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| HEALTH TRIBUNE | Wednesday, September 17, 2003, Chandigarh, India |
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Coffee
increases stamina and aids weight loss Happy
marriage makes women healthy AYURVEDA & YOU LETTERS |
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Menopausal
zone: get ready to face the hardships Come menopause and you are exposed to a host of physical and emotional problems. Heart disease and bone loss are great bugbears for such women. If you are aware of the perils that may beset with the onset of the decade starting at 40 years of age, you can prevent these problems. But you have to be under the care of your gynaecologist. Cardiovascular diseases account for about one of every two women's deaths. By becoming aware of the risks involved and making small lifestyle changes, heart attacks, stroke and other such diseases can be prevented to a great extent. Many women don't care about themselves until their health is in jeopardy. While men have more heart attacks than women, the latter are less likely to survive a heart attack. Prior to menopause, women are protected from heart disease probably, in part, by their body's natural production of the hormone estrogen. (Premenopausal women who have diabetes are not protected by estrogen.) Estrogen is thought to keep a woman's arteries free from the build-up of fatty substances, cholesterol, and cellular waste by improving the ratio of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) and HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. Obesity and lack of exercise compromise the function of the major heart arteries, and are particularly threatening to women. Stress may exacerbate heart disease symptoms. While the replacement of female hormones at the appropriate time and under medical supervision may be considered by your gynaecologist, a healthy lifestyle involving eating proper food and in moderation, regular exercises, avoidance of smoking and other intoxicants and controlling your body weight is important to prevent heart disease. If you are physically inactive, or have medical problems, it is especially important to discuss exercise with your gynaecologist first. Start slowly, walking 10 to 15 minutes at a time, three times a week, may be a good beginning. If you have limitations in the kind of exercise you can perform due to heart disease, get a referral to a physical therapist, and consider water exercise and lifting small weights. Weight-bearing exercise may be the most important one for preventing osteoporosis because it creates high pressure on the bone, which helps to build and maintain its strength. This includes brisk walking, dancing, racket sports and aerobics. Muscle strengthening exercise may also be beneficial, particularly for the large muscles of the shoulder, pelvis, hips, back and trunk. If you have been told that you need to lower your heart disease risk, you will do well to become a legume-lover. Legumes are a type of food including peas, lentils and beans. Eating them four times a week or more lowers the risk of coronary heart disease by 22 per cent. A legume-rich diet is also protective against high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Legumes are rich in fibre, low in fat and very easy on the budget. Similarly, compounds called flavonoids, found in black and green tea and in certain foods like onions, may help prevent any damage to cardiovascular tissues. Studies have shown that people who consume more flavonoids have a lower risk of coronary heart disease. A recent study suggests that the protective effect of tea is stronger in women than in men. To prevent osteoporosis, increase the amount of calcium and vitamin D in your diet. Adding calcium to your diet may be the easiest health-related change you can make. It's an important one, too. Calcium may reduce fractures caused by osteoporosis by as much as 50 per cent. Good sources of calcium include low-fat dairy products such as milk, yoghurt, cheese and ice-cream, dark green leafy vegetables, fruits like dried figs or apricots, fish like whitebait, tuna, sardines and salmon with bones. Don't avoid dairy products. To supplement your diet, you may wish to take calcium tablets. Vitamin D is found in plenty in fortified milk and cereals as well as in vitamin supplements. The writer, a senior gynaecologist
and menopause consultant, is the author of "Guide to Better
Health after Menopause".
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Coffee increases stamina and aids weight loss SYDNEY: Hold on coffee lovers, myths about coffee are brewing faster than your average espresso. A recent Australian study found coffee could increase stamina and aid weight loss. While coffee may not cause high blood pressure or increase cancer risk, it is not a fat-free, weight-loss supplement. After brewing, espresso coffee contains 2.5 per cent fat. Filtered coffee contains 0.6 per cent. But Dietitians Association of Australia spokesman Trent Watson said weight loss would be minimal. "Coffee increases fat oxidation, so it burns fat as a fuel for the body instead of burning carbohydrates," he said. "But for an average coffee drinker, it would make only a small difference." Watson said weight loss could be attributed to coffee's ability to make you feel full, says a report in The Herald Sun. Coffee increases alertness by acting as a stimulant, and boosts information processing by up to 10 per cent. Thousands of research projects have been carried out searching for a link between coffee and cancer, and none has been found. "Caffeine is actually on a list of banned drugs for the Olympics," he said. Because coffee burns fat, it keeps carbohydrates in reserve, which helps improve performance over a long period." Athletes with more than 12
micrograms of caffeine in their urine are disqualified. As a stimulant,
coffee generally contributed to sleep deprivation. "Sleep
deprivation can increase stress hormones, which can lead to chronic
diseases, such as heart disease," said Watson. ANI
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Happy marriage makes women healthy WASHINGTON: Marital bliss makes a woman healthy, finds a new study. The research, published in the current issue of Health Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association (APA), has revealed that women who are in satisfying marriages have a health advantage over those who are single or tied down in unsatisfying relationship. For the study, the researchers involved 493 middle-aged women (42-50) over a 13-year period. The findings revealed that women in good marriages were less likely to develop risk factors that lead to cardiovascular diseases compared with other middle-aged women. The researchers said that the results
indicated that women in marriages characterised by high levels of
satisfaction showed a health advantage when compared with participants
in marriages characterised by low levels of satisfaction and with
unmarried participants (single, widowed or divorced). ANI
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AYURVEDA
& YOU The history of dieting can be traced back to ancient times. Many of the earliest ayurvedic texts refer to certain reducing regimes which include fasting and dieting. With the passage of time, these therapies assumed varied manifestations as fasting more or less got religious connotations and dieting fell to distorted interpretations. Currently, when the knowledge of the science of diet and nutrition is making rapid advances, both of these regimes are unfortunately becoming the most incorrectly applied therapies. As the lure of getting slim and trim finds more and more recruits, physicians across the world are worried over the side-effects of self-induced or misconceived dietary concepts. This phenomenon is fast catching up with urban India and one can easily find persons, mostly females, going through various types of dieting regimes. These include stopping the intake of anything sweet in taste and shunning milk and milk products. Invariably, dieting turns into fads and beliefs to include dangerous concepts like crash dieting. This can lead to the draining out of essential nutrients from the body in alarming proportions. Wrong dieting not only adversely affects the total human physiology but can also lead to serious and life-long health problems. These complications are further enhanced when person eager to shed extra fat start taking unregulated drugs whose safety has not been adequately established by laboratory trials. In advanced countries, too, there are campaigns to seek a ban on the unsafe weight-reducing medicines and other similar appetite suppressing aids. Of the vast side-effects of dieting, dizziness, lethargy and general weakness are perhaps the most common and earliest symptoms arising due to the nutritional deficiency. As stomach secretes acid and prepares to accept food at fixed times, the sudden but frequent skipping of meals leads to acidity and causes inflammation of the stomach. When food intake decreases, the subsequent decline in the intestinal functioning results in many nutritional and allied problems. In case the state of ill-executed nutritional deprivation continues for longer period, its most serious fallout is metabolic and hormonal irregularities in men and women. Calcium deficiency, osteoporosis and joint pains and menstrual disturbances occur in women of menopausal age, but nowadays these problems are also faced by girls undergoing dieting. If the dieting can lead to such worst problems like dark circles under eyes, dry skin analmia, palpitation, squeezed faces and sagging bodies coupled with numerous other side-effects, one wonders what harm a little extra fat does to the body. The age-old ayurvedic concept of "parakriti" or the mind-body constitution of a person gives a clearer idea of dieting. Why do Vata" dominated persons not put on weight even if they are over-fed or given a fatty diet? Why do "kapha" personalities not shed weight while on a diet? Or why do they regain weight when the regime is over? These to be properly understood. An important point which, in the glare of dieting, seems to be getting lost is regular exercise. How much exercise one needs and what diet and lifestyle should be recommended for a person should be explained according to the individual need and the particular body constitution. Dieting is a serious business. Self-dieting or wrong dieting and choosing unproven and unsafe weight-reducing medicines can play havoc with ones body. From thin to getting pencil thin, the craze for shedding weight is getting new but utterly deviated meanings. It is the time we adopted a realistic and more cautious approach towards. Who needs dieting and who doesnt need it should be better left to be decided by a physician only. The writer is a Ludhiana-based
senior ayurvedic consultant.
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LETTERS I read with interest Dr J.G. Jolly's article, "Blood banks in India: an alarming scenario" (The Tribune, September 3). He has correctly highlighted the serious deficiencies in the existing system of blood banking in the country. But the picture is not as bleak as it is made out to be. In fact, blood banks in India, today stand at a much better plane than they were five to seven years ago. Let me explain. Till January 1996, professional blood banks were run commercially throughout India dealing with blood as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. Various malpractices like transfusing infected blood or diluting one unit of blood with distilled water to make into two prevailed. The harmful effects on the recipient patient were ignored only to earn a few more rupees. But this never happened in Chandigarh. You may ask why? The Post-Graduate Institute for Medical Education and Research (PGI for short) had been set up in Chandigarh in the early sixties. Its Blood Transfusion Department was headed by Dr J.G. Jolly. Realising the significance of (as he very lucidly brings out in his article) the voluntary blood movement (now better known as the "Safe Blood Movement"), Dr Jolly was responsible for organising a few social workers to motivate people to donate blood voluntarily and without remuneration. The Blood Bank Society, PGI, Chandigarh, was born in 1964. In the last four decades the BBS, Chandigarh, has become synonymous with the voluntary blood donation movement. Hats off to Dr Jolly. The matter does not end here. The BBS, by its tireless voluntary efforts, not only insured that procedures were not abandoned at the PGI or accident victims did not die for lack of blood, but also carried on a relentless fight against the evils of the professional system of blood banking. There was, undoubtedly, the shortage of blood everywhere, and much needs to be done to ensure the availability of safe blood. Here a vital role has to be played by NGOs like the BBS. It should be made mandatory for every blood bank to have an NGO attached to it (as has been the practice at the PGI for nearly 40 years). The spirit of social service of such voluntary workers will not only help motivate donors but will also keep blood banks especially in the private sector under check and prevent any deviation from good manufacturing practices. NGO approached the Supreme Court for directions, which led to the delivery of a historic judgement. It has to be left to such voluntary bodies to take the safe blood movement further. MANMOHAN LAL SARIN, Chandigarh II I marvel at the extraordinary work that the Blood Bank Society has been doing. Using every psychological trick in the book, it has managed to bring within the movement hundreds and thousands of individuals. Innovative schemes like blood insurance where immediate family members of voluntary donors would receive blood for free in case of a need for a period of one year have also helped to ensure that any one who is on the society's list of donors would rarely move out. The volunteers of the Blood Bank Society were always thee to greet you with a smile. They would fuss over you and ensure that you have had a good meal before you came in you would get a motherly scolding if you admitted to not having had your breakfast or lunch. They would make sure that you went away, got a bite and then came back to do your good deed for the day. I remember that on one occasion I had to actually fight a bit to get them to allow me to donate blood. I was going away for a while and was not going to be in the country on the day that my next donation became due, a week later. I had a tough time convincing them that if I did not donate blood right away, I would not be able to fulfil my promise to myself of donating blood four times a year. And then there are the wonderful doctors of the Blood Bank. Believe me, when I tell you that nothing scares me more than the sight of that long needle and the awful moments of anxiety just before it is inserted in your vein. I guess I am a big sissy. But I have to request the doctor to be as gentle as possible, and to avoid letting me see the needle. But to their credit, I have never been laughed at, nor have I felt the slightest bit of pain or discomfort. Over the years, I have always found the doctors at the Blood Bank, PGI, to be most caring, unhurried and considerate. They may have a huge line of people waiting to give blood. They may have to skip meal once in a while on a busy day. But the smile on their faces is never missing. I agree with Dr Jolly that this is one successful experiment that needs to be replicated all over the country, to ensure that the partnership between the PGI and the BBS can be demonstrated as an example to everyone, everywhere. The voluntary blood donation movement surely requires more people to come forward to help the needy across the country. Dr Jolly has correctly stressed the need for non-commercial, non-governmental organisations to be encouraged to ensure that the primary forces behind the movement remains the desire to serve the public and not commercial interests. HARPREET SINGH GIANI,
Chandigarh
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