After a long weekend of binge drinking with friends, a friend’s wedding or after a weekend getaway, here are the two words going through your mind: liquid diet. This trend of detoxing your body caught on a few years back. Having proved effective in providing sufficient hydration to the body, it strengthens your muscles and is much easier to execute than a regular diet with solid food.
Since we all have tried (and then some) this form of dietary nutrition, we thought of bringing you the drinks that are safe to binge on. Here’s a list of the top ten healthiest drinks in the world, and why your body can never have enough of them.Continue reading “Take Advantage of These 10 Healthiest Drinks – Be Healthy”→
If the last time you let your anger get better of you and it took you by surprise, you need to take a more serious look at the problem. If you’ve raised your voice more than once at a dinner party, punched a wall after a fight, stormed out of a room in anger or more importantly, felt the increasing urge to do any of the aforementioned things, you’re probably angrier than you think you are.
Anger and anxiety are problems that can easily go undiagnosed and untreated. The issues may be boiling under layers of denial and ignorance years before they finally burst out. The more serious worry though is that people may not even be aware that they may be suffering from serious anger issues.
Even if you think you have your anger in control, here are some things you probably didn’t know your anger could lead to. No matter in what stage you think you are, inadvertently your anger is taking control of you with every temper tantrum. There is a list of scary and serious effects of anger including, mild to severe headaches, digestion problems, such as abdominal pain, stomach uneasiness, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure and skin problems. If you’ve been battling with anger for a while, you must have also been warned against the high level of stress it causes you, the risk to your heart .
Anger affects your health through migraines, depression and increases the risk of heart diseases
To get you acclimatized to your issues, you need to identify your problem. Here are some quick pointers:
Admit to your problem:
Notice your behavior carefully for a week. If you think your problem is not chronic, or not as serious, be vigilant with yourself. The next time you get angry, make a mental note. If your anger episodes are occurring more frequently than you thought, Houston, we have a problem.
Aggressive or repressive:
Here’s the tricky part. Even if you’ve not yelled at the cashier, packed a punch at the punks who ticked you off or raised your voice in anger, you may still want to take a closer look at yourself. You may be repressing anger by keeping it bottled up. It is just harmful as aggressive anger, possibly even unhealthier.
Pay attention to physical symptoms:
Usually when a person gets angry, the body reacts to that anger. If a colleague is inefficient, your employees have walked in late or your spouse is driving you up the wall, your body will react first. That pain in your neck will start acting up, your joints will probably call for attention or the throbbing pain in your temple will return. This is your body telling you that a storm is coming.
One or many:
Once you’ve identified your issues, try and figure out if it is only one problem you’re stresses about or many. If it’s a one-situation only anger, then it is slightly easier to handle. For instance, if only work-related issues stress you out, then the problem is at work, and not at home. If this is not the case though and the problem is your temper and not the environment, then you need to work on yourself.The point of the matter is, don’t take your anger lightly. If not today, a year or five later, you will be left facing either physical or mental consequences of your anger. Treat it now when you can. Here are some simple DIY anger management tips:
Get help:
A visit to a doctor is probably the smartest thing you will do all day. Not only will you know how serious your problem is, a therapist might help subdue the problem before it gets worse.
Find your exit activity:
If you see the familiar symptoms of the imminent anger outburst, excuse yourself and walk away. Find an activity that will help you cool off. Take a walk or go for a run. Go talk to a more friendly voice or put on your favourite music playlist. Change the mood and return when you feel calmer.
Find an activity that calms you down, change it monthly
Don’t get angry at the same thing twice:
You can be better than that. If you’ve already realised you have no patience for incompetent drivers on the road, or your child’s messy bedroom, don’t return to the same issue. Accept some inevitable life truths, and try moving on from the small stuff.
Discover a new hobby:
Distraction is the key here. People who have anger issues usually hate the Hulk monster they become once they turn green. So add an aspect to your personality that you really enjoy. Take up cooking, music or sports. Become a cinephile for a month. Change your activity monthly.The important positive to remember here is the amount of advancement medicine has made in terms of mental health. So today you have therapists, pain relievers and medication to help you pull through. The equipment is ready, so it’s now time to let go and breathe easy.
A new study by the JAMA Internal Medicine journal has proved that smoking causes more than 48 per cent of deaths from the 12 types of cancer. In a recent news story, TIME magazine quoted the journal saying that, ‘Smoking resulted in more than 80 per cent of lung cancer deaths as well as 77 per cent of larynx cancer deaths. Other top cancers caused by smoking include esophagus, kidney and liver cancer.’
To put it more simply, almost half the deaths caused by cancer were linked to smoking. Though these figures were limited to the United States of America, it is not too difficult to extrapolate these numbers globally, or to India.
These figures that scream to you across news headlines are not new. With every research paper published, the case against smoking is getting stronger. But to quit smoking is never easy. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably tried to quit, more than once perhaps, and undergone a relapse.
But there is no shame in admitting defeat and giving it another try. So if you’re trying to quit, helping a friend/spouse or child cut down or have never tried to cut down because you don’t know how to, here are some pointers to nudge you to stub it out.
What’s your number? Identify the problem you’re dealing with. Make a note of the number of cigarettes you smoke daily. Be completely honest, even if you smoke more than you thought you do. The aim is to cut that number down. Once you give a face to the problem, it gets easier to deal with it. So if you smoke ten cigarettes a day, the number needs to go down to eight, then five. Set yourself a target for each week. After two or three weeks, cut the number of cigarettes by one. Go slow, set a reasonable number for yourself.
Find a Reason to Quit
The reason will make your resolve to quit even stronger
Even though quitting to stay healthy is reason enough, give yourself a separate reason. Are you bringing up kids? Did you quit swimming after you started smoking? Does your husband hate the fact that you smoke? Is it making your skin look darker and making you look older? All you need is one reason. You’ll find that it is easier to latch on to your resolve, once you have a strong reminder of why you’re quitting.
Employ ‘The Buddy System’
Find a friend who wants to quit too. But it is important to keep in mind that this friend must be equally motivated to quit. Once you have your ‘person’, make a pact of how many you’re allowing each other to smoke. If you cross the line, tell him, he’ll understand. If you do well, tell him, he’ll want to do better. Two is always better than one, whether it’s to complain about craving a smoke, or discuss withdrawal symptoms. Drag this buddy to parties so that you can keep a tab on each other.
Make some rules
Promise yourself you won’t smoke after dinner, in the car or in the bedroom. Stay away from your usual smoking zones such as the smoke room at work, your terrace and your balcony. Don’t buy a packet of cigarettes on your way home. Throw away your ashtray and lighter. You’ll find that refusing a smoke after a couple of beers is hard, but physically trying to clean out your life is much easier.
Ask for medical help
Try Nicotine Replacement Therapy, which means supplying your body with nicotine but not through tobacco. Try options such as nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, inhalers, and nasal sprays. You can also ask your doctor for prescription pills to help with the withdrawal.
Try using a nicotine patch as an alternative to tobacco
Replace smoking with a hobby
Discover a new activity that will excite you. Take up cycling, running, swimming (exercise will also help you feel better about quitting). Pick up a musical instrument or a fresh hobby such as cooking. gardening or painting. You don’t need to be very good at this, just good enough to be distracted.
Exercise will help you get back into shape and also prove as a distraction
It’s okay to slip
Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you decided to smoke four cigarettes a day, and have not stuck to your word, try again tomorrow. Don’t abandon your plan midway. It’s a long road, and a few bumps along the way never hurt anyone.
Aim towards quitting altogether
Once you have your cigarettes per day in control, take the plunge for the next step. If you’ve cut down successfully and feel comfortable enough, concentrate on quitting. It’s only the next step.
Anyone who has quit smoking successfully will tell you that it was not the easiest thing in the world for them to do. But the rush of taking your life in control is going to make the long and hard journey worth it.
Glandular fever is a self-limiting sickness which is caused by Epstein-Barr virus. It is also known as infectious mononucleosis. Following a recovery from this illness, the patient is usually immune to it for a lifetime due to the antibodies produced by the immune system during recovery. So, it is rare to contract the fever after going through the first episode.
Young adults and teenagers are common customers of glandular fever. Symptoms vary from a usual headache to sore throat and fever to swollen glands in the armpits or on the neck. It takes 4-8 weeks to incubate and is mainly spread by close contact – kissing, coughing, sneezing, and sharing things (cups, glasses, etc).
Long intervals of hard work, physical exertion, and unhealthy lifestyle (poor sleep pattern, alcoholism, and drug addiction) are noted as the commonly known causes of tiredness or fatigue. A lay man could feel tired due to a recently suffered bereavement or upset, personal or family issues, emotional disturbance, work pressure, low spirits, confusion, etc.
Lack of a “good night” sleep is one of the major reasons which kindles tiredness in the body. An underlying medical problem such as anemia or viral disease such as glandular fever can extract huge amount of energy from the body, leaving the person tired for weeks. Common factors which contribute to tiredness are lack of regular exercise, unhealthy or insufficient diet, poor sexual lifestyle (frequent masturbation, unnatural sex), etc.
Continue reading “Take Advantage of These 10 Healthiest Drinks – Be Healthy” 
