Chat with a HEART SPECIALIST

A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty, Narayana Hrudayalaya
(Heart Specialist) Bangalore was arranged by WIPRO for its employees.
The transcript of the chat is given below. Useful for everyone.


Qn: What are the thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart?

Ans:
1. Diet - Less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil.
2. Exercise - Half an hour's walk, at least five days a week; avoid lifts and avoid sitting for a longtime.
3. Quit smoking.
4. Control weight.
5. Control blood pressure and sugar

Qn: Is eating non-veg food (fish) good for the heart?

Ans: No

Qn: It's still a grave shock to hear that some apparently healthy person
gets a cardiac arrest. How do we understand it in perspective?

Ans: This is called silent attack; that is why we recommend everyone past the age of 30 to undergo routine health checkups.

Qn: Are heart diseases hereditary?

Ans: Yes

Qn: What are the ways in which the heart is stressed? What practices do you suggest to de-stress?


Ans: Change your attitude towards life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life.

Qn: Is walking better than jogging or is more intensive exercise required to keep a healthy heart?

Ans: Walking is better than jogging since jogging leads to early fatigue and injury to joints

Qn: You have done so much for the poor and needy. What has inspired you to do so?

Ans: Mother Theresa , who was my patient

Qn: Can people with low blood pressure suffer heart diseases?

Ans: Extremely rare

Qn: Does cholesterol accumulates right from an early age
(I'm currently only 22) or do you have to worry about it only after you are above 30 years of age?

Ans: Cholesterol accumulates from childhood.

Qn: How do irregular eating habits affect the heart ?

Ans: You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body's enzyme release for digestion gets confused.

Qn: How can I control cholesterol content without using medicines?

Ans: Control diet, walk and eat walnut.

Qn: Can yoga prevent heart ailments?

Ans: Yoga helps.

Qn: Which is the best and worst food for the heart?

Ans: Fruits and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil.

Qn: Which oil is better - groundnut, sunflower, olive?

Ans: All oils are bad.

Qn: What is the routine checkup one should go through? Is there any specific test?

Ans: Routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol is ok. Check BP, Treadmill test after an echo.

Qn: What are the first aid steps to be taken on a heart attack?

Ans: Help the person into a sleeping position , place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum casualty takes place within the first hour.

Qn: How do you differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble?

Ans: Extremely difficult without ECG.

Qn: What is the main cause of a steep increase in heart problems amongst youngsters? I see people of about 30-40 yrs of age having heart attacks and serious heart problems.

Ans: Increased awareness has increased incidents. Also, edentary lifestyles, smoking, junk food, lack of exercise in a country where people are genetically three times more vulnerable for heart attacks than Europeans and Americans.

Qn: Is it possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy?

Ans: Yes.

Qn: Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems for the child. Is it true?

Ans : Yes, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities and you may not have a software engineer as a child

Qn: Many of us have an irregular daily routine and many a times we have to stay late nights in office. Does this affect our heart ? What precautions would you recommend?

Ans : When you are young, nature protects you against all these irregularities. However, as you grow older, respect the biological clock.

Qn: Will taking anti-hypertensive drugs cause some other complications (short / long term)?

Ans : Yes, most drugs have some side effects. However, modern anti-hypertensive drugs are extremely safe.

Qn: Will consuming more coffee/tea lead to heart attacks?

Ans : No.

Qn: Are asthma patients more prone to heart disease?

Ans : No.

Qn: How would you define junk food?

Ans : Fried food like Kentucky , McDonalds , samosas, and even masala dosas.

Qn: You mentioned that Indians are three times more vulnerable. What is the reason for this, as Europeans and Americans also eat a lot of junk food?

Ans: Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately, Indians are vulnerable for the most expensive disease.

Qn: Does consuming bananas help reduce hypertension?

Ans : No.

Qn: Can a person help himself during a heart attack (Because we see a lot of forwarded emails on this)?

Ans : Yes. Lie down comfortably and put an aspirin tablet of any description under the tongue and ask someone to take you to the nearest coronary care unit without any delay and do not wait for the ambulance since most of the time, the ambulance does not turn up.

Qn: Do, in any way, low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count lead to heart problems?

Ans : No. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity.

Qn: Sometimes, due to the hectic schedule we are not able to exercise. So, does walking while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house, work as a substitute for exercise?

Ans : Certainly. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair and sitting helps a lot.

Qn: Is there a relation between heart problems and blood sugar?

Ans: Yes. Strong relationships since diabetics are more vulnerable to heart attacks than non-diabetics.

Qn: What are the things one needs to take care of after a heart operation?

Ans : Diet, exercise, drugs on time , Control cholesterol, BP, weight.

Qn: Are people working on night shifts more vulnerable to heart disease when compared to day shift workers?
i
Ans : No.

Qn: What are the modern anti-hypertensive drugs?

Ans : There are hundreds of drugs and your doctor will chose the right combination for your problem, but my suggestion is to avoid the drugs and go for natural ways of controlling blood pressure by walk, diet to
reduce weight and changing attitudes towards lifestyles.

Qn: Does dispirin or similar headache pills increase the risk of heart attacks?

Ans : No.

Qn: Why is the rate of heart attacks more in men than in women?

Ans : Nature protects women till the age of 45.

Qn: How can one keep the heart in a good condition?

Ans : Eat a healthy diet, avoid junk food, exercise everyday, do not smoke and, go for health checkup s if you are past the age of 30 ( once in six months recommended) ..

Daily Fitness Tips - Loose Weight Easily

These days we live in a very fast paced society where we do not have the time to learn about the foods we consume or the health we should maintain. Whenever we are hungry we eat the food that is easily available. We are in such a hurry that we do not bother to learn whether the food we are consuming has the proper nutritional value or whether it is a balanced diet with proper concentration of essential elements required by our body. If we want to have any amount of weight loss we will have to pay attention to what we are eating and engage in some form of physical activity.

Since we are so busy at work there is no proper eating schedule, we have foods at parties and gatherings, we have food at hotels and dhabas, we have food at road side stalls and finally all this over calorified unhealthy food takes its toll on the day we turn into a plump person putting on a lots of body fat turning us into a unfit individual.
In this fast pace society it’s too tough to cook a calorie wise meal rather than consuming a high calorie fast food. But one should know that a hamburger with 17 gm fat contains 2000 calories that will take 500 minutes of walking to spend all the calories.

You can consult nutritionists, doctors or even online calculators to calculate your recommended weight and calorie intake according to your age and height. Next you should use a caloric counter that will inform you about the amount of calories certain foods have in them. Now keep a record of the foods consumed. This may further help you plan a body fat loss diet. Now calculate how much you are over your ideal body weight. Keep in mind that 1 kg contains about 7000 calories. So this will help you calculate the total overweight of your body.

We can lose weight by consuming the body fat loss diet with recommended caloric value and regular exercise. It will not only burn off the extra calories but also help to keep you slim. Health conscious people must maintain a regular exercise plan and must adjust their exercise routine for the early morning. This is the best time of exercising because the body uses the stored up fat in the body during workout and continues the process for next hour approximately. So postpone the breakfast one hour after exercise routine.

Next you must have a body fat loss diet containing one item each of protein, carbohydrate and fat six times a day rather than three. These are the key to lose weight, body fat and remain healthy and lead a fit life.

Cotton Ear Buds...

Cotton Ear Buds... (Must read it)

Pls do not show sympathy to people selling buds on roadside
or at
signals..... ....

Just wanted to warn you people , not to buy those packs of
ear buds you get
at the roadside. It's made from cotton that has already
been used in
hospitals.

They take all the dirty, blood and pus filled cotton, wash
it, bleach it
and use it to make ear buds. So, unless you want to become
the first
person in the world to get Herpes Zoster Oticus (a viral
infection of the
inner, middle, and external ear) of the ear and that too
from a cotton
bud, DON'T BUY THEM!

Education makes people easy to lead but difficule to drive, Easy to
govern but impossible to enslave.

New weapon against tuberculosis: free cell minutes for patients who take medicine

Researchers believe they've discovered a new weapon in the battle
against tuberculosis: Free mobile phone minutes.

For years, doctors have struggled to get some TB patients to take all
their medication, which generally involves a six-month regimen of
multiple drugs.

Now a student-led group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
has developed a way to use cell phones to let patients test
themselves. And if the tests show patients are following doctor's
orders, they get rewarded with free minutes.

"We're piggybacking on one of the bigger rollouts of infrastucture out
there, which is wireless technology and telecom technology," said Jose
Gomez-Marquez, one of the project's leaders.

The system works like this: Patients test their urine using a strip
that reveals a numeric code if it detects TB medicine. They then text
message the code to their health care provider and get credit toward
incentives such as free minutes.

The in-home tests also eliminate the need for health care workers to
make several patient-monitoring visits a week, a routine that is often
impractical in remote places, Gomez-Marquez said.

Mobile phones are good tools for the project because they are common
in the developing world, where it's often cheaper to erect cell towers
than miles of poles and wires, Gomez-Marquez said.

Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of a World Health Organization program
to fight TB, called the MIT idea "creative." But he said personal
visits must continue because systems that depend heavily on patient
self-reporting have often failed.

"I would think it's a dangerous game to rely only on incentives," he said.

In 2006, the most recent year statistics are available, 9.2 million
people worldwide were diagnosed with tuberculosis and 1.7 million
died.

The disease can be cured with a steady regimen of drugs. But many
patients start feeling better and stop taking the medicine too soon.
Others abandon the drugs because of side effects such as nausea, fever
and rashes.

If the drugs are taken only sporadically, the bacteria build up
resistance. The WHO estimates that 5 to 10 percent of TB deaths are
patients who stop taking medication properly.

The MIT group — which originally included five students — took on the
TB problem in 2007 as part of the university's annual "IDEAS
competition," which challenges participants to solve various world
problems.

Under the TB treatment system used by the WHO, the relationship
between the patient and health care worker can get adversarial, said
Elizabeth Leshen, an MIT junior working on the project.

"We wanted to do something that takes the health care worker out of
the supervisory role and puts him or her back into the patient care
role," she said.

Cell minutes were chosen as an incentive because patients want them
and phone companies are willing to give them out, said Gomez-Marquez,
who added that other incentives and reporting methods can be tailored
to different regions.

A small study of 20 patients in Nicaragua last year indicated the MIT
system could work, and a larger study in Pakistan is planned for this
summer. The team is trying to raise the $200,000 for a full-scale
clinical trial.

The WHO's Raviglione said the MIT group's program could be an asset,
particularly in developed countries, where people are more familiar
with technology. But he said it must be combined with regular visits
from health care workers or community leaders who can ensure patients
take their medicine.

Before personal visits became routine in the 1990s, death rates from
tuberculosis were estimated at 40 to 50 percent, according to the WHO.
After officials began making visits as part of a broad strategy to
fight TB, that figure dropped to 15 percent.

"Human contact is essential for people who have to take drugs for a
long time," Raviglione said.

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY - 5TH JUNE

World Environment Day is commemorated each year on 5th June. It is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

The World Environment Day slogan for 2008 is "Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy". Recognising that climate change is becoming the defining issue of our era, UNEP is asking countries, companies and communities to focus on greenhouse gas emissions and how to reduce them. The World Environment Day will highlight resources and initiatives that promote low carbon economies and life-styles, such as improved energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, forest conservation and eco-friendly consumption.

The TelecomWave.com & CampusBuzzIndia.com Group is committed towards this Global Concern. We at Group CSR are suggesting a few simple steps to reduce our carbon footprints.

Actions You Can Take at the Office

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Recycle office paper, newspapers, beverage containers, electronic equipment and batteries. Reducing, reusing, and recycling in your office helps conserve energy, and reduces pollution & greenhouse gas emissions from resource extraction, manufacturing, and disposal. You can reduce, reuse and recycle at the office by using two-sided printing and copying; buying supplies made with recycled content; and recycling used printer cartridges.

2

. Manage office equipment effectively to utilize energy better and save

Office equipment and electronics use energy even when idle or on stand-by. To save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at work, always activate the power management features on your computer and monitor, unplug laptop power cords when not in use and turn off equipment and lights at the end of the day. Consider using a power strip that can be turned off when you're done using your computers, printers, wireless routers and other electronics.

Look for ENERGY STAR qualified products for the Office

When buying new products for your office at work or at home, get the features and performance you want and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollutants. Look for ENERGY STAR qualified office equipment, such as computers, copiers, and printers, in addition to other product categories, including lighting, heating and cooling equipment and commercial appliances.

Use less energy for your local commuting

Switch to public transportation, carpooling, biking, and other innovative ways to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on your way to and from work.

Actions You Can Take at Home

Change lights

Change a light, and you help change the world. Replace the conventional bulbs in your most light fixtures with CFL or bulbs that have the ENERGY STAR and you will help the environment while saving money on energy bills. If every household of our Group members adopts this one simple action we would prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from nearly 700 cars annually.

Use water efficiently

Saving water around the home is simple. Municipal water systems require a lot of energy to purify and distribute water to households, and saving water can lower greenhouse gas emissions. There are also simple actions you can take to save water: Be smart when irrigating your lawn or landscape; only water when needed and do it during the coolest part of the day, early morning is best. Turn the water off while shaving or brushing teeth. Do not use your toilet as a waste basket - water is wasted with each flush.

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Recycle your newspapers, beverage containers, paper and other goods. Use products in containers that can be recycled and items that can be repaired or reused. In addition, support recycling markets by buying products made from recycled materials. Reducing, reusing, and recycling in your home helps conserve energy and reduces pollution and greenhouse gases from resource extraction, manufacturing, and disposal.

Heat and cool smartly

Simple steps like cleaning air filters regularly and having your heating and cooling equipment tuned annually by a licensed contractor can save energy and increase comfort at home, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When it's time to replace your old equipment, choose a high efficiency model, and make sure it is properly sized and installed.

5. Look for ENERGY STAR qualified products

When buying new products, such as appliances for your home, get the features and performance you want AND help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. Look for ENERGY STAR qualified products in various product categories, including lighting, home electronics, heating and cooling equipment and appliances.

6. Spread the Word

Tell family and friends that energy efficiency is good for their homes and good for the environment because it lowers greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. Tell 5 people and together we can help our homes help us all.

Actions You Can Take on the Road

Buy smart

Before buying a new or used vehicle (or even before renting a vehicle), check for more fuel-efficient vehicles available in the market that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Drive smart

Many factors affect the fuel economy of your car. To improve fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, go easy on the brakes and gas pedal, avoid hard accelerations, reduce time spent idling and unload unnecessary items in your trunk to reduce weight. If you have a removable roof rack and you are not using it, take it off to improve your fuel economy by as much as 5 percent.

Tune your ride

A well-maintained car is more fuel-efficient, produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions, is more reliable, and is safer! Keep your car well tuned, follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule, and use the recommended grade of motor oil. Also check and replace your vehicle's air filter regularly.

Check your tyres

Check your tyre pressure regularly. Under-inflation increases tire wear, reduces your fuel economy by up to 3 percent, and leads to increased emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants.

Give your car a break

Use public transportation, carpool or walk or bike whenever possible to avoid using your car. Leaving your car at home just two days a week will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 727 kilogram per year. Whenever possible, combine activities and errands into one trip.

We are sure each and every member of our Group will exhibit his/her commitment towards the environment and offer a green & safe Mother Earth to the Generation Next.

Think Greener ! Think Cleaner !

Let us pledge to make this world a better place to live in.

This is a TelecomWave.com & CampusBuzzIndia.com initiative...