Health & Fitness
Natural curd for gut health and weight loss

Milk is not everyone’s favourite food but it’s tough to come across someone who dislikes to yoghurt or curd, which is the popular name for milk curdled using live bacteria that is part of traditional diets across most of south Asia and the Middle-east.
Curd has been a staple in India for generations. It is the only fermented food considered sattvic (full of live-giving prana), according to Ayurveda texts, which tout it as the nutritional boost that helps treat disorders ranging from indigestion and fever to anorexia and infertility.
Curd is made when “beneficial” live bacteria (as against bacteria that cause disease) convert milk sugar called lactose into lactic acid, which thickens the milk and gives it the distinctive tart flavour. Since fermentation breaks down lactose into lactic acid, some people with lactose can eat a little curd without experiencing adverse effects.
Since milk is its primary constituent, curd is high in protein (10 gm/100 gm; one small bowl) and calcium (100 gm), and brings with it all the nutritional benefits associated with milk, such as prevention of osteoporosis or brittle-bone disease. Its high live bacterial content improves gut microbiota, which boosts the immune system, break down potentially toxic food compounds, and synthesise certain vitamins and amino acids, including vitamin K and the B vitamins, riboflavin and B12.
Indian Vs Greek
Most types of Indian curds contain higher amounts of calcium than Greek yoghurt, which typically lose calcium when it’s strained to give it a thick and creamy consistency.
Apart from the texture, purists insist that curd if different from Greek yoghurt because the latter is made from fermenting milk with specific strains of bacteria,Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, with lactobacilli and bifidobacteria sometimes added to it.
Curd from India, on the other hand, has been found to contain at least 250 species of Lactobacillus bacteria, which explains the wide varieties of natural textures and flavours across the country.
For maximum health benefits, it’s best to eat curd in its natural form or with vegetables and fruits added without added sugar. Commercially-available flavoured yoghurts may have up to 20-25 grams of sugar per 150 ml container, which can lead to weight again. Commercial yoghurts may have gelatin added to thicken the texture, and pectin to increase shelf life, so it’s advisable to read the labels.
Health Plus
The biggest plus of yoghurt is its boosting gut health, improving nutrient absorption and lowers symptoms of diarrhoea, including antibiotic-associated diarrhoea.Lactobacillus, along with other families of anaerobic “good” bacteria such as peptostreptococcus, bifidobacterium, and clostridium, flourish in the low oxygen environment in the large intestine and prevent the overgrowth of harmful bacteria by competing for nutrients and attachment sites in the gut’s mucous membranes, which are the primary site of immune activity and production of antimicrobial proteins.
A study that followed 120,877 men and women over 20 years published in The New England Journal of Medicine found yoghurt lowered body weight and protected against heart disease and type-2 diabetes.
It also protects against the chronic inflammatory bowl diseases like irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, as well as allergies and H. Pylori infection, which is one of the primary causes of gastroenteritis in India. People with any of these conditions would benefit from eating yoghurt every day, according to The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Entertainment
Munmun Dutta shares transformation photos, says she is ‘feeling the change’
Munmun Dutta who is most popular for portraying the part of Babita iyer in TMKOC has taken instagram to share her change pictures.
She shared a split of two photographs showing the distinction in her look prior to going through the program, and after it. She wrote in the subtitle that the interaction is as yet in progress and she is anticipating her wellness venture.
View this post on Instagram
Munmun in her caption wrote, “Great part was, at long last after not turning out for right around 4 months, I got once more into the propensity for working out routinely once more. Long approach to accomplish the god-like physique however I am on target and persuaded to do as such. It will be an excursion and I am anticipating it.”
As of late, Munmun had purchased another level in Mumbai and shared photographs of it via online media. She said that purchasing the new house was a “little glimpse of heaven” second for her.
Health & Fitness
Life expectancy in India drops by 2 years due to Covid pandemic: Report

A statistical analysis conducted by Mumbai’s International Institute for Population Studies shows that life expectancy in India has dropped by roughly two years due to Covid-19 pandemic.
According to IIPS assistant professor Surayakant Yadav, the life expectancy at birth for men and women has declined from 69.5 years and 72 years in 2019 to 67.5 years and 69.8 respectively in 2020, reports Times of India.
‘Life expectancy at birth’ is defined as the average number of years that a newborn is expected to live if the mortality pattern during their birth remains constant in the future.
The study was conducted to analyse the effect of the Covid pandemic on the mortality patterns across the country, as thousands of lives were lost due to the deadly pandemic waves.
The study also found out that the Covid toll was reported to be the highest for men in the age group of 35-69. The excess deaths in this age bracket due to Covid led to a sharp drop in life expectancy.
The IIPS based its study on the data collected by the 145-nation Global Burden of Disease study and the Covid-India Application Programme Interface (API) portal.
Yadav further added, “The Covid impact has wiped out the progress we made in the last decade to increase the life expectancy figure. India’s life expectancy at birth now is the same as it was in 2010. It will take us years to catch up.”
However, IIPS director Dr K S James added that epidemics in the past in countries, including Africa, massively impacted life expectancy, but it recouped in a few years.
Source : IndiaToday
Health & Fitness
3rd Covid Wave Unlikely To Mirror Devastating 2nd Wave: Top Medical Body

Rapid scale-up of vaccination efforts, says the study, could play an important role in mitigating the present and future waves of the disease.
New Delhi: A potential third wave of Covid infections seems unlikely to be as severe as the second wave, says a modelling study by a team of scientists from the Indian Council Of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Imperial College London, UK. Rapid scale-up of vaccination efforts, says the study, could play an important role in mitigating the present and future waves of the disease.
India’s first wave of SARSCoV-2 infection began in late January 2020 with a peak attained in mid-September. This phase was relatively mild compared to the second wave that followed, from mid-February 2021 onwards, exhibiting a more explosive spread across the country. A major factor driving this second wave is the emergence of more-infectious variants of SARS-CoV-2, principally B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant) and B.1.617.2 (Delta variant), of which the latter has played a dominant role in recent months.
Third waves have emerged in other countries – like the UK and the USA – and are driven by a range of factors, says the study.
The results suggest that a third wave, if it should occur, is unlikely to be as severe as the second wave, given the extent of spread that has already taken place in India, it adds.
“Consequently, for a virus to cause a major third wave in the face of this pre-existing immunity, extreme scenarios for the abrogation of that immunity are required, or for that matter, for the transmission fitness of any novel virus,” says the article in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
For the wave to be as devastating, at least 30 per cent of the population who had been infected earlier must entirely lose their immunity, or an emerging variant of the virus must have a reproductive rate (R) over 4.5, that is, each infected person should be spreading to at least 4-5 others and these must occur almost immediately after the second wave ends, according to the study.
The emergence of a third wave in India could be substantially mitigated by the expansion of vaccination, says the study, adding the rollout of vaccine should be in such a way as to cover 40 per cent of the population with two doses over a period of three months following the end of the second wave, which is on the decline currently.
Crowding, use of mask and physical distancing during social interactions are all key factors shaping transmission rate and therefore population-level spread, the study cautions.
“Lockdown-release mechanisms could be a plausible driver for a third wave in India, depending on how effectively lockdowns have controlled transmission during the second wave particularly when instated at an early stage of the second wave and prior to attainment of peak,” says the study.
The analysis, says scientists, is intended to be illustrative and not predictive.
“In the present approach, we considered essentially a uniform waning rate over the spectrum of severity. Second, the basic reproduction number (equivalently, the rate-of-transmission) was assumed to remain constant during each wave,” said the scientists explaining the methodology used in the study.
Source : NDTV
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