Health Adda

If you have been lucky to have had your mother care for you and nurture you in your infancy and childhood, thank your stars! How life could have been different  without her is the subject of several scientific papers that deal with the unpleasant consequences of “Maternal Deprivation Syndrome” Infants without moms make poor starts in life. They often do not grow well physically, lagging behind in height and weight, in what is termed “growth failure”. And funnily, this seems to occur despite the adequate nutrition reaching their guts. Scientists are, as usual, trying to investigate what “factors” could be responsible. One explanation is deprivation of mother’s milk that lowers a child’s immunity. Breast milk is rich in anti-bodies and immune boosters that help protect the baby from recurrent infections, frequent episodes of diarrhea, pneumonia and absorption defects. What scientists find intriguing is to segregate the “measurable” factors such as antibody levels passing from breast...

Long hot spells, when the sun bakes the earth and the mercury rises to create new records, pose major challenges to health and life. Our bodies dry up (called d ehydration; remember that 2/3 of our body is made up of water) or get excessively heated (called heat or sun stroke due to the body’s thermostat failing to maintain our temperatures around 370C), posing a threat to life. The simplest way to stay well and energetic during summer is to keep your body well hydrated at all times. Start the day with two or three glasses of water in the morning as soon as you wake up. The trick is to drink fluids before you start feeling thirsty, because by the time you feel it, the body has already started signalling to you that it is getting dehydrated. When you start for school or work in the morning, make sure you drink two more glasses of water. In dry hot weather, water is lost from the body through breathing and invisible perspiration. It is therefore wise to anticipate it before you set out....