Fast facts about fasting

It could be an impending wedding or a dream holiday, but all of us think of losing weight just to fit into that one dream suit or dress. A drastic, unhealthy trend has caught the fancy of those desperate to lose weight anyhow. Most people resort to fasting without proper guidance. While fasting for small amounts of time does help cleanse the body of toxins, people have begun to fast for longer time periods. And the immediate effect might be impressive, but is it safe on a long term basis?Forms of fasting

Water fasting: This involves intake of only water and no food. It is very stringent and may lead to multi-nutrient deficiencies.

Juice fasting: Here, you simply take fruit and vegetable juices for detoxification. This involves rapid cleansing and may cause weakness.

Selective food fasting: Certain cereals, fruits and vegetables are permitted but no animal foods are allowed. This is the healthiest form of fasting and can be adhered to for a longer time span.

Many health practitioners are against the idea of fasting. But there are health benefits to it too: Periodic fasting accompanied with healthy eating improves insulin responsiveness, lowers blood cholesterol and prolongs life span. It helps improve the mental stability of people suffering from anxiety and depression. It detoxifies the body, cleanses the blood and improves the functioning of kidneys and liver.

The side effects Fasting involving sole dependence on water and juices has its own side effects, which may not show immediately but will affect you later on. What may seem to you as fat loss is actually plain water loss. Excessive weight loss is often accompanied with vitamins and mineral deficiencies. Fasting for more than 10 days causes the following problems: It leads to hormonal fluctuations which lead to mood swings, irritation and fluctuations in the menstrual cycle. Blood pressure drops and you feel dizzy especially when changing body positions. Muscle weakness and cramps occur due to mineral deficiencies. The drop in blood sugar level makes you lose concentration. You become susceptible to infections. The kidney and liver become weak and their ability to regulate metabolism is compromised.

The right time It is advisable to fast when: You're leading a life of excesses. You're overcoming an emotional attachment to food.

Beetroot wonder

Beetroot is a good source of folic acid, vitamin C, B1, B2, B3, and A. It is also rich in calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and sodium.

* It helps improve the quality of blood. It lowers blood pressure and prevents cardiovascular problems.

* The water in which beetroot is boiled is effective in treating pimples and boils.

* It's best to eat beetroot raw as many of its nutrients are lost when it is cooked.

* Beetroot is good for pregnant women because it lowers the risk of neural tube defects in infants. (Text: Hindustan Times)

Five hidden dangers of Facebooking

 An expert in online privacy has drawn attention to the five dangers of sharing information on social networking site Facebook.

Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online, claims marketing efforts by the company often results in a compromise on account holders' privacy, reports CBS News.

Goodchild noted five risks of using Facebook on 'The Early Show on Saturday Morning.' They are:

1.Your information is being shared with third parties

2. Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign

3. Facebook ads may contain malware

4. Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable

5. Scammers are creating fake profiles

Earlier this week, 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the site manipulates privacy settings to make users' personal information available for commercial use. (ANI)

Take care of your ears

Do you hear a buzzing sound often? Do you find it hard listening to faint sounds? If you are used to listening to loud music, it is likely that you may have these problems.

Loud music can damage your ears in the long run. “Even daily sounds can damage your hearing in a way that you will only realise much later,” says ENT specialist Dr Akash Bannerjee.

Overexposure to loud noise can make your eardrums thin, eventually breaking them and making you deaf. Dr Bannerjee says the highest sound you should expose your ears to is 125 decibels.

Busy traffic

During maddening traffic, honking increases, tempers rise and noise levels eventually go up. “The noise in traffic can go up to 115 decibels during rush hour. Overexposure to this amount of sound will slowly, but surely impair your ear,” says Dr Deepak Vora, an ENT specialist.

Prolonged mobile phone usage

Keeping your phone volume loud can expose your ear to 100 decibels of noise. Limit phone calls to two minutes. Use the silent mode as much as possible.

Watching movies in theatres

You may think that fancy sound systems in theatres make your movie-going experience better! In reality, most movie theatres create 120 decibels of noise. You may not feel so while watching the movie; but you will feel the effects later.

Music concerts

If you have ever been to a rock concert, you will know what we mean. The noise levels at rock concerts can reach 150 decibels. “Your hearing can be damaged for up to two weeks,” says Dr Bannerjee.

Pubs/discotheques

Noise levels in these places can shoot up to 130 decibels. It could take anywhere between 20-30 minutes to feel a difference in your hearing. The damage is slow, but loud music can also cause the death of hair follicles.

Using earphones

“They can cause maximum damage to your ears. When your ears are closed because of earphones, you are encouraging the growth of bacteria,” says Dr.Vora. This can damage your hearing; starting slowly from the internal parts of your ear.

It is important that you take care to protect your hearing every day. “Wear earmuffs, especially if you are exposed to road repairs,” says Dr Bannerjee. Alternatively, you could use cotton in your ears to rest them periodically. That sure ‘sounds’ good…

Exercise ‘forestalls osteoporosis’

Physical activity can help forestall osteoporosis, according to Medical College of Georgia researchers. 

Declining estrogen levels have long been linked to osteoporosis, but bone density starts to decline years before these levels drop, according to Dr. Joseph Cannon, Kellet Chair in Allied Health Sciences and principal investigator of the National Institute of Aging-funded study. It's during that time that levels of follicle-stimulating hormone, released by the pituitary gland to help regulate ovarian function, actually increase.

Cannon theorizes that higher levels of FSH decrease bone mineral density by increasing cytokines, regulatory proteins produced by white blood cells. One cytokine in particular, interleukin-1, signals certain cells to transform into osteoclasts, which break down and resorb bone.

"We hypothesize that the higher levels of FSH decrease bone mineral density by influencing the production of cytokines," said Cannon, who presents his team's research at the American Physiological Society's Experimental Biology 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif. April 24-28.

After measuring FSH and bone mineral density in 36 women between the ages of 20 to 50, the researchers correlated higher FSH levels with lower bone mineral density.

When they incubated FSH with white blood cells isolated from the women, it stimulated production of interleukin-1. Moreover, higher circulating levels of IL-1 correlated with lower bone mineral density, if the levels of interleukin-1 inhibitory factors were taken into account.

Additionally, they found that study participants who exercised more than 180 minutes a week retained greater bone density.

"Our work provides more evidence that physical activity is important for maintaining bone density. It's a case of ’use it or lose it," Cannon said, citing his team’s findings that exercise seemed to promote inhibitory factors that help keep interleukin-1 and bone breakdown under control. 

Want to lose weight? Keep a journal

Motivation and keeping a journal of what you eat are key components for shedding excess weight, according to new research.Scientists at the University of Kentucky and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that the type of motivation for dieting and techniques to boost it when it dips could mean the difference between success and failure.

"Motivation has an impact on weight loss but the impact is really mediated by adherence to self-monitoring," said Kelly H. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. "If you are going to self-monitor your diet and exercise every day you are going to lose more weight.Webber, who along with her colleagues reported the findings in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, said the best way to self-monitor is to keep a journal of everything you eat and how much you exercise.

The researchers studied two types of motivation, autonomous and controlled, during a 16-week weight-loss program involving 66 overweight women. Autonomous motivation is driven by personal reasons, while controlled motivation is based more on pressure from others and feelings of guilt.They found that dieters who were self motivated and who kept a journal tended to be more successful.

"People who actually write down everything they eat and drink during the weight loss program are going to do better. And that is probably why commercial programs like Weight Watchers are very successful," said Webber.All of the dieters were given questionnaires and asked to describe their motivation. Their weight loss and motivation were measured every four weeks during the program. They also measured their own progress with a online self-monitoring program.

"The importance of motivation is that it gets you to self motivate, which is the behavior that matters in weight loss," Webber explained.Sustaining motivation was also essential because once it began to drop, usually between weeks four to eight, successful dieters who dropped 5 percent of their body weight were those who managed to keep the motivation going.Webber suggested that if motivation starts to fall after about four weeks it would be a good time to boost it with initiatives. "We think that contact with a counsellor is always helpful with motivation and contact with other people trying to lose weight," she said. "Seek support. I think we need support to keep continually motivated. Some people are successful on their own but most of us need support."

Your Diet In 2020

Just checked out with the grocery cart of the future? Here's your digital receipt scoring the nutrient richness of your trip. Heading home for dinner? Your smart fridge has scanned all the food in your kitchen, compiled a menu of the healthiest meal combinations (tailored to your food preferences and allergies, of course) and has started preheating your oven.

In 2020, all the things we've always been told to do--eat better, exercise, get some sleep, see your doctor--will not only be easier, we'll do them in spite of our best efforts not to. Making healthy choices will be done for us.

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Take nutrition. Imagine if today's nutrition labels--with their user-friendliness of tax forms and the informational consistency of a Madoff prospectus--were replaced by a universal icon that ranked all food with a brilliantly simple combination of a color and a 1-to-5 rating based on a database of nutritional information. Making a healthy choice becomes as simple as picking a color and the highest number rating you can find.

Video: 2020 Medicine

For the last several months my colleagues and I tagged along with strangers on their grocery trips and even invited ourselves to their family dinners, all in the name of understanding how Americans decide what to eat. What we learned is that people unwittingly develop basic principles or philosophies about what to eat, based on a buffet of often conflicting sources: morning shows, celebrity nutritionists, cereal boxes, a best friend and (at best) five minutes of conversation with their doctor. The result is an incomplete and often inaccurate understanding of nutrition that leads to unhealthy food choices and, ultimately, poor health.

When it comes to food, our research found that all 300 million Americans typically fit into just four distinct types of eaters: Convenient, Comfortable, Confused and Convinced. A person's "Food Personality" is based on how heavily influenced they are by a particular situation, and whether they have a defined or undefined approach to nutrition.

To help Americans eat better, we must create a universal nutrition information system that is both intuitive and easily adopted. This is no small task. The USDA, FDA, Food Standards Agency, supermarket chains and food producers have made attempts at standardizing and simplifying consumer choice, yet none have improved America's eating habits. Why? We found that no approach takes into account the entire user experience. Package labeling--the predominant focus of most systems--is only one consumer touch point.

In 2020 we'll be able to leverage interconnected devices that go beyond a fire hose of nutritional information. We'll be able to collect and aggregate food choices and their nutritional impact over time, ultimately driving behavioral change through integrated experiences. Digital interconnectivity will link together every food decision--imagine having an instantly updated nutritional rating that is omnipresent in your life. Purchase a salad for lunch, watch your rating go up. Eat those buffalo wings, watch it plunge.

A universal icon will be the core to realizing a universal understanding of nutrition. By creating one intuitive system, we can help everyone effortlessly identify and track the nutrient richness of what they eat. With this vision in mind, we have proposed an icon combining a number score and color value that is easy enough for even a 5-year-old to grasp.

In our future vision, a simple choice of a 3-value loaf of multigrain bread over a 2-value roll sparks the urge to reach a 4-value shopping trip. The icon is definitive enough to score every food combination from a single vegetable to a month of meals. It's flexible enough to help every Food Personality regardless of the decision before them: salad vs. fries, pretzels from brand X vs. brand Y, or spaghetti dinner vs. mac-n-cheese. And, ultimately it encourages consumers--and food manufacturers--to make decisions on the basis of health first.

The alternative is a technology-fueled, convenience-charged world of overmarketed, indulge-now-take-a-vitamin-pill-later foodlike products, each less healthy than the next.

But if we start today with a universal system for making food choices, by 2020 we'll have a world where nutritional value defines the competitive food marketplace. The tastiest benefit? We'll change the world whether the average consumer realizes it or not.

Dan Kraemer is a principal at IA Collaborative, a creative enterprise specializing in branding, graphic and interface design, product development and strategic research. His work focuses on connecting observed human behaviors with design innovation.

Treat Your Back Pain Now!

If we randomly choose any five persons, three of them would complain of a back ache. Thanks to the stressful lifestyle, long hours of work that makes us static for more almost 12 hours a day, lack of exercise and lack of rest. Back pain is one of the most frequent complaints. Back ache is a pain that can be felt anywhere along the spinal chord. It is an outcome of the malfunction and discomfort of the spinal chord as a whole and muscles, nerves and bone joints in particular. The back pain can be divided into neck pain, upper back, lower back, tail bone pain. The intensity of pain can vary from a dull, slight pain to an acute pain. Sometimes the pain is sharp and piercing.

The symptoms :

You can feel a constant discomfort and pain in the back. Taking rest and pain killer cream like Moove or pills do not make any difference.The pain may become worse with some activity. The pain can increase with prolonged sitting and or sleeping in any one position. If its a neck or upper back pain, pillows can increase the discomfort. A neck pain can make you feel giddy and sometimes pukish. You may find it difficult to bend or pick up heavy weights. An acute pain may cause difficulty in moving about. Depending on the intensity of the pain, back pain can be treated with long term treatments or short term treatments.

Short Term Treatments

Use of medicines, pain killers and other muscles relaxants can treat back pain at the initial stages. Non-sterodial anti inflammatory drugs are the most common medicines.A regular oil massage can relax your muscles and give you some relief. Ayurvedic oil massages are the best for treating back pains. Acupressure and pressure point massages are also effective. Long Term Therapies .If the pain is acute and short term home remedies are not effective, it is advisable to consult a doctor as soon as possible. Physiotherapies are one of the best treatments for back pain. A session of 10 days or even longer may give you a lot of relief.

Cold compression therapy is advocated for a chronic pain and is postulated to reduce pain and inflammation.

For extreme cases, doctors may also advice electrotherapy. Back pains can be worst enough to go under the knife. Patients with Lumbar Disc Herniation, Spinal Stenosis, Compression Fracture are all adviced to undergo a surgery. Regular Care .Back pains can not be cured 100 per cent. Long term treatments also loose its effect if regular care is not taken. Back pain patients should regularly take steps to avoid recurring of the pain. Regular exercise, enough rest, lowering down of the stress level and a balanced nutritious food is important.

The coolest food of the season

Is the heat making you listless and dull? Try a glass of cold limejuice with a bit of sugar, salt and a dash of cumin powder. Or grab a tumbler of buttermilk. If neither is accessible, stop over at a fruit stall and help yourself to tender coconut.

You'll be surprised how fast these quick-fix solutions work to recharge your energy-sapped system. Peddar Road-based jewellery designer Reshma Mehta has a favoured recipe to beat the heat: "Panna (a juice made from boiled or roasted raw mango pulp). I don't drink carbonated beverages - they make me feel bloated. I prefer my mother's recipe for raw mango juice - the pudina (mint), coriander leaves, cumin seed powder and dash of black salt make it very tasty and refreshing."

Pushpesh Pant, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and researcher of traditional Indian food, seconds that. "Traditional Indian cuisine," he says, "contains redhydrant and restorative supplements in preparations like chutneys and sherbets, as well as the vast variety of raitas that we have." The key summer advisory for food is to eat light and include ingredients that have cooling properties, he says.

Curd, cumin, khus, sandal, rose water, tamarind and anaardana (pomegranate seeds) are naturally cooling. Go heavy on homemade salads and squash vegetables like bottle gourd, snake gourd, pumpkins, which have high water content. If you don't like these vegetables, the good professor has interesting alternatives. "Go for soups like gazpacho and chooza chaat (chaat made with smoked chicken cuts), Mediterranean dips and Thai salads instead of heavy spicy food," he says.

Tofu, green Thai curries, hummus, moussaka and the Lebanese version of bhartha are very good alternatives to the hot Indian food we are used to. Cold cuts are fairly foreign to the Indian food habit, but Pant says cold cuts, tandoori or dum make great fillings for pita bread sandwiches and wraps."Steamed dhoklas and idlis, chaat items like dahi bhalla can be substituted for a main course," he says. And don't forget sol kadi, that divine coastal preparation from Maharashtra. The diluted-coconut-milk-and-kokum base soothes the digestive system.

Skin Care Tips For Summer

Body Care

Summer is the season when you have to take special care of your skin. You may be surprised that your summer skin, which looked radiant throughout winter, suddenly looks dull, blemished and oily. This is because, in winter your skin's natural oils solidifies, whereas in summer it flows freely. It's estimated that 90 percent of wrinkles cause due to sun exposure. The sun's long- and short-wave ultraviolet rays, or UVA and UVB, penetrate the deepest layers of skin, damaging the collagen -- the spongy protein that gives skin it's structure, firmness, and elasticity. Fair skin wrinkles more readily than dark skin because it contains less pigment, which acts as a natural sunscreen, blocking some of the sun's damaging UVA and B rays...Continue reading...

To prevent wrinkles caused due to sunrays stay out of the sun, especially between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., when it's almost directly overhead and UV radiation is strongest. Stay in the shade as much as possible. And wear protective clothing and plenty of sunscreen. Strive to apply sunscreen 15 to 30 minutes before stepping outside. Sunscreen should always be reapplied after contact with water or after sweating. Sunscreen also should be worn year round--every time you leave the house. Shop for sunscreen that blocks against UVB and UVA rays both believed to induce skin cancer.

Smooth on a moisturizer that contains sunscreen in proper concentration. Put it on before you leave the house and reapply every two hours. Wear proper sunglasses (see our article on sunglasses) and a hat with a broad brim.

Moisturisation is the most important part of daily skin care. Your skin needs more water than anything else and moisturisers are more needed in summer when you lose most of your body salts by sweating. Buy a water-based moisturizer and use it without fail. Make it a habit to wash your face gently with water a number of times in a day (try and use mineral water). You can splash as many as 20 times as long as you don't use very hot or cold water on your skin (which can cause fine vein to appear on your face). Steam your face regularly to open the pores and clean your face of the dirt (five minutes for dry skin and 10 minutes if it is oily). Pat dry with tissue and moisturize.

A few moisturisers you can make at home:

1. Take cucumber juice and watermelon juice in equal proportions and apply on face. You can cool it in the frig before use.

2. Rose water is also a good moisturiser and it can be sprayed on the face to tone and refresh it.

Feet Care

Just as you take care of your body you must not forget your feet and hands. Mostly people neglect their feet and hands and think that they don't have to take care of them or rather feel unnecessary to waste their time on them. Coz believe me there's nothing more off-putting than looking at cracked, dirty heels. So all you have to do is use plenty of water and voila… you will have wonderful and sexy feet and hands you will love to flaunt.

Soak your feet and hands in water for 15/20 minutes. Add a pinch of salt in it…..it is excellent to help you get rid of fatigue. It is advisable to change water from hot to cold. That is for 2 minutes soak your feet in cold water and then soak it in hot water. This is good because it improves your blood circulation. Do this for 15 minutes once a week.

Do not wear shoes and closed footwear in the summer. Wear strappy, low-heeled sandals or some fancy flats. Wear a footwear that will allow air circulation and which are comfortable.

The most important tip: drink lots and lots of water. Drink at least 15 glasses of water.