Getting Up at 6:30 AM Was Never Part of the Plan

It started with a few questions to Naresh. Somehow, I ended up watching candlestick charts before sunrise.

---

How It Started

It started the way most of my expensive hobbies probably start.

Our friend Naresh mentioned something about trading during a phone call.

I asked a question.

Then another.

Then another.

Most people would probably react with some version of, “Are you sure you want to do that?” I would have said the same thing if a sixty something engineer had announced that he was going to learn day trading.

But Naresh never seemed bothered by my questions. He patiently explained the basics, answered questions that probably sounded obvious to him, and somehow never made me feel that my questions were beneath him.

Unfortunately for my free time, curiosity took over.

---

The Market Changed My Morning Routine

For most of my adult life, mornings and I maintained a strictly professional relationship.

Anything before 8 AM was considered unnecessary.

Then I discovered that the US stock market opens at 6:30 AM my time.

I now wake up before it.

Voluntarily.

I set an alarm so I can watch candlestick charts move around on a screen before most sensible people have finished their first cup of coffee.

If someone had told me a year ago that I would eventually wake up at 6:30 AM to watch stock charts, I would have questioned their medication.

The market did not change its schedule. My sleep schedule surrendered instead.

---

When Engineering Logic Meets the Market

I come from a world where logic is supposed to produce predictable results.

Write the right code.
Get the right output.

Run it again.
Get the same output.

The stock market apparently never signed that contract.

I would find a rule that looked almost perfect. It would work several times in a row. Naturally, I would begin feeling quite clever.

Then the market would produce an outcome that made me stare at the screen and wonder whether I had accidentally entered a parallel universe.

Eventually, I realized something important.

The problem was not that I had failed to find the perfect rule.

The problem was believing that one existed.

Trading does not require me to predict everything correctly. I need to identify a few things that work often enough for my own strategy, manage the risk when they do not, and resist the temptation to chase every possible pattern on the screen.

Banging my head against one perfect logic was the bug. Learning what actually works was the fix.

---

The Friend Who Built an App

Naresh eventually built a website based on the trading principles he had developed through his own experience.

What I found interesting was how unglamorous the underlying philosophy was.

No promise of getting rich overnight.

No magical formula.

Just find a small edge, control the risk, repeat the process and avoid doing anything heroic with your money.

Rinse and repeat.

It sounds almost boring.

Which, I am beginning to suspect, may actually be a good thing in trading.

---

Twelve Weeks and Counting

What started as me asking Naresh far too many questions has now turned into a regular learning session.

A small group of us from the same engineering batch has been meeting for about twelve weeks as I write this. We are going deeper into trading concepts, discussing what we see and, importantly, putting some of our own money behind what we are learning.

That last part has a way of improving concentration.

It is one thing to discuss a candlestick pattern on a screen.

It is another thing to watch it move while your own money is sitting there politely asking you to pay attention.

Most of us spent our careers being the people others called when something broke. Now we voluntarily sit in front of charts while the market explains, sometimes quite efficiently, that we may be the ones who need debugging.

There is also something particularly enjoyable about learning this with friends who knew each other long before anyone was talking about candlesticks, liquidity and risk management.

---

More Than Just Trading

But perhaps the more important objective was never really trading.

It was to bring the '86-90 batch of Sindri back together.

We have all spent decades getting busy with careers, families and the general business of being adults. Somewhere along the way, the old batch that once shared classrooms, hostels and countless opinions became scattered across different parts of the world.

Trading gave us an excuse to come together again around a common topic.

And, importantly, to find something productive to do with our spare time rather than finding creative new ways to irritate our spouses.

If we can learn something interesting, keep our minds active, enjoy each other's company and perhaps make a little pocket money after retirement, that would be a pretty good outcome.

The money would be nice. Getting the gang back together might be worth even more.

---

Where This Leaves Me

I am still very much a student.

I do not have a magical trading formula, and I have stopped looking for one.

What I have gained so far is something more useful: a healthy respect for risk, a suspicion of any strategy that claims to work every time, an alarm clock that now gets me out of bed before sunrise, and a deep appreciation for a friend who has been remarkably patient with a group of engineers who apparently cannot resist trying to debug something that was never designed to be debugged.

Measure. Observe. Adjust. Repeat.

Apparently, that algorithm works on more than just blood sugar.

And apparently, it also works better when the market opens at 6:30 AM.

---

Author's Note

I am not a financial advisor, and this is not trading advice. Trading involves real risk, and what works for one person's account, strategy and temperament may not work for someone else.

This is simply a personal learning journey from an engineer who discovered that the stock market is perhaps the one system where debugging the problem sometimes reveals that the engineer is part of the problem.

Episode 6 - When My Kidneys Filed a 2 AM Complaint for 2 Meals a Day

 Another field note from an engineer who discovered that simplifying the meal schedule does not necessarily simplify the plumbing.

If you are new to this journey

If you have not had a chance to read my earlier posts, I recommend starting from Episode 1 and following the journey in sequence. Each episode led naturally to the next one, much like debugging a system where every fix seems to uncover another interesting problem.

Here are the five episodes so far:

Episode 1: A Journey to Outsmart Blood Sugar (Before It Outsmarts Me)

Episode 2: When Fasting Met Blood Donation: An Accidental Experiment

Episode 3: When Numbers Tell Stories: My Annual Blood Report Meets Twice a Month Fasting

Episode 4: An Engineer’s Dilemma: Should I Debug My LDL or Just Take the Statin?

Episode 5: The Decision: When a CAC Score of 18 Stopped Being Just a Number

If you have already read them, you can skip the history and proceed directly to my latest experiment.

The Two Meal Experiment

If you have been following my attempt to outsmart blood sugar, you know that I have gradually turned my body into a small personal biochemical laboratory.

There are the muscle sponge experiments, where 20 squats or 30 push ups after a meal can bring my glucose down quite noticeably.

There are my 9 rounds of Sun Salutations every morning.

There are twice a month Ekadashi water fasts.

And somewhere along the way, in year 2026, something else became surprisingly natural.

I started eating two meals a day instead of three.

There was no grand strategy behind it. I simply discovered that I did not really miss the third meal.

My usual schedule had been roughly 9 AM for the first meal and 3 PM for the second and final meal.

The routine was simple.

The spreadsheet looked good.

My glucose numbers seemed happy.

So naturally, I assumed the system was working beautifully.

Then my kidneys filed a complaint.

The 2 AM Problem

I started waking up around 2 or 3 AM with an urgent message from the internal plumbing department.

Bathroom. Now.

There was no snooze button.

No negotiation.

Just a very clear biological command.

At first, I wondered whether this was simply another privilege that comes with getting older. Perhaps my bladder had decided that it too deserved a more active role in my life.

And then there was the obvious possibility that any man of my age is expected to consider:

The prostate.

I am not qualified to diagnose which department is misbehaving, so I am not going to promote myself from engineer to urologist overnight.

If my prostate is planning a rebellion, I will let my doctor investigate that during my regular physical rather than trying to diagnose it from my bedroom.

Until then, I decided to look at the evidence.

And the evidence produced an interesting clue.

One evening, instead of having my second meal at around 3 PM, I had a light meal at about 7:30 PM.

I even drank water until around 9 PM.

I fully expected my bladder to send me an even more enthusiastic invitation at 2 AM.

It didn't.

I slept through the night.

That got my attention.

One night is not a scientific study, of course. But it was enough to make me wonder whether the problem was not two meals a day itself, but perhaps the very early timing of my second meal.

What Could Be Going On?

This is where my curiosity kicked in.

If eating at 7:30 PM and drinking water until 9 PM did not result in a 2 AM bathroom visit, why was finishing my second meal around 3 PM apparently different?

There is a plausible physiological explanation, and it has less to do with the amount of water I drink than I initially thought.

When we eat, insulin rises. One of insulin's many jobs is to tell the kidneys to retain sodium. When we go for a longer period without food, insulin levels fall. With lower insulin, the kidneys can start excreting more sodium. This process is called natriuresis.

And here is the important part:

Water tends to follow sodium.

So when the kidneys decide to send more sodium out, they can send more water along with it. The result can be increased urine production.

There is another piece to the puzzle. Our body stores carbohydrate as glycogen in the liver and muscles, and glycogen is stored together with water. As the body uses some of that glycogen during the long gap between meals, some of the associated water is released and eventually needs to be excreted.

Normally, the body has another clever nighttime mechanism to prevent all this from turning into a midnight bathroom expedition. As we sleep, the hormone vasopressin, also known as antidiuretic hormone, rises and tells the kidneys to conserve water and produce less urine.

So, in simple terms, there are two competing instructions:

“We are sleeping. Save the water.”

versus

“There has been a long gap since the last meal. We can let some sodium and water go.”

I am obviously simplifying a much more complicated physiological system. But it helped me understand why my meal timing could potentially matter.

When my second and final meal was around 3 PM, there was a very long interval before bedtime and an even longer interval before breakfast the next morning. When I moved that meal to 7:30 PM for my little experiment, that interval became considerably shorter.

And despite eating later and drinking water until 9 PM, I slept through the night.

That does not prove that the earlier meal timing was causing my nighttime urination. There are many possible reasons someone might wake up to urinate, including prostate and bladder issues, fluid intake, medications, sleep patterns and other medical conditions.

I also did not measure my overnight urine volume, sodium excretion, insulin or vasopressin.

So I am not qualified to diagnose which department is misbehaving, and one experiment certainly does not qualify me to promote myself from engineer to urologist overnight.

But I did have something useful: a repeatable observation and a reasonable hypothesis.

Perhaps my two meal routine is perfectly fine, but the 3 PM timing of my second meal is not ideal for my sleep.

And that is enough for this engineer to run the next experiment.

The Next Experiment

That experiment has now given me an idea.

I am considering moving my two meals from my usual 9 AM and 3 PM schedule to something closer to:

First meal: around 11 AM

Second and final meal: around 6 to 7 PM

The 7:30 PM experiment was encouraging because I slept through the night despite eating later and drinking water later.

Now I want to see whether moving my regular meal timing in that direction will make a difference consistently.

I have not declared victory.

I have not even changed the system completely yet.

I am simply making the next adjustment and watching what happens.

And that outcome will have to wait for the next episode.

The Rest of the System Remains

Nothing else in the experiment needs to be thrown out.

The squats remain.

The push ups remain.

The Sun Salutations remain.

The two meal routine remains.

And the twice a month Ekadashi fast remains.

Only the timing of the two meals is now under review.

This is probably another example of something I have learned repeatedly during this journey.

The human body is not a spreadsheet.

You can optimize one variable and discover that another department has opinions.

I started by trying to improve blood sugar.

Then came cholesterol.

Then ApoB.

Then my CAC score of 18 reminded me that the cardiovascular system keeps its own historical records.

And now the kidneys have joined the conversation.

Apparently, they want a seat at the engineering review meeting too.

So the latest algorithm remains simple:

Measure. Observe. Adjust. Repeat.

I am not trying to make my body follow my spreadsheet.

I am trying to listen carefully enough to understand what the body is telling me.

And preferably, to understand it before 2 AM.

My system may be adjusting its timing before Daylight Saving Time, but the engineer still expects his quota of uninterrupted sleep.

Author's Note

These reflections come from an engineer who started learning human biology far too late in life, mostly out of curiosity and partly out of necessity. What began as an attempt to outsmart blood sugar has turned into a continuing experiment in metabolism, meal timing, data and resilience.

I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. Nighttime urination can have many causes, so persistent symptoms should be discussed with a healthcare professional.

Think of this as a personal midlife engineering project on the body's operating system, where trial, error and humility are all part of the lab work.

The Day My Money Returned But Time Didn’t.

After 10 years, ₹43 lakhs finally came back to my account. What didn’t come back was time.

Not a bonus. Not an investment return. Just my own money finding its way back home after 10 years and 3 months.

Somewhere along the way, I aged. The system took its time.

---

I still remember Jan 18, 2016.

It was supposed to be a routine login into my ICICI Bank account. The kind you do absent-mindedly, maybe between two meetings.

Instead of seeing about ₹43 lakhs sitting across fixed deposits, I saw a number that looked like a rounding error. A couple of thousand rupees.

For a few seconds, I assumed I had logged into the wrong account.

Then reality logged into me.

---

The money was gone. Not misplaced. Not locked. Gone.

What followed was not a cyber investigation thriller. It was something far more educational.

I wrote to the bank. Escalated. Even reached out to the CEO’s office.

The response was elegant in its simplicity.

It must be your fault.

There is something almost comforting about how quickly complex system failures can be reduced to user error.

---

The next question was simple. What do you do sitting 8000 miles away in the US when your bank account in India has been emptied?

Answer. You start making calls that feel slightly absurd.

With help from Sindri friends, and one friend from my SAIL days who stayed ice cold on the surface but completely invested underneath, I managed to get an FIR filed in Hyderabad without physically being there.

That, in itself, felt like a small victory.

The investigation is still ongoing. Ten years later.

At some point, I realized if I waited for closure from that route, my children might inherit the case file along with family photos.

---

So I made what, in hindsight, was the most important decision.

I approached the adjudicating authority under the IT Act in Telangana.

What followed restored some faith.

The court looked at the facts. Not assumptions.

The bank’s position was clear. Phishing. Password compromise. Customer responsibility.

The court’s response was refreshingly grounded.

There was no evidence of phishing. The pattern of transactions did not resemble typical phishing fraud. Multiple fixed deposits were prematurely closed over days without adequate safeguards. OTP systems and authentication controls were not robust.

In simple terms, the system had holes. And those holes were not mine.

The judgment held the bank responsible.

₹43,07,525 to be paid back. 
Interest at 9 percent. 
Compensation for mental agony and costs. 

For the first time in years, the numbers started making sense again.

---

The bank then did what large institutions are expected to do.

They appealed.

And that is when I was introduced to the most consistent feature of the Indian judicial system.

        Time!!!

Dates were given with remarkable generosity. Every few months, like a subscription service I had not signed up for.

तारीख पर तारीख sounds dramatic in movies. In real life, it is just a calendar quietly filling up.

Time is not a side effect of the system. It is the system.

This phase lasted about four years.

At no point did I feel I would lose the case. But I did start wondering how long winning was supposed to take.

---

Eventually, the bank approached for a settlement.

By then, both sides had spent enough time, money, and energy to understand that closure has value.

The opening offer from the bank was educational. Let us just say it had only one digit.

We eventually settled at ₹80 lakhs in December 2025. 

Somewhere between 2016 and 2025, inflation, exchange rates, and life had all moved on.

Time does not just delay justice. It quietly changes its value.

---

The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal formally disposed of the matter on Jan 20, 2026, recording the settlement between both parties. 

And today, a couple of months later, the money finally showed up.

No ceremony. No closure email. Just a credit entry.

---

So what did I learn from this 10 year experiment?

One, systems fail. That is not surprising.

Two, institutions defend themselves. That is expected.

Three, persistence matters more than outrage.

And four, the Indian judicial system does work. But it runs on a different clock.

If you have the patience, the resources, and a slightly stubborn belief that you should not pay for someone else’s mistake, you will get there.

        Eventually!!!

---

If I had to summarize the experience as an engineer, I would not even take full credit.

This was a distributed system.

Friends who showed up quietly.
Friends who guided without noise.
Friends who stayed when the system kept delaying.

To a few friends who know exactly who they are, this outcome has your fingerprints all over it.

The bug was real.
The fix was correct.
The support system was exceptional.
The execution time was unbounded.

---

Money came back.

Time did not.

And that, perhaps, is the only line item no court can compensate.

---

Documents (For those who like going deeper)

• Lower Court Judgment
• Settlement Agreement
• Final Disposal Order

Available on request

 

Episode 5 – The Decision: When a CAC Score of 18 Stopped Being Just a Number

Coronary CT scan showing mild calcified plaque in the LAD (CAC score: 18)

For the full arc of this experiment, I recommend reading the series sequentially from Episode1 through Episode 5. The story unfolds cumulatively — much like biology itself.

Episode 4 – An Engineer’s Dilemma: Should I Debug My LDL or Just Take the Statin? 

Episode 3 – When Numbers Tell Stories: My Annual Blood Report Meets Twice a Month Fasting 

Episode 2 – When Fasting Met Blood Donation — An Accidental Experiment 

Episode 1 – A Journey to Outsmart Blood Sugar (Before It Outsmarts Me) 

By now, the numbers are no longer abstract. They have names, units, and an unsettling tendency to show up in places I’d rather not look.

      ApoB: 124 mg/dL

      CAC score: 18

Not catastrophic. Not zero.

Just enough to end denial. Not enough to qualify for a dramatic hospital montage — but sufficient to make arrogance feel slightly irresponsible.

---

The Real Question

My metabolism is good. Triglycerides low. Insulin sensitive. Blood pressure fine.

And yet — plaque.

The lesson is uncomfortable but simple:

You can be metabolically disciplined and still be particle-heavy.

ApoB does not respond dramatically to virtue. It turns out the liver does not award moral points for clean eating and optimism.

---

The 2% Reality

A low-dose statin in my case likely reduces absolute 10-year risk by about 2% (If you do not believe this percentage then write to me in the comment - I will share with you the engineering calculation to satisfy your biological curiosity)

Not dramatic.
Not trivial.

This is what prevention actually looks like — incremental, statistical, and deeply uncinematic. No swelling music. Just spreadsheets.

---

The Plan (No Drama)

Phase 1: Finish 12 weeks of Vitamin D correction.
Phase 2: Recheck ApoB.
Phase 3: Start low-dose statin for 6 months.
Phase 4: Stop for 3 months. Recheck ApoB.

Then decide — preferably without pretending the outcome will surprise me.

If ApoB rebounds above ~110 → long-term statin makes sense.
If it stays below ~95 → lifestyle carries more weight.

No guesswork. Just measurement. Because denial, while emotionally efficient, is biologically expensive.

---

The Line I am Drawing

ApoB was the signal.

CAC was the confirmation.

Formal Coronary Artery Calcium (Agatston) report confirmingtotal score of 18

The report above is real. Eighteen is small — but it isn’t zero. And zero, I’ve learned, is a very comforting fantasy.

I’m not afraid of a statin. I’m more suspicious of pretending the numbers will age gracefully on their own.

If my ApoB stays stubborn, I’ll choose maintenance over mythology. If it behaves, I’ll accept that — without writing a self-help book about it.

No heroics. No denial.

Just fewer illusions — and less calcium where it doesn’t belong. Not destiny. Not doom. Just accumulated exposure quietly keeping score and data deciding the next decade.

⚠️ Author's Note

These reflections come from an engineer who started learning human biology far too late in life — mostly out of curiosity, partly out of necessity. What began as an attempt to outsmart blood sugar turned into a crash course in metabolism, ratios, and resilience. I’m not a doctor, and this isn’t medical advice. Please consult your physician before experimenting with fasting, diet tweaks, or supplement changes. Think of this as a mid-life engineering project on the body’s operating system — one where trial, error, and humility are all part of the lab work.

Episode 4 – An Engineer’s Dilemma: Should I Debug My LDL or Just Take the Statin?

This is the fourth part of my ongoing series on fasting, metabolic health, and the curious adventure of an engineer trying to understand biology using logic, data and the occasional mild panic.

If you haven’t read the earlier episodes, you can find them here:

• Episode 1 – A Journey to Outsmart Blood Sugar (Before It Outsmarts Me)
• Episode 2 – When Fasting Met Blood Donation — An Accidental Experiment
• Episode 3 – When Numbers Tell Stories: My Annual Blood Report Meets Twice a Month Fasting

The Story So Far…

In the last episode, I shared how practicing twice-a-month 36–48 hour fasts and following an 18:6 eating window dramatically improved my glucose levels. My energy went up, my sleep improved, and for the first time in years, it felt like my body and brain were finally running the same firmware version.

I was quietly hoping that my annual blood report would give me a shiny “all clear” stamp.

It didn’t.

The Lipid Plot Twist

Buried in the report was the new villain of this season: my lipid panel.

• Total Cholesterol: 221
• Triglycerides: 104
• HDL: 40
• LDL (calculated): 162

Total cholesterol never impressed me much. As Dr. Robert Lustig likes to say: “Total cholesterol, throw it in the garbage. It means absolutely nothing… you need to know what kind of cholesterol you’re talking about.”

Still, 162 for LDL is not the kind of number you frame on the wall, and my primary care physician reacted exactly as modern protocols expect her to.

Within hours of the lab results, she had electronically sent a prescription for statin. The pharmacy messaged me almost instantly: “Your medication is ready for pickup.”

Appointments may take weeks, but prescriptions fly at fibre-optic speed.

The Oct 21 Confession

At my annual physical on October 21, I decided to be honest.

“Doctor,” I said, “I never took the statin you prescribed last year.”

Her face went into that familiar expression that doctors reserve for engineers, lawyers and people who Google too much.

Last year (2024), she had prescribed 10 mg of statin. I quietly ignored it and, instead, started fasting regularly, shifted to two meals a day, and tried to fix the inputs before accepting a lifelong pill.

She listened, sighed, and said something to the effect of: “If your lipid panel is still bad this year, I will prescribe it again — and this time you really must take it.”

Fair enough.

But when I opened this year’s prescription, I noticed something that instantly activated my engineering brain:

• 2024: Statin 10 mg (never taken)
• 2025: Statin 5 mg

So without taking any statin at all, just by changing lifestyle, I had apparently earned a 50% dose reduction.

The engineer in me immediately plotted a mental graph: keep fasting, extend the trend line, and maybe next year the dose is… 0 mg?

Is this exactly how medical dosing works? Of course not. But try telling that to an engineer who just discovered a pattern.

The Internal Debate: Pill Now or Data First?

That’s when the real dilemma started. A familiar internal argument began between “Obedient Patient” and “Annoying Engineer.”

Questions began to swirl:

• Can fasting and lifestyle alone bring LDL to a safer range?
• Is LDL-C by itself enough to justify a lifelong medication?
• Are my LDL particles mostly small and dense or large and floaty?
• Shouldn’t I understand more before agreeing to a daily pill for the rest of my life?

Biology may be complex, but engineers are stubborn. We like to see the whole diagram before we press “Run”.

So I did what any 2025 engineer would do: I asked a few trusted AI tools, read several articles and listened to some long-form discussions on lipids.

The recurring message was clear:

LDL-C alone doesn’t tell the full story.

The Missing Pieces Behind LDL

This is where two other characters walked onto the stage: a deeper look at particle numbers and a better way to see whether plaque is actually forming in the arteries. Let’s just call them “advanced blood markers” and “artery imaging” for now, to keep things simple.

The idea that really clicked with my engineering mind was this:

• One set of tests can tell you how many potentially troublesome particles are circulating.
• Another test can show if those particles have actually started building plaque on your artery walls.

In other words, one tells you about risk potential, the other shows the actual damage so far.

That combination felt much more satisfying than a single “LDL 162 → take statin” rule.

Why These Extra Tests Matter (Especially to an Engineer)

Think of it this way:

• Your standard lipid panel is like looking at the total number of cars entering a city.
• The advanced markers tell you how many of those cars are heavy trucks with dodgy brakes.
• The artery imaging tells you whether there are already traffic jams and accidents inside the city.

If my “traffic report” shows both a high number of risky vehicles and proof of actual pile-ups inside the arteries, then statins make much more sense to me.

But if the traffic looks busy on paper and, on imaging, the roads are still clear… then it becomes a very different conversation.

Why Am I Doing This and Not Just Obeying?

I often ask myself: why should patients have to reverse-engineer their own treatment plan?

Medicine still runs a lot on statistical averages and guidelines written for populations. But I am not a population. I am a single data point with my own history, habits, genes and quirks.

Yes, doctors must worry about legal risk. Yes, guidelines are written to be safe for the majority. But those of us who think in spreadsheets, graphs and decision trees crave a bit more personalization.

And, most importantly, if I am going to take a pill every day for the next several decades, I want to be absolutely sure I am taking it for the right, well-understood reasons.

When Silicon Valley Meets Artery Valley

Engineers spend years debugging code and chasing down intermittent faults in systems. Our instinct is always:

“Don’t just reboot. Find the root cause.”

So when my LDL came back elevated, I couldn’t just “reboot” by swallowing a statin and hoping for the best. I wanted to profile the system, inspect the logs, and understand whether the real bottleneck was lifestyle, genetics, inflammation, or early plaque buildup.

That doesn’t mean I am anti-medicine. It just means I prefer to read the full specification sheet before I sign up for a lifetime contract.

So What’s the Plan?

Here’s my next step:

• Get the additional blood markers that go beyond standard LDL-C.
• Get an imaging test that can show whether there is already plaque in my coronary arteries.
• Then, sit down with my doctor and decide, with real data, whether statin is the right move for me now.

If those tests show that my arteries are already paying the price, I will have no hesitation in starting the medication. At that point, it won’t feel like surrender; it will feel like a data-driven decision.

If, on the other hand, the tests show that my risk is relatively low despite the LDL number, then I may get a bit more time to double-down on lifestyle, fasting and other non-pharmaceutical levers.

Either way, the decision will be anchored in much more than a single number on a lab report.

And because I’m still an engineer at heart, I am also sketching a simple little decision framework for myself — almost like a flowchart for cholesterol choices. I’ll share that in Episode 5, once I have my own test results in hand so that you can see how the logic plays out on real data instead of just theory.

Your Turn

If your doctor has ever prescribed a medication for cholesterol, did you:

• Start it immediately and trust the recommendation?
• Or did you pause, research, and look for more data the way I’m doing now?

I’d love to hear what you did — and whether you’d make the same decision again with what you know today.

In the meantime, I’ll be out here debugging my own biology, one lab report at a time.

⚠️ Author's Note

These reflections come from an engineer who started learning human biology far too late in life — mostly out of curiosity, partly out of necessity. What began as an attempt to outsmart blood sugar turned into a crash course in metabolism, ratios, and resilience. I’m not a doctor, and this isn’t medical advice. Please consult your physician before experimenting with fasting, diet tweaks, or supplement changes. Think of this as a mid-life engineering project on the body’s operating system — one where trial, error, and humility are all part of the lab work.

The Rear-View Mirror Man : Celebrating the Enduring Warmth of Tara Chacha

The news of Tara Chacha passing, shared by my wife around noon, here, in Bay Area, California, delivered a surprising, piercing jolt. It wasn't the shock one feels upon losing a constant, daily fixture, rather, it was the profound realization that a foundational piece of one's personal, emotional geography, a landmark only glimpsed occasionally, but relied upon for orientation had suddenly been removed. He was never close in the mundane, day-to-day sense, yet the news stopped me in my tracks today, because the man himself was anything but mundane.

My first sighting of Tara Chacha occurred during my own wedding in 1993, which, for any groom, is a state of mind best described as beautiful, white-knuckle chaos. I wasn't focused on assessing the extended family hierarchy. I was entirely preoccupied with the far more pressing matter of ensuring I didn't set my sehra on fire or trip over the sacred coconut. Consequently, his towering presence was, regrettably, lost in the moment. Yet, years later, I realized something essential about him had been lodged firmly in my rear view mirror - a perfect, clear snapshot of a presence that, once seen, was impossible to forget. It is in that mirror that I’ve kept him for the last three decades, and the glass has never once fogged.

The Economics of Affection: A Portfolio of Impressions

The irony is that I may have interacted with him in person only five or six times over the course of three decades, yet each meeting was a high-yield investment, leaving me with returns in affection, warmth, charm, and grace that have sustained me far longer than any fleeting memory from that chaotic wedding day.

Tara Chacha was a master of presence. His physical stature : tall, well-built, and handsome combined with his booming voice, was an immediate command for attention. But the true genius lay in how he used it. He commanded respect not by demanding it, but by radiating a calm, accommodating nature that invited everyone into his orbit without ever imposing his will. He exhibited carefree attitude, but never careless. He was reasonable, yet utterly magnetic.

He had the rare ability to make you feel as though the moment you shared was the most important event of the day. In my forst couple of meetings, he loved reciting stories of his days spent in Jamshedpur. For me, a former management trainee at Tata Motors (then Telco) who had also walked the storied streets of the city, those anecdotes were not just stories; they were a mutual language. He would lean in, eyes alight, describing a time when work felt less like a job and more like building a destiny, a concept I could instantly relate to, making me feel less like a relative-by-marriage and more like a junior colleague.

In many beautiful respects, his spirit mirrored that of my own sanjhle papa (my 3rd Chacha). Both possessed that innate, almost gravitational ability to immediately light up the entire surroundings. They had the kind of genuine exuberance that made you put your phone down and listen. I imagine his life, the years in Jamshedpur, the responsibilities, the raising of a family was not always easy, but he wore his experiences with the grace of a seasoned traveler who appreciates the journey more than the destination. That is the true fantasy his image helps me construct - a life lived not by avoiding complexity, but by mastering the art of joyful engagement.

Dariyapur: The House that Radiates Warmth (And Witty Chaos)

Now we arrive at our family’s epicenter and that is Dariyapur, my in-laws’ ancestral home.

I must confess that while Dariyapur is my wife's maika, I hold a deep love for that cluster of houses and its gola in Patna, not out of spousal duty, but because of its rich, layered, and storied history. That place has a certain untranslatable laissez-faire, a distinct, chaotic, yet absolutely irresistible charm that makes it feel more like a living monument than a mere residence. The sheer layered history that place carries makes you envious and proud at the same time. And this, truly, is the crux of Dariyapur’s magic. 

While the warmth is certainly fueled by the wonderful people who currently reside there, it is magnified manifold by the invisible embrace of the spirits of those who are no longer with us. It is their residual kindness, their non-judgmental acceptance of the 'outsider' (me!) 32 years back, that allows the invisible warmth to endure. It’s a testament to the character of the generations who built that home, and Tara Chacha was certainly one of its storied resident who spent a significant amount of his time there.

Tara Chacha’s connection to Dariyapur was the stuff of legend. My wife, and my sister-in-law, all used to share how he would constantly reminisce about his life there. Even in his later years, as his memory began its cruel, inevitable retreat, the mention of Dariyapur was the password that lit up his eyes. I witnessed this first-hand a few years ago during a meeting in Delhi. The name of the house wasn't just a place, it was an anchor to his entire being. He may have traveled the world and lived a grand life, but Dariyapur was the home port of his soul.

It is for this very reason that the history of that house - the tales, the triumphs, the towering personalities that have graced with their presence with all the simple daily dramas must be chronicled for posterity. Someone more closely connected with that house must take on that responsibility, ensuring that its history and the spirits that infuse it with warmth are not lost to the shifting sands of time.

The Enduring Bond of Shared Kinship

My wife naturally carries more exquisite, detailed memories of her Chacha, memories formed over a lifetime of interaction and she often shares them, painting a picture of his tall personality that only confirms my own distant impressions. But for me, Tara Chacha served a unique and deeply personal role. While I never had the incredibly good fortune of meeting my father-in-law, I always, privately, positioned Tara Chacha in his place.

This was not a conscious replacement, but a natural, invisible transference of respect and affection. He possessed the same stately wisdom, the generous nature, and the commanding presence that I had only heard described of my late father-in-law. This created a profound, enduring, and utterly invisible bond that I hold dear.

We will not dwell on the closing chapter, but rather raise a toast to the extraordinary quality of the life he led. He was, in every sense, a masterclass in human presence, demonstrating that genuine charm is the beautiful equilibrium found in accommodating the world without ever compromising one's own dignity. He gifted us the indelible reminder that the true measure of a man is not his worldly accumulation, but the enduring warmth he distributes.

May his spirit assume his rightful post as one of the benevolent, charming guardians of Dariyapur, ensuring his light remains a clear fixture in all our rear-view mirrors. His was a life beautifully lived, and his memory will forever stand as a beacon of enduring values.

May his soul find eternal peace 💐. Om Shanti. 🙏🏼

🩸 When Numbers Tell Stories: My Annual Blood Report Meets Twice a Month Fasting (Part 3 of “A Journey to Outsmart Blood Sugar”)

For most people, November means pumpkin pies, Diwali sweets, or early-bird Black Friday deals. For me, it’s a combo of Halloween hangover and health homework.

While everyone else is finishing leftover candy and bragging about their costume photos, I’m opening my LabCorp report which, let’s be honest, is scarier than any haunted house. 🎃

This is my version of a Halloween sequel: “Return of the Lab Report. Except the ghosts here have names like LDL, Triglycerides, TSH and they never fail to haunt me every November.

This year, though, I had reasons to be hopeful. For over a year, I’ve been fasting twice a month (36–44 hours each time) and, for the last two months, I’ve downsized from three meals a day to two.

Basically, I’m running a low-budget metabolic startup, testing whether patience, not pills, can fix my biochemistry.

The Good, the Bad, and the Boring (data do not lie)

The Sugar Story: A Quiet Victory

Dr Robert Lustig famously says, “It’s not about calories — it’s about insulin.”
Looks like my pancreas agrees.

By sticking to two eating windows and giving my body longer rest periods, my HbA1c fell from 5.9 to 5.5. No drugs, no supplements, just restraint (and a stubborn streak).
Fasting Glucose held steady at 92 mg/dL, which means fewer glucose spikes and more stable energy.

If there were a Fitbit for insulin, it would’ve thrown confetti.

The Fat Files: Where LDL Thinks It’s the Hero

Here’s where the comedy begins. My LDL climbed from 154 to 162, nudging total cholesterol over 220.

Before anyone panics, let’s borrow Dr Lustig’s metabolic math:

• It’s the TG : HDL ratio, not total cholesterol, that hints at insulin resistance.
• Under 2 is great, 2–3 acceptable, over 3 = metabolic traffic jam.

Mine? 2.6. Not bad, just a polite nudge to “keep running / hiking /walking /Swimming or whatever you like to move your body for.”

So while LDL strutted around, my triglycerides stayed low and HDL didn’t desert me. Lustig would likely pat me on the back and say, “Your liver’s still got its act together — just stop feeding it fructose.”

The Liver Whisper

My ALT and AST stayed normal, meaning my fasting didn’t stress the liver.
Lustig often points to the ALT : AST ratio — when ALT > AST by a lot, it hints at fatty liver.
Mine were well-balanced, so the internal refinery is functioning efficiently — probably because I stopped supplying it with midnight snacks to process.

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The Vitamin D Drama

Now, the real underachiever: Vitamin D 16 ng/mL.
Apparently, fasting indoors does not stimulate solar synthesis.
Even Dr Lustig’s “sunshine hormone” can’t thrive on willpower alone.
Note to self: step outside occasionally or buy those elusive D3 capsules that keep showing up in the Amazon cart.

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What the Trends Whisper

Improved

• HbA1c ↓ 5.9 → 5.5 : Stable glucose, better insulin sensitivity
• B12 creeping upward

Holding the Line

• Liver, kidney, PSA — quiet performers doing their job

Needs Nudging

• LDL ↑ 162 mg/dL (watch the cheese board)
• Vitamin D low → get more sunshine
• TG : HDL 2.6 → keep fasting rhythm steady

Lessons (with a grin)

1. Two Two Meals > Three Temptations
   Who knew eating less often could feel more freeing? My glucose graphs now look like calm sine waves instead of jagged ECG spikes. Apparently, the body runs smoother when it isn’t treated like a vending machine.

• Ratios > Raw Numbers
  As Dr. Lustig says, numbers lie but ratios tell the truth. The TG : HDL and ALT : AST ratios are like health’s debugging logs. They reveal what the pretty dashboard won’t.
• Sunlight > Supplements
  Vitamin D taught me that even the most data-driven person can’t photosynthesize under fluorescent lighting. Step outside. The sun’s API is free.
• LDL Needs Coaching, Not Condemnation
  My LDL may be stubborn, but maybe it’s just trying to protect me from my own enthusiasm for buttered toast. In engineering terms: it’s running in “defensive mode.”
• Discipline > Perfection
  Fasting isn’t a punishment; it’s scheduled maintenance. Like a system reboot — brief downtime, smoother performance afterward.
• Curiosity Never Retires
  It took me decades to realize that biology is just another operating system except you can’t replace the hardware. So I tinker gently and debug patiently.

Final Reflection

Fasting, to me, isn’t punishment — it’s pressing “Reset” twice a month.
Going from three meals to two made my metabolism hum instead of wheeze.

From 2017’s sugar roller-coaster to 2025’s metabolic jazz, the trend is clear: discipline outperforms diet fads.

Twice-monthly fasting has stabilized my glucose, sharpened focus, and kept inflammation quiet.

Now, the plan is simple: keep the sugar steady, charm HDL into rising, convince LDL to behave, and maybe — just maybe — step out into the Californian sun before sunset.

Because as Dr Lustig might say,

“You can’t hack biology — but you can negotiate with it, one fast at a time.”

⚠️ Author’s Note

These reflections come from an engineer who started learning human biology far too late in life — mostly out of curiosity, partly out of necessity. What began as an attempt to outsmart blood sugar turned into a crash course in metabolism, ratios, and resilience. I’m not a doctor, and this isn’t medical advice. Please consult your physician before experimenting with fasting, diet tweaks, or supplement changes. Think of this as a mid-life engineering project on the body’s operating system — one where trial, error, and humility are all part of the lab work.