardiology Conferences at Montefiore Hospital, and in one of the sessions a Bangladeshi nurse who shared he had his first stent at age 38, asked a question of Dr. Kim A. Williams who was then president of the American College of Cardiology, responded that he had just made a study trip to Bangladesh and that indeed the average age for the first heart attack in Bangladesh was 43 years, versus about 63 in the US in general. The reason was simple: the Southeast Asian population genetically tend to have smaller diameter bloodvessels, so they get clogged more easily. We also know by now that this 20-year handicap can be largely mooted by a healthy lifestyle, including a health Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet, without added SOS, Sugar, Oil, and Salt.
We are now hard at work at bringing back new activities in the community, in collaboration with the doctors in the area. There will be an announcement about this soon. We may do cooking classes again, and of course the restaurant is doing excellent with their plant-based diet. One feature may be a day of free testing with the MCG test, which is the most sophisticated test in existence today of the entire cardiometabolic system, which excells at early detection of budding problems. For our SE Asian friends, we always recommend Dr. Nandita Shah’s excellent book Reversing Diabetes in 21 days. There are other excellent books, which can be found in our shopping section, but for the SE Asian palate, Dr. Shah’s book is unbeatable. The principles area all the same.
Our relationship with Sharan is at this point developmental and conceptual in nature, but we are delighted to enjoy such a relationship with an organization we admire so much. Stay tuned.