Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
a recent study conducted in Delhi has found alarming levels of metals such as lead and cadmium in several placental tissues. This has sharply highlighted the hazards of air pollution as these metals are both toxic and often, are the cause many irreversible health effects. The threat unborn babies face …
Mothers should breast-feed their babies for at least the first year as it benefits both the baby and the mother, says the American Academy of Paediatrics. In a policy statement issued recently, the academy says that studies have shown that breast-feeding can decrease the incidence or severity of conditions such …
A pregnant woman's exposure to chemicals and possibly to alcohol may make the baby prone to leukaemia, reports a new study. Mel Graves and his team from the Institute of Cancer Research, USA, recently isolated DNA from the cells of leukaemia -infected children aged five months to two years. In …
studies show that calcium intake does not help prevent bone loss in lactating women. At present, doctors prescribe calcium doses for such women to prevent loss of bone density. Heidi J Kalkwarf and his colleagues at the Children Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, usa , have found that calcium intake of …
nutrition plays a vital role in the development of a baby's immune system, even in the womb. A team of researchers led by Andrew Prentice of the Medical Research Council's Dunn Nutrition Unit, Cambridge, uk, has confirmed the relationship after analysing the births and deaths of nearly 1,000 people in …
Women can help prevent deterioration of their child's intelligence in later years by avoiding toxins and leading a healthy life during pregnancy. The environment of the womb plays a crucial role in deciding a child's intelligence quotient (IQ), according to a team of researchers led by Bernard Devlin at the …
Until now pregnant women were under the misconception that if they had morning sickness, they were less prone to a miscarriage. Kathleen O'Conner of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, says that morning sickness is simply more frequent in younger women. She randomly selected 708 married women (age 18-47 years) in …
Medical specialists from 75 countries of the world gathered recently, in the city of Marrakesh to participate in the first world congress on maternal mortality with a view to mitigate the phenomenon. Congress spokesperson Badr Tazi told Reuters just before the congress began, "The main objective is to examine in …
an enigmatic protein extracted from the urine of pregnant women can slow the progression of an aids -like disease in laboratory animals. It can also destroy cells from tumours that afflict some aids patients and boost the production of immune cells, according to Robert Gallo of the University of Maryland …
Pregnant women often complain of lack of concentration and poor memory. Scientists now offer an interesting explanation for this phenomenon; that a woman's brain size shrinks during late pregnancy and it takes up to six months to regain its full size. Using magnetic resonance imagery, Anita Holdcroft and her colleagues …
Sri Lanka's minister of public administration, recently announced a new health insurance scheme which promises Rs 3,000 and six month's maternity leave to state-employed women. The proposal immediately faced flak from family planners, whose programmes have brought down the country's birth rate to 1.4 per cent. "We cannot take chances …
women who eat poorly before and during pregnancy have babies who grow up with a tendency to heart disease and stroke, according to David Barker and his colleagues at the Medical Research Council's Environmental Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, uk. Barker observes that the nutritional status of the mother during …
What if the nurturer herself turns into a polluter? Smoking and / or drinking mothers poison the foetus. Alcohol consumers expose the foetus to alcohol syndrome, which engenders congenital malformations and low birth weight in newborns. Smoking during pregnancy passes cancer-causing chemicals to their foetus' blood where these linger for …
malaria is back again, and this time with a trans-generational implication. According to a recent report, first pregnancies undo the relative resistance against Plasmodium falciparum , the most serious form of malarial parasite. The resistance seems to improve with subsequent pregnancies. The distinct clinical entity is known as maternal malaria. …
WOMEN face a great risk to their own health during pregnancy. A joint study conducted by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization highlights the normally underestimated fact of maternal mortality. The report says that there are nearly 80,000 more pregnancyrelated deaths per year than previously …
OBESE women are more than twice as likely to have babies with neural tube defects (NTO) such as spina bifida, as women of average weight, say American researchers. But the two teams of researchers from Boston and California also pointout that they do not yet understand why extra fat should …
FOR women, pregnancy is a time of joy. But it is also a time when otherwise young healthy women develop some serious medical problems. However, women nurturing life in their wombs can escape one such complication by just taking a simple precaution of adding calcium in their diet. Nurturing the …
IT HAS long been an enduring enigma as to how a foetus, genetically very much a 'foreign' entity, is tolerated by the mother's immune system through the months of her pregnancy. At the molecular level it is rather puzzling that the foetus manages to retain a foothold even though many …
Women keen on motherhood are being advised to cut down their intake of coffee. A study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University in the US found that women who consume 300 mg of caffeine a day, roughly three cups of coffee or eight sodas per day, reduce their …
DEVELOPED by Roger Gosden of the University of Leeds in the UK, the process of restoring woman's fertility involves the removal of the ovaries before chemotherapy and radiation in cancer patients. A few slices of it are put in cold storage with the hope that the frozen pieces of this …
