There are many walks around the Rainforest Retreat we’ve been staying at for the past few days. There used to be more but landslides and development have cut off some paths.
For the past two days, more and more guests have been arriving. Most are young couples from Bangalore and the occasional family. They are escaping for a day or two of peace in the rainforest.
One of the guests told us of a walk to a hillock, which was mostly off-road. We went on the walk this morning. After a few twists and turns, we reached the hillock. There was a possibility of making the walk circular. We tried to follow what looked like a continuation of the path that, theoretically, would circle back to the homestay. After 30 minutes or so, the path seemed to be heading in the direction of yesterday’s walk. This would require walking uphill on a tarmac road. So we backtracked to the homestay. We returned just in time for lunch.
After lunch, we did some reading then went for afternoon tea. I continued talking to Fred. He’d been here for a couple of weeks. His visits to the rainforest predate the Rainforest Retreat. He stayed for about a month once a year. One of the owners used to be his student.
Fred, a Canadian, is knowledgeable about many subjects. He’s a microbiologist and a lab manager for basic medical research. We spoke about Ozempic, crispa and other recent medical developments. Most of the time he was teaching me.
I asked Fred about Ozempic. I’d heard a podcast on it. Ozempic is the brand name for a drug that helps manage type 2 diabetes and supports weight loss. The ingredients mimic a natural hormone called GLP-1. It works by lowering blood sugar, slowing down digestion (making you feel full longer), and reducing your appetite. On the podcast, some people said that they were also turned off highly processed food. Although, for some, there can be side effects (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation), for others, it’s an effective weight loss drug.
Ozempic is typically injected weekly. When Fred worked for a major pharmaceutical company, the CEO didn’t want to create drugs that had to be injected. People don’t like needles! Some medication, however, must be injected. For example, insulin is a protein. If you could take it as a pill, it would be ineffective because it would be digested just like food. The protein would be broken down. When you inject insulin, you get the whole protein. This is what’s required, not something broken down into smaller parts. Other drugs, if they survive digestion, might not pass into the blood efficiently and must be injected too. Of course, there are drugs that could be given orally but sometimes are injected if fast action is needed.
After our discussion and before dinner, Helene and I walked around parts of the estate we’d not explored. There were several paths and we picked a promising one. It led eventually to some of the other cottages, where we were back on familiar ground.
