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...

The recent death of 2 victims of rape that the media highlighted is a gruesome reminder of how pitiably inadequate our state of preparedness is for dealing with this hazard to health and life. I am told that the reason why crime rates in Singapore are one of the lowest in the world is because people there are scared to commit them. What deters potential criminals is a high chance of being nabbed (good policing) , that no amount of phone calls can prevent or reverse. Further, the punishment for crime is strict and harsh. What happens in India is quite the opposite. Most rapists feel confident of getting away. The girl, they feel, would be so shocked, “stigmatized” or perhaps even dead that she and her family would probably not dare to complain. The culprits of the Delhi gang-rape case in which 6 criminals assaulted a 23 year old in a bus probably thought that way! What deters a victim further is the lack of grooming of the hospital and police staff to attend to a victim’s co...

A fracture of the hip bone can be the proverbial last straw for an elderly person. We saw a friend’s mother go through it all. She used to be petite and frail and a hump (bent spine). One day she fell in the bathroom, broke her hip and became bedridden. Orthopedicians and her children, two of who were doctors, felt scared to subject the 75 year old to surgery. She therefore lay in bed for 7 long years, fed and bathed by domestic aids. She suffered the extra misery and humiliation of depending on them for the bed pan as she could not make it to the toilet. In spite of all possible care that the family could provide, she developed bed sores. Her recent death was perceived by many as liberation from her painful hopeless state. Each year, there are an estimated 500,000 spinal fractures, 300,000 hip fractures, 200,000 broken wrists, and 300,000 fractures of other bones.  About 80% of these fractures occur from relatively minor falls or accidents, and are caused by osteoporosis. The st...

The 85 year old British scientist, Professor Robert Edwards, who helped create the first test tube baby and thus transformed the lives of millions of couples plagued by infertility, was finally awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine, 2010. The person happiest to hear the news was Louise Brown, now 32, who on July 25, 1978, became the first ever child born through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), to her mother Lesley, who was seeking tretament for infertility. Professor Edwards along with his research partner Dr PatrickSteptoe,  had been resarching on taking eggs out of a woman’s body after stimulating the ovary, and fertilizing it with sperms from a donor, in a petri dsh, allowing it to multiply a few times, and then putting it back into the womb of the woman. Their first success came with Lesley Brown who gave birth to Louise by natural delivery. Dr Steptoe, with whom Dr Edwards had started his infertility research and clinic in Cambridge, died in 1988. As the Nobel Prize...

The events around World Woman’s Day last week brought out the grim state of health and power women enjoy in our society yet again. Women have probably realized by now that their dependence on “chivalrous” and “caring” male partners over history has no t done them much good, and have finally decided to take up their cudgel, at least in politics. Medical research has shown that women’s health matters to society. Weak anemic mothers with soft fragile bones produce weak low birth-weight babies, even male ones. And the short-sightedness of feeding iron and calcium to our women only during pregnancy while neglecting them the rest of their lives, can’t make them robust quickly enough to bring forth a healthy next gen. Kerala is the state that has shown by example, how educating and empowering women can make a strong and healthy society. I wonder whether Aishwariya Rai Bacchan who adorns the Wikipedia page on ‘Women in India’, also personify health and power, as she does beauty (...

More than a year after its introduction into India as an over the counter (OTC) drug, the Emergency Contraceptive pill seems to have become quite popular. Marketed by atleast 2 pharmaceutical companies, namely Cipla (i-pill) and Mankind (Unwanted-72), awareness about their existence among women who can watch TV has become widespread.  Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs)—sometimes simply referred to as emergency contraceptives (ECs) or the " morning-after pill "—are drugs that act both to prevent  ovulation  or  fertilization  and possibly post-fertilization  implantation   of a  embryo . Hence they are distinct from  medical abortion  methods that act after implantation.  As its name implies, EC is intended for occasional use, when primary means of contraception  fail. Since EC methods act before implantation, they are medically and legally considered forms of  contraception . ECPs contain the  hormone levonorgestre...

Kylie Minogue, the sultry Australian pop singer and actress, was detected to have breast cancer at the age of 37. The diagnosis forced this  international celebrity to put an end to her Showgirl Tour and career. She underwent breast surgery in Melbourne in May 2005, followed by chemotherapy in France. What makes her so special is the way she underwent treatment for her disease under intense public gaze, and the openness with which she shared her experience with her fans and the public.  She is back on track in her career, where she is flying even higher than before.             Voted “Woman of the Year” in 2006 because of her inspirational fight against the disease, Kylie helped create a wave of awareness amongst fans and public about breast cancer. It led to a spike in screening tests in women. Described as the “Kylie Factor”, 40% more women underwent mammography and other tests as part of a cancer detection check up. ...