Health & Food

Mar 17: Addressing the healthcare needs of the country, the government proposed National Health Policy 2017, which aims at providing affordable healthcare for all. The policy proposed free drugs, free diagnostics and free emergency care services in all public hospitals as part of financial protection at secondary and tertiary care levels. It hopes to achieve the highest level of good health and...

New Delhi, Mar 16: Indians are among the poorest sleepers in the world, clocking in an average of 6.55 hours of sleep a night, a report by fitness solutions firm Fitbit said today. Among the 18 countries surveyed, India was only ahead of Japan, which saw its residents getting 6.35 hours of sleep on an average. People in New Zealand, the UK and Australia seemed to get the most sleep on average per...

Los Angeles, Mar 15: A lotion enriched with the body's own beneficial bacteria may help protect against skin infections such as eczema, a new study claims. Researchers from University of California, San Diego in the US took bacterial samples from patients' skin, picked out certain species and cultured them in a lab, and then put these bacteria into a lotion. They found that, for five patients with...

London, Mar 14: Despite giving you sleepless nights, constant worry and financial headaches, parenthood may be key to having a longer life, particularly in older age when health and capacity start to decline, a new study has claimed. By the age of 60, the difference in life expectancy, which does not seem to be influenced by the sex of the children, may be as much as two years, the findings...

Mar 13: The ability to perform astonishing feats of memory, such as remembering lists of several dozen words, can be learned, according to a team of researchers. After 40 days of daily 30-minute training sessions using a strategic memory improvement technique, individuals who had typical memory skills at the start and no previous memory training more than doubled their memory capacity, going from...

Washington, Mar 12: Children who are bullied may experience lifelong health effects related to chronic stress exposure such as increased risk for heart disease and diabetes in adulthood, new research has found. Recent advances in understanding of the negative health effects of chronic stress highlight a pressing need to clarify the longer-term health implications of childhood bullying, researchers...

Berlin, Mar 12: Walking or jogging may help cancer patients cope better with the side effects of chemotherapy, a new study has found. Exercise as a therapy to complement chemotherapy has a positive effect on muscles, balance and tumour-related fatigue syndrome, researchers said. Patients tolerate the therapy better and experience less disease recurrence (relapses) later on. This has already been...

Washington, Mar 11: Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have identified a chemical signal in the zebrafish brain that helps it regenerate retina, a finding that may help cure blindness in humans. The discovery raises the possibility that human retinas can be induced to regenerate, naturally repairing damage caused by degenerative retinal diseases and injury, including age-related macular...

Mar 10: Women beware before dying your hair or using hormonal contraceptives, as they may increase your chances of breast cancer. Researcher Sanna Heikkinen from the University of Helsinki in Finland and Finnish Cancer Registry evaluated the contribution of the use of hormonal contraceptives and hair dyes on breast cancer risk factors. "The biggest risk factor in breast cancer is high age and...

Washington, Mar 8: Trying to stick to a diet? You may want to avoid eating out with friends, say scientists who found that the temptation to overeat is stronger in social settings such as restaurants. Researchers from University of Pittsburgh in the US, used smartphones and a custom-developed application to capture data of 150 dieters, 90 per cent of which were women, moved through everyday life...