Breastfeeding for over 6 months may cut diabetes risk by half

The lockdown forced by the coronavirus in India has had some unexpected but positive fallouts: It has brought families together and reduced corporate politics, says an expert working in the field for the past decade.

"Today the whole world is on lockdown because of COVID-19, and all that we read, talk and hear is about life and death. We can't deny that the times are tough and the future is uncertain. But I would like to turn the coin and see the other side: the positive side," Shikha Mittal, Founder Director of Be.artsy told IANS in an interview.

Be.artsy is one of India's leading social awareness enterprises which deals with emotions at work and promotes arts as a communication tool for workplaces.

"In the 21st century, personally and professionally, people are practising politics over humanity, competition over collaboration, and have lost touch with themselves due to materialistic desires. During the lockdown, we are forced to confront our existing daily lives, and two interesting things that we can ponder upon, have emerged.

"First, have we ever looked at our family with the same lens as we are using today? What is it that we are doing differently with family today, and what can we do to carry our actions of today into our tomorrow? This is the premise of the #aajjaisakalcontest" that Be.artsy has launched across India.

The aim is "to encourage people to share one habit or life skill that they never practiced earlier, but post Covid-19 would like to continue and enjoy".

How did Be.artsy come about?

"I used to be in the corporate world, earning promotions and greater responsibility. However, the work conditions in those days were unfriendly to women and I had faced many instances of sexual harassment and workplace harassment in the six years of my corporate career. And that's when I had an epiphany."

Be.artsy's most popular programmes are on Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) and on Financial Literacy which makes young people financially independent and better prepared to face the corporate world. "We know that a stitch in time (of planning for the future) saves nine (debt trap, dependence, health emergencies, expenses exceeding income, no savings, families without support, retirement in poverty, lost dreams, extravagance). This can only be achieved by sensitisation," Mittal explained.

Taking multiple courses of antibiotics within a short span of time may do people more harm than good, suggests new research which discovered an association between the number of prescriptions for antibiotics and a higher risk of hospital admissions.

Patients who have had 9 or more antibiotic prescriptions for common infections in the previous three years are 2.26 times more likely to go to hospital with another infection in three or more months, said the researchers.

Patients who had two antibiotic prescriptions were 1.23 times more likely, patients who had three to four prescriptions 1.33 times more likely and patients who had five to eight 1.77 times more likely to go to hospital with another infection.

"We don't know why this is, but overuse of antibiotics might kill the good bacteria in the gut (microbiota) and make us more susceptible to infections, for example," said Professor Tjeerd van Staa from the University of Manchester in Britain.

The study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, is based on the data of two million patients in England and Wales.

The patient records, from 2000 to 2016, covered common infections such as upper respiratory tract, urinary tract, ear and chest infections and excluded long term conditions such as cystic fibrosis and chronic lung disease.

The risks of going to hospital with another infection were related to the number of the antibiotic prescriptions in the previous three years.

A course is defined by the team as being given over a period of one or two weeks.

"GPs (general physicians) care about their patients, and over recent years have worked hard to reduce the prescribing of antibiotics,""Staa said.

"But it is clear GPs do not have the tools to prescribe antibiotics effectively for common infections, especially when patients already have previously used antibiotics.

"They may prescribe numerous courses of antibiotics over several years, which according to our study increases the risk of a more serious infection. That in turn, we show, is linked to hospital admissions," Staa added.

It not clear why hospital admissions are linked to higher prescriptions and research is needed to show what or if any biological factors exist, said the research team.

"Our hope is that, however, a tool we are working for GPs, based on patient history, will be able to calculate the risks associated with taking multiple courses of antibiotics," said Francine Jury from the University of Manchester.

Washington D.C., May 9: Do the middle age feel much stressful now, and seems to have changed over time, if compared to the life in the 90s? Well, this recent study indicates that it might be true.

The study has signalled to the fact that life may become more stressful majorly for middle-aged people than it was in the 1990s. The researchers reached this analysis even before the novel coronavirus started sweeping the globe.

A team of researchers led by Penn State found that across all ages, there was a slight increase in daily stress in the 2010s compared to the 1990s. But when researchers restricted the sample to people between the ages of 45 and 64, there was a sharp increase in daily stress.

"On average, people reported about 2 percent more stressors in the 2010s compared to people in the past," said David M. Almeida, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State.

"That's around an additional week of stress a year. But what really surprised us is that people at mid-life reported a lot more stressors, about 19 percent more stress in 2010 than in 1990. And that translates to 64 more days of stress a year."

Almeida said the findings were part of a larger project aiming to discover whether health during the middle of Americans' lives has been changing over time.

"Certainly, when you talk to people, they seem to think that daily life is more hectic and less certain these days," Almeida said.

For the study, the researchers collected data from 1,499 adults in 1995 and 782 different adults in 2012.

Almeida said the goal was to study two cohorts of people who were the same age at the time the data was collected but born in different decades. All study participants were interviewed daily for eight consecutive days.

During each daily interview, the researchers asked the participants about their stressful experiences throughout the previous 24 hours.

They asked questions related to arguments with family or friends or feeling overwhelmed at home or work, so and so. The participants were also asked how severe their stress was and whether those stressors were likely to impact other areas of their lives.

"We were able to estimate not only how frequently people experienced stress, but also what those stressors mean to them," Almeida said.

"For example, did this stress affect their finances or their plans for the future. And by having these two cohorts of people, we were able to compare daily stress processes in 1990 with daily stress processes in 2010," Almeida added.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that participants reported significantly more daily stress and lower well-being in the 2010s compared to the 1990s.

Additionally, participants reported a 27 percent increase in the belief that stress would affect their finances and a 17 percent increase in the belief that stress would affect their future plans.

Almeida said he was surprised not that people were more stressed now than in the 90s, but at the age group that was mainly affected.

"We thought that with economic uncertainty, life might be more stressful for younger adults. But we didn't see that. We saw more stress for people at mid-life," Almeida said.

"And maybe that's because they have children who are facing an uncertain job market while also responsible for their own parents. So it's this generational squeeze that's making stress more prevalent for people at mid-life," he concluded.