Friendship is beautiful

After finding out his best friend has cancer, first grader, Vincent Butterfield, shaved his head and raised money to help support the expensive treatments.

A healthy heart

On the occasion of World Heart Day, here are 10 ways to keep your heart healthy listed @ TOI.

1. Avoid smoking
2. Cut down on salt
3. Watch your diet
4. Monitor your alcohol
5. Get active
6. Monitor your BP, blood sugar and cholesterol levels
7. Manage your waist
8. Manage your stress level
9. Check your family history
10. Laughter is the best therapy

Tips courtesy: Dr Kushagra Katariya

Vanity Waist Sizing

Next time you go to buy a pair of jeans or skirt, don't feel happy that you have reduced your waist size if you fit into something less than your actual size. Disguised as a perfect fit, brands are trying to lure your buy based on your appeal to lose weight and slim down.

According to Esquire Magazine, many retailers are lying to consumers about waist sizes in order to make them feel thinner and more likely to buy their clothes. The worst offenders? A pair of Old Navy pants labeled as size 36 were in fact 41 inches, a pair of size 36 Dockers were actually 39.5 inches, and Haggar and Gap were both selling 39 inch pants as size 36. CBS Sunday Morning featured a story today about the trend towards "vanity waist sizing."


Courtesy: Carpe Diem.

Large waist???

Get back in shape or your heart might have a problem. Read this...

People with a larger waistline and high triglyceride levels are at increased risk of coronary heart disease, according to a new research.

"Among individuals classified at low coronary heart disease risk based on the absence of traditional risk factors, the presence of the hyper-triglyceridemic waist is predictive of a substantially increased risk of coronary heart disease," said Drs. Benoit Arsenault and Jean-Pierre Despres, Laval University, Quebec City.

A point to be noted is that men and women with increased waist circumference (even without higher triglyceride levels) and increased triglyceride levels (even without higher waist circumference) show high risk of CAD.

However, both factors combined showed the highest risk of CAD.

The study is published in Canadian Medical Association Journal.


You got to Go Lite!

Fitness trends

Most of my friends are hitting the gym to get back in shape while some, including yours truly, hardly get time to do so. The reason is they don't want to look the way they are on the D-day. Now this may seem normal but DNA reports something different.

As they prepare to tie the knot, they are even ready to go under the knife in search of that 'perfect look' for their wedding day.An increasing number of would be brides and bridegrooms are queuing up before cosmetic surgeons ahead of their 'D-Day', with some asking for a perfect nose while others seeking fat reduction. While people seeking liposuction, nose jobs or breast implants are a regular feature at cosmetic clinics, their number often goes up ahead of the wedding season, surgeons say.

This gets funnier... Another interesting trend we have observed lately is that besides the would-be brides and bridegrooms, their close relatives also come seeking treatments.

Whether or not going under the knife healthy is doubtful but I think you should look at yoga, walking, dieting and other ways of regular stuff to get back in shape. Thanks to Divya, Tulasi who are experts in dieting and fitness and in pushing me, I am getting back in shape too. Since Divya turned a fitness freak, she lost like 12 kgs in five months and is into salsa, kick boxing, yoga, painting and what not! Tulasi is on Dinaz's team that broke the Asian record conducting aerobics classes for 20 hours continuously and is attempting to break the world record by doing it for 26 hours in Hyderabad on January 9 and 10.

Whether it is for the D-day or not, you need to be fit to do well at work and be healthy. So go for that walk, play whatever sport you want to, skip the lift, eat a tad smaller less oily diet, sleep well and start getting back in shape today.

Indian sleeping pattern

I am missing something very dearly these days and it seems to evade all my friends and peers. I guess we am not alone as Phillips' study reveals the same details. Some points from the report:

• 93% Indians are sleep deprived and get less than the eight hours of mandatory sleep required for good health while 11% actually fall asleep at work
• 11% Indians took leave from work because of lack of sleep
• 58% of the respondents felt that their work was impacted due to lack of adequate sleep
  
• 74% woke up anywhere between one to three times during their sleep. Reasons for waking up were need to answer call of nature (90 percent), stress at work (15 percent) and noise outside the home (10 percent)
• 62% of those surveyed displayed high risk of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), a condition characterised by repeated cessation of breathing during sleep and which can potentially lead to heart disease and worsen heart failure

Sounds scary but every bit is true. Staying fit and sleeping well should be the first priority. Try checking these stats with your own sleeping schedule and check if you are in the risky zone too. If you are, then sleep :)

About me missing sleep, am dozing off now. Good nite.

Mineral water or Plain?

That was what the waiter asked us when I went to dine with a friend at M G Road. Plain came the reply. Were we going to drink normal water unboiled filled with a lot of disease causing germs? Should we have opted for mineral water that is treated and all the germs are killed? Was I supposed to pay 28 rupees for the packaging and the brand or was the money being charged for the purity of the H2O inside? If you think mineral water or branded packaged water is 100% clean, then you are grossly mistaken. May be the water comes from Himalayas or the Ganges! I don't really know. How could I? Should I trust the label?

Labels can be misleading at best, deceptive at worst. In one notorious case, water coming from a well located near a hazardous waste site was sold to many bottlers. At least one of these companies labeled its product "spring water." In another case, H2O sold as "pure glacier water" came from a public water system in Alaska.  More than 25 percent of it comes from the local municipal supply. The water is treated, purified and sold to us, often at a thousandfold increase in price. Most people are surprised to learn that they're drinking glorified tap water, but bottlers aren't required to list the source on the label. 

The controversy isn't simply about tap vs. bottled water; most people drink both, knowing the importance of plenty of water. What they may not know is that some bottled water may not be as pure as they expect. In 1999 the NRDC tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water. (This is the most recent major report on bottled water safety.) While noting that most bottled water is safe, the organization found that at least one sample of a third of the brands contained bacterial or chemical contaminants, including carcinogens, in levels exceeding state or industry standards. Since the report, no major regulatory changes have been made and bottlers haven't drastically altered their procedures, so the risk is likely still there.

So the risk can be around 60% less when compared to consuming clean plain water. So you decide. Plain water or Bottle? 

Life support

The Week: The Emergency Medical and Research Institute (EMRI), a brainchild of disgraced Satyam Computer Services founder B. Ramalinga Raju, has decided to continue its operations in 11 states and is looking for donors and corporates to replace Raju and family. 

The nonprofit organisation, which was launched in 2005, operates 1,650 free ambulances in Andhra Pradesh and plans to increase the fleet to 4,000 by December. It has 12,000 employees.?Several board members and chairman emeritus A.P.J. Abdul Kalam  resigned in the wake of the Satyam disgrace, but CEO Venkat Changavalli said the project would go on.?Apparently, some corporates and philanthropists have come forward to sustain it. The state governments are bearing 95 per cent of the operational costs. The organisation has fixed assets of Rs 51 crore in the form of 1,20,000 sq.ft built-up area, an emergency response centre, ambulances, hardware and equipment. 

My kid has more Chromosomes than your kid!

Raphaela my eldest daughter has Down Syndrome, she turns 4 in just under two weeks. Since she was a tiny baby we have called her a Diva, she's blessed us with endless joy and endless attitude! She required open heart surgery when she was just 5 weeks old, but she bounced back beautifully from that (Big thanks to Dr Pohlner & Staff at Brisbane's Prince Charles Hospital) & hasn't looked back. Now at nearly four she does everything and more that any "un-enhanced" child would do.

She starts Kindy in 3 days, loves Fimbles, Bananas in Pyjamas & her Poppy, she loves playgroup and dancing and her temper is almost as bad as her mummy's. Less and less children with Down Syndrome are being born into our society, due higher rates of prenatal detection and ignorance about what its really like to live with this Syndrome.

We are losing a whole generation of Raphaela's peers because of fear and misinformation. The world is not a better place with this practice of modern "eugenics".

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