health tips

Three reasons why you should eat kiwi fruit

Other than its exotic taste, kiwi fruit contains numerous phytonutrients and well known vitamins and minerals that promote health.

Here are a few reasons why you should eat kiwi:

1. Aids digestion: A great source of fibre, kiwi prevents constipation and other intestinal problems. It also offers soluble fiber, providing bulk that promotes the feeling of fullness – a natural diet aid.

2. Reduces cardiovascular risk: Eating kiwi every day may help lower risk of blood clots and reduce the amount of fats (triglycerides) in the blood, thus promoting cardiovascular health. It is an excellent source of vitamin C, and polyphenols, and a good source of potassium, all of which may function individually or in concert to protect the blood vessels and heart. High level of potassium helps keep electrolytes in balance by counteracting the effects of sodium, thus helping manage blood pressure.

3. Good for asthma and diabetes sufferers: The high content of vitamin C confers significant protective effect against respiratory symptoms associated with asthma such as wheezing. Kiwifruit, as a very good source of dietary fiber is good for keeping the blood sugar levels of diabetic patients under control.

Source: Zee news

Pre-Natal Care Goes Mobile in Uganda

Kampala — In Uganda, three students have invented a smartphone application that can measure the heartbeat of a fetus. The device could improve prenatal care in rural clinics, and may even help prevent deaths during childbirth.

Joshua Okello’s first love was medicine. He studied to be a doctor before quitting to pursue his second love: technology. However, his interest in medicine never left him. Last year, Okello and two other students at Kampala’s Makerere University invented a smartphone application that they think could change the face of maternal health care in Africa.

The app is called a WinSenga – “senga” is the local term for an aunt who helps out during pregnancy. It consists of a tiny microphone in a plastic horn, based on the Pinard horn used by midwives for centuries.

“It’s a long cone-shaped device with a hole through it and a flat top. The midwife places it on the belly and listens in. Every midwife in this country has seen it, and that is what they are trained with,” said Okello.

The sound the horn picks up is fed into a smartphone that records and analyzes the fetal heartbeat. From there, said Okello, the WinSenga suggests different courses of action.

“Say you have a baby and we detect that the heartbeat is less than 120 beats per minute. That is a problem. So immediately, we pop up something that says ‘Please, we suggest that you could do A, B, C, D,'” explained Okello.

The device is not yet fully functional, but last year Okello and his partners won a $50,000 grant from Microsoft – the “Win” in WinSenga is short for Windows. They are now developing their app from a Microsoft-funded technology incubator at the university, set up to encourage Uganda’s nascent tech sector.

Having a mobile device could make it easier for health care workers to reach women in remote villages, said Okello. The final result should also be cheaper than the machines currently in use.

“We are getting a solution that’s cheaper, which means that more clinics are going to get it. If we could get Huawei or I don’t know who to give us phones for free, we are looking at a solution that’s less than $100,” said Okello.

Juliet Birungi, an obstetrician who has tried the WinSenga, says she sees another use for it. In understaffed hospitals like the one she works in, she says, the WinSenga could be even more helpful if it is attached to a mother’s belly during labor and delivery, monitoring the state of the baby.

“You have so many mothers in labor, and we do not have enough staff. You find that while the mother is laboring here, the other one is delivering, the other one is bleeding. So when you come, you are able to look at the recording,” said Birungi.

An abnormal fetal heart rate can be a warning sign of labor complications, and could mean the difference between life and death, says Birungi. Uganda’s maternal mortality rate is so high, she adds, that a machine can only do so much.

“Just like all devices, they do not replace the need for a human being who is skilled. The need is still there, and it’s real and it has to be worked upon. But this device would make their work easier, and the outcome would be much better,” said Birungi.

The app could easily be adapted to other developing countries with similar problems, thinks Okello. With a little tweaking, he adds, it could even be used at home by pregnant women in developed countries.

For the moment, however, he and his team are busy preparing for a clinical trial in January, when WinSenga will finally be put to the test.

Source: All africa

1500 medical tourists seek treatment in Dubai every day

MedTRSMDXB111

Emirates Airlines is said to fly in 1,500 medical tourists daily to Dubai airport before they take onward flights to destinations such as India, Thailand, Malaysia or Singapore. If Dubai can tap a share of such travellers, it has scope to be a destination for medical tourism, for which strategic initiatives have already been launched.

Emirates is easily the most impressive success story about Dubai; if there is anything more successful, it is perhaps Dubai itself. Or the equation could be one of symbiosis, where one contributes or even leads to the betterment of the other in a continuous process.

So, the role played by Emirates in making Dubai what it is today needs no further explanation. But an interesting part is that the airline has acted as a change agent in innumerable other ways and in other parts of the world. It has helped the world discover hitherto unknown destinations and also connect travellers from around the world to Dubai, either through direct connections or by virtue of the emirate’s hub status.

In its inevitable march towards becoming the world’s biggest airline by 2020, a landmark in the evolution of Dubai on account of the Expo, Emirates has most effectively utilised the emirate’s geographical advantage, which brings over a third of the world’s population within four hours’ flight and two-thirds within an eight-hour flight.

Emirates already operates over 3,200 flights per week to over 135 destinations in more than 75 countries and hopes to fly 70 million passengers in the year of the Expo, pressing into service more than 250 wide-body aircraft.

Emirates is already a major catalyst of globalisation in many ways. A top Indian healthcare industry official pointed out the other day that Emirates’ flights alone bring 100 medical tourists daily to the group’s hospitals in four metropolises.

A major one was announced last year to unify all related procedures in Dubai in collaboration with Dubai Health Authority, Dubai Healthcare City, General Directorate for Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) and Department of Tourism and Commercial Marketing (DTCM), among others. The Authority seeks to identify gaps in services, building capacity and raise the level of investments in the sector, including participation by the private sector.

The introduction of a three-month medical tourist visa was another important step. The visa, extendable twice, up to nine consecutive months, could be a major incentive for foreign patients to seek treatment in Dubai and other emirates. Similarly, the introduction of short-stay visas for specialist doctors for even a day has made it easier for hospitals to bring experts for consultations and special procedures.

The Dubai Health Strategy 2013-25 incorporates a masterplan aligned with the Dubai Strategic Plan 2015 to provide residents as well as visitors access to internationally recognised levels of healthcare and transform the emirate into a medical tourism hub

The head of Dubai Health Authority (DHA) believes that by the end of the decade the number of medical tourists receiving treatment here will be in the millions annually. It estimates that their numbers to increase 10-15 per cent each year. About 15 per cent of patients in Dubai Healthcare City are already medical tourists. The City is planning to create new specialist centres to enhance the city’s appeal, while DHA has announced plans to build additional hospitals and clinics to strengthen healthcare delivery.

Dubai’s medical tourism plans are now expected to be calibrated with the Dubai Expo 2020 infrastructure development, which will further help position it as a medical tourism destination of some standing.

Source: global travel industry news

How to use meditation for pain relief?

With its origins in ancient religious and spiritual traditions, meditation is a widely used mind-body practice used even today, to complement medical procedures and treatments.

Although, used mostly for relaxation and stress reduction, meditation-based therapy is increasingly offered in medical centers and clinics today to manage pain and reduce anxiety prior to surgeries. Surprised? Recent studies have shown that frequent practice of meditation can lead to significant control of pain. Read on to know how meditation alters your pain perception and quells pain even better than some of the most powerful drugs.

Meditation and common forms
The term meditation refers to a set of techniques wherein a person minimizes the activity of the mind without altering the level of alertness. Broadly, the technique has been categorized under five basic categories:

Mantra meditation
This comprises the Transcendental Meditation techniques, Clinically Standardized Meditation and Relaxation Response. In this process, by repeatedly using a sound or phrase, a person focuses to achieve a state of perfect consciousness.

Mindfulness meditation
This form of meditation involves focusing on what you experience while performing the technique like the very flow of your breath.

Yoga
Here, a person attempts to achieve a state of calmness by combining bodily postures with controlled breathing.

Tai-Chi – A form of Chinese martial arts, the technique is performed using self-paced series of movements in a slow-graceful manner along with deep breathing.

Qi gong – This involves a combination of meditation, breathing exercise, relaxation and physical movements.

Meditation and pain management: In the past, meditation has been explored extensively for its effects on stress reduction and other similar clinical functions. However, researchers have now identified another significant health benefit of the technique that suggests that it is actually possible to overcome debilitating pain with the help of meditation. What’s more, some of these studies have also suggested that the pain-relieving effects of meditation might be even more effective than morphine.

Back in April, 2011, a study by the researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center indicated that a person can attain at least 40 per ent decrease in pain intensity and 57 per cent in pain unpleasantness merely by practicing these techniques regularly. This decrease in pain was found to be much higher than with morphine or other pain-relieving drugs. With the help of magnetic resonance imaging, the brain activity of study participants after meditation demonstrated how the technique increased the activity of certain areas which are responsible for pain perception.

Despite such findings, scientists were unable to ascertain the actual mechanism of this phenomenon until now. According to a recent research published at the Brain Research Bulletin, investigators from Harvard, MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have identified a possible answer. They suggested that the explanation probably lies in alpha waves manipulation in the brain.

Furthermore, they explained that by practicing the techniques of mindfulness meditation for a period of eight-weeks or above, you will be able to control the activity of these brain waves.

Source; Times of India

Older men who ignore knee pain risk worse problems

Shrugging off chronic knee pain as an inevitable part of aging puts men in their 70s at risk for accelerated muscle loss, falls and generally reduced quality of life, a new study suggests.

“This study confirms the findings of many studies indicating that chronic knee pain will seriously impact quality of life in older people,” lead author Marlene Franzen said.

Franzen is an associate professor of physiotherapy at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Nearly half of men over 70 have chronic knee pain, according to her team’s report in the journal in Age and Ageing.

“Chronic knee pain is not a ‘benign’ disease,” she told Reuters Health. “It does lead to a greatly increased risk of falls and developing mobility disability, and therefore increased risk of early mortality.”

Mobility disability means being unable to walk up or down stairs to the first floor without help and being unable to walk about half a mile without help, according to Franzen.

She and her coauthors tracked 1,587 men over age 70 for two years. About 640 of the men said they suffered from chronic knee pain at the start of the study. Two years later, another 150 reported experiencing bouts of chronic knee pain as well.

The researchers found that men with knee pain were nearly two and a half times more likely to have mobility disability than those without pain.

“Mobility disability among older people with chronic knee pain is serious as it has been associated with early mortality,” Franzen said.

The men with knee pain were also more likely to experience falls, which can be serious for people over 70, and to have reduced strength and mass in the muscles, tendons and ligaments that extend the knee, according to diagnostic scans.

The link between decreased leg muscle strength and chronic knee pain had only previously been established for women, Franzen said.

While some loss of muscle mass – about 1 percent a year – is typical with aging, Franzen’s team also measured changes in the strength of leg muscles that control the knee.

Past research has found the strength of those muscles drops by about 3.4 percent a year, and that was the rate Franzen’s group saw among men without knee pain. But for men who developed knee pain during the two-year study, muscle strength dropped by 4.5 percent a year.

“I think the evidence from this study and previous research would suggest that knee pain in older adults is associated with increased mobility problems, and this may be at least partly related to muscle strength declines,” David Scott said.

Scott studies the gradual loss of muscle mass that usually begins after age 30 at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, but was not involved in the new study.

“This might indicate that methods to improve lower-limb muscle strength in older adults, such as supervised exercise training, may have potential benefits both in decreasing the disability associated with knee pain, and also in preventing development of pain itself,” he said.

In the new study, obesity, back pain and higher levels of physical activity were more common in the group of men with knee pain. Men in their 80s, however, were less likely to have knee pain, which the authors attributed to their probably being more sedentary.

Knee pain usually becomes troublesome many years earlier than age 70, when people often have more physically demanding lifestyles or occupations, often in their 50s, Franzen said. Knee pain with age is even more common among women, she said.

For the obese, losing weight can help alleviate some knee pain, she said.

Otherwise, patients should see their doctors for an effective and safe pain management strategy, and a physiotherapist for a recommended physical activity program, Franzen said.

Source: News dump

New tech may boost success rate of IVF

 

Scientists have developed a safe, accurate and low-cost method to select genetically normal embryos for the IVF procedure, increasing a couple’s chance of producing a healthy child.

Through whole-genome sequencing of individual egg cells, the new method detects chromosomal abnormalities and DNA sequence variations associated with genetic disorders.

“Theoretically, if this works perfectly, we will be able to double the success rate of test-tube baby technology from 30 per cent to 60 per cent or even more,” said study author Dr Jie Qiao, Chief Physician and head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing.

The in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedure involves joining a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm in a laboratory dish and then transferring embryos into the woman’s womb.

Various procedures are currently available to detect genetic defects in embryos prior to implantation, but these approaches are often invasive, requiring the removal of cells from the growing embryo, and do not simultaneously detect both chromosomal abnormalities and DNA sequence variations associated with genetic disorders.

Researchers have recently developed whole-genome sequencing methods to simultaneously detect both types of defects in single human sperm cells, but until now, an analogous approach had not been applied to egg cells, even though chromosomal abnormalities are much more common in egg cells than in sperm cells.

In the new study, Dr Sunney Xie of Peking and Harvard universities teamed up with Qiao and Dr Fuchou Tang of Peking University to develop a method for sequencing the entire genomes of polar bodies – cells that arise as a byproduct of egg cell division and often die later on.

Because polar bodies are dispensable for human embryonic development, they can be safely removed without harming the embryo.

“We are now starting a clinical trial based on this approach. If the clinical trial works, this technique could enormously increase the success rate of IVF, especially for older women or women who have had recurrent miscarriages,” Xie said.

The study was published in the journal Cell.

Source: Times of India

For pre-diabetics, just 2,000 steps a day reduces the risk

People who are already on the way to developing diabetes could significantly reduce their risk of having a heart attack or stroke by walking for just an extra 20 minutes a day for a year, scientists said on Friday.

A large international study of people with a condition called impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) – a precursor to diabetes – found that taking an extra 2,000 steps a day over one year cut the risk of serious heart illness by 8 percent.

IGT affects around 344 million people worldwide, or almost 8 percent of adults, and this number is projected to rise to 472 million by 2030 as populations grow and age and unhealthy diets contribute to increasing rates of diabetes.

“People with IGT have a greatly increased risk of cardiovascular disease,” said Thomas Yates of Britain’s University of Leicester, who led the research.

“While several studies have suggested that physical activity is beneficially linked to health in those with IGT, this is the first study to specifically quantify the extent to which change in walking behavior can modify the risk of heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular-related deaths.”

Yates’ team took data from a trial covering more than 9,300 adults in 40 countries who had IGT and heart disease or at least one cardiovascular risk factor.

All the participants were given a lifestyle change programme aimed at helping them lose weight and cut fat intake while increasing physical activity to 150 minutes a week. Using a pedometer, researchers recorded usual walking activity over a week both at the start of the study and again 12 months later.

After adjusting for a wide range of confounding factors including body mass index, smoking, diet and use of medication, the researchers used statistical modeling to test the relationship between the number of steps taken a day and the risk of subsequent heart disease.

They found that for every 2,000 additional steps a day the start of the study there was a 10 percent reduction in risk of heart disease.

On top of this, the risk of heart disease and so-called cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes was further reduced by 8 percent for every extra 2,000 steps a day between the start of the study and 12 months later.

“These findings provide the strongest evidence yet for the importance of physical activity in high risk populations and will inform diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention programmes worldwide,” said Yates.

“Changing physical activity levels through simply increasing the number of steps taken can substantially reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease,” he added, noting that the benefits of extra walking showed up regardless of a person’s bodyweight or the level of activity they started at.

Source: reuters

New gene linked to cleft lip and palate syndrome identified

An international team of researchers has identified a new gene related to the Van der Woude syndrome, the most common syndrome with cleft lip and palate.

The study by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden can lead the way to improved genetic diagnostic of individuals and families with orofacial clefts.

Cleft lip and palate is one of the most common birth defects and can be found in the form of cleft lip or cleft palate alone; or cleft lip and palate together.

Now, through an international collaboration between researchers from Sweden, USA, Finland and Israel, a second gene related to VWS has been found.

The researchers started by doing a so called genetic linkage study of a large family from Finland. The family had been diagnosed with VWS, albeit no IRF6 mutations had been found.

By comparing the DNA of affected individuals with DNA from healthy family members, the researchers identified another gene, called Grainy-head like 3 (GRHL3), which was mutated only in the affected family members.

The same gene was found to be altered in 7 additional families with VWS where no IRF6 mutations had been found previously

“The discovery of a new gene, GRHL3, responsible for the most common of the syndromic forms of cleft lip and palate means that researcher or clinicians with collections of families or isolated cases with cleft lip and palate, syndromic or non-syndromic, now will be able to look for mutations in this gene,” lead researcher Myriam Peyrard-Janvid said

“As it has been shown for IRF6, one or several polymorphisms in GRHL3 might be found to be associated with increased risk of clefts in non-syndromic cases,” Peyrard-Janvid added

The study is published in the American Journal of Human.

Source: DNA India

Small Changes to Combo Meals can Help Cut Calorie Consumption

What would happen if a fast-food restaurant reduces the calories in a children’s meal by 104 calories, mainly by decreasing the portion size of French fries? Would children compensate by choosing a more calorie dense entrée or beverage? Researchers at Cornell University, Dr. Brian Wansink and Dr. Andrew Hanks, analyzed transaction data from 30 representative McDonald’s restaurants to answer that question.

Prior to 2012, the Happy Meal® was served with one of three entrée options (chicken nuggets, cheeseburger, hamburger), a side item (apples or small size French fry), and a beverage (fountain beverage, white milk, chocolate milk, apple juice). By April 2012, all restaurants in this chain served a smaller size “kid fry” and a packet of apples with each CMB. Wansink and Hanks found that this change in default side offerings resulted 98 of the 104-calorie decrease in the CMB.

With such a large decrease in calories, would children compensate by choosing a more calorie dense entrée or beverage? Wansink and Hanks found that 99% of children ordered the same entrée, and orders of chicken nuggets (the lowest calorie entrée) remained flat at nearly 62% of all orders. Yet, nearly 11% fewer children took caloric soda as a beverage and 22% more chose white or chocolate milk–a more satiating beverage. This increase was partially due to small changes in advertising for milk. Interestingly, the chocolate milk served in 2012 was of the fat-free variety compared to the 1% milk variety served previously. It also contained 40 fewer calories. Overall, the substitutions in beverage purchases resulted in 6 fewer calories served with the average CMB.

Small changes in the automatic—or default—foods offered or promoted in children’s meals can reduce calorie intake and improve the overall nutrition from selected foods as long as there is still an indulgence. Importantly, balancing a meal with smaller portions of favored foods might avoid reactance and overeating. Just as managers have done this in restaurants, parents can do this at home.

Source: Food psychology

Ancient hand bone dates origins of human dexterity

The discovery of an ancient bone at a burial site in Kenya puts the origin of human hand dexterity more than half a million years earlier than previously thought.

In all ways, the bone – a well-preserved metacarpal that connects to the middle finger – resembles that of modern man, PNAS journal reports.

It is the earliest fossilised evidence of when humans developed a strong enough grip to start using tools.

Apes lack the same anatomical features.

The 1.42 million-year-old metacarpal from an ancient hominin displays a styloid process, a distinctively human morphological feature associated with enhanced hand function.

Its discovery provides evidence for the evolution of the modern human hand more than 600,000 years earlier than previously documented and probably in the times of the genus Homo erectussensu lato.

The styloid process helps the hand bone lock into the wrist bones, allowing for greater amounts of pressure to be applied to the wrist and hand from a grasping thumb and fingers.

bones
The styloid process can be clearly seen in the Kaitio bone
Prof Carol Ward and her colleagues note that a lack of the styloid process created challenges for apes and earlier humans when they attempted to make and use tools.

This lack of a styloid process may have increased the chances of having arthritis earlier.

Prof Ward, professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the University of Missouri, Columbia, said: “The styloid process reflects an increased dexterity that allowed early human species to use powerful yet precise grips when manipulating objects.

“This was something that their predecessors couldn’t do as well due to the lack of this styloid process and its associated anatomy.

“With this discovery, we are closing the gap on the evolutionary history of the human hand. This may not be the first appearance of the modern human hand, but we believe that it is close to the origin, given that we do not see this anatomy in any human fossils older than 1.8 million years.

“Our specialised, dexterous hands have been with us for most of the evolutionary history of our genus, Homo. They are – and have been for almost 1.5 million years – fundamental to our survival,” she said.

The bone was found at the Kaitio site in West Turkana, near an area where the earliest Acheulian tools have appeared. Acheulian tools are ancient, shaped stone tools that include stone hand axes more than 1.6 million years old.