For me, 9th June 2020 was a day I’ll never forget. My blood pressure shot up beyond all reasonable limits and I had to rush to the hospital for fear of a stroke. As I sat there in the OPD, my life flashed before my eyes – I tried to analyze the reasons for my condition and the usual suspects came up – diet, exercise (or lack thereof), sleep (or lack thereof), work and family stress…

I was lucky to be discharged from the hospital that very night as there didn’t seem to be any issue with my heart itself. However, this event had rocked my world and I needed to fix my lifestyle to ensure that I stayed around to see my grandkids. I needed a friend, philosopher and guide (ok, a doctor too) to steer me in the right direction – so, I reached out to someone I trusted like family – Dr Purnendu Nath aka ‘Puru the Guru’ (my ‘chaddi buddy’ and a doctor of finance, but with more knowledge of creating a properly functioning human body than most allopathic doctors).

Puru was his usual candid self and laid it out bare – fix your lifestyle and reduce your biological age, else…He put together a (deceptively) simple system for me wherein I had to record a bunch of stuff about myself on a daily basis. As I embraced this new regime, I was amazed as to his ability to monitor and analyze my progress (remotely from Dubai and London) – the online log was peppered with comments on practical exercise and diet suggestions, merits of each med ingested,…..

The results were quick, evident and spectacular – I have shed more than 20 kgs since my Black 9th June, my blood pressure has stabilized, my dosage has halved, a number of meds eliminated, snoring eliminated… I am eating infinitely better – quality, quantity and method.

Puru subtly steered me towards protocols like Intermittent Fasting. For me, another really important improvement has been in my hydration (10-12 glasses of fluids daily now) and this was facilitated by a very simple trick by Pooru (I am not going to reveal this here).

My exercise is only an hour’s brisk walk daily and planks and push-ups for maintaining muscle.

In the TV game show ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ (Who wants to be a millionaire?, one of the lifelines, when you are badly stuck, is ‘Phone a Friend’ – I am so glad I called Puru!

Raj
Investor, Epicurean, Traveller