Who’s Wiser? | Flash Post 375

Button, seeing our Labrador sunning herself post lunch, made me wonder as to who’s wiser! Our other species like cats, dogs or humans!

What’s your reason for asking that question?

Well, I was reading an item in today’s Times of India that said that a deficiency of vitamin D causes chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension according to a new pan-India study. Around 84% of the diabetes patients and 82% of hypertension patients participating in the study had low levels of this vitamin. It was published in the latest Indian Journal of Diabetes and Endocrinology. The main author of this study, Dr P G Talwalkar, said that 70-90% of Indians have low vitamin D levels which could adversely affect skeletal development in babies and children and bone health in adults.

What you are trying to say is that your pet sits out in the sun post lunch to get her dose of this vitamin!

That’s right. When her friend was around, both would sit in the sun for a minimum of 15-20 minutes, sunbathing.

This is simply amazing.

They do this instinctively without knowing anything about the role of this particular vitamin for healthy bone health. Neither can they read and educate themselves and brush up their knowledge. And humans, after being aware of the importance of this particular vitamin, don’t pay heed. What we do is pump our systems with loads of deficient vitamins and suffer adversely from the after-effects of vitamin overdone.

I get it.

I remember my mother standing in the sun post her bath for about 10-15 minutes every day.

But life has changed from a simpler, easier, almost stress free and far less  competitive times into a hugely complex, stressful and hugely competitive era where, to quote Lewis Carroll from his masterpiece, Alice Through the Looking Glass, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”