At a certain interval we all feel hungry; after the basic meals. It includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. Only these 3 meals are not at sufficient to fulfill anybody’s daily recommendation of nutrients. It is mandatory to eat in between the main course meals. If one is aware of healthy snacking techniques or know the benefits of healthy snacking ten the mid meal munching can turn into healthy snacks to lose weight.

Food is furnished with nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, vitamins and water. Though, the mechanism of every nutrient is linked with the other available nutrient is linked with the other. The role of every nutrient is varied, complex and very particular.

Due to hectic lifestyle we all become carefree with the food we ingest. There are times where we either prefer to skip meals or eat junk food stuff or eat foods that are calorie dense but have empty calories. This is the only reason of upcoming various lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia, malnutrition, osteoporosis, cancer, IBS, HTN, PCOS, PCOD.

As both the partners are working these days due to shortage of time they rely on:

• Skipping meals
• Eating instant or easy to cook foods
• Packed and processed foods
• Eat oily and fried foods
• Eating non-nutritive foods at canteens
• Health Hazards

Negligence of food and heavy work pressures may often lead to many sleepless nights or reduced sleeping hours. Consequently, we all ascertain do not bother about your health and ignore the body signals which if continued over a period of time may give rise to several chronic diseases and illness.

Imbalance meals or nutrition or diet may leads to fatigue, tiredness, irritation, frustration, anxiety, short temperedness, damaged hairs, unmanageable hairs, dull skin, rough nails are some of the most common symptoms.
Precaution

If paid attention towards your diet all of above stated problems can be rectified to certain extent. You don’t need to spend hours in kitchen to procure the nutrition and preserve your health. Rather, you need to follow certain tips given below. Thus, utilize your week off for the week’s diet doing necessary chores to and prepare homemade snacks.
The healthy options for snacks can help you to manage the nutritional status of your family members.

Eating Healthy snacks  can help you in the following ways:

• Healthy snacks to loose weight
• Healthy after school snacks for old age people.
• Healthy afternoon snacks for pregnant ladies.
• Healthy afternoon snacks for lactating ladies.
• Healthy snacks working people.
• Healthy snacks for night shift workers.

Healthy snacks can also be kept at school/office canteen as they are not only have socio economic benefits but also are cheaper and much healthier.

List of Healthy Snacks:

• Fruits
• Salads
• Idli ( Rawa, Oats, Ragi, Vegetable)
• Sprouts
• Cabbage Katori or Kachori
• Buttermilk
• Mix veg Poha
• Mix veg Upma
• Dhokla
• Homemade Paneer Wrap
• Homemade Soy Wrap
• Banana Chips
• Milk Shakes
• Green roti/parantha
• Paneer Blend
• Sprouted Green Salad
• Green Salad
• Tofu
• Cottage Cheese
• Khakera
• Moong Cheela
• Besan Cheela
• Uttapam
• Dosa
• Chapati based baked pizzed ( homemade)

These are some of the healthy snacks or healthy munching options that can be added to diet to be healthy and fit.

The post Gaining weight?? Go for these absolutely healthy munching options appeared first on MedDNA Blog.

If your routine is not same as others do like waking up in the morning and trying to finish of your working well in time, it implies you are working in a shift. It is utmost important to have healthy diet for night shift workers that help them to keep fit, hale and hearty and in physical, mental, emotional well-being.

It can be evening shifts, night shifts or morning shifts and often people do the double shift too. As per The “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”’ defines: anything that materializes and works at the other time than the “normal daylight hours” of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. is referred as a shift time for the workers. If in case, the working time is odd, disturbed or changes frequently then it would not be so easy to continue the healthy regime.

Rather you would turn inflexible, unhealthy, irritated and frustrated very often. It has an impact on your sleep schedule, eating schedule, and skip meals, indulging more in unhealthy food stuffs, eat irregularly, exercise habits etc. All this disturbs the natural internal clock of the human being that further upsets the hormones and brain chemicals that regulates the mood swing, appetite and nervous and digestive system, that regulates the mood swing, appetite and nervous and digestive system.

While making a schedule emphasis to get sound and deep sleep for about 7-8 hours, add roughage and fiber and wholesome foods. One must add some physical activity in daily routine. This will help in improving your overall health while working during shift.

It has been surveyed people who work more at shift are more prone to constipation, migraine, spondylitis, depression, restlessness, obesity, diabetes, insomnia, fatigue, sleep apnea, accidents, ulcers, and certain sorts of cancer, weight gain and heart diseases, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, anxiety, high risk of strokes.
Those who are working and especially the shift workers consume tea, coffee mostly from the vending machines or take away restaurants that are nearby. It may perhaps inflict chaos on the fitness goals of an individual. One of the priority and most vital step is healthy diet for night shift workers. To reduce your dependence on vending machines and fast food, bring your own healthy drinks and food to work.

Guidelines and certain recommendations about healthy diet for night shift workers:-

Eat protein more: shift workers face tremendous problems as they deal with many problems, and the main problem includes drowsiness, restlessness, fatigue due to which struggle a lot with themselves to keep calm. Therefore, it is important to choose from the healthy stuffs for mid night munching. Incorporation of protein foods includes lean meat, tuna, eggs, cottage cheese, peanut butter, turkey, tofu, almond milk; soy milk helps in raising the levels alertness and boosting the focus.

Lower down the carbs intake: It would be great if the night shift workers and people who change shifts very frequently avoid high carb diet or the junk foods or the fried foods. It includes potatoes, pasta, macaroni, burger, pizza, breads, rice, etc. It also included heavy and fired food stuff like samosa, kachori, chips etc. The higher the carb content in the food the higher will be the satiety value, that leads to relaxing and sedative effect on the body. Thus enhances laziness and drowsiness.

Avoid refined sugars: As we all are aware that sugar is not good for health. As per the researchers, if people indulging in night shift eat more sweets or any other sugar product are more prone to diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, hyperlipidemia, obesity and certain sort of cancer. Thereof, it’s a good option to control down the intake of sugar based drinks.

Avoid sugary, aerated and carbonated beverages, soda and alcohol consumption: Similarly, as sugars are not a healthy options, consumption of sugary, aerated and carbonated drinks, soda and alcohol is an unhealthy choice for being a well-being or hale and hearty. Night shift workers or the shift workers mostly combat with many health issues. They often complaint of laziness, drowsiness, restlessness and sleeplessness because of which they either get addicted to the unhealthy options of food available in the market or try to quench their emotions with them.
Avoid caffeine: Likewise, the consumption of sugars, alcohol, carbonated drink etc. is not the healthy practices. In the same way, adding caffeine in your routine is not good either. Though, caffeine has its accelerating outcome on human’s body. It helps in relaxing the body and awakening them when the body is tired and fast asleep.

Don’t use food to surge your needs: Often the shift workers or the night shift workers gets through boredom, tiredness and lethargy to suppress it they end up eating the food that provides them an immense pleasure such as chocolates, energy bars etc. It is again not a healthy diet for night shift workers.

Handout advises for Shift Workers:
It is necessary to change the routine, dietary habits as per the working hours. It is the only key to lead a healthy life. Include the following tips to be fit. These are:

• Add raw fruits and vegetables.
• Add low fat dairy products.
• Plan exercises at-least four times a week.
• Schedule your sleep time rightly for 7-8 hours a day.
• Spend some time with nature during day.
• Go for healthy options. (During a week off, try to buy fruits and salad material. Wash cut and store in zip
• pouches i.e. an easy to carry pouches).
• Prepare two healthy tiffin’s at home, one as a main meal and another as a snack.
• Eat small, frequent meals.
• Try to eat well in time. (Fix your time for the meals).
• Don’t eat in a hap-hazard way. (Give time to eat).
• Drink plenty of fluids including water.

Try to plan, evaluate, implement and check execution of your day and step forward towards healthier lifestyle. It is rightly stated healthy regime and healthy diet for night shift workers always walk hand in hand in order to get maximum health benefits.

The post Healthy Diet For Night Shift Workers appeared first on MedDNA Blog.

As suggested by diet counselors eating healthy includes the following:

• Minimize Starch
• Avoid Refined Sugar
• Avoid refined wheat and its Products
• Prevent the Intake of Red Meat and Organ Meat
• Do Not Take Cream, Ghee, Excess Oil, Vanaspati etc
• Avoid Artificial sugar

• Avoid Eating Junk Food Stuff
• Skip Bakery Food Products
• Avoid cold drinks, aerated and carbonated drinks
• Avoid alcohol and smoke
• Avoid emotional binging
• Avoid eating when bored or stressed

One should eat healthy to lose weight. Some tips and recommendations are:

• Include fruits
• Include raw vegetables
• Take egg whites and yolk at least thrice a week
• Add lean meat like chicken breasts
• Add fishes like shellfish, tuna, mackerel, salmon etc
• Drink plenty of water
• Do Not binge all the time. Sit at a place and eat via plate
• Don’t skip meals

Also include in some Exercises to Reduce Weight If anyone’s weight is more than the ideal weight than it’s a time to move ahead and step out to shake your body. Therefore, you can try doing these exercises and some of the below listed physical activities.

Exercises and physical activities to lose weight:

• Cardio Exercises
• Strength Training
• Interval Training
• Surya Namashkar
• Vipashna
• Meditation
• Yoga
• Power Yoga
• Dance
• Aerobics
• Zumba
• Push Ups
• Crunches
• Spot Jogging
• Weight Training

These are some of the common and most effective workouts that helps in reduction of weight other than eating healthy.

Fad Diets and Crash Diets

Being a nutritionist, a dietitian and a lifestyle coach, I have seen people coming to me and interests in FAD and CRASH diets. I do understand that these diets enhance quick and instant weight loss. Rather I would suggest everyone to eat healthy to lose weight slowly and gradually. It will stay for long and chances to gain weight back are much less. It is most honest and earnest advice to skip the weight loss pills, laxatives, excessive fasting and starving, or to be on almond diet, Fad diet, crash diet etc.

Being on special diets does not only help in reducing weight but also reduces fat percentage and muscles too. Thus, affects the metabolism process by slowing it. On contrary, it deteriorates the stamina and hinders with health drastically.

The only and a healthy way to reduce your weight is to eat healthy to lose weight. Eat nutritious food in place of empty and zero calories food stuff. Avoid eating more of junk or crap food. Do exercise, indulge in one or more physical activities like brisk walk, jog, yoga, aerobics, zumba etc. and lose weight.

Below are the enlisted food stuffs that must be included in diet regime in order to reduce weight.

• Water based food products like melons, cucumber, tomatoes etc.
• Whole eggs
• Leafy Vegetables
• Salmon
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Brussels
• Lean Beef
• Chicken Breast
• Tuna
• Boiled Potatoes
• Beans and Legumes
• Soups
• Almonds
• Cottage Cheese
• Avocados
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Whole Grains
• Fruits
• Grapefruits
• Chia Seeds

One must eat healthy and do exercise to lose weight and be fit. For this make a record of physical activities and exercise you do. Keep a record of what you are eating and at what time you are eating. It will help you as you can yourself notice  of what is getting wrong and can modify things on your own till an extent.

The post Steps to lose weight in just 30 days appeared first on MedDNA Blog.

Importance of seeing dentist every six months is immense. Like the body needs check up every now and then, it is important to take care of your oral cavity as well. Dentist visit is important in-order to keep your mouth, teeth and gums healthy. It is well said that “prevention is better than cure”. By visiting dentist twice a year helps in attaining a high level of oral hygiene and helps in keeping you away from various oral infections and illness like tooth decay, gum swelling, cavities, oral cancer etc.

Visiting a dentist twice a year has become the thumb rule for the people. Consulting the dentist on the regular basis helps dentist to recognize the disease at an early stage. And illness treated well in time is managed well with lower degree of pain.

The dentist consultation comprises of check-ups, cleaning and is followed by follow ups depending on person to person, but I must tell you it you have no time for your oral hygiene and care, you must find out a time suitable to you.

Seeing dentist every six months is important for:

• Smokers
• Pregnant women
• Diabetics
• People with current gum disease
• People with a weak immune response to bacterial infection
• People who tend to get cavities or build up plaque

There are two steps of regular dentist visit; checkup and cleaning.

Check ups

While doing the routine check-ups a dentist examines the oral hygiene in numerous way and look for a variety of diseases that may occur unknowingly. The qualified dentist may check for cavities, plaque, tarter, oral cancer, diabetic effect, vitamin deficiencies, gums and gingivitis. The dentist may also examine face, neck bite, saliva, tongue, dementia, heart and coronary arteries diseases, osteoporosis, GERD, lower jaw movement and may give to some advice or tips to maintain hygiene in between the visits to avoid any oral issues.

Cleaning

After doing the examination the dentist may do the intensive cleaning of your teeth if required. As brushing regularly can clean the teeth to an extent and help in keeping the oral hygiene but cannot remove the tarter. The special measures and tools are used to remove tarter known as scaling. A preserving paste is used to remove the stains from the surface of the teeth. This is called polishing the teeth. Polishing is followed by flossing. This is the procedure to clear and clean the surround and in between gaps of the teeth.

.Follow Ups

If in case dentist found reasons to check it early. Instead of seeing dentist every six months, Dentist may ask you to visit the clinic within two, three or four months depending on the tooth condition.

Hope this article will motivate readers to go for regular dental checkups, to avoid decaying of tooth and other tooth related problems in future.

The post Seeing Dentist Every Six Months appeared first on MedDNA Blog.

Before you start your practice, take a moment to connect to your breath. Consciously take ten slow, deep belly breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. Notice the feeling of your chest and abdomen expanding and contracting. Keep this conscious breath throughout your practice. Hold each pose for 1 to 2 minutes.

 Soothing Sequence Yoga Poses

1. Balasana (Child’s Pose)

Balasana, also translated as strength pose, is the perfect position to start your sequence and relax into your breathing. This restful pose restores and rejuvenates and relieves tension in the hips and lower back.

Starting on all fours, spread your knees wide and let your toes touch. Drop your hips back onto your heels and slowly lower your forehead to your floor or mat. Rest your arms along your sides or bring them out in front of you.

 2. Marjaryasana (Cat Pose) and Bitilasana (Cow Pose)

Cat Pose and Cow Pose often come hand in hand. This combination of poses stretches out your spine and massages all the organs in your abdomen, helping to create emotional balance.

Begin on all fours, with your shoulders directly above your wrists and your hips directly above your knees. Start with Cat Pose by rounding your spine and dropping your head and tailbone down. Hold for 30 seconds. For Cow Pose, drop your belly down and stretch your head and tailbone up. Slowly alternate a few more times. These two yoga poses is very easy to perform and is very beneficial.

 3. Viparita Karani (Legs Up the Wall)

This supported inversion pose slows pulse and breathing rate as well as lowering blood pressure. The dilation of the blood vessels improves circulation and soothes every system in the body. Watch as this pose causes your headaches, anxiety and restlessness to disappear.

Support your hips with a pillow as you extend your legs against a wall towards the ceiling. You’re your arms by your sides and rest your head and shoulders on the floor.

4. Supta Matsyendrasana(Supine Spinal Twist)

Twists are fantastic at release muscular and emotional tension, calming mind and quieting the nervous system.

Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Extend your arms to each side so your form a T shape. Tuck your shoulder blades against the floor and drop your knees to the left as you gently turn your head to the right. Do not force this movement, just breathe into the twist. Hug your knees into your chest before transitioning to the other side.

5. Savasana (Corpse Pose)

Every yoga session should end with Corpse Pose so you can soak up the benefits of your practice in a period of deep relaxation. This pose will help your alignment, release the spine and calm the nervous system.

Lie on your back with your legs extended out. Allow your ankles to fall open. Extend your arms by your sides with your palms facing up. If you feel a lot of tension in your lower back, tuck your shoulder blades underneath you. Let your body rest heavy against the floor and take the time to do some rounds of conscious and mindful breathing.

Hope you will try all these Yoga poses at home!!

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