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. …
PREMENSTRUAL syndrome or PMS is an inseparable part of every woman's life. Involving both physical as well as emotional symptoms, it occurs regularly in relation to the menstrual cycle. PMS, according to experts, usually sets in about five to eleven days before the menses and subsides either with menses or …
people living in the villages near the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (ucil), Jaduguda, Bihar, are suffering from a large number of radiation-induced diseases, deformities, mental retardation as well as disturbances in reproductive physiology. This was revealed in a recent survey by a team led by B N Pandey of …
hospitals in the us performed radiation experiments on mentally retarded Norwegians during the Cold War, reveals a retired senior health official. Fredrik Mellbye, a top government doctor from 1950 until 1972, says that these people were used to determine the effect of radiation on humans. Such experiments were carried out …
The gym? Forget it. You can body build even without getting off that comfortable couch. Mental exercise can increase strength almost as much as regular and strenuous physical practice, British researchers announced recently. Dave Smith and his team from the Manchester Metropolitan University, uk, measured the push that 18 male …
the American linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky once asserted that human beings, apart from being the only species able to communicate through a spoken language, are further endowed at birth with an innate linguistic ability. What Chomsky meant is that the human brain is essentially precon-ditioned to construct the …
The male brain shrinks more rapidly with age than its female counterpart, particularly in the frontal and temporal lobe regions. This was reported by C Edward Coffey and his team of the Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, USA. Because men are more prone to age-related memory loss than women, the …
The first concrete evidence that repetitive strain injury (RSI) is caused by damage to sensory nerves by has been reported by researchers at the University of London, UK. This study shows a quantitative sensory deficit in patients with RSI. Jane Greening and her team used a 100-hertz vibrameter to obtain …
On the importance of iodine in our body: Iodine serves as a raw material for making thyroxin, a hormone, which is produced by the thyroid gland. Since iodine and thyroxin are required for the development of the brain, the single most important cause of mental retardation today is iodine deficiency. …
each year, between March and June, the Grim Reaper celebrates. It is around this time every year that the nation witnesses a sharp rise in the number of suicides among the school-going children. The capital's police, for instance, refer to this period as the "suicide season'
To clarify whether dyslexia, a fairly-common disorder characterised by an unexpected low reading ability, involves the brain's defective processing of visual information, US-based National Center for Research Resources-funded experts studied brain activity in a visual pathway. Using a method known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, that non-invasively measures changes in …
the power of positive thinking has been much talked about and considered rewarding. But a new study by psychologists at Ohio State University, usa, suggests that the power of negative thinking may have a stronger influence on well-being than the power of positive thinking. Researchers found that the possible harm …
why do some people kill themselves? Suicides, till recently, were incidents that only a psychologist would look into, and through years of psychological study we now know that unbearable bouts of depression, stress and numerous other psychological factors can force a person to take such an extreme step. Whatever the …
altering the brain's electrical signals with magnets may some day help people recover after severe injuries such as strokes and amputations. Researchers have recently proved that magnetic fields can change how our brain forms new neural connections. The human brain's ability to rewire itself, called brain plasticity by the experts, …
each visual scene that we look at is highly detailed and composed of numerous elements. Though we can usually appreciate a scene as a whole, our eyes continue to move from one element of the scene, or a "target,' to another. These movements are called saccades or saccadic movements and …
a simple 15-minute screening test for people suffering from headache has been devised by scientists at the Cincinnati Headache Institute, Ohio University, usa. The procedure would help doctors know the exact location of pain, the severity of pain and whether other factors such as stress, are contributing to it. This …
Studies show that men who lose their cool are twice at the risk of heart attack as compared to more mild-mannered men. Susan Everson and her colleagues at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, Ann Arbor, USA, reached the conclusion after studying 2,110 middle-aged men, most of them in …
damage to the brain or spinal cord due to severe injuries has become more frequent nowadays. So, researchers are constantly trying to develop therapies to deal with trauma of this nature. Much interest has been directed at the possibility that neuronal pathways, which do not serve a particular function might …
studies have shown that the problem of obsessive compulsive disorders ( ocds) in most people starts in childhood. Patients suffering from the disease develop odd behaviours such as checking things again and again, showing jerky movements after a brief illness or head injury, or spinning around a set number of …
Some cardiac arrests may be all in the mind. Researchers in Canada have discovered a region in the brain that controls the activity of heart and blood vessels. According to them, abnormalities in the region can result in heart attacks. They suspect that many unexplained heart attacks could be due …
Treatment with an anti-depressant drug can help smokers give up the habit. People who smoke are more likely to have depression than non-smokers. Richard Hurt and his colleagues of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA, conducted a study on 615 people. They found that an anti-depressant bubropion helped many of …
