During my school days, I have noticed doctors prescribing glucose to patients with weak digestion due to a recent illness. I was curious and asked one of the elders about glucose and got to know that it readily provides energy, you need not to wait for it to digest like food. I got so impressed that I decided to have glucose instead of food. Bought a box of glucose from my pocket money and started having it instead of my regular meals. Just within a day I fell sick because of not having enough food.

I did not realise why I fell sick but the elders at home scolded me a lot and made me eat regular meals. A few years later I studied more about the digestion system and nutrition in my biology class. We do not need just energy like how cars need only fuel to run, we need a balance of minerals, nutrients, some complex compounds and energy food in terms of not only glucose but also complex carbs, fat, protein and also undigestible roughage.

Undigestible roughage? Why would someone eat something that cannot be digested, I came to know later that it is as necessary as any other nutrient you have because our systems are designed to process food moving through the digestive system and roughage is the train that passes through the system unbroken. We are not machines, we are an assembly of symbiotic cells.

On a parallel; for people who are deep into work and only work for a long while, we can see them taking a wild break sometimes not even returning back to the same intensity that they were involved earlier. Similar to our digestive systems, our mind also requires roughage; we can’t keep hammering on high intensity work for ever to achieve great heights. Our mind should get a sense of living through the days instead of working through the days. Roughage for the mind can be anything that is done in leisure but not on targets and deadlines. It can be reading, gardening, walking around, playing etc. Go ahead and go easy on those long days. Find the balance, have enough roughage.

All work and no play makes anyone a zombie.