Supplement-ary

#293

Three posts ago, I shared how my B12 had dropped and my physician suggested a once-a-day chewable. That's how I officially joined the supplement club, though I wasn't quite sure what this club was all about, so naturally I went digging.

Supplements are basically vitamins, minerals, protein, herbs and other extras packed into pills, powders and gummies. They came about soon after scientists figured out how to make vitamins in a lab, and by the 1940s, multivitamins were already sitting on pharmacy shelves, with convenience doing the rest since popping a capsule felt way easier than planning a balanced plate. Then in 1994, a US law called DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act) allowed supplements to be sold without FDA approval, which means the maker is responsible for safety and the FDA usually steps in only after something goes wrong. No wonder the supplement aisle is so crowded with bold promises.

So who actually needs them? My college course on nutrition is pretty clear on this: food first, and then supplements only to fill real gaps for specific people like:

1. Vegans, e.g. for B12. That's me.
2. Women who are or could become pregnant, for folic acid. Folate intake needs to jump by about 50% in pregnancy, and the baby's brain and spine form in the first few weeks, often before a woman even knows she's pregnant. Plus, the body absorbs folic acid from pills and fortified foods better than dietary folate.
3. Older adults, who make less stomach acid and absorb less B12 from food.
4. People with little sun exposure, for vitamin D.
5. Anyone with a deficiency confirmed by a blood test.

And who has no need for supplements? Most healthy people eating a varied diet on a regular basis. In such cases, supplements provide extras the body doesn’t need, and those extras can easily backfire: fat-soluble vitamins pile up, iron turns toxic, and too much folate can hide a B12 deficiency while nerve damage quietly carries on.

Labels need a careful eye too. A 500 milligram calcium gluconate tablet may hold only 45 milligrams of actual calcium, and some pills barely even dissolve. My textbook suggests a fun little test: drop one in a glass of vinegar, and if it hasn't broken apart in about half an hour, it probably won't in your gut either.

Then there's the multivitamin, the most popular pill on the shelf, which for most healthy people works as a modest safety net at best. My own multi has B12 in it, and my levels still dropped. A multi is built to maintain normal levels, not to fix a deficiency. Hence the separate chewable.

And feeling tired doesn't automatically mean you need iron either, so test, don't guess.

What no supplement can fully cover is phytochemicals. These are natural compounds plants make to defend themselves against sun, pests, and disease, and they give fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices their color, smell, and bite. They're not vitamins or minerals, so skipping them won't cause a deficiency disease. Scientists have identified thousands, studied only a fraction, and many more haven't even been discovered yet. You can't bottle what you haven't found. A few examples:

1. Lycopene makes tomatoes red. It belongs to the carotenoid family, cousin to the beta-carotene in carrots. Cooking tomatoes with a little oil makes more of it available.
2. Anthocyanins paint berries, purple cabbage and black grapes.
3. Curcumin turns turmeric golden. Black pepper helps the body absorb it. Indian "haldi doodh" with pepper wasn't a happy coincidence, after all!
4. Allicin gives crushed garlic its punch. It forms when garlic is chopped or crushed, so letting it sit a few minutes before cooking helps.
5. Sulforaphane comes from broccoli, cabbage, and their cruciferous cousins. It nudges the body’s own defense enzymes into action and is being studied for its role in cancer prevention.

Researchers are studying phytochemicals for protecting cells, calming inflammation, and more. That's also where supplements trip up. In large trials, beta-carotene pills raised the risk of lung cancer in smokers, while people who ate beta-carotene-rich fruits and vegetables did fine. Pull a compound out of its plant and it doesn't always behave the same way. Food comes as a team. Fiber, vitamins, minerals, and thousands of phytochemicals working together in ways science is still untangling.

These days I read nutrition labels on foods and supplements the way I read a lease agreement. Slowly, and with far more respect for the fine print.

"Micro"cosm

#292

Microcosm comes from the Greek mikros kosmos. A little world. Fitting, because micronutrients come in tiny amounts, milligrams and micrograms, yet they run a whole universe inside us. Last post covered the big three macros. This one zooms into the little world that turns out to be gigantic. And mostly unexplored, at least by me, until my nutrition course helped me delve into it.

Vitamins

In 1912, a biochemist named Casimir Funk coined "vitamine," from vital amine, thinking they all contained nitrogen. They didn't. So the "e" quietly got dropped and we were left with vitamin.

There are 13 of them, split into two teams.

1. Fat-soluble (4): A, D, E and K. They travel with fat and get stored in the body, so too much can build up. They're better absorbed when taken with food, so they can dissolve in the fat from the meal.
2. Water-soluble (9): C plus eight B vitamins. Thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), B6, biotin (B7), folate (B9) and B12. They dissolve in water and leave when they're done. Mostly. B12, the rebel from two posts ago, stashes itself in the liver anyway.

The names are half the fun. Riboflavin comes from the Latin flavus, yellow, for its color. Fun side effect: it turns your pee bright yellow. Pantothenic comes from the Greek pantothen, from everywhere, because it shows up in almost every food. Folate comes from folium, leaf. Cobalamin, B12's real name, holds cobalt, the only vitamin with a metal inside.

And the missing numbers? B4, B8, B10 and B11 were once on the roster but got cut. The body makes them, or they turned out to be pieces of folate. Nobody renumbered the jerseys.

Where to find them, plant edition:

1. A: carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and spinach, as beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A as needed. Too little causes night blindness. Too much from supplements can damage the liver. Too much from carrots just tints your skin a little orange.
2. D: sunshine (hello again, #275), fortified plant milks and UV-exposed mushrooms. Too little softens bones. Too much, almost always from pills, pushes blood calcium dangerously high.
3. E: nuts, seeds and vegetable oils. It protects cells from damage. Deficiency is rare, and megadoses can interfere with blood clotting.
4. K: leafy greens, and our gut bacteria make some too. It helps blood clot.
5. B vitamins: whole grains, legumes, leafy greens and nutritional yeast. Too little thiamin causes beriberi. Too little niacin causes pellagra. Too little folate during pregnancy raises the risk of birth defects. Too much niacin from supplements flushes the skin red and hot.
6. C: amla, guava, bell peppers and citrus. Too little causes scurvy, the old sailor's disease of bleeding gums. Too much mostly ends in an upset stomach.
   
   

Minerals

My textbook paints this picture: Pull every mineral out of a human body and you get a pile weighing about five pounds. Calcium and phosphorus make up three-fourths of it, mostly as bone. Run a magnet through the rest and the iron barely fills a teaspoon. Leave only copper and iodine, and you'd better shut the windows. A breeze would blow them away.

1. Major minerals (7): calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chloride and sulfate. Needed in larger amounts (more than 100 mg a day).
2. Trace minerals (9): iron, zinc, iodine, selenium, copper, manganese, fluoride, chromium and molybdenum. Needed in pinches.

Major doesn't mean more important. Missing a few micrograms of iodine a day hurts as much as missing hundreds of milligrams of calcium. Most of us fall short on potassium and calcium and go way overboard on sodium.

With minerals, it's less about how much you eat and more about how much you absorb. Some foods hand them over. Others hold on tight.

1. Calcium: tofu set with calcium, fortified plant milks, ragi, sesame, bok choy and kale. Spinach looks loaded with calcium on paper, but it's also full of oxalates, natural compounds that bind calcium and carry most of it right out of the body. Popeye was misinformed.
2. Iron: lentils, chickpeas, beans, tofu and leafy greens. Plant iron aka non-heme iron absorbs less easily than iron from meat (heme iron). Vitamin C helps, so that squeeze of lemon on my dal was more than just for taste. Tannins in tea and coffee do the opposite, binding iron in the gut. So chai can wait an hour after an iron-rich meal. Too little iron leads to anemia and fatigue. Too much, usually from supplements, is toxic, and iron pills are a known poisoning risk for small children.
3. Phytates: found in whole grains, legumes and seeds, they grab onto iron, zinc and calcium. Soaking, sprouting and fermenting break them down. Idli and dosa batter, fermenting overnight, is nutrition science in action.
4. Iodine: iodized salt is the easy source. Too little swells the thyroid gland into a goiter.
5. Potassium vs sodium: potassium comes from bananas, potatoes, beans and most produce. Sodium sneaks in through packaged and restaurant food. Too much sodium and too little potassium both nudge blood pressure up.
   
   

Water

In school, we learnt to call water "the elixir of life." The word elixir traces back to the Arabic al-iksir, the magical powder alchemists believed could turn metal into gold and stretch life forever. Water earned the title, and rightfully so. Your body needs 50 times more water than protein and 5,000 times more than vitamin C. You can survive months short on most nutrients, but only a few days without water.

It doesn't all come from the tap. Every drink counts, even coffee, tea and soda, though soda brings a sugar bill along with it. Food chips in roughly a fifth of our daily water. Watermelon, cucumbers and oranges are mostly water. The body even makes a little of its own while breaking down food.

Too little shows up as thirst, headaches and fatigue, and by the time you feel thirsty, you're already a bit behind. Too much is rare but real. Endurance athletes who chug plain water for hours can dilute their blood sodium to dangerous levels. Even the elixir has a limit.

A five-pound pile of dust, thirteen vitamins and a few glasses of water. Tiny cast. Blockbuster show.

"Macro"economics

#291

Last post, I zoomed into one tiny vitamin (B12). This time, let’s zoom out to the big three: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Think of your body as a little economy running on a daily calorie budget. Carbs and protein bring in 4 calories per gram. Fat brings in 9, giving the body more than twice the energy for the same amount in weight.

Carbs: Cash on Hand

Carbs are quick energy, ready to spend. Your brain is their biggest customer. It lacks the enzymes to burn fat for fuel, so it runs almost entirely on glucose.

Growing up in South India, rice was the staple and nobody called carbs evil. Then I moved to America, where carbs were public enemy number one. So I cut out rice, fruit, and most carbs for a couple of weeks. Result? Zero energy and plenty of fatigue. Lesson learnt. Carbs are not the enemy. The kind matters more. Complex carbohydrates like whole grains, lentils, and veggies keep the economy steady. Refined carbs like white bread and added sugar crash the market. Tip: The less processed a food is, the more efficiently the body can break it down into lasting energy.

Protein: Infrastructure

Protein builds and repairs everything. Muscle, enzymes, antibodies, even the net that clots a cut. No need to obsess over it, but when you train hard, your muscles put in a bigger order.

One lesson came up in both my nutrition course and my CrossFit certification: protein alone doesn’t build muscle. Muscle needs two signals. One is raw material, the amino acids from food. The other is demand. When you lift or push hard, your muscle fibers sense the strain and flip on a growth switch (called mTOR), which tells cells to start building. No workout, no switch. In one study, people on bed rest lost muscle at the same rate whether they ate extra protein or not.

So where does the extra go? The body has no warehouse for amino acids. The liver strips off their nitrogen and turns it into urea, which the kidneys flush out. The rest gets burned for energy or stored as fat. Which brings a caveat. More protein means more urea for the kidneys to filter. Research hasn’t shown clear harm to healthy kidneys, but for people with kidney disease, cutting back on protein may slow it down. More isn’t automatically better.

And if carbs run short, the body starts burning protein for fuel*. That’s like burning the furniture to heat the house. Plant-based folks can trade smartly too. Beans with rice, dal with roti. Together they cover what each one lacks alone.

*The full picture: when carbs run low, muscles and organs switch mostly to burning fat. The brain can’t use fat directly, so the body breaks down some protein, even from muscle, to make the glucose the brain needs. Stay very low-carb for a few days and the liver turns fat into ketones, which the brain can use for part of its fuel. That spares some protein, but the brain never fully quits glucose.

Fat: The Savings Account

Fat is the most energy-dense currency. It stores energy for later, helps make hormones, and lets you absorb vitamins A, D, E and K.

Back when fat became the bad guy, food manufacturers pulled it out of products and pumped in sugar and refined starch to keep the taste. Low-fat cookies, anyone? Sugar deserved the closer look all along.

Refined carbs and added sugars absorb quickly, so blood glucose spikes and the pancreas releases a surge of insulin. When glucose floods in faster than muscles can use it or store it as glycogen, the liver converts the surplus into triglycerides, a type of fat that circulates in the blood. High triglycerides are one of five markers of metabolic syndrome, along with a large waist, low HDL ("good") cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. Three or more raise the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Sugar can still have a seat at the table, albeit a small one.

The Balance Sheet

My textbook recommends 45 to 65% of calories from carbs, 10 to 35% from protein and 20 to 35% from fat. CrossFit’s Zone diet keeps it tighter at 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat. Zone runs a little lighter on carbs than the textbook. The rest comes down to bio-individuality, a fancy way of saying the same plate lands differently in different bodies. Genes, gut bacteria, activity level and food history all shape how each of us uses what we eat.

Somewhere back home, my mom’s plate of rice, dal and veggies is nodding along. She balanced this budget long before I learnt the math.

"B"(12) positive

#290

The Number

I did my annual checkup last year and everything came back normal. Vitamin B12, aka cobalamin, showed up a little over 180. On the lower end, but close enough to healthy. No flags from the doc. Life was hunky-dory and I went on my way.

With one teeny change. I stopped consuming dairy completely. Going from vegetarian to vegan meant zero animal sources from then on.

A year and a half later, the next checkup showed B12 at 118. A drop of 62 points, roughly a third, in one metric. That signals deficiency. My physician linked it straight to my switch to veganism and suggested I start supplements.

For context, most labs read B12 like this: below 200 pg/mL is deficient, 200 to 300 is a gray zone worth retesting, 300 to 900 is normal, and functional medicine folks aim for a tighter sweet spot of 500 to 900.

The Clues

Sometimes the mind likes to connect the dots, matching past situations to present data. Looking back, the clues were all there. Fatigue-filled days. Random energy dips despite steady coffee, nutrient-dense food, decent sleep and plenty of water. Not my 4PM crash kind of tired I'd written about earlier. A slower, heavier kind. Workouts felt harder and recovery took an extra day. I blamed sleep, the gray Seattle skies, and possibly Mercury in retrograde. With all my home-cooked, carefully planned meals, I didn't think I was missing anything.

The inner engineer in me kept that story in check. Correlation isn't causation. Still, the dots were lining up.

Being naturally curious, I started digging. Coincidentally, I'd enrolled in a college-level nutrition course at the time, and that particular week, I was studying the chapter on vitamins. Part curiosity, part homework. Over the next few posts, I'll share bits of what I'm learning in class, mixed with what I'm learning about my own body. Consider this the trailer.

Food Sources

Vitamin B12 is made by bacteria through aerobic or anaerobic microbial fermentation, rather than by plants or animals, and animals simply store it. That’s why it naturally shows up only in foods of animal origin. My textbook’s top sources read like a non-vegetarian’s dream menu: sardines, tuna, steak, and chicken. For a lacto-vegetarian: Cottage cheese. For plant-based folks, the only real options are fortified foods like enriched cereals, fortified plant milks, and nutritional yeast. All that to hit just 2.4 micrograms a day, a speck so small it makes a grain of salt look like a boulder. When I dropped dairy and eggs, I dropped my main source without realizing it was a source at all. "You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone." -Joni Mitchell

Learnings

1. Function: B12 helps make new cells, teams up with folate (another B vitamin) to make healthy red blood cells, and maintains the protective sheaths around nerve fibers. Fatigue is one of the first whispers when it runs low.

2. Deficiency: Absorption of Vitamin B12 needs stomach acid and a compound called intrinsic factor. Low B12 can come from poor absorption too, which is why the recommendation is to rely on a professional diagnosis over self-diagnosis. Good thing I let my doc get there first. Also, B12 gets stored in the liver, which is why a year isn't usually enough to see a drop. The tank drains slowly, then all at once shows up on a lab report.

3. Characteristic: B12 dissolves in water, so whatever my body doesn't use gets flushed out. Hence ingesting once-a-day chewable tablet helps meet the body's daily needs with no risk of toxicity.

"Know thyself," said the Oracle at Delphi. I'd add: Know thy lab report too!
Every line of it, not just the famous ones.

Attitude of Gratitude

#289

In my previous post (#287) on positivity, I wrote about having an optimistic bent of mind, and briefly mentioned gratitude journaling. This practice has been with me for more than five years now. Looking back, I thought I learnt it from books, but realized that I also inherited it from my family.

Growing up, my grandma would read out snippets from her diary she maintained almost daily. Sometimes, she would even let me witness her beautiful handwriting. Almost all her entries were prefaced with "By God's Grace". She'd either say how an event went off really well, express her gratitude toward specific people, accomplishments big and small alike, or some days, just "By God's Grace, everyone is healthy."

Years later, I see my cousin doing exactly that. Same phrasing, same practice. Amazing!

My mom too, at the dinner table, would thank the Almighty not just for the meal but for a good appetite as well, which is super important. What a wonderful feeling it is when your body is working well enough to desire and crave food. She wasn't thanking for abundance. She was thanking for function. For the small things that keep you going.

And somewhere along the way, I absorbed and imbibed this. Thanking people for things. Big things, small things. It costs nothing. You don't lose anything by saying thank you. You just acknowledge that someone showed up or that something went right or that you noticed.

The journaling part came later. I started writing three things every morning. From generic "I'm grateful for life and love" to specific "I'm grateful for having cooked this experimental dish that turned out yummy," or "I'm immensely thankful for all the support my loved ones have shown me during recent tough times by calling and checking in on me." 

Specificity matters because our brain stops scanning for the broad strokes and starts catching the actual moments. After weeks of doing this, even hard days brought in perspective.

I'll sit down frustrated about something that didn't work. Journal about it. And as I write a couple of paragraphs, I'm writing a thank you on that same page. Because I realized that no matter what, there was ALWAYS something to be thankful about. A tiny win for the day.

The habit of gratitude journaling doesn't mean or require you to pretend everything's fine. A lot of it is mostly just data. Even terrible days have small good things (silver linings) in them. Both feelings can exist at the same time. The frustration and the gratitude. My family recognizes that. And five years into this practice, I'm becoming more and more cognizant of it too.

"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance." - Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now)

Pantry alchemy

#288

A year ago I had cut dairy because my skin demanded it (#260, #286). 

Clear skin felt non-negotiable, so instead of treating veganism like a restriction, I tapped into my creativity to concoct fun recipes with dairy-free alternatives.

A lot of my initial experiments are now our weekly staples. 

One of them is my spinach, chickpea, coconut curry.

It all started one lazy evening when I opened the pantry to see what's the easiest path to a 10-minute dinner. I saw canned chickpeas and canned coconut milk, and I knew my freezer had a few frozen spinach cubes. 

A quick mix of them along with sauteed onions and tomatoes, topped with regular spices and herbs, was all that was needed. It turned out great.

Nutritionally too, a complete package- Folate (a B vitamin), all the 4 fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K), and iron (mineral) from the dark leafy green spinach, protein and carbs from the chickpeas, and healthy fats from the coconut milk.

Such trials motivate me to experiment more. Some work out, some don't, but either way, I no longer feel constrained by the lack of options (ingredients and recipes) from being dairy-free.

On days I can't quite figure out by myself what to make looking at my fridge and pantry, I turn to Claude and YouTube. Those work just as well!

Mrs. Brightside

#287

The Cloud

A few months back, life tilted. Nothing catastrophic, but heavy enough that I had to choose. Surrender to it, or find something that still gleamed. I chose the latter, though honestly some days that meant Netflix binges without the guilt tax. Some days it meant catching one small thing that went right, even when everything else looked grey. Some days it meant not shaming myself for needing rest.

The hardest part wasn't the weight. It was not shaming myself for how I was handling it.

The Silver Lining

Two months ago I wrote about letting the sunshine in- literally! About SAD and Seattle winters and vitamin D. But there's a metaphorical version of that same practice. 

Enter: gratitude journaling. 

I wrote every day. About friends and family who reached out to support me during tough times and good times alike. About grueling-but-fueling workouts I indulged in. About the morning coffees I restarted and cute, purple plushies and pens I bought that brought me little joys. It took conscious effort to stop trying to "fix" myself and instead start asking: what's already working here, thus embodying Martin Seligman's (father of positive psychology) PERMA model.

He defines five pillars of flourishing: Positive emotions (the gratitude, the plushies), Engagement (the workout "flow" states), Relationships (the friends who showed up), Meaning, and Accomplishment. Your brain spots problems automatically, that's survival. But survival isn't the same as living aka thriving. When you look for what's already working, there's more than you think.

With this, the heaviness became more easy to deal with, and I no longer treated my own coping mechanisms as a bad thing. 

The Rays

Optimism need not be something you're born with. It can be something you practice, put in effort to get better at week after week, especially when you don't want to. Calm reframing instead of harsh reprimand and self-judgment. Turning your attention toward the silver lining without pretending the storm isn't still there. 

Looking at the bright side and actually feeling better, not because everything is bright, but because you're the one choosing which direction to face. All you gotta do to thrive is: "Open up your eager eyes!"

Scar wars

#286

My face went to war with itself last month. A cyst had bloomed beneath my lip- one of those angry, pus-filled things that hurt to touch. By next morning it was a throbbing yellow beacon. By evening, after twelve hours in ninety-degree heat, it was oozing. I picked at it (yes, I know better). It cleared in real time. Now it's just a scabbed reminder that skin is deeply, brutally biological.

For the past year, I've been chasing the acne fix like a technical problem with a clean solution. Cut dairy (#260). Lift three times a week. Eat real food. Get sleep. And yet, despite doing everything the dermatologist and every wellness influencers prescribed, my skin got worse, not better.

Of course acne isn't a single variable equation. I dug deeper to find solace.

A dermatologist gave me topical creams and benzoyl peroxide face wash, and explained to me what happens when using tretinoin. It is a vitamin A derivative that rewires how skin cells behave. Your skin gets angry first. Irritated, flaky, breakout-prone. The instinct is to stop. I almost did. But she said: "You have to get past the hump." The temporary peeling off is the skin purging damaged cells and rebuilding. I learned that retinol products focus on faster skin turnover.

How they do this: bacteria live in your pores like uninvited roommates. Your immune system sends white blood cells to evict them. Pus is what's left over: dead bacteria and dead WBC soldiers. It's your body doing its job, just messily.

I started retinizing last week. My face looks worse than it did in week one. But understanding the mechanism makes it less personal and slightly more motivating. I reassure myself that my skin isn't betraying me but rather just rebuilding, albeit slower than I'd like.

The Stoics have a concept called "amor fati". It means loving your fate. A lot of things in life get worse before they get better. Acupuncture. Physical therapy. Learning an instrument. My face care journey, no exception. The discomfort isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. Sometimes it's proof you're doing it right.

Self-care isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it's investing in a cream that stings, or a dermatologist appointment that costs real money, or sitting with your face looking worse while collagen rewires underneath. 

The temporary chaos is the price of actual change.

Prompt Proposal

#285

I was voice journaling with Claude yesterday, talking through a technical question for a CrossFit workout, and I realized that when I started being more specific with my ask, the responses turned more helpful. I clearly stated what I wanted to accomplish, what I'd already tried, what felt stuck, and this made an increasingly frustrating Q&A session into more of a helpful brainstorming discussion with deeper insights.

Gathering info on how friends and family use GenAI, I learned that some approach it like a vending machine. Slot in a question, get out an answer. I faced this in my early adoption days too.

Me: "How do I get better at pull-ups as a beginner?"

AI: "Practice consistently. Strengthen your back and shoulders. Use resistance bands. Increase volume over time."

Me: "Okay but like, how many times a week should I actually train them?"

AI: "Three to four times per week is standard for most beginners."

Me: "Should I do them on consecutive days or spread them out?"

AI: "Spreading them out allows for better recovery."

Me: "What about my diet? Does that matter?"

AI: "Yes, protein intake supports muscle recovery."

Me: "How much protein though?"

AI: "About 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of body weight daily."

Similarly, when I ask questions around time and life management, I very quickly get frustrated because of not getting exactly what I want. The conversations escalate as:

Me: "OMG can you give actual helpful advice on how to not burn out?"

AI:

• "Prioritize self-care
• Take regular breaks
• Set boundaries with work
• Practice mindfulness"

Notice the pattern? Generic prompts get generic, vague responses. Frustrated prompts get bullet points that don't help. Curt prompts get curt answers.

You get back what you give. 

These rookie exchanges reminded me of an Akbar-Birbal story from Indian folklore, specifically about why Birbal remained the emperor's favorite. 

The story goes:

A jealous minister approached Akbar: "Why do you always choose Birbal for important tasks? Give me a chance to prove myself." Akbar agreed. He sends him to investigate a commotion near the kingdom.

The minister returns: "There's a carnival happening outside."

Akbar: "How long is he gonna be here?"

Minister: (Runs back) "One week."

Akbar: "What's causing all the noise?"

Minister: (Runs back) "A traveling is performer with drums."

Akbar: "Is anyone doing anything about it?"

Minister: (Runs back) "No one's complained yet."

And so on. Multiple trips. Multiple direct answers to each separate question. No anticipation or further thought whatsoever - what does the king actually want to know and why? How to make the exchange more efficient? 

Birbal shows up later. Akbar asks the same of him.

Birbal: "A traveling performer arrived this week. He'll be here seven days before moving to the next town. He's playing drums at the carnival, which is loud. I checked, no one's complained yet. But I also learned he's performing to raise money to support his family (his wife and son), so he might be open to adjusting his schedule if the noise becomes a real issue."

One answer. Everything Akbar asked for, plus context Akbar didn't even know to want. The other minister immediately realized why Birbal was the favorite.

I applied similar logic to prompt better and leverage AI for learning:

CrossFit workout:

Me: "I've been doing CrossFit for three months. I can do five strict pull-ups in a row, but my form falls apart after that. My shoulders get fatigued before my grip does. I've been training pull-ups three times a week. What I'm trying to figure out is whether I should focus on shoulder strength work first, or keep practicing pull-ups and adjust my training volume."

AI: "Your shoulder fatigue before grip fatigue tells me your shoulder stabilizers are the limiting factor, not your pulling strength. Try this: add two dedicated shoulder stability sessions weekly, focus on scapular work and horizontal pulling. Keep your pull-up practice to twice a week for now, but prioritize quality over volume. Once your shoulders stabilize better, you'll see form hold longer."

Nutrition course:

Me: "I'm studying nutrition. The textbook explains that carbs convert to glucose, which powers muscles. But I'm a visual learner and I'm confused about the timing part. Like, when exactly does glucose get used versus stored as glycogen? Does it matter if I eat carbs before or after my workout, and why? Can you explain it simply?"

AI: "Timing matters because of insulin sensitivity. Post-workout, your muscles are primed to absorb glucose directly into muscle cells as glycogen, not store it as fat. Pre-workout carbs give you energy for the actual effort. If you eat carbs at random times with no training nearby, they're more likely to be stored. Think of it like this: post-workout is like an open door to your muscle cells. Pre-workout is fuel in the tank before you drive."

If the nutrition prompt was in the same chat session as the CrossFit one, Claude would even tie those threads: "So when you do pull-ups and eat carbs post-workout, your muscles absorb that glucose directly as glycogen to repair and rebuild the shoulder stabilizers you just worked. You're not just eating rice, you're refueling exactly what you broke down."

A note for people new to AI tools (this works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity): 

The practice matters more than the tool.

When you show up with thought already happening and share specific instructions on what outcomes you're looking for, the AI can actually think with you. When you hand it vagueness, it hands you back a generic, non-useful blob.

Yes it takes longer to create those prompts. But in reality, those save time (and tokens!) You could even try using voice over typing to get the job done faster.

Be like Birbal.

Learning Styles

#284

I've watched people learn my whole life. Some light up when someone's explaining something out loud. Others zone out and need to read it themselves (that's me!). Some need diagrams and visuals (also me). Some need to hear the story. There's no one way, though unfortunately most classrooms teach like there is.  Conforming to a single format and expectation. No wonder so many people think they're bad at learning. They're just not learning the way their brains actually work.

For me, I took advantage of that as an adult once I not only became more aware but also as resources like GenAI made learning, its modes, and accesses virtually limitless.

I always thought I was a visual learner because I respond to images and written words. I need specific examples to understand the underlying concepts at times, but then I'd click on an educational video, say, ten to fifteen minutes on how manual vs. automatic automobile gear transmissions work, and I'd lose focus after just two or three minutes. Listening to someone talk, even when they're drawing on a whiteboard tends to exhaust me. So I'd think, "Well, I'll just read about it instead," and somehow I don't tend to zone out. The words on the page have a vastly different effect on me. And I know the situation is the exact opposite for a lot of folks out there.

A part of it ties to cognitive load: basically, how much information your brain can process at once. Video lectures layer sound, visuals, pace, and duration all at once. Reading lets you control the speed. One can pause, reread any number of times, skip ahead and come back more easily, and differ the pace on different sections of a page. For some brains, that's the difference between learning and tuning out.

When I studied for my PMP (Project Management Professional) exam, I tested this intentionally. I grabbed the PMP Exam Prep for Dummies book from the library and paired it with video lectures strategically - not as my primary source, but to fill gaps. Reading was my workhorse. I'd absorb the material in half the time. It was slightly different in this particular case because preparing for an exam is different from actually learning the subject. I needed to understand what the exam tested more than memorizing answers or learning the concept as such due to hands-on experience at work, and the combination of books and  videos helped me strike that balance.

The meta part- I also started noticing how I learn about things I'm genuinely curious about - hobbies, interests, random topics. Same pattern. Reading first, videos when I'm stuck.

Learning styles are many: visual learners absorb through images and written words, auditory learners thrive on listening and discussion, reading/writing learners (like me) need text to process, and kinesthetic learners need hands-on experience.

If you notice your learning style skews toward reading, or video, or listening, or hands-on, stop forcing the other way and honor the working of your brain. That's self-care, too- giving yourself permission to learn the way you learn best. Your future self will thank you for the time you save.