WARNING TO CITIZENS

BMC hospitals set to deal with summer ailments

Mumbai: Even after the temp e r at u re dropped by two degrees Celsius on Thursday, the BMC is not taking a ny ch a n c e s. The civic body’s health department is gearing up to attend to an influx of patients with heat stroke-like symptoms.
    An advisory has also been issued warning citizens from venturing out in the afternoon. Public health department executive health officer Jairaj Thanekar said all major BMC hospitals were prepared to handle any situation. “We are expecting more patients complaining of fever, dehydration, headache and increased heart rate. The humidity can also make things worse for children, senior citizens and those who are overweight. Rising temperature can lead to other ailments too,’’ he said.
    The advisory spells out several precautionary measures, like having plenty of fluids, wearing loose-fitting clothes, avoiding working in hot conditions, bathing regularly and avoiding eating roadside food and drinks.

 

 

 

Breathe your way to health and success

 Followers of the practice of Brahmavidya believe that one can achieve health and success by practicing this science. They also call this the science of happy, complete life! Brahmavidya gives definite methods by which a person can overcome his physical and mental problems and lead a healthier, happier and more successful life. These simple and effective methods are based on breath and thought, which are the basic elements of life. For this, one needs to devote only 20 minutes daily for spiritual breathing exercises and 20 minutes for meditation. It is claimed that Brahmavidya can help in removal of root cause of illnesses and promote good health. This practice improves mental outlook of the person and makes him a more positive, cheerful, optimistic and confident person. With better physical and mental health, person can work more efficiently, making him more successful at his job, business or profession.
    Brahmavidya Sadhak Sangh is a charitable trust and all teachers and volunteers work in spirit of service, without any remuneration, to spread this unique knowledge. At present the Sangh is conducting Brahmavidya classes in Marathi, Hindi and English at over 150 centres in Mumbai, Pune and Ratnagiri. In the past decade, over 70,000 students have benefited from Brahmavidya teachings.
    Any one above the age of 18 years can join the Basic Course, which is of 22 weeks and classes are conducted weekly once for 1.5 hours. New batches of 22 weeks of Basic Course in English will commence this month at 14 centres in Mumbai. For further details, enthusiasts can contact: Airoli: 25446630, Andheri: 26333694, Bandra: 26148245, Borivali: 9869264623, Chembur: 9869378952, Churchgate: 9320972347, Dadar: 9820227104, Goregaon: 9870227746, Malad: 9870227746, Mulund: 25476818 / 9820107317, Thane: 25422768, Thane: 25403310 / 9820425661, Vashi: 9869378952, Vile Parle: 9324184159 and Trust Office – 25339977. Also log on to: www.brahmavidya.net 

 

A Brahmavidya session in progress

 

Heart can regenerate: Indian doc

Mumbai: A broken heart can mend itself, literally. In a discovery that opens up the possibility of helping people with serious cardiac ailments, an international team of researchers that includes a Canadian-born Indian neurosurgeon has found that the heart can regenerate itself.

    Scientists have so far believed that the heart never regenerates. "We have shown for the first time that the heart is capable of regeneration,'' said Dr Ratan Bhardwaj, who gave primary inputs for the research under the lab supervision of Jonas Frisen at Stockholm's Nobel Medical Institute. Bhardwajspoke to TOI soon after the research paper was published in the prestigious journal, Science. Bhardwaj, now at the University of Toronto, said the cells that regenerate, called cardiomyocytes, comprise 20% of the total heart tissue. They are also responsible for the crucial pumping action.
    Calling the finding a "myth-breaker and a paradigm shifter in science'', Bhardwaj said it opens the doors to future stem cell therapeutics and regenerative strategies. "It would be great if researchers could understand this mechanism better and possibly devise a pill to boost the regeneration of the organ especially after a heart attack or chronic heart failure,'' he said.
    The 35-year-old doctor said, "You are actually having your own body heal itself. It's akin to the skin healing after a cut or the bones joining after a fracture. So, wouldn't it be great to find a way to heal your heart when it literally breaks, or fails? That's the beauty of this experiment.'' Carbon tech helped to trace heart's growth
Mumbai: An international team of researchers has found out that a broken heart can heal itself thereby exploding the myth that the heart never regenerates.
    The research used carbon dating to track DNA molecules within heart cells and show that new cells were being produced. "For the first time, we were able to see and show that the heart actually is continuously making and replenishing new heart cells,'' Canadian-born Indian doctor Dr Ratan Bhardwaj.
    Radio carbon dating is a technique used to determine the age of anything from the bust of the Mohenjodaro Priest to that of Queen Nefertiti. "But the body uses the same isotope, Carbon-14, in a very different way,'' Bhardwaj explained.
    During the Cold War, the rash of nuke-testing released huge amounts of radioactive C-14 in the atmosphere. This got mixed up with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that plants use up in photosynthesis. "Humans and animals ate the plants, so the C-14 went into our system. Now could this somehow be tracked, we wondered. With that leap of logic, we zeroed in on the DNA molecule which ought to be fixed from the time when the cell was made, barring very negligible amounts of turnover. So, if one could carbon date the DNA from a specific set of cells, one could find out how old that cell was,'' Bhardwaj said.
    "In terms of actually doing it, however, it was a long shot and very expensive. Not a lot of groups are able to do this—start with a whole human heart, separate the heart cells, that is the crucial 20%, from the rest, purify the DNA and send this to the lab to measure the C-14 content. One speck of dust in the sample can totally wreck the data. So we were not too worried about competing with many other labs,'' he said.
    The beating heart that's responsible for pumping blood is made up of cardiomyocytes which comprise about 20% of the cells. The rest are largely support cells of the matrix. Said Bhardwaj, "Now, as we grow in age and size, this amazing cell has long been known to 'hypertrophy', that is, get bigger with function. We were able to show that it grows in number as well.''

The University of Ottawa, Canada (Research center finding)
Proudly to announce!

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E-spies target 103 countries

Chinese Hackers Steal Data From Dalai Lama's Office, Indian Embassy & Others

Toronto: A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.
    In a report, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but added that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved.
    The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware.
Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at
least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama's Tibetan exile centres in India, Brussels, London and New York.
    The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage, said they believed that in addition to spying on the Dalai Lama, the system, which they called Ghost-Net, was focused on the governments of many South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
    They said they had found no evidence that US government offices had been infiltrated, although a NATO computer was monitored by the spies for half a day and computers of the Indian embassy in Washington were infiltrated. NYT NEWS SERVICE
WORLD WIDE WEB: TRACKING GHOSTNET
The Canadian researchers concluded that the entire system—the largest uncovered so far—was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China
The trail began when the office of the Dalai Lama asked the researchers to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware
The malware not only hunts for important files but also turns on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room
In addition to the Tibetan leader-in-exile, the spies were focused on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries Specific e-mail from Dalai's office stolen
Toronto: Intelligence analysts say many governments, including those of China, Russia and the US, and other parties use sophisticated computer programs to covertly gather information.
    The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to light in terms of countries affected. This is also the first time researchers have exposed the workings of a computer system used in an intrusion of this magnitude.
    The researchers were able to monitor the commands given to infected computers and to see the names of documents retrieved by the spies, but in most cases the contents of the stolen files have not been determined. Working with the Tibetans, however, the researchers found that specific correspondence had been stolen and that the intruders had gained control of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai Lama's organization.
    They said, after an email invitation was sent by the Dalai Lamas office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities. NYT NEWS SERVICE

Bigger your waistline, greater the strain on your lungs

 There's more bad news for people who carry oodles of fat around their waists: Not only is it associated with diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease and but also with decreased lung function. "After adjustments in the study for age, sex, BMI, smoking status, alcohol consumption, leisure time physical activity and cardiovascular history, metabolic syndrome remained independently associated with lung function impairment," wrote co-author Natalie Leone, of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (FNIHMR). "We found a positive independent relationship between lung function impairment and metabolic syndrome due mainly to abdominal obesity," she said. The results were published in the second issue for March of the American
Thoracic Society's
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
— IANS

Now here's another good reason to slim down!

Red meat ups death risk

Raises Chances Of Heart Disease, Cancer Among Other Illnesses

Washington: People who eat the most red meat and the most processed meat have the highest overall risk of death from all causes, including heart disease and cancer, US researchers reported.
    The National Cancer Institute study is one of the largest to look at the highly controversial and emotive issue of whether eating meat is indeed bad for health. Rashmi Sinha and colleagues looked at the records of more than 500,000 people aged 50 to 71 who filled out questionnaires on their diet and other health habits.
    Even when other factors were accounted for — eating fresh fruits and vegetables, smoking, exercise, obesity — the heaviest meat-eaters were more likely to die over the next 10 years than the people who ate the least amount of meat.
    "Red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality," Sinha and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
    They divided the volunteers into five groups, called quintiles. Between 1995 and 2005, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died.
The quintile who ate the most red meat had a higher risk for overall death, death from heart disease and cancer than the men and women who ate the least red meat. The researchers said thousands of deaths could be prevented if people simply ate less meat. "For overall mortality, 11% of deaths in men and 16% of deaths in women could be prevented if people decreased their red meat consumption to the level of intake in the first quintile," Sinha's team wrote.
Many studies have previously shown that people who eat less meat are healthier in many ways, and Sinha's team noted that meat contains several cancercausing chemicals, as well as the unhealthiest forms of fat.
Barry Popkin, an expert in nutrition and economics at the University of North Carolina, said the study was unusually thorough and careful. Eating less meat has other benefits, he said, for instance, farming animals for meat causes greenhouse gas emissions that warm the atmosphere and uses fresh water in excess, he said. REUTERS

KILLER MENU: Red meat contains several cancer-causing chemicals, as well as the unhealthiest forms of fat

Benefits of apple juice

Fresh apple juice carries a significant amount of vitamins A and C! You can mix your fruits and vegetables together to make your own great tasting juices from carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, or melons. It is always better to juice with the peel on, so that you can enjoy all the nutrients...
    Simply push a lemon through your juicer right before you begin juicing your apple. The apple peel carries some of its nutritional value. You should also wash your apples before you juice them. This is because they are covered in a very thin layer of wax to help preserve the apple's moisture. A good portion of the vitamin C content is just underneath the skin. Also, as the apple ripens, the skin retains a lot of its nutrients and flavour. So allowing a little bit of time for them to ripen before you juice them will improve the great tasting value of your fresh home made apple juice.
    Apple products serve as an immediate source of energy because of the sugars that the fruit carries.
    Apple juicing is an inexpensive way to improve your body health. Juices made from fresh fruits are a delicious way to improve your all round body health, and they also provide a great deal of nutrition. Apples can also be a primary source of soluble and insoluble fibre. Apple juice is a powerful cleanser and an important necessity for the health of your body. Compounds in apples and apple juice called phytonutrients act in the same way as red wine and herbal tea; they delay the break down of LDL or "bad" cholesterol.
    For the elderly generation, drinking fruit juices should begin with apples, especially if you are suffering from arthritis and rheumatism. This is because apples carry a substantial amount of potassium. For this reason, juicing your apples has been known to ease arthritis and rheumatism. Drinking apple juice also flushes out the liver and kidneys and is low in calories. Over time, this can reduce the chances of having liver or kidney disease.

APPY HAPPY: Apple juices serve as an immediate source of energy

Green tea keeps teeth tip top

 What ancient Chinese and Japanese believed about green tea's health giving properties is being borne out by ongoing scientific studies, especially in weight loss, heart health, and cancer prevention. Researchers also found that routine intake of green tea may also help promote healthy teeth and gums, after analysing the periodontal health of 940 men. Peridontal disease is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the gums and bone supporting the teeth, and has been associated with the progression of other diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. "It has been long speculated that green tea possesses a host of health benefits," said study author Yoshihiro Shimazaki of Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. "And since many of us enjoy green tea on a regular basis, my colleagues and I were eager to investigate the impact of green tea consumption on periodontal health, especially considering the escalating emphasis on the connection between periodontal health and overall health." Researchers observed that for every one cup of green tea consumed per day, there was a decrease in all three indicators, therefore signifying a lower instance of periodontal disease in those subjects who regularly drank green tea.
    IANS

TEA FOR TWO: Green tea combats gum disease

Laugh for good health!

 What's the one medicine that works wonders for your health, yet comes free of cost? Laughter that's what! Yes, laughter and happiness do contribute immensely to one's well-being. Keeping that in mind, SAB is bringing out a new show Laughter Yoga on Sundays at 8 am to kickstart a healthy week. Developed by Indian physician Dr Madan Kataria in 1995, 'Laughter Yoga' is beyond entertainment or amusement. It is a healthy exercise routine which combines laughter exercises and Yogic breathing techniques (Pranayama) which brings more oxygen to the body and brain, making one feel more energetic and healthy. In this show Dr Kataria the founder of Laughter Yoga clubs will lead the sessions by which the audience can actually learn Laughter Yoga exercises by watching the show. Laughter Yoga is a revolutionary idea where anyone can laugh for 15-20 minutes without relying on humour, jokes or comedy. It is done in a group as a form of exercise which soon becomes real laughter as the close knit group observes one another. This complete health show also includes a segment on health tips given by Dr Kataria. His experiences will be shared with the viewers which will include useful tips on allopathic medicines, ayurveda, nature cure, healthy food habits and first aid. So get ready to laugh and get fit!

LAUGH OUT LOUD: Dr Madan Kataria with wife Madhuri