Happy feel of life

If you always fly in the sky, you must notice full body scanners at airports could increase your risk of skin cancer. The X-ray machines have been brought in at Manchester, Gatwick and Heathrow.

But scientists say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children. They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.

Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s centre for radiological research, said although the danger posed to the individual passenger is ‘very low’, he is urging researchers to carry out more  tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation.

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Too much alcohol and poor vitamins have seriously influenced health of most women. An analysis of more than 100 scientific studies has painted a worrying picture of the dietary habits of women. From teenage girls who have a taste for salt and alcohol to pensioners who are lacking vitamin D, women are raising their odds of disorders from heart disease and breast cancer to brittle bones and depression.

Busy lives, lack of cooking skills, an appetite for fast food and pressure to be thin had all taken their toll on women’s diets, said researcher Carrie Ruxton. Urging women of all ages to think more about what they eat, she said: ‘The quality of a woman’s diet is fundamentally important across her lifespan, not only during the childbearing years. ‘The diets of UK women are, in general, characterised by high intakes of salt and saturated fat, and low intakes of fruits, vegetables, fibre and oily fish.

‘Women need to make better dietary choices to ensure they consume enough vitamins and minerals and, thus, safeguard their health.’ Dr Ruxton, a freelance dietician and Manchester Metropolitan nutritionist Dr Emma Derbyshire, combed the medical literature for information what women are eating and what their dietary habits are doing to their health.

Writing in the journal Nutrition Bulletin, they said that more than half (52 per cent) of schoolgirls are lacking magnesium, an energy-boosting  mineral found in green leafy vegetables, nuts, meat and fish.

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It is really good news that breast cancer can be prevented and treated with a revolutionary jab. The drug has been tested on women as early as next year. It could wipe out up to 70 per cent of breast cancers, saving more than 8000 lives a year in the UK alone.

Its creator Dr Vincent Tuohy said the effects could be ‘monumental’. ‘We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines have prevented many childhood diseases,’ he said.

The theory behind the vaccine could eventually be used to target other types of cancer as well, he added. The drug targets a protein called alphalactalbumin that lurks in most breast cancer tumours.

Having the jab revs up the immune system, priming it to destroy the protein as it appears and so stop tumours forming. It also harnesses the power of the immune system to shrink pre-existing growths by up to half.

Dr Tuohy’s team tested the vaccine on rodents that were genetically prone to breast cancer. Those which did not have the jab developed breast cancers by the age of ten months, but all of those that were immunised remained cancer-free, the journal Nature Medicine reports.

Dr Tuohy, an expert in the workings of the immune system from one of America’s top hospitals, said: ‘It was a yes/no result – it was as clear as a bell. We really believe that breast cancer is a completely preventable disease.’

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We always worry that when we loss weight too quick in a short time, it may easily reverse to the original condition. But recently scientists have found that crash dieting is an effective way to slim and dieters who shed the most weight in their first month also lost more in the long run.

And they were just as likely to maintain their new shape as dieters who lost less. The message, says the study, is that the first few weeks of a diet are critical and may spur dieters on.

University of Florida researchers followed more than 250 obese women who were asked to cut their calorie intake and increase their exercise for 18 months. Those who lost more than 1.5lb a week during the first month lost more than two stone within six months on average.

But those who initially lost less than half a pound a week ended up losing just 11lb overall. The 1.5lb a week figure is well within the safe limits recommended by most dieticians. Although women in both groups did put some weight back on, those in the speedy group fared no worse than the others.

Writing in the International Journal of Behavioural Medicine, the researchers said: ‘Because weight regain reverses the health benefits achieved with weight loss, considerable efforts have been placed on identifying behavioural factors that may be associated with long-term success. Studies have shown that rate of initial weight loss, even within the first few weeks of treatment, may serve as an important predictor of long-term success.

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Don’t believe that some exercise like side bends, torso twists and hip extensions, could help you reduce waist fat. They may only help tone the muscles around the waist but can’t reduce the fat because the time taken to complete forces these exercises to be anaerobic, they burn mainly carbs. This doesn’t mean you should neglect this type of exercise for the waist. Toning the abdominal muscles helps tighten and firm the area so once you lose the layer of fat the muscles they can show through clearly to give that washboard look!

In fact the best waist exercises to reduce fat are those which encourage the body to switch into the fat burning energy system, the aerobic pathway. Our energy system works a bit like gears, they switch from one to another. The first two work closely together switching from one to the other as we go about most daily chores. The trouble is they gain the majority of energy from carbohydrates, the body’s preferred energy source. The third gear takes time to switch into but it burns fat through an aerobic pathway. Aerobic simply means “with oxygen” and fat must have oxygen supply to burn. Some exercises that are low in effort and performed for a long duration allow the cardiovascular system to deliver enough oxygen to the working muscle cells.

It is impossible to find an exercise to “spot reduce” fat from the waist because of the way the human energy system works, it cannot produce all its energy needs from one area alone. Have you ever wondered why we have many friends who try all the latest new waist exercises yet fail to achieve the results they want – a smaller waist?

The best exercises for losing inches from our waist are those that allow the body to switch into the third fat burning gear, exercises like rowing, swimming and walking. When these exercises are completed fat is burned from all over the body including the waist and hip region. Eventually you will lose inches from the waist and flatten the stomach muscles with regular aerobic exercise.

I’m not tied, but just want to sleep. So you are, maybe, because summer is coming. I hate being drowsy for that there are so many works that I don’t finish, and I hate drowsy life with no vigour. Now I find 7 ways to beat summer drowsiness.

1. Keep yourself hydrated: It is a simple advise but most of the time not followed correctly. Most people drink lot of fizzy and sugary drinks. Over consumption of sugar in drinks leads to bloating, insulin fluctuations eventually leading to a feeling of lethargy followed by emptiness in the stomach. Some people prefer to have many cups of tea/coffee which leads to suppression of the thirst mechanism and dehydration. The best solution is to have watery fruits like watermelon (tarbooz), muskmelon (kharbooja) etc. You can also drink lightly salted coolers like chaach, fresh lime etc.

2. Eat small frequent meals: Many people feel uncontrollably sleepy after lunch. The best option is to eat small meals at frequent intervals to get energy but at the same time it should not fill your stomach as this will result in a surge of insulin along with feeling of sleepiness. Many naturopaths recommend that one must eat food only 1/3 capacity of the stomach; 1/3 capacity should be with fluids and the rest should have air for optimal functioning of the stomach. Small meals options can be roasted chana/murmura, boiled lentils, a spicy dal (pulses) soup, raitas, salads, fruits, cold soups, leafy vegetable rolls stuffed with paneer, boiled rajma (kidney beans), boiled potato etc.

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It is said that the fat first grows on and last reduces off the waist. And it is not easy to loss weight even if you do hard, so we always get a big head when we find flesh on our waist round and round. We may have tried lots of waist exercise or even eat some medicine but with no obvious effect. I can’t promise three waist exercises below will take effect on your waist, but at least they are another choices that you can choose after you failed with the exercises you did before.

1. Hindu Squats

This helps reduce the waist size by burning up a ton of calories. It creates a huge oxygen deficit which ellicits the body to burn off fat for energy. Here’s what you do…

In your living room or wherever, just squat up and down as fast as possible. Be sure to touch or swipe your finger tips onto the ground with each repetition to insure you went low enough with the squat. Do 100 repetitions in less than 5 minutes. Once you can do that, add another 100 repetitions and do in under 10 minutes.

There are no weights or anything else needed. Just keep your back pretty straight when you do it. Do this everyday. Hey! Don’t complain, it only takes 5-10 minutes.

2. Vacuum Pose

Ok, now this is a direct abs exercise. In fact, it’s the best exercise you can do to reduce your waist size. Someone loses between 1.75-3 inches off their waists in less than a month doing this exercise.

Suck in your belly button… not your upper abs area. Suck it in until you can’t suck it in any further. It should feel like your belly button is touching your spine.

Now, hold that position for 15-60 seconds. Rest, then repeat. Do this for 5 minutes everyday and you should be down 1.75 inches from your waist in less than a month. My clients who’ve done this for 20 minutes a day have lost an incredible 3 inches from their waists.

3. Walking up an incline

This is another biggie. It also creates a huge oxygen deficit which forces the body to burn belly fat for energy. All you do is take a treadmill and incline it to 10-15 degrees and walk for 15 minutes. Sound easy? Try it. You can thank me later. It’s like night and day inclining a treadmill and walking or jogging on a flat treadmill.

You can also walk up hills. But I can’t snap my fingers and put a hill outside your house. So the first 2 exercises are more calorie and fat burners which annihilate belly fat by stealing it for energy.

Health experts predicted that cutting overall consumption in England alone by just 1 percent of trans fats in food would lead to 11,000 fewer heart attacks each year and 7,000 fewer death, because trans fats was linked to a substantial risk of heart disease events, including heart attacks and death from coronary disease.

Therefore, they are calling for a ban on trans fats. However, Barbara Gallani, director of food safety and science at the Food and Drink Federation, has a different opinion. She said the report from the U.S experts failed to take account of industry efforts to remove trans fats and gave rise to unnecessary health concerns.

There must be many make-ups harmful to our health among all the food all over the world. But we could not ban the use of them for cooking or as an ingredient. As long as Food Standard Agency keeps it within the safe levels and we eat less fat found in dairy foods and red meat, it is not going to be a big problem.

No matter if you feel uncomfortable or if there are some symptoms with your breasts, you’d better go to hospital for check every year. Breast cancer has been a big threat to the female health, and more and more people have had something wrong with their breast but of which they don’t have enough awareness. We have been told many times that early detection is the key to finding a breast cancer and the earlier breast cancer is found the more favorable and treatable.

Don’t be too scary and worrisome to see doctor, in order not to delay the treatment. It is said that 80% of abnormal mammograms wind up being benign. So if you feel nothing or something uncomfortable with your breasts, you have no need to worry about the inspection result. Even if you are told mammogram is abnormal, you should believe that the result is not going too bad and with the help of doctor, you can recover well. Don’t be afraid of breast cancer, be brave to fight against it.

Girls need to be cautious that drinking may cause benign breast disease, especially to those who regularly consume alcohol, they are at greater risk in their 20s than their teetotaling counterparts, according to Harvard researchers report in the May issue of Pediatrics. Begign breast disease or noncancerous lumps, bumps or cysts in the breast are known risk factors for breast cancer.

Now these findings raise a wide range of concern, because more and more college students has begun to take alcohol in recent years, correspondingly they worry about their health in these days when breast cancer becomes a big threat to female’s health.

“The breasts of young girls are very active and if you give them extra hormones or alcohol, then they can respond by creating lumps and bumps and things in the category of benign breast disease, and if you keep this going, it can increase the risk of breast cancer,” says Marisa Weiss, MD, the president and founder of advocacy group Breastcancer.org.

During the 2005 and 2007 surveys, the participants were asked about benign breast disease; 147 women said they had been diagnosed with it and 67 of these women said this diagnosis was confirmed with a biopsy.

Drinking by adult women is one of few known dietary risk factors for breast cancer. Keep far away from alchol when you are a teenager or an adolescent girl, because the habits you develop at that time are likely to turn into lifelong habits.