Fitness expert, Namita Jain answers readers’ questions on fitness. Get your doubts cleared and see them featured on our FAQ page every Thursday.

This week’s answer:

1. Hi there, I am 23 and want to loose my waight upto 10 kg unable to understand how to do it, please suggest me my daily diet plan, if possible,i am vegetarian.
my weight is 58 kg. and my height is 5’3.5″. my problem area is my hips and waist my waist is 30 and hips is 37. need your help.
Please suggest me my diet please so that i can feel fit.
Thanks and Regards,
Parul

2. Hi madam, I am 25 years old i want to reduce 10 kg weight. I was 58 before my marriage and since 6 months i have gained upto 8 kg which is 65 now. Please provide me a daily healthy diet chart to reduce my weight.

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Researchers have developed a computer-based test that could help heavy drinkers reduce their alcohol consumption.

The new University of Liverpool study has shown that the habit of consuming alcohol can be interrupted when people practice methods of restraint whenever they see images of alcoholic drinks.

For the study, the team developed a computer test that required participants to press particular buttons when an image of alcohol or soft drink appeared on screen.

The participants were asked to perform this task at speed, but when they heard a tone sound they were expected to stop immediately. In one group the tone was presented at the same time as alcohol pictures appeared on screen, and in another group the tone was not matched up to images of alcoholic drinks.

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A team of scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia has discovered a gene that could hold the key to treating and potentially controlling chronic infections such as HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis.

They found that the gene, called Arih2, which is essential for embryo survival, also controls the function of the immune system – making critical decisions about whether to switch on the immune response to an infection, the Daily Mail reported.

The finding could help in the development of treatments for infections that ‘overwhelm’ the immune system like HIV as well as conditions that cause chronic inflammation such as rheumatoid arthritis, they said.

The team discovered the gene in dendritic cells, which act as an early warning system raising the alarm if they detect foreign invaders.

“Arih2 is responsible for the most fundamental and important decision that the immune system has to make – whether the immune response should be initiated and progressed or whether it should be switched off to avoid the development of chronic inflammation or autoimmunity,” the paper quoted research leader Dr Marc Pellegrini as saying.

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Drinking one normal-sized soft drink per day may put men at increased risk of developing more aggressive forms of prostate cancer, according to a Swedish study.

The study found that those who drank one 11-fluid-ounce soft drink a day were 40 percent more likely to develop more serious forms of prostate cancer that required treatment.

In the study, researchers followed over 8,000 men aged 45 to 73 for an average of 15 years for the study.

“Among the men who drank a lot of soft drinks or other drinks with added sugar, we saw an increased risk of prostate cancer of around 40 percent,” the New York Daily News quoted Isabel Drake, a PhD student at Lund University, as saying.

The study is to be published in the upcoming edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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In Sanskrit, the daily routine is called as Dinacharya. ‘Din’ means ‘day’ and ‘acharya’ means ‘to follow’ or ‘close to’. So, Dinacharya is an ideal daily schedule taking into account the nature’s cycle. In Ayurveda, the focus is levied on the early hours of the day as it is instrumental in setting the tone of your day.

Ayurveda believes that routine is a discipline for the body and mind which strengthens immunity and purifies the body of its wastes. With the help of simple healthy routines, one can clean the body and mind, balance doshas, strengthen immunity and start the day on a refreshing and rejuvenating note.

The following simple routine in the morning will help you start the day on a blissful note. Here is your guide to a refreshing morning.

Brahma mahurata

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Doing more exercise could help people with high cholesterol as much, or more, than drugs, a new study has revealed.

The ten-year study of 10,000 US veterans found that the very fit were 60-70 per cent less likely to die than unfit people on statins.

However, it also found that combining statins with keeping fit could improve survival rates even further, the Daily Mail reported.

“The fitness necessary to attain protection that is much the same or greater than that achieved by statin treatment in unfit individuals is moderate and feasible for many middle-aged and older adults, through moderate-intensity physical activity such as walking, gardening and gym classes,” the paper quoted Professor Peter Kokkinos, who led the research at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington DC, as saying.

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A team of researchers including an Indian origin has developed a new and sensitive method that makes it possible to diagnose malaria from a single drop of blood or saliva.

With the development of this method, the researchers hope to go one step further in identifying and treating all patients suffering from malaria.

Malaria is a life-threatening disease that strikes more than 200 million people every year – mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The disease is caused by the Plasmodium parasite, which is spread by infected mosquito bites. Today, malaria can be prevented and successfully treated, but more than half a million people nevertheless die every year from the disease.

Large-scale monitoring and treatment programmes during the past decade have reduced the distribution of the disease, and the frequency of actual epidemics has fallen. However, the number of malaria patients with relatively low infection counts has increased, and the need for more sensitive methods to diagnose the disease has thus increased dramatically.

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Researchers will be undertaking a new stage of a study aimed at improving the health and mobility of those suffering from the common complaint of “walking on marbles” associated with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) in the feet, it has been revealed.

Forefeet often contain some of the first joints to be affected and those with the condition often say that they feel like they are “walking on marbles”.

Mostly, people have thought that this was due to walking on foot joints that are affected by the RA.

The Health Sciences’ FeeTURA study however, developed new ways of assessing the forefeet through the use of diagnostic ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging techniques.

From this work, the University of Southampton researchers discovered that some of the swellings and associated feeling of ‘walking on marbles’ were related to inflamed bursae (a fluid-filled sac usually found in areas subject to friction) that had developed underneath the forefoot joints. These inflamed bursae were rarely detected by clinical examination.

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Herbs have been used since time immemorial to treat health disorders, both for prevention and cure. India being home to the traditional healing system of Ayurveda, it is but natural that we use many natural therapies that are part of our regular diet, like coriander, pudina (mint), ginger or garlic.

More on Ayurveda

In fact, some herbs when administered properly can prevent and treat serious illnesses. Here’s a look at the benefits of some of the common herbs that we consume every day.

Tusli or basil: Commonly used in Italian cooking and even worshipped in India, this herb has multiple benefits. It helps relieve fever and inflammation and fights bacterial infection. It prevents development of gastric ulcers and cancer, and also reduces blood pressure.

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A new method, which transforms aged stem cells into cells that function like much younger ones, may one day enable scientists to grow cardiac patches for damaged or diseased hearts from a patient’s own stem cells-no matter what age the patient-while avoiding the threat of rejection.

Stem cell therapies involving donated bone marrow stem cells run the risk of patient rejection in a portion of the population, argues Milica Radisic, Canada Research Chair in Functional Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) and Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto.

One method of avoiding the risk of rejection has been to use cells derived from a patient’s own body. But until now, clinical trials of this kind of therapy using elderly patients’ own cells have not been a viable option, since aged cells tend not to function as well as cells from young patients.

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