Nutrition and Lifestyle - Smoking

Cigarettes contain chemicals that cause cancer. They also contain nicotine although it is not one of the cancer-causing representatives. But it is the matter that gets you enthusiastic on cigarettes. This makes your brain faster to make cigarettes even more addictive.

Effects of smoking 

·         You'll find yourself with wrinkle around your eyes and mouth. 

·         Dry, unhealthy, older-looking, faster-aging skin

·         Yellowish, brownish tobacco-stained teeth, gum disease and bad breath. 

According to the researchers conducted, risk of developing 2 type of diabetes is higher for a smoker than a non-smoker. Smoking increases the risk of obstacle and death from diabetes as well. If you smoke, you are 2 to 3 times more likely to have a heart attack than a non-smoker as stated in researchers and more likely to die from heart diseases. Smokers are more likely to have strokes, blood clots as well.

Tobacco smoking is responsible for breathing obstructions which includes like emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Lung cancer is the disease of the smoker. As stated in recent discussions 90% of primary lung cancers caused by smoking. Lungs are damaged not only by the number of cigarettes that you drink but also results in smoking for longer time.

Benefits of a non-smoker over a smoker

·         Skin is already healthier because it's getting more oxygen and blood

·         The appearance get mature more slowly more than a smoker

·         Hands lost yellowish tint, teeth are no longer being discolored

·         Risk of diabetes is lower and make a healthier body and make physical activity easier

·         Risk of heart attack is lower

After three days as a non-smoker, you've noticed an improvement in your breathing. You might develop a bit of a cough as your lungs clear.

Nutrition and Lifestyle - Sleep

If an arousing person spends a better life his/ her brain generates alpha waves attributable to relax and awake at the correct time. Also alert person generates beta waves which are about twice as fast. As a person falls asleep and sleep deepens, the brainwave patterns slow down.

During the night if something unpredictably happens, rapid eye movement sleep occurs. According to researchers conducted recently reveals that most students experience three to
five intervals of rapid eye movement sleep per night and brainwaves during this period -speed up to awake levels.

In my experience, I have seen students with eyes flickering back and forth rapidly. Also some student’s arms, legs and facial muscles will twitch during rapid eye movement sleep. If you get up a person during rapid eye movement sleep, the person can brightly remember dreams. You must have both REM and NREM sleep to get a good night's sleep.

Why sleep is necessary for a human? What happens when we don't get enough sleep?

·         Missing one night of sleep is not fatal. A person will generally be short-tempered during the next day and will either become tired or restless. 

·         If a person misses two nights of sleep, it gets worse. Concentration is difficult and attention span falls while increasing the mistakes that are made during the work.

These two points are proving that sleep is essential for a human to survive a better life. A person who gets just a few hours of sleep per night can experience some problems as discussed above. You can become more prone to syndrome if you don't get enough sleep and growth can be short. Brain needs to rest to recharge the brain.

Benefits of sleep

·         Sleep gives the body a chance to repair muscles and other tissues.

·         Sleep gives the brain a chance to organize and record memories. 

·         Sleep subordinate energy consumption (when you sleep you will be saving considerable amounts of energy) 

Technology and Learning

Teachers can use computers to help students to learn such as conduct investigation, production and evaluation. Personal computer with graphic capability offers the outlook of making one-on-one dialogues. This raises the obstacles for the student learning. Students must be well rhymed in the research of good writing materials.

Ideally, computers can help us to promote and triumph highest learning objectives.  The ability to think critically and creatively helps corrective approaches to search information for any kind of work.  This also aid in collaboratively solving important problems.

Today most of the students make use of computers in the classroom. They have different abilities such as note taking, typing, mapping etc. We know many students like visual learning than auditory learning. They like to see pictures, diagrams, flow charts and, demonstrations. But someone may think they have full knowledge where the rest is dull. This does not mean that such students must see everything they learn according to their personality. In other terms they cannot learn via abstract concepts.

Visual representations of auditory information do not provide a rich knowledge to the listener. For an example if we say something which is coming in Chemistry some kind of test then visual representation make understand-ability than audio only. 

When a question is given student can remember the experiment and can write the answer easily. Therefore it is important to provide pictures, diagrams, charts. But now a day’s most of the teachers do not like to show the visuals by doing it, but of course it is helpful to students. Visuals contribute to a discussion with teacher and student in preparation for laboratories.  

Critical Thinking and Technology

Especially the current generation students need to think critically. They need to get an interest in events conducted in the surroundings and also need best disciplines to survive successfully with a good repudiation. Students need to prepare for standardized behavior. We need to help students to become active and improve the mental power and also need to understand important ideas to study and evaluate.

Students learn as you would expect as they grow day by day while trying to solve problems. They develop their native interests that guide mission for knowledge.  This helps to reduce rewards that come into view to control the interest.

Teachers must pose questions that attract, fundamental questions that stretch out at the heart of disciplines. When teaching need to help students to understand why current discussions capture attention about the technology in critical thinking. Adults must meet the students on the outside and help them understand the value and the location of the tasks that are being practiced. We must help them understand why anyone might want to solve some problems or answer some questions.

We must also recognize that students like to become academically animated and motivated to work. If we show some concern for them and some faith in their ability they definitely try to succeed. So nearly we need to identify their attitudes and values as well as abilities. 

We should help students develop and process specific conceptual interpretation abilities. Also we should think in terms of when thinking about teaching students to understand, analyze, produce, and evaluate evidence. One cannot learn to achieve the goal successfully where as other can do it successfully. We need to help our students acquire knowledge by reading.  We must purposely help them to acquire specific non-figurative reasoning capacities. We must teach them the logic of thinking by standing in different perspectives. 

We should spend time teaching students how to learn rather than using the classes to utter information. We should do less telling and more asking. Normally the above phrase doesn't always work. When it is related to technology we must change our minds for researching more about them while improving the human learning.

In general the brain loves diversity. Same as brain, students also like different kinds of input, not the same kind all of the time. Comparatively few students have fixed styles of learning such as learn from single life experience. Many students have learning traits which express liking for approach. Some students like visual information while others like speech or visual symbols or else written words and mathematical notations. Most students prefer to talk things out.

Some like to learn from the facts, data, and experimentation where as others prefer to work from principles and theories. Solving problems by standard methods show patience with the student but sometimes makes complications. Then students become bored. Sensors are good at memorizing facts.

All these things signify about providing good learning environments for students. If we provide that diversity, we can speak to different personalities while encouraging everyone to expand their preferences in new ways.

Thinking leads for fear, worry, anxiety and tension. Healthy challenge can motivate the student to think diversely. We must help our students to feel comfortable and try to learn by using their capabilities to learn. We must promote students with some liking then students will be able to achieve success with enthusiasm. 

Cuisine Sri Lanka

Apart from the staple food as described in the above post, Sri Lankan cuisine is a huge unity of influences from South Indian neighbors and the Portuguese and Dutch pioneer. Milk Rice is concerned as an important cultural valued food since from past till today. Rotti is made by powdered cereal. Also there are gruel prepared using cereal namely Lunu Kenda, Kola Kenda and Kiri Kenda. These gruel help people to build a health body and event give energy to the body.  

According to the ancient sources, herbal gruel have given for patients almost every day which can be categorized as Polpala Kenda, Hathavariya Kenda, Iramusu Kenda, Ranawara Kenda and Gotukola Kenda. In most cases ancient people used to have gruel for their breakfast. Same as gruel there were some fruit drinks which were popular since past like mangoes, orange, lemon.

In the past people were used to have green leaves and vegetables with their meals because they are grown by themselves in home gardening. Food items like drumsticks Wel kohila, Kesel muwa, Kekatiya and Nelum ala were popular from the past. 

The different types of spices were mixed with curries like pepper, ginger, mustard, tamarind, garlic, turmeric, lemon, curry leave. Coconut oil is used for tasting food as well as consumed in preparing food in occasional seasons. Most of the sweets are made out of rice flour and treacle. Some of them are known as Avulpath, Aluwa, Halapa, Ingurudosi, Puhuldosi, Welithalapa, Pani Walalu, Dodol.

From the aryan’s period in Sri Lanka fish and meat were widely consumed. The popular meat is mutton. The fish varieties like Lula, Kavaiya, Pethiya, Prawn and Crab. As well the eggs were consumed in the past such as Chicken eggs, Thara eggs, Kesbe eggs.

With the stated above information we can come to a conclusion that Sri Lanka had a culturally valuable food culture from the past. The food items such as Pittu, Appa, Indi Appa, Wade and Papadam came from Indian culture. During the Portuguese, Dutch and English rules many food items were introduced to Sri Lanka.

Pittu made with the Malay contingents brought by the Dutch and the English. This is a mixture of fresh rice and grated coconut steamed in a bamboo mould.  Thosai is delicious, nutritious and eat with chili sambol. Milk is a food item with high cultural value.

Sri Lankan food culture influenced of Buddhism and Ayurvedic medicine. Different beliefs, blessings and worships have contributed to sustenance of the country’s food habits. 

The Nature of Food in Sri Lankan Culture

The culture differs from country to country. In Sri Lanka, there is unique culture and civilization inherited from the past. Sri Lankans are great foodies and their food varieties are hot, spicy and nutritious.  Rice and curry is the staple food of a Sri Lankan which is usually consumed daily can be found at any special occasion. In ancient Sri Lanka, there were number of methods in relation to cooking rice.

Some of them are milk rice, tempered rice, ambul bath, cooked rice with bee honey, rice with spices, rice mixed with cereal, tempered rice with vegetable, yellow rice, rice mixed with green gram. There are evidences on cultivation by the Aryans regarding the main food in the Sri Lankan culture which is based on rice. As there was good paddy cultivation in Sri Lankan history rice became the staple food.

The historical writings and archeological sources provide witnesses that Sri Lanka has a unique food culture. Among these writings Mahawansa, Rasavahini, Saddarmaratnawali, Tupawansa, Bodhiwansa, Inscriptions at Thonigala, Medirigiriya and Pillar Inscription at Badulla are very significant. Sri Lankan style of cooking has been partial by south Indian cooking. Sri Lankan meal always consists of leaves, dry fish and several vegetable curries etc. Meat curries and fish dishes are the hot favorites among the tourists. Sri Lankan make special sweets with coconut milk, flour and Honey at cultural festivals like New Year.

According to the historical evidences the tank was introduced in the days of King Pandukabhaya for the cultivation of paddy. Today when we go to North and South of Sri Lanka we can see plenty of tanks done by different kings. As mentioned in the ancient Pali writings there was other food like green gram, millet, kurakkan, undu, gram, dhal were cultivated in Chenas. These built healthy people.

The components like carbohydrate, fat, protein, water and vitamin needed to be included in a balanced diet in traditional meals. Ancestors have knowledge in food processing and natural preservations. With the facts mentioned above we can come to a conclusion that ancient Sri Lankans had rice and food cultivate in chenas for their balanced healthy meals.

When a country develops its technology, the traditional skills and ways of life die out. It is pointless to try and keep them alive. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

When a country develops its technology, the traditional skills and ways of life die out. It is pointless to try and keep them alive. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

The trend of globalization has directed people to a wave of change and improvement of the traditional skills and lifestyles. The changes have occurred from a longer time period. Actually without progress we wouldn't be live where we are today. Furthermore it means we will be in the past communication era which was quite difficult. However, I do not totally agree with the opinion that it is pointless to try and keep them alive.

In the Stone Age man created the fire by rubbing two stones or sticks. He also created other tools as a cut with stone and stick in order to hunt animals for food. These tools allowed him to stay alive in stone era. Currently we have fire and enough tools to get food which make our life much easier.

Obviously we developed our technology from the traditional ages work. Then those skills have disappeared. It is not sensible to keep on producing fire in the same as we did a million years ago. So the change is the key of progress in technology to survive.

Although such ways of life have died out as we learn history as a subject in school or else read historical scenarios we know how we created them.  Therefore this is the most important. Finally I would like to say that any country started developing new technologies to improve its productivity and ensure the economic and social development of the citizens while keeping them up to date with the new technologies and teaching them how to use them to make lives easy.

But it is valuable to keep the knowledge of traditional skills alive by teaching the new generations like how these things done in the past and how we used to live with those.