Health Adda

  A good night’s sleep, so essential to rest your body and mind, and restore ‘energy” and vitality, is becoming a casualty for many these days. Last week a 58 year old lady complained that she woke up with a startle in the middle of the night dreaming of “drugs”, something she had never been exposed to all her life. Another reported a nightmare in which he felt someone was “strangulating” him by tightening something around his neck, till he woke up feeling choked! Yet another reported dreaming that he was in an ICU of a hospital with PPE draped figures surrounding his bed while he was being prepared to be hooked to a ventilator. Bad dreams can be disturbing to say the least. One wakes up with a startle or in sweat, feeling disturbed and uneasy, and feeling drained. The mood in the morning is usually uneasy and snappy. Creative thinking has usually gone for a toss…postponed to yet another day when one feels more cheerful and positive.   Several factors could be contribu...

At times such as this after 5 months into the pandemic when  Covid  infection numbers are still climbing up, life is anything but “normal”, and uncertainty is looming like thick clouds over our heads, many are getting the feeling that they are reaching the snapping point!   It was in this context that 260  teachers of  one of the reputed school chains , Lucknow Public School,  gathered  Sunday  for an online interactive session by HOPE Initiative to discuss and explore strategies of coping and resilience.   Of the many segments of society that are facing  the present brunt , school teachers  are a particularly hard-hit lot. Apart from the  universal  fear of infection, they find themselves being pushed into crazy degrees of multi-tasking: looking after   children’s studies, cooking, chores  at home  in addition to the teaching. To make matters worse, they are being pushed from their comfort zone of conventio...

  Stress is undoubtedly rising steeply  in these COVID times, not just due to fear of contracting the virus, getting proper treatment, social stigma that it may bring, or surviving the infection, but now to a  newly added cause:  exhaustion and despair from waiting almost endlessly for it to go away! Yes, it is no small concern. Last week during a video consultation, a young 25-year-old girl broke down and described anxiety, palpitations, sleeplessness, constant fear, exhaustion, and a feeling of deep despair stemming from the endless wait for life to get back on track. She complained further of a constant feeling of impending doom and collapse that was driving her to wonder if life was worth living any longer. Coping behavior seems to vary between individuals, but patience is certainly running out for many who had believed that the wait would be a 2-week affair. And now that the wait has crossed 4 months with no end still in sight, many minds are reaching snapping p...

If you did not exchange wishes with friends on Friendship Day, STOP, THINK and RECTIFY! You could be missing an essential ingredient of health from your life. Friendship Day is generally celebrated on the 1 st Sunday of August, but you can of course observe it every other day. FRIENDS are important for several reasons: 1.       Scientists studying the effects of friends note a strong link between immunity and social support. Those with friends are more likely to ward off or fight illnesses and traumas, and survive life threatening situations like major accidents or heart attacks. Even wound seem to heal faster in those who have warm friends. 2.    They play a key role in processing stress. Unburdening your heart is a great stress buster and helps reduce stress hormones from the body. 3.     Friends play a pivotal role in boosting self-confidence. Remember the first occasion when you had to go up on stage…and how your suppor...

In times such as these, when every TV channel, newspaper or conversation is spewing fearful and despairing news, how does one cope and survive with the hope to see better times? Amidst galloping COVID 19 numbers, gruesome clashes on our borders, crumbling economy and a very uncertain future, I discovered a living story of exemplary coping and resilience that can make a difference to our lives. Her name is Ruth Ba der Ginsberg, 87 year old lady, the oldest judge of the Supreme Court of USA who is attending to her duties while undergoing chemotherapy for her third cancer. The present cancer that she is fighting is an advanced one that has spread to her liver, for which she is receiving twice weekly chemotherapy and is optimistic as the tumour is showing signs of regression. Her long life is as much a lesson in hard work and perseverance in reaching where she has in her career, as it is about coping and resilience with health problems and cancer. Her first date with cancer was in 1999 whe...

If your mind space is crowded with too many stressful “negative” occupants such as COVID crisis, border conflicts, shattering economy, uncertainties of future or locusts, just to name a few, and if you are in a mood to explore something new and relaxing, give Birdwatching a try. At the outset, let me confess that being a workaholic all my life and born under the Zodiac sign of Capricorn, I had never found time for such “idle” hobbies”. In fact as stud ents with lives packed with studies, sports, thrills, work and challenges, we had scoffed at Dr Salim Ali, one of the greatest ornithologists, who had made headlines decades ago. It all started 2 years ago when my wife hung a “bird feeder” outside our window and our gardener planted a new creeper in the garden. Two years down, when I found myself locked in at home recently in my own empty nest, I found time to notice and appreciate groups of domestic birds visiting us. And when I Googled “Bird watching health benefits” I was stunned with ...

Unexpected disasters, natural or man made, are getting commoner by the day and failure to address the emotional trauma and psychological impact of survivors such as the relatives of road traffic accident victims, often leaves a glaring hole in people’s lives and personalities. For most of us, it would be impossible to imagine the emotional trauma and agony of those who have seen loved ones been dragged away by flood waters or buried alive by landslides, o r perhaps even worse, just missing! How and what can be done for them? I was watching the TV interview of one of the relatives of a recent RTA victim and was saddened to hear how the lives of the family members had had been catapulted since the young man’s death. At the outset it is important to know the sequence of reaction that a traumatised person goes through. The first stage is one of denial or disbelief at the suddenness of the upheaval. It is followed usually by anger, often directed at people around, government, at oneself or ...

If difficult stretches of time throw us a challenge and make us think and behave differently, they also often emerge as life’s best TEACHERS. While the tone is of fear, gloom and lament on most lips nowadays, some are using this period as an opportunity to turn things completely around.  Many are going back into reviving their long-lost hobbies. The social media is throbbing with people displaying their musical talents, either rendering solo song s or getting together with other musicians on “tele” platforms to create complex music. In one of the displays, several musicians joined in from different parts of the globe to create a finely tuned “orchestra”! There are others who are reverting back to dancing, cooking, craftsmanship, yoga or fitness. All of them look surprisingly happy in the videos they post, their pursuits proving helpful in lifting their gloom and bringing a smile of accomplishment and joy onto their faces. Few seem to be discovering and enjoying their new avatar in ...

It could not be more sardonic that when forcibly confined to our homes and locked into isolation, our earlier hankering for holidays, respite from school and work and time for rest, is turning out to be like Midas’s boon of golden touch! In this unprecedented period of depressive developments, we are experiencing many types of emotions that are broadly included under “stress”. The international expert David Kessler  terms it “Grief” and describes 6 stages which I found helpful to understand my feelings: 1.The 1st stage is DENIAL; like what we felt in early March…..”this is just another scare….happening elsewhere…wont affect us in any way”. 2. It gives way to ANGER: “how can this be happening here? Lockdown on our freedom and movements? Never happened before! The government and enforcement people are victimising us…..we need to raise our voice and fight!” 3. When we run out of options, we start to BARGAIN: “OK.. If we suffer for these 3 weeks, all will be OK ag...

The ways in which our mind works to face an impending challenge, such as an examination, job interview or marriage (let us not forget elections nowadays!) are so many, that even experts could not tell you which is the best. Some thoughts work as traps, guaranteeing disillusionment, disappointment and depression. It makes sense to “look in,” identify, and then avoid them. 1. Worse Case Scenarios Before a competitive examination or an interview for a job with limited vacancies, it is impractical to “believe” that you will certainly make it. It all sounds great when motivational speakers try to pump in positivity to bring out your best performance and overcome anxiety, but for most realists” or “pragmatists”, it is unreal. Several youngsters do not really seem to give a thought to "Plan B" or a back up plan for a worst case-scenario. They are the ones who tumble badly down into hopelessness and loss of self-esteem as they find themselves unprepared to deal w...

While excessive computer use can lead to conditions such as attention deficit disorder, depression anxiety an d proneness to violence, recent research has shown that internet is not all that bad after all! The web may in fact be teaching our brains, subtly rewiring the way we respond, think and behave. The book iBrain Surviving the Technological Alterations of the Modern Mind, by Dr Gary Small, provides new insight through research undertaken at UCLA, and reveals that an hour of internet use every day may boost brain function. We learn to react more swiftly to visual stimuli, improve our ability to sift through large amounts of information, and decide what is important and what isnt”. This training is most evident when we scan our e-mails, quickly deciding and deleting what is spam, while focussing on those that are important. If you never use computers, then start, Professor Small recommends. As we found, even an hour a day can vastly improve yor information processing ...

If some of you are feeling low, suffering from fatigue and having a disturbed sleep cycle these days, you could be suffering from “Winter Blues”. In these foggy wintery times, when the days are not just cold, but dull and dark, you may find yourself feeling more lethargic, gloomy and down overall. A more serious form of this mood change during winters is called SAD or seasonal affective disorder. It is associated with sadness, dullness and negative thoughts that affect normal relationships at home or work. Usually seen in women, SAD sets in every year when the sun starts loosing its brightness to fog and clouds, the day begins to shorten and the temperature dips and remains low. The primary culprit of both the winter blues and SAD is the lower level of natural sunlight we are exposed to in winter. This leads to: 1. Dips in serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates mood 2. Disruptions in circadian rhythms (your body’s internal clock), which help control slee...

Funny as it might seem, patients who are warned too much of possible side-effects before being given a medication, seem to experience them more often. Describing this phenomenon as the NOCEBO effect, German researcher Winfried Hauser has recently shown that patients anticipating side-effects such as giddiness, headache, constipation or lack of concentration, experience them more often than those who take the drug without being told about them. This new finding fits well with what physicians have suspected all along, that the body’s response to therapy often depends on the patient’s belief with which he takes it. Some of the benefits of medicine undoubtedly come from the positive anticipation that a particular drug will work as intended -- easing arthritis or relieving wheezing, for example – called the PLACEBO effect. On the flip side our belief in a drug’s side effects may actually cause us to suffer from them as well. The role of suggestion and belief in obtaining a posit...

The modern-day sceptic looking through his logical lens at what we do at this festive time of the year, often finds it as meaningless, wasteful old fashioned mass hysteria! Attempts by Indians to reconnect with their families and friends, pray and fast together, perform rituals, wear new clothes, hug each other and rejoice and try to keep their traditions and faiths alive make little practical sense. What is worse is that the food is usually poisonously rich, roads are choked, offices and businesses come to a grinding halt in what appears quite stupid. And yet the air that gets charged with renewed excitement is what scientists find difficult to measure and analyse. While lifestyle and food are indeed important for good health, studies suggest that human emotions may have a significant, perhaps crucial impact on an individual's well-being. Researchers from University of Kansas found that positive emotions are critical for upkeep of physical health for people worldwide, especi...

The family and friends of Mr KM, a successful manager of a private bank, who recently suffered a heart attack at the age of 40, could have foreseen it coming if they had recognized what his “personality type” was driving him up to. KM had a classical “Type A” personality; he was fiercely ambitious, charged and aggressive.  Friends recall how he was always setting high targets and then restlessly struggling to achieve them. And instead of relaxing for a while when done, he would promptly set another much higher target that he would start to pursue. He had to be more successful than others, finding it hard to be one of many. Not surprisingly, he had come to achieve an important position at such a young age.  And not surprisingly, he had a heart attack now despite being a non-smoker and regular gym goer. The constantly charged state of such people generates frequent surges of stress hormones called adrenaline and corticosteroids. The health price they often pay for ...

Recent research is turning the relationship of health and happiness on its head; healthy people are of course happier, but more startling is the observation that those who are happy and satisfied with their lives are a lot healthier. Moreover, the benefit comes with a quick turn around time, with greater happiness boosting health in as little as 3 years. In a scientific study, 10,000 adults were assessed how happy and satisfied they had been by their response to 2 simple questions: “During the past 4 weeks, have you been a happy person?” and “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life?” The answers were correlated with physical health parameters in 2001 and then 3 years later in 2004. “We found strong evidence that both happiness and satisfaction have an impact on our indicators of health”, says Dr Siahpush, from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, USA. They were associated with excellent or very good physical health, absence of long-term limiting i...