Health Adda

The importance of common salt, essential not just for life but for good health especially in hot times is unfortunately often overlooked. The balance and concentration of sodium in our body, is one of the most delicately monitored and finely tuned body functions and is kept constant concentration of 0.9%. Salt , also known as   table salt, or   rock salt is a crystalline mineral that is composed primarily of  sodium chloride (NaCl) , a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of ionic salts . It is essential for  animal  life in small quantities, but is harmful to animals and plants in excess. Salt is one of the oldest, most ubiquitous food seasonings and  salting  is an important method of  food preservation . The   taste of salt (saltiness) is one of the  basic human tastes . Most people expect a straight flat answer to the question “ How much salt should we consume each day?”. The National Academy of Sciences, ...

An elderly lady who had tolerated her mild symptoms of abdominal gas for decades, was suddenly metamorphosed to a vegetative state thanks to an unusual side effect of a newly launched drug for gaseousness!. The disturbing video of this lady, with shaking of hands and  twitching  of face, shown to a gathering of doctors in a meeting in Lucknow recently evoked a uniform surprise “Gosh, I did not know this could also happen!”. Dr Debnandan further shared information gathered from the net that  several  such instances of an ailment resembling Parkinson ’s disease have been reported with this agent, the disorder becoming permanent in many. Adverse reactions to medicines do occur in a minority and every doctor faces them from time to time. What constitutes a tragedy is when the reaction is grave or life threatening while the indication for prescribing the medicine was mild. Take for instance the side-effect of constipation that comes with many draugs such as pain-kill...

The deodorant spray, the next gen’s all too familiar “deo”, may be the cause of our excessive fatigue and exhaustion during hot summer days. Deodorants, meant to tackle the bad body odour especially from the underarms, do so by two methods. One is by killing the germs that colonize in these warm moist sites and break down secretions into smelly substances. Almost all deos are therefore antiseptic agents of a sort, containing some form or other of spirit, natural oils and perfumes. They work to keep us feeling clean and fresh. Many deos however are anti-perspirants as well, and work by blocking the secretion of sweat from the sweat- glands. This variety of sprays has become trendy as they make the skin look cool and dry even on sweaty days. They prevent the embarassing wet dark maps from appearing on the shirts, and make us stink less as there is less soaking of clothes with skin secretions. While many use the terms deodorants and anti-perspirants interchangably, they are not the...