Health Adda

The eerie silence that follows Diwali can usher in gloom as the weighing -machine needle tauntingly veers to the right at this time of every year. Remorse at our recent gorging is the norm at such times, and getting back to shape with all the barfis and laddoos still filling the refrigerator, the challenge. Getting back to exercise in this phase poses major hurdles. Our playmates have yet to return to the turf from their Diwali bashes. The bright five-thirty summer mornings have been swallowed by the night. And with the nip in the air, it is prime time to curl up and glimpse a few more frames of pleasant dreams as we wait for our morning cup of hot tea to drag ourselves out of bed. Where and how then do we begin to arouse ourselves, start moving and regain the lost waist lines and belt holes? Step 1: Shrug off the laziness. My German friend Winfried, tells me that there is no equivalent to “wake up” in their language; they only have “stand up”!. I found this German habit of literally

Caffeine, contained in coffee, tea, cola drinks and chocolates, has been in the eye of a storm swirling around breast lumps for quite some time. Says Dr Amit Aggarwal, consultant in the Department of Endocrine Surgery at the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, “If young girls can give up coffee, tea and chocolates, their breast lumps often disappear miraculously”. The issue had erupted few years ago when a lime-soda drink (7-Up) manufacturer had started advertising its drink as safe for women because it does not contain caffeine. Understandably, it upset the manufacturers of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, which do contain caffeine. They contend that 7-Up's advertising campaign was based on unsubstantiated health concerns. Avoiding caffeine a xeno-estrogen, can be practically difficult. "Xeno" means foreign. Estrogen is the female hormone that causes breast development and dominates the first part of the menstrual cycle. Scientists now believe th

The young remorseless killer Andres Behring Breivik, who cruelly snuffed out 92 innocent young lives in Oslo recently in a cruel saga that shocked the world, had shown similar traits towards animals in his younger days. He is said to have loved hunting, and enjoyed killing innocent animals. Little surprise then that he shot 25 teenagers dead when they tried to swim away, like shooting fleeing birds. The increasing violence in schools and society in recent years has, in most cases, began with cruelty to animals.   High-school killers in the USA such as Kip Kinkel and Luke Woodham of USA, tortured animals before starting their shooting sprees as did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot and killed 12 classmates, admitted to mutilating animals.  Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, director of the Child Study Center at New York University. says about potential criminals, “You have a child who has symptoms of aggression toward his peers, an interest in fire, cruelty to animals, social isolation;

A recently held poster-making competition organized by HOPE Initiative ( www.hope.org.in ) on 22 nd September in which 170 artistically-inclined school students representing 36 schools took part, once again drove home the point that perceptions and emotions, rather than dry bits of medical information, often shape our attitudes towards health and its hazards. Pix 1: Students pouring imagination and colours on to their posters. The Governor of UP Shri BL Joshi, who graced the ceremony in Lalit Kala academy as chief guest, expressed appreciation and intrigue at the imaginative and creative ways in which students from class 6 to 12 had depicted topics ranging from “Life Style Diseases” to “Road Traffic Accidents”. Pix 2 : Shri BL Joshi surveying the posters “Health” can be as boring a topic, if students are lectured on the virtue of eating apples, to an as amazingly exciting one if they are encouraged to research and present issues as they see through their own eyes. Sample this

As a medical specialist, armed with voluminous knowledge of diseases, skills and several years of experience, I had started exuding a good degree of confidence, somewhat more than what my wife felt was desirable. It was around then that a frail, 83 year old lady came to see me for abdominal pain, jaundice and fever. She was as apprehensive of me as a doctor as I was of her old age. The duct through which bile flowed from her liver to the intestines was blocked and converted into a bag of pus with stones. It was not without trepidation that I offered to pass a rather thick endoscope down her throat to the intestines, pass an electric wire into the lower portion of her bile duct and cut out and clear the passage through ERCP. I did not mince words in explaining to her sons the considerable danger that the procedure carried in her vulnerable condition. The patient on her part agreed to take the chance. With two of my juniors keeping strict vigil on her pulse and respiration, two nurses a