Miranda P. YEOH
Biochemistry first entered my life as an academic discipline-pathways memorized, molecules traced, exams passed. Decades later, it returned as something far more intimate: a guide to healing.This book grows out of a life spent teaching, learning, and living with science. As a lecturer in college, I used songs, rhythms, and musical mnemonics to help students understand complex processes such as glycolysis and the Krebs cycle. Years later, when my own health faltered-when sleep failed, pain arrived, vision dimmed, and nerves burned-I turned back to those same principles, no longer for grades, but for recovery. Food becomes molecules. Molecules become new healthy tissues, not just fuel. Healing is biochemistry, expressed in daily life.This is not a conventional textbook, nor is it a memoir alone. It is a bridge between knowledge and experience, science and perseverance, the classroom and the kitchen. Drawing on biochemistry, biology, nutrition, and lived reflection, the book explores how nourishment, rest, movement, and kindness support the body’s natural drive toward balance and repair. Like leaves turning sunlight into sugars, like mitochondria shaping oxygen into energy, our bodies are not passive participants in health.In many ways, this volume continues themes explored in my earlier works, Are We Born to Serve (Volumes 1 and 2) and Poems Pave Our Lives. Where those books examined endurance, service, and creativity across a lifetime, this book turns gently toward the present-toward healing, nature, and the quiet contentment found in daily living.Set against the cultural and natural backdrop of Penang, these pages weave together health, culture, and purpose. Some chapters reflect on recovery and self-care; others celebrate land, tradition, and the wisdom of ordinary lives. Together, they form a record of growth and gratitude. If these reflections remind readers that renewal is possible at any age and that health often begins with understanding and mindfulness, then this book will have served its purpose.
