Spices to Warm Up Your Winter

Spices are a treasure trove of health benefits. Many boast of properties that can keep a host of ailments at bay, and it’s been backed by research! So, better brush up your knowledge on our Indian spices to keep yourself safe from the morning and evening chills.

Turmeric 
This Indian spice is considered a natural antibiotic. A host of medical studies claim its anti-inflammatory action is sometimes better than cortisone and phenylbutazone treatment. Thankfully, Indian cuisine uses turmeric in most of its cooking. We suggest you bring home this season the wet version of turmeric abundantly available. Ground it using a pestle and add it to your food while cooking. Or simply chop and drop a few pieces into milk, boil. Have it to keep cough at bay.

Cardamom
Tea infused with cloves and cardamom is helpful in preventing coughs and cold during this weather. A common grandmother’s remedy is to boil two-three cardamoms in a cup of water and add a teaspoon of honey, and drink it just before going to bed. It’s said to clear nose and chest congestions. Its aroma is known to uplift spirits and veer away depres I- sion, perfect for I this gloomy I weather.

Ginger 
Indian homes often prepare ginger-garlic paste and use it in most of their cooking. Soups are perfect for winters. Add fresh ginger pieces to chicken soups and relish with garlic bread. It has anti-inflammatory capacities, thus it helps fight throat and chest infections.

Cinnamon 
One of the oldest known spices, knowledge about cinnamon has been increasing every day. It’s said to stimulate blood circulation, thus inducing some warmth. It’s the perfect spice for this cold-hot-cold climate in the city, as it helps strengthen the immune system. A pinch of ground cinnamon and a teaspoon of honey in warm water in the morning will keep you protected. Sometimes, it’s also teamed with ginger to tackle common colds.

Cloves 
Ayurvedic medication relies on cloves to treat respiratory issues. Add two or three to soups, tea, dal and curries to keep cough at bay. Chewing a clove is said to help ease irritations in the throat, and chewing a burnt one is said to tackle cough.

Wish you a Happy Navratri

 

Rejuvenate greets you a HAPPY NAVRATRI

Fancy body piercing? Get your hygiene right

Aparajit Sinha, 21, pierced his eyebrows in the first year of college to look cool. But within two days he had to take the studs out because of extreme infection and severe pain.

Body piercing has come a long way - from earlobes and the nose traditionally to eyebrows, belly button, lips and tongues now. But it needs care in the initial days to avoid infections.

Many youngsters impulsively head for piercing without taking note of their skin type, proper sterilisation and post-piercing care information.

"Lack of hygiene, lack of proper sterilisation of the area and the gun are the common reasons why pierced areas catch infection. Also, there are some people whose skin is very sensitive and when they clean the pierced area with antiseptic, they get irritant eczema," Sachin Dhawan, clinical and aesthetic dermatology at Artemis Health Institute in Gurgaon, told IANS.

Dhawan gets around 10 percent queries for piercing complications.

While piercing the earlobes and eyebrows result in common complications, nose or naval infections can be fatal. Nose infection could result in swelling and pain for a few days at the pierced site, says Mumbai-based cosmetic surgeon Meenakshi Agarwal.

Also, studs and rings can get caught in clothes, which can aggravate the problem.

"There are times when a stud gets caught in clothes and pulls the skin, leaving one in extreme pain. So this unexpected rubbing too can lead to further complications," said Mumbai-based dermatologist Ashwini Padmawar.

Experts also suggest that one should avoid going to any random piercing shop and opt for experienced hands to avoid infections.

"A lot of ENT surgeons and plastic surgeons also do piercing, it is safer to get it done from them, as they understand the body system better," said Agarwal.

Sixteen-year-old Anamika Kalsi, who got her belly pierced without informing her parents and chose a cheaper place for piercing, realised this later.

She covered her stomach all the time and didn't take precautions to clean up the spot. End result - major infection and ultimately she had to pop antibiotics to control inflammation.

This often happens because body piercing at a local shop or a jewellery shop is cheap - it could be done within Rs.500, but at such places people are not hygiene-conscious. On the other hand, a medical expert's charges start from Rs.2,000 onwards, but he or she takes all the precautions. In case there is any complication, they are capable of taking care of the problem before it goes out of hand.

So, it is advisable that one should go to experts and in case it doesn't fit into your budget, just make sure the gun or the hands used for piercing are clean, as simple hygiene steps can keep an infection at bay.

"One should put an antibiotic ointment and gently wash the area once a day for at least 15 days after the piercing to prevent infection," said Padmawar.

"If infections happen, they can be treated with antibiotic tablets and ointments for five-seven days. If allergies happen they need to be treated with anti-allergic and steroid antibiotic ointments," he added.

New chip may be game-changer in disease detection

A cheap, highly portable blood test has proven as accurate as expensive hospital-based analyses in detecting HIV, syphilis and other infectious diseases, according to a study released Sunday.
Researchers tested prototypes of the creditcard-sized lab-on-a-chip with hundreds of patients in Rwanda, reporting nearly 100 per cent accuracy.
The so-called “mChip”, they said, could help knock down three barriers to effective delivery of health care into the world’s poorest regions: difficult access, high costs and long delays for results.
“The idea is to make a large class of diagnostic tests accessible to patients in any setting in the world, rather than forcing them to go to a clinic to draw blood and then wait days for their results”, said Samuel Sia, a professor at Columbia University and lead developer.
The findings were published in Nature Medicine.
With a projected production cost of a dollar per unit, the mChip would be far cheaper to administer than current lab-based tests.
Because it can scan for multiple proteins, each corresponding to a disease, at the same time with a single blood sample, it is probably even cheaper — and more accurate — than strips which work like store-bought pregnancy tests.
“Current rapid HIV tests require subjective interpretation of band intensity by the user that can result in false positives,” that is, healthy individuals being misdiagnosed, the study noted.
The mChip, by contrast, allows for measurement using a hundred-dollar handheld instrument no more complicated to use than a cell phone, according to the researchers.
Finally, the device produces results in minutes rather than days or weeks, a time saving that can make a big difference in treatment outcome.
The device contains a microchip housed inside an injection-moulded plastic casing, explained Vincent Linder, Chief Technological Officer at Claros Diagnostics, which owns or has licensed relevant patents.
Unique disease “biomarkers” contained in a pin-prick blood sample bind to one of up to 10 individual detection zones.
A nano-scale gold “reagent” — which detects a substance via a chemical reaction — is injected, followed by a silver one that interacts with the gold to produce an ultra-thin film.
“The darkness of the film is proportional to the concentration of biomarker in the sample,” said Linder, comparing the steps to the development process in non-digital photography.
The results are measured with a LED-based detector, or can be assessed by the naked eye.
In Rwanda, Sia and colleagues tested the device in Muhima Hospital in Kigali, where on-site results currently take days or weeks because samples must be sent to an outside laboratory.
From a total of 70 specimens with known HIV status, half male and half female, only one tested false, a result that rivals the accuracy of lab-based HIV analysis.
Similar tests on more than 100 archived specimens yielded equally reliable results, as did further trials based on samples from female sex workers known to be infected with both HIV and syphilis.
The researchers hope the device will boost testing of pregnant women, especially in Africa.
Currently, barely a quarter of pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries are tested for HIV, a figure which provides scant hoping of reaching the UN goal of eliminating mother-to-child transmission by 2015, according to the 2010 UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic.
In Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, only nine and six percent, respectively, of pregnant women currently receive HIV testing, according to the report.