Health Adda

Diwali, the festival of joy, lights and cuisines, provides a perfect opportunity to blend tradition with dash of sense and demonstrate to neighbours and friends smart new ways of doing old things. The Eats: A huge amount of effort and resources are traditionally sp ent in procuring or preparing sweets for neighbours, relatives, colleagues, partners and bosses. My rough guess is that, diabetes, obesity and heart problems being as common as they presently are, most of these traditional delicacies are hardly touched by those for whom they were intended, and find their way to homes of servants, drivers and junior office staff.  Should you want your sweets to be savoured and remembered, you need to make them appealing, healthy and different so that guests who have nibbled at the same-old-sweets, are game to try more than a mouthful at your home.  Adding and garnishing your preparation with natural sweeteners such as honey, dates, figs and raisins could add originality...

The scare of the currently raging Dengue epidemic in Lucknow is neither a false alarm nor media hype. Good many people have fallen prey, and several have already died. The tragedy is that Dengue is assume its most aggressive form in you ng healthy adults, who were, till yesterday, up and about their usual lives, attending to business, going to college, partying or planning a grand Diwali bash. Attempts at mosquito control seem to have gone awary. Many might ask if it had started at all, seeing the heaps of polythene bags by the roads. The striped Aedes mosquitoes are easily seen in homes and offices on their dauntless flights landing on arms, necks and feet for their blood meals and injecting the virus through skin pricks. High fever with body aches, visit to the doctor, the blood test confirming Dengue, falling platelet count, scurrying to hospitals for platelet transfusions, overcrowded hospitals is the usual circuit. What can you do to protect your self and your fami...

Dengue is having a free run this autumn, thanks to the abundant rains, ramapant water logging and unrestricted breeding of mosquitoes. Almost every household in and around Lucknow has either had a bout of fever in the last month or is likely to in the next one.  Recognizing Dengue Fever (DF): It is a viral infection transmitted by mosquitoes and presents as a sudden febrile illness of 2-7 days’ duration, with 2 or more of the following: 1.      Headache 2.      Pain behind the eye balls 3.      Severe body aches 4.      Pain in the joints 5.      rash In children, DF is usually mild. In adults, it can be quite incapacitating, with associated nausea, vomiting, depression and fatigue. Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) is a more severe form of the disease associated with bleeding from different parts of the body such as red spots or patches in the skin, bleeding from the no...

Indian doctors were galvanized last month when the prestigious medical journal, Lancet, published an article describing super bugs that are virtually resistant to all known anti-biotics, and alleging that they originated from the Indian subcontinent.  To add insult to injury, the lead authors, who were British, named this germ after New Delhi (NDM1), consigning the name of our national capital to the immortal pages of medical notoriety. What most Indians found blasphemous was the fact that although this highly resistant strain was also isolated from other parts of the world, the authors chose to name it after New Delhi, a city from which no sample had actually been tested, and went on to sound a travel advisory cautioning Britishers to travel to India for “medical tourism”. Development of resistance in bacteria to the latest and strongest antibiotics called Carbepenems, is however alarming news. Alexander Fleming, who had discoverd the first antibiotic, penicillin, in...