Heartburn and my story of ‘TEA- totaling’

20.8.2008

Heartburn and my story of ‘TEA- totaling’
Many people want me to write regularly whether it can be possible with the subjects available around us is a concern.
Just now I had listened to a lecture on heartburn by Dr. Pulak Sahay, a gastroenterologist at Leeds University(UK). A form of oesophageal disease, Barrett’s Oesophagus is rising alarmingly due to smoking and others where capsicum is also supposed to be a cause. I said about a research by one Dr. Shrivasatva ,not a medical doctor but a scientist whose work had been that capsicum in fact blocks one enzyme which lead to acid secretion, This I had listened to on the BBC some 5-6 years back. Dr.Sahay agreed that it might be so!
After listening to that I had started eating one capsicum(green) whenever available in house and that too biting that taking in left hand while eating food as someone had told me that Swami Vivekananda had been eating!
Anyway my heartburn became lesser though the cause of heartburn also include anxiety status which needs relieved apart from the fact that tablets like omeprazole should be taken half an hour before breakfast or dinner, not at bedtime.

Hot drinks including tea can cause oesophageal strictures and hence anything should be taken after cooling as once upper third of oesophagus is passed the epithelium is changed from stratified to columnar and it cannot carry thermal sensation and once you gulped hot haluwa you will think that it has passed but will burn oesophagus and below it was hot!
My father said that once Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, MRCP, FRCS, the CM of WB had said to some patient that hot tea had burnt his oesophagus. That was the time in fares tea was given free for advertisement by tea companies!
Dr. Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS used to say that a social worker should must take tea (maybe to have some talks over cheaply given by even in a poor person’s house, of course he himself was so poor that it is said once his sister in-law (bhabhi)could not make tea as nothing was in the house of that poor Brahmin!
I am a teetotaler, not only for alcohol but for tea and coffee too and barring a few occasions have hardly taken tea or coffee anywhere.
I recall I could not get sleep till late night when I had coffee with the legendary physian of Bihar, Dr. Shrinowas’s house when (after 5 years of his saying that come after MBBS when I had gone first on his invitation as a comment written on his POLYPATHY appeared in the Aryavart, the daily. I had met him at Patna in his clinic for discussion) I had gone to his Patliputra Colony house in 1980 to invite him for the I Conference of the NMO where he came as per his promise.
Next I recall I had a cup of coffee with Mrs. Radha Singh, the then Commissioner of the Chotanagpur when I had gone to meet her with some medicos of the RMCH for some NMO related work.
Then I had asked my ex-wife Dr.Suman Jha at her AMC, Dibrugrah hostel to bring one cup of tea- that she brought and I though took to show that I am able to change my habits, she broke the cup in anger(and later marriage!).

And when she filed some cases in the court once I ad waited at BhauraGahi’s old temple of Mata Guheshwari( Mother godess in rectal part, very unique temple), the wife of priest brought a cup of tea for me which I took as a Prasad.
In my childhood I had promised before Ramchandra Sharma ‘Veer’, the great person who took fast for 72 days with the Shankaracharya of Puri for abolition of Cow- slaughter. That was my movement participation when I might ne 12 years only.
Tea was not common in my house however occasion cup I might have taken. However in the floods at Darbhanga in 1975 when water entered in Pandasarai area( the area where later maybe in 1985-86, I had gone to visit the legendary poet Baidyanath Mishra Yatri, Nagrjuna of Hindi when Bharat Choubey,Secretary, NMO,DMCH, now a spinal surgeon at Mumbai, had donated his blood to Mahakavi when I was on tour somewhere) I had gone with Ramsevak Sharan, pracharak of the RSS, for a coutsey visit to his brother(a Judge in the Court)’s house, his bhabhi could not make tea for want of materials and I re-decided that I will not take tea or coffee!
Maybe it is also a factor in preventing any heartburn! But more important is what Dr. Manjushree Tiwari had said to the speaker(though not understandable to him), quoting Bhagwad Gita’s 4:24 that whatever we eat is gong to Brhma which is also Agni
“Brahmarpanma, Bramhvir, Brahmagno, Brahmanahutam,
Brahmaiv Ten Gantavyam, Brahmkarm Samadhinam.
“In the Yajna offered thing is Brahma, the material for havan is also Brahma, the Brahmaform doer’s method of giving ahuti in Brahmaform fire is also Brahma-in that Brahmakarm ,the Yogi who is established , the obtainable result by him/her,therefore is also Brahma.”