 Ensure Perfect Measurements to Avoid Medicine-related Complications  Sitting Without Support Kills the Chances of a Perfect Reading Is it the sphygmomanometer that’s tricking our eyes or are we inducing the BP instrument to show different measurements with our faulty acts? Its quite strange that your BP readings differ slightly between instruments when measured back-to-back and even the same readings might show different measurements when taken twice in a while. The need has sprung up to monitor your BP at the comfort of your home owing to serious health consequences owing to varying blood pressure levels. But, even small issues that seem insignificant during the time of measurement might cause fluctuations in readings anywhere between 2 and 40 mmHg. Next time you think of getting your BP checked ensure that you follow the guidelines given here for an accurate measurement without which hearing the BP values could make your pressure go up high even further & the dosage further higher! Such high measurements can lead to debilitating side effects. Control your blood pressure levels with a lifestyle change that includes eating healthy foods and exercising regularly. Get in touch with nutritionists/dietitians at www.firsteatright.com to get a customized diet plan to keep BP under control.
The American Medical Association has stated the common positioning problems that can lead to increase in blood pressure levels. If the patient has:
Failure to follow any of the above-mentioned guidelines (such as not placing the foot on the floor or abstaining from talking) can lead to incorrect readings that are high. This in turn makes the doctor prescribe high-dose medications that can be harmful on the body. Whereas, sticking by the recommendations helps in achieving correct measurements and medications prescribed for these readings.  A Healthy Relationship Needs a Healthy Frame of Mind  Hop & Play, Save Your Relationship from Going Astray Relationship status: Single, Engaged or Married in your social media accounts is not all about simply having a partner. We don’t have the power to choose or parents or siblings but we have been blessed with the ability to make choices on our life partners, friends and other people whom we would like to travel with us in our journey of life. Almost none of us remember our initial 2-3 years of life but the experiences during those times might tag along with us and influence our choices later in life. Understanding the knack of getting into a healthy and romantic relationship and maintaining it is one of the key skills required by young adult to flourish in life. A healthy and loving relationship is purely based on love, problem-solving ability and without any physical/verbal violence involved between the two. The interesting catch here is that such healthy relationships exist and are influenced by the different experiences that people have had in their own respective families.
Relationships Churned by Family Values? How our family environment influences our romantic relationships and our social skills hasn’t been well-known and discussed until now. But we have heard enough about proverbs such as ‘Tell me your friend, I will tell you who you are’ and ‘Like mom, like son’ which show us the huge impact of the company we keep and the surrounding we grow up in. For instance, one of my close friends has a stuttering problem but it was not an inborn issue. He grew up in a hostile environment where his parents were constantly arguing and physically fighting too. One fine (or rather bad) day he started to stammer after witnessing one such fight. When the physician analyzed he came to know that the child’s mind had been tremendously affected and all the buried feelings exploded as stuttering. The environment in which you grow plays a prominent role in defining who you are and what you do. To understand the link between family environment and its effect on romantic relationships a team of researchers analyzed long-term data from more than 10,000 youngsters in rural and semi-rural communities. From them, 2,000 randomly selected people were analyzed as young adults in the follow-up research. This included 974 participants who were 18-21 years old and in a steady romantic relationship. All the 2,000 participants were questioned about their assertiveness, engagement with family members, the atmosphere existing in the family and the impact of their parent’s discipline methods in grades 6, 7 and 9 respectively. Again, between the age of 18 and 21 they were questioned about violence levels, problem-solving skills and the quality of love they experienced in their relationship. Results showed that individuals brought up in close-knitted families that has an underlying current of love, compassion and understanding were at a minimal risk of being in an abusive/violent romantic relationship or one that had poor problem-solving abilities. One surprising find here is that neither the parenting methods nor the family environment had any impact on the amount of love existing in any relationship. But a positive parenting approach had a positive impact on the participant’s assertiveness helping them put forth their needs in a positive way and also have a smooth interaction with both the families. This study clearly shows that children who grew up experiencing a positive family environment and effective parenting were likelier to have healthy romantic relationships as young adults. Such healthy relationships take away a great disturbance in life-stress, at least in personal life. Stress in personal life can take a toll of your health too leading to serious consequences elaborated at www.firsteatright.com. In turn, children who were cooperative, confident and well-behaved also were great contributors to a positive family climate. Your family is the first relationship you develop born into this world and how you behave amongst family members has a great impact on what you do with your other relationships later in life. Constructive or destructive communication, communicating in a neutral way, yelling during a disagreement or throwing tantrums are all learnt during your first intimate relationship-that is your family relationship. Other acts or feelings later in life are an extension of this. So, when young parents now realize this maybe they have an opportunity to provide the best environment for their kids in terms of kindness, love and affection to help these children grow into assertive young adults who can nurture a loving and caring romantic relationship.  Every Day is Different, Depression is not Constant  Curbing your Ability to Exercise Can Disturb the Mind Greatly Habits are like addictions. Its extremely difficult to let go of them once our mind and body is attuned to it. Forming a habit takes time (and of course practice) and un-forming a habit takes even more time. Exercise is one of those habits that’s difficult to get into the groove but once our mind is fixed on it the day remains incomplete without performing it. Physical education (PE) hasn’t gained much prominence in our country, there are not many schools which insist on PE as much as academics. Such educational institutions can never become the cornerstone of physical activity and habit formation. Whereas, as parents we are obligated to nurture our children with the best of characters, personality and habits with relentless efforts. Once children grow up with a defined set of habits what exactly is their mindset when they are suddenly told to unfollow some of them?
Forming &Un-forming Habits Exercise is as important as brushing our teeth or going to sleep. There can be no excuses accepted for refraining from exercising except when our own health doesn’t permit it. Every nutritionist, dietitian and health expert recommend getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise on at least five days a week to stay in shape and be fit. Why don’t you get your lifestyle corrected with the needed diet changes and exercise practices by getting in touch with reputed dietitians and nutritionists at www.firsteatright.com? Once we get used to any form of exercise-walking, jogging, gym, aerobics or a sport-we look forward to it with eagerness and enthusiasm. There are studies supporting the fact that exercising is good for mental as well as physical health. It helps to relieve stress, bring in serenity and help the individual stay away from depression. So, can avoiding exercising or non-performance of any physical activity lead to depression in a person? Though we are well-aware that exercising regularly can reduce depression we are not quite aware of what happens to these depressive symptoms when exercise is stopped. This attracted a group of researchers who reviewed studies that looked into the case of 152 adults (50 were women) who stopped exercising. Each of them was habituated to exercising at least for 30 minutes thrice a week for the past three months. Researchers were surprised to know that stopping to exercise triggered symptoms of depression in some people after three days itself while some others started experiencing depression symptoms a week or two after halting the physical activity. Also, female participants exhibited pronounced symptoms compared to their male counterparts. We cannot come to definite conclusions from this because the above study looked into aerobic exercise only, without taking account of resistance training or mixed exercise. While the area of research seems to be quite interesting there are no solid evidences or authentic proofs that help us derive the conclusion that halting exercising increases chances of depression. We are left with many unanswered questions here-Does an individual get depression even when he/she is forced to abort activity due to some injury? For someone whose depression levels are always imbalanced does stopping activity for a couple of days show evident changes? But, the grounds on which this research is done highlights the benefits of exercising once again. It is always appreciable to make a habit of some physical activity, stick to it and continue performing it to reap benefits. Don’t go by what the society norms state-walking, gym or Zumba are not the only ones available. Choose something that your heart yearns for. If you love sports, choose something between football or tennis, if you are an extrovert you can always opt for group fitness classes and if you are an introvert it is never wrong to perform some physical exercises all by yourself in the comfort of your home or go for a quick jog in the lush green park outside.  Better to be Slow & Steady than Fast & Hasty It takes no more than 3 seconds for you to eat a handful of chips before poking again into the bowl for another helping but your grandpa seems to find it difficult to push down a single one despite the fact that he loves to eat them! While his heart reaches out to the bowl his swallowing ability prevents him from eating them rapidly. Ageing brings about a reduction in muscle mass, function, speed and efficiency in every adult who reaches this phase of life. Have you ever noticed elderly people preferring to eat soft foods such as porridge or soap to pastas or pizzas? They have reached a point where their only wish is to live comfortably every day for the rest of their lives causing themselves and others no trouble, ensuring their good health as much as possible and trying to accomplish as many things as possible by themselves. Swallowing difficulty is a side effect of many medical conditions such as stroke, conditions that affect the nervous system or surgeries involving the neck and throat. Swallowing difficulties can be a sign of ageing too and almost all individuals experience varying proportions of it above the age of 80.
Dysphagia Its no surprise that people start losing teeth with ageing (in fact, youngsters these days go for root canal treatment and removal of decayed tooth) and these missing teeth might make swallowing a difficult affair. But a new study has come up with a strong association between swallowing difficulty and loss of muscle and function in the throat. The study included 31 adults aged between 62 and 91 years who had no swallowing problems and 33 healthy young adults aged between 18 and 28. Both the groups underwent an X-ray video test that elaborated the swallowing procedure. This video showed for how long the wind pipe was in a closed state during swallowing, how long it took to close the airway and how food was prevented from entering the lungs. The video showed that the process of swallowing was delayed in older adults meaning the food got into the throat later and it also took extra time for the subsequent actions to start and prevent food from entering into the windpipe. This shows that older adults are at an all-time risk of getting their food stuck in the lungs that can also lead them to death (a condition called as aspiration pneumonia). Almost 15% of the elderly population experience dysphagia (swallowing difficulties) and this can land the person with malnutrition, dehydration and pneumonia. In short, it has debilitating effects on the health and quality of life of individuals. Exercise for the Throat? We exercise for every part of the body right from our arms, legs and belly to neck and face. Why don’t we try doing a few exercises for our throat muscles too? Its in our hands to prevent a small problem from blowing out into a full-fledged one by ensuring a few things. Take good care of your teeth and ensure tiptop oral hygiene. Get handy tips on maintaining oral hygiene at www.firsteatright.com. Take in small bites of food and chew them well to ensure that they get into the food pipe (esophagus). Ageing brings about various changes to our body:
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AuthorDietitian & Nutritionist Dr. Nafeesa Imteyaz. Archives
November 2020
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