News

The Hindu :

Don’t mindlessly sprinkle salt on your food. A high salt diet leads to hypertension and reduces the effectiveness of BP medication

PHOTO: AFPTOO MUCH SALT Has little health benefit

Not only does a high-salt diet contribute to hypertension, but it can also reduce the effectiveness of blood pressure medications, a new study finds.

“What is striking about these results is the degree of the effect,” said Dr. David A. Calhoun, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a member of the team reporting the finding in a recent online issue of Hypertension.

Benefits of low-salt diet

The study evaluated 12 people with resistant hypertension, high blood pressure that can’t be controlled by a three-drug regimen. Because the study was so small, the results can’t be easily applied to everyone with high blood pressure, but “anyone with high blood pressure certainly benefits from a low-salt diet,” Calhoun said.

High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular problems, and heavy salt intake has long been known to contribute to the condition, Calhoun said.

Another study reported in the same issue of the journal described a significant reduction in high blood pressure from a modest reduction in salt intake in a group that included whites, blacks and Asians.

That study, done at St. George’s University of London in England, had 169 participants, all of whom had moderately high blood pressure. After reducing their salt intake from 9.7 grams a day to 6.5 grams a day, the average reduction in a six-week period was 4.8 points in systolic pressure and 2.2 points in diastolic pressure.

Both studies emphasise the importance of controlling salt intake to keep blood pressure at safe levels, said Dr. Martha Daviglus, a professor of preventive medicine and medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association.

Between 20…More

The Hindu :

Stalking and being stalked has become a pastime for many

Chatting away Make new friends

All the world is a web. And all the men and women are mere stalkers. And it’s not just Kareena or Aishwarya who are being stalked. If you are active on any of the social networking sites, chances are you are being stalked. But hang on, don’t hurry and block your pictures or delete all your accounts. These are friendly and harmless stalkers.

And stalking gets endorsements from Bollywood celebrities. Take Karan Johar, for instance. On a TV show, he recently admitted that stalking on Facebook is his favourite pastime. Further, he said he loves accepting friends request on Facebook from his ‘cool classmates’ – both school and college. It’s altogether a different thing that these ‘cool classmates’ treated Karan like a non-entity for his ‘un-cool looks.’

On the TV show with Farah Khan, he confessed: “I love accepting those friendship requests that says, ‘hey remember I was your friend in school or college?’ I add them and enjoy going through their albums and enjoy seeing those swans turn to ugly ducklings now.”

But that’s Bollywood.

In the commonwood too the stalkers are here, there and everywhere.

With an increasing number of people signing up on social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and Hi5, you can never be sure of who has gone through your details, album or messages. And there is a lot of browsing done. Yes, mostly from complete strangers checking you out everyday

“I enjoy seeing the ‘good girls’ from school turn into wild things now. These are the ones who probably looked down at some of us for wearing knee-length skirts while they wore skirts that touched their ankles, for not oiling and braiding our hair like theirs and instead sporting it short. Now that they are out of school and studying abroad, these ‘good girls’ have…More

The Hindu : y>Time and space are no longer issues: welcome to the world of easy gardening. JAYASHREE ARUNACHALAM digs deeper

PHOTO: K.R.DEEPAKVERDANT VISTAS How does your garden grow?

Gardens and gardening have always held strong appeal. There’s Miss Marple and her battle against weeds in St. Mary Mead, Mary Lennox and her visions of blossoming roses in “The Secret Garden”, and Alice’s adventures with the critical Tiger-Lily and the severe Rose in “Through The Looking Glass”. Move to 21st century urban cityscapes, and you can see the change. “We live in vertical constrained spaces,” says Raj Shekar of Hobby Hub in Hyderabad which, houses an extensive nursery. “Most people have no space for horizontal gardens.” Even those people who enjoy a little greenery fringing their apartments suffer from constraints of time, with hectic work and play schedules overshadowing the more mundane routine of watering plants.

However, like true children of our times, lack of time and space can no longer stand in our way. Several low-maintenance options are now being popularised amongst the horticultural circuit to provide easy solutions to the gardening conundrum.

Lalita Agarwal from Pune talks on bottle gardening. “It’s survival of plants without maintenance,” explains Lalita. Using transparent containers – they could be fish bowls or wide-necked bottles – she deftly shovels peat, gravel, charcoal to absorb excess moisture, and compost into it. Slip slow-growing, humidity-free plants into the bottle and seal, and the plants can live for years, requiring very sporadic spraying with water and no direct sunlight to keep them going.

The options are endless. “There are hanging plants from Thailand to hang in balconies and verandas which require occasional spraying with water and nutrition,” says Raj. “Bonsais or lucky bamboo shoots which only need to be placed in a bowl of clean water are also popular, especially because of vastu and fengshui reasons.”

Sixty-five-year-old gardening enthusiast Latha Srinivasan remembers a time when the…More

The Hindu : y>

Comic caper Kind Hearts and Coronets is the greatest of the Ealing comedies

Bangalore Film society will be screening three cinema classics from across the world, over the weekend. The movies will be screened at Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark’s Road cross. On Friday at 6.30 p.m., watch “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, directed by Robert Hamer. It is the tale of the charming Louis Mazzini, ostracized from aristocratic society because his mother eloped with an Italian opera singer as he makes a determined attempt for Dukedom. However, he has to contend with eight relatives in his path to achieving the goal. On Saturday, catch “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It is the tale of Kiki, a thirteen year witch-in-training who has to leave her home with only her cat Jiji for company and find her place in the world. On Sunday at 6.15 p.m., “Watch Night on Earth”, directed by Jim Jarmusch. It is an incandescent film, equipped with Frederick Elmes cinematography, Tom Waits’ brilliant bebop waltz score and career best performances from an ensemble cast, which includes Gina Rowlands, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Rosie Perez, Beatrice Dalle etc. It chronicles five stories set in taxi cabs in five cities across the world from Los Angeles to Helsinki, `and includes elements of comedy, drama and melancholy. Call 25493705/9886213516 or mail bangalorefilmsociety@gmail.com for more information.

<FONT …More