HEAlTH

Tips to deal with anxiety in these trying times

Anxiety is our body’ s natural response to stress. Its a feeling of fear or apprehension about what is to come. The first day of school, going to a job interview, or giving a speech may cause most people to feel fearful and nervous. The most recent addition to these reasons is the pandemic which has made anxiety and stress more common in people.

Dr Chandni Tugnait, MD (A.M) Psychotherapist, Life Alchemist, Coach & Healer , Founder & Director, Gateway of Healing shares a few tips to keep yourself anxiety-free during the pandemic scare:

Practice left nostril breathing for a couple of minutes daily to keep stress and anxiety away. Simply take your right hand and, with your fingers outstretched, block off your right nostril by putting gentle pressure on it with your right thumb. Be sure to keep the rest of your fingers straight and pointing up towards the sky; the fingers act like antennas for the “cosmic” energy that surrounds us all. With a long, slow, deep breath, gently inhale through your left nostril. Then, just as gently, exhale long, slowly and completely, again through the left nostril. Relax your body as you feel the relaxing, cooling breath bringing new life into your body. Relax even deeper with each exhale as you breathe out all tension, all stress, and all disease.

Journal your thoughts, feelings, fears, experiences and ideas to process them in a better way. This is actually a great therapy tool that improves mental health as we do not let things pile up, give space, distance & shape to things while reflecting upon them. This helps in venting, accepting and then finally healing.

Maintain sleep hygiene by sticking to the same time for sleeping & waking up daily. Evaluate things that disrupt your sleep so they can be avoided. Block blue light 3-4 hours before you sleep; no TV, no cell phones or iPads!

Use aromatic diffusers to enhance the mood and clear the energy around. Aromatherapy stimulates the limbic system of the brain that controls emotions & memory.

Sip water from a transparent green bottle daily to keep the lungs & nasal passage healthy. Using colour therapy with water is most effective as more than 75 per cent of our body is made of water.

Follow a meditation and mindfulness practice for 5-10 minutes daily. You can meditate in silence, body scanning or follow a guided meditation. This keeps the focus on the present moment’ and hence greatly reduces stress & anxiety.

By: Puja

How to make your basic meals full of nutrition

The fact that fancy diets are difficult to follow is because they try to eliminate all ingredients that are well accustomed to our taste pallet. It’s important to follow a diet that helps in reaching our fitness goals in a flexible and comfortable manner.

However, making major changes to your diet can sometimes seem very overwhelming. Instead of making big changes, it may be better to start with a few smaller ones, by tweaking your regular cooking style, chapati, curries, dal and soups be a welcome change and add value to everyday nutrition.

Diksha Chhabra, Founder, Diksha Chhabra Fitness Consultations, shares a few ways you can make load your meals with nutrition and that too effortlessly.

Power of Protein:

We have seen our mothers and grannies making paneer or curd at home with leftover milk. Ever wondered what that water like substance is? Often thrown as waste after making paneer or seen as leftover after the curd is set is actually pure milk protein that gets filtered during the process. It’s a quick digesting class one protein which the human body can easily absorb and can benefit of. Instead of throwing the residual water after making paneer or removing it from curd to make it thick and creamy, use it in kneading your dough for chapati, or add it to dals, vegetable curries, soups and even for cooking rice and pasta. Our Indian vegetarian meals lack class one source of protein and this can positively increase the nutritional value of simple everyday meals.

Power of Fibre:

Food rich in fibre helps your body to dispose off the toxins, regularise bowel movement, lowers blood sugar and cholesterol levels. A few basic changes to our whole wheat flour, dosa idli batter and chapati can lead to more fibre. Adding multiple grain like jowar, bajra, oats, ragi, legumes in our flour or batter doubles up its nutritional value and fibre content. The same can be done if you are fond of baking cakes and cookies. The more the number of different kinds of grains in your plate, the healthier it is.

For your sweet tooth:

There is a great way of having your favourite ice-cream, make it with frozen fruits at home with no added sugar. Fruit with natural pulp like banana, mango, chikoo, coconut cream or papaya can be frozen in the refrigerator for few hours after which once you blend it in the blender it gets nice creamy ice-cream. You can also add berries, nuts or dark chocolate to enhance the flavour. Juicy fruits like orange, watermelon, sweetlime, kiwi can be great options for making popsicles once its juice is extracted. Also, instead of sugar laden thick shakes with artificial flavours and milk, adding fruits and yogurt can be a game-changer in your list healthy and guilt-free dessert or snacks.

By: Puja Gupta

Rahul Bose

looks for solutions amid growing Covid crisis

Actor Rahul Bose last month shared words of encouragement with netizens at a time when the nation is battling the second wave of Covid.

“Anger, exhaustion, confusion, despair, feed off each other. Infighting inevitably follows. How many times have we seen this in sport. A team that was winning in the first half, suddenly staring at a massive defeat in the second,” he wrote on Instagram.

“The only way to break this is to gather again, take a deep breath, believe in each other, list where things are going wrong, go back to what worked for the team, and then push harder than ever before to implement those solutions. #winthis,” he added.

On the work front, the actor features in the recently-released web series “Bombay Begums ” alongside Pooja Bhatt, Shahana Goswami, Plabita Borthakur, Amruta Subhash, Aadhya Anand, Vivek Gomber, Danish Husain and Nauheed Cyrusi.

By: Anjuri Nayar Singh

Globally, more than three million people have now died from the coronavirus. Following are the major coronavirus-related updates from across the world for the month of April COVID-19

INDIA’S RECORD CASES

The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv (Ukraine), Caracas (Venezuela) or Lisbon (Portugal). It is higher than Chicago’s population of 2.7 million and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.

Canada battling the crisis

Canada has deployed its military to Ontario amid a worsening Covid-19 wave that has caused the positivity rate to hit an all-time high in the province. The government approved Ontario’s request for medical and other support as ICU admissions hit new highs recently.

Earlier this month the province issued new stay-at-home orders that were met with some protests. The government doubled down on April 16 when it said it would strengthen enforcement and penalties for those not complying with orders.

Canada said it would deploy federal health human resources, provide support from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), and pay for the redeployment of the Canadian Red Cross to support and relieve staff in medical care facilities, a statement released testified.

India’s record cases, again

India recorded a new high of more than 261,000 daily coronavirus cases on Sunday.

Statistics by the Health Ministry revealed that 261,500 cases were registered in the past 24 hours, which pushed the total to 14.7 million. There were 1,500 deaths, taking the number of fatalities to 177,150.

Capital New Delhi has recorded 24,000 coronavirus cases in a day and is facing an acute shortage of hospital beds.

Iran sees highest daily death toll in months as virus surges

Iran’s daily coronavirus death toll climbed over 400 for the first time in months on Sunday, as the country, which has long had the region’s largest outbreak, battles a postholiday infection surge.

Iranian health authorities recorded 405 fatalities from the virus, pushing the total death toll to 66,732. Officials

-19 ROUNDUP:

CASES, NO MASKS IN ISRAEL

increasingly have warned about the impact of trends seen nationwide during the Persian New Year, or Nowruz.

The two-week holiday last month brought increased travel, relaxed restrictions and large gatherings without precautions.

Brazil’s record daily deaths

Brazil recorded 67,636 additional confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 2,929 deaths.

Brazil has registered more than 13.9 million cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 371,678, the second-highest in the world behind the United States.

France’s quarantine measures

France will enforce a strict 10day quarantine for all travellers coming from Brazil starting April 24 in a bid to prevent the spread of a coronavirus variant first found in the South American country.

France decided this week to suspend all flights to and from Brazil. The measure will be extended until April 23. Starting April 24, only people residing in France or holding a French or European Union passport will be allowed to fly to the country.

The same measures will also gradually be put in place by April 24 for people returning from Argentina, Chile and South Africa, where other coronavirus variants were detected.

Turkey reports high number of cases again

Turkey reported 62,606 new coronavirus cases in the space of 24 hours, close to its highest daily tally, and 288 deaths.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday announced several new restrictions and a partial lockdown for the first two weeks of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to curb the surge in cases.

Turkey’s overall death from COVID-19 stands at 35,608, from more than 4.2 million confirmed cases.

Cambodia uses wedding halls for CoVId patients as cases surge

Cambodia began setting up thousands of hospital beds in two wedding party halls on Sunday to cope with an influx of COVID-19 patients in a country that up until recently had largely managed to contain infections.

Cambodia also reported a daily record 618 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, its health ministry said, in a spike in infections following an outbreak first detected in late February.

The new numbers took the overall tally to 6,389. Cambodia until recently had one of the world’s lowest numbers of infections. It has reported 43 deaths, all in the past two months.

Australia in no hurry to reopen borders

Australia is in no hurry to reopen its international borders and risk the country’s nearly coronavirus-free lifestyle, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.

Australia closed its borders to all non-citizens and non-residents in March 2020 and has been permitting only limited international arrivals in recent months, mainly its citizens returning from abroad.

The border closure, together with snap lockdowns, swift contact tracking and high community compliance with health measures, have made Australia one of the world’s most successful countries in curbing the pandemic, limiting coronavirus cases to below 29,500 infections and 910 deaths.

Israel scraps mask requirement

Israel has dropped the requirement to wear masks outdoors and fully reopened schools for the first time in more than a year. Most of the country’s population has been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Masks are required to be worn in public places indoors. The government said masks continue to be worn outdoors as well in large gatherings.

All students – from daycare to 12th grade – returned to regular inperson classes on April 25..

With inputs from Aljazeera

How seasonal shifts affect your skin

As the weather changes, most of us notice changes in the texture and appearance of our skin as well. A shift from dry to oily feeling, increase in skin flare ups and breakouts are common experiences.

Seasonal changes bring with them a lot of environmental changes as well. Along with temperature shifts, humidity levels also fluctuate. The type of pollens or allergic elements in the environment also change, so do microorganisms. All these changes do have an impact on skin, particularly for those who have sensitive skin, points out Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi, Dermatologist from Medlinks, New Delhi.

With summer, some people tend to experience skin irritation or acne. As hot weather induces sweating, bacterial growth may also result in bad odour and rashes on sensitive areas.

“Sometimes, even as temperature and humidity increase, we overlook the need to shift to lighter non-comedogenic skincare products. This in turn may further induce episodes of flare ups or breakouts. Some people even report flare up in skin conditions such as eczema or psoriasis. Often, the use of heating devices in winters sucks away all moisture from the indoor air, exacerbating skin dryness and related conditions,” he says.

A study published in the British Journal of Dermatology concluded that a shift of season does not just change the environmental conditions but also induces changes at skin’s cellular level. The study found that a seasonal shift unleashes a breakdown in filaggrin, a protein that helps modulate the skin’s barrier function, along with changes in corneocytes, the cells that form the skin’s outer layer. When the skin’s barrier function is interrupted, the skin tends to become more vulnerable to irritation and damage, he adds.

The expert says it is important therefore as weather changes, our skincare regimen also changes to address the needs of hour. Here are a few suggestions from him:

Change your skincare routine

While, a good cleansing, toning and moisturising routine must to be followed round the year, an important thing to do is to modify your skincare products as the weather changes occur. So, shifting to lighter non-comedogenic products is the first thing to do as we transition into the summer. If you have been using a creambased facewash or moisturiser, now is the time to switch to water-based light formulations Consider some skin procedures

If you have been considering a skin procedure, a seasonal shift is perhaps the appropriate time to undertake it. Not only will it pave the way for a dermatologist visit, it will also help prepare your skin better against the sudden trauma of weather change.

A dermatologist will examine your skin in-depth and help you make an informed decision of which skin procedure you need. If your skin is experiencing dryness, flakiness and signs of ageing are troubling you, you may consider a hyaluronic acid-based treatment such as Profhilo. Similarly, if you are experiencing oiliness and clogged pores, exfoliating and deep cleansing procedures such as hybradermabrasion and carbon peels may help.

Parineeti Chopra:

Anything sub-par won’t be accepted by audience today

Actress Parineeti Chopra feels the pandemic has changed the way people want to be entertained, and the films being made need to be in accordance to what people want to watch.

“The pandemic has changed the taste of the audience, and we have to respect what they are seeking,” she says.

The actress, who has “Animal” coming up with Anil Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor, says that all actors need to take stock of the quality of cinema they are offering before signing films. by audiences, who have access to clutterbreaking content emerging from across the world. We actors and filmmakers have to keep this in mind,” she says.

“I have gravitated towards projects that have strong content because I realised that everyone around me, including me, was only watching films or shows that are landmark. So, why should anyone else see anything average,” she says.

She adds: “All my future projects including ‘Animal’ are strong subjects that are unique and fresh for audiences to see and love. I will be only looking out for scripts that only offer something new for people to enjoy.”