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....

You will be surprised to know that of all the addictive agents that you can list such as tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, betel and drugs, one that has probably sneakily getting you hooked from early childhood and making the largest impact on your health could be your addiction to sugar. Sugar, scientists point out, poses far greater danger than we seem to realize; it is a toxin that harms our organs and disrupts the body’s usual hormonal cycles. Excessive consumption of sugar, they say, is one of the primary causes of the obesity epidemic and metabolic disorders like diabetes, as well as a culprit for cardiovascular disease. More than 20% of urban Indians and 10% of urban school children and adolescents in India are obese largely due to excessive consumption of sweets and sugar. That the landscape of health across the world and especially in India is undergoing drastic change is reflected in the WHO’s recent report attributing over 60% of urban deaths in our country to life-sty...

Violence against Doctors Last week’s gory incident in which a renowned super-specialist, Dr. Rohit Gupta was mercilessly beaten up by disgruntled relatives in a private hospital in Allahabad has shocked not just doctors, but most sensible members of society. The CCTV video showing the goons drag Dr Gupta to a room in the hospital and thrash him for over 15 minutes, has gone viral and evoked sharp outcry. Dr Gupta who sustained a fracture of his jaw bone and multiple other injuries is undergoing treatment in another hospital. He had gone to visit the 80 year old critically sick patient at 4 AM in the morning, who died, when this incident occurred. The fall out of such an event causes great harm to society, especially patients in dire need of medical help at odd hours. I am sure Dr Gupta, having learnt the lesson of his life, will refuse to take calls at odd hours. And so will many other doctors practicing in small hospitals and nursing homes.  If society and administra...

Dr Gourdas Choudhuri

In their pursuit to understand why some people live healthier and longer lives, and after chasing several measurable parameters such as blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, uric acid and smoking for over half a century, medical scientists are now tumbling upon an esoteric factor that has been conspicuously missing from medical books, called ‘happiness’ that could hold the key to our wellness. Happiness is quite like the hippo in the zoo. When you see it you can easily recognize it, but when someone asks you to describe it, it is not easy. It does not have the distinctive features like an elephant’s trunk or a leopards spots. And yet when you try counting people in office who are happy, or occasions when you have been happy, you know exactly who or what they are! Funny as it might sound, the arrival of “happiness” as a medical factor affecting our lives probably started when a group of German pragmatists tried to beat the Americans at their habit of measuring every aspect...

Let us recapitulate a few essential points about the role, aims, targets and methods of exercise that should keep you fit and well. In case you have missed the previous columns, here are the key points: Exercise comes next only to food as an essential component for ensuring good health and longevity. It tones up the heart, lungs, muscles and joints. People who exercise regularly have healthier hearts and tend to live longer. People with diabetes, obesity and fatty liver can do very well with exercise. Aerobic exercise improves insulin sensitivity, brings down blood sugar levels, help burn extra fat and prevents clogging of arteries of the heart with cholesterol The type of exercise that is good for the heart is called cardio-vascular or aerobic exercise. It involves movement such as brisk walks, jogging, cycling, swimming, treadmill or playing outdoor games. A good point is to calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI). It should be between 20 -23 for Indians. If it is more than ...