All posts by Sumana Rao

Don't worry about the people in your past; There's a reason they didn't make it to your future.
Tinda chutney

Delicious And Spicy Tinda Chutney

Here is a delicious chutney recipe you should try this season. Tinda belongs to Cucumber family, It is also known as tindora, tondekai or Coccinia.  One can prepare varieties of dishes using tondekai – vanghi bath or spicy rice bath, curry, can be used in mixed vegetable curry or one can prepare delicious chutney. Like cucumber tinda serves zero calories and is good for weight loss.

Tinda chutney recipe

Ingredients:

  1. Small cut Tinda (Tondekai) – 1.5 cups
  2. Channa dal – 1 Tbsp
  3. Urad dal – 1 tsp
  4. Cumin – ¼ tsp
  5. Green chilis – 4-5
  6. Coriander – 1/2 cup
  7. Tamarind – small lemon size
  8. Curry leaves – few (about 10)
  9. Salt – as per taste
  10. Asafetida (hing) – pinch
  11. Oil for seasoning

Preparation:

  1. Wash and remove tip of tinda and cut into small round pieces
  2. Dry fry channa dal, urad dal, cumin till they turn golden brown. Add curry leaves and continue frying for a minute. Transfer to a plate and allow the contents to cool.
  3. Place same vessel on medium heat, add 1 Tbsp oil. To heated oil, add cut tindora, green chilis and coriander. Fry till the tinda turns golden brown color. Remove from heat and allow it to cool.
  4. Transfer cooled dal and tindora mix both to mixer jar. Add salt and tamarind. Grind the content to coarse paste. Remove and transfer to vessel.
  5. Heat oil and prepare seasoning with mustard, red chili, asafetida and transfer seasoning to tinda chutney.
  6. Serve tinda chutney with rice, chapathi, bread or as a side dish for curd rice.

Image credit: Indiamart

Author: Sumana Rao | Posted on: May 26, 2023
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Why teenagers need yoga?

Why teenagers need yoga?

We know yoga provides many benefits for both body and mind. Yoga is a practice for both body and mind and helps body get into shape, gives flexibility and improves mind’s ability to focus by giving clarity. Yogis everywhere are devoted to yoga in daily life to reap both spiritual and physical award.

Yoga helps to overcome stress in all!

Many schools – elementary, middle and high schools adopted yoga to improve children’s performance.

Study shows that high school students who are practicing yoga are happy, tension free, depression free and can be handling anxiety well. These children are also reported to have fewer negative emotions and showing improvement in studies. More teenagers are practicing yoga with parents, friends and teachers.

If you are a parent, encourage your child to practice yoga. Understanding the benefits of practicing yoga might help parents to convince children to hit the mat.

Reasons for why teenagers need yoga –

  1. Education: Teenagers are always surrounded by drama and tension. Distraction around them can bring their grade down and disturb their studies. Yoga practice helps increases concentration, reduces ADHD and helps them to focus on the moment. It gives sense of balance and helps to achieve their goal.
  2. Physical: Those teens who are athletes can gain flexibility by practicing yoga. It also builds strength, tones muscle, increases balance and helps in coordination. It also reduces obesity, gives stability to core and reduces body stress.
  3. Emotional: Teen life can be stressful. Peer pressure, career goal, homework, pressure of performance can cause stress and bring them down emotionally. Yoga helps to bring positive thoughts, positive energy in their mind. Too much stress can bring suicidal thoughts, depression – in fact these are two serious conditions that are attacking teenagers. Body image is another struggle of young minds. By practicing yoga, they will be able to understand feeling and what is worth in life. Yoga can be a guide to bring happiness, sense of accomplishment,  confidence, self-love, self-acceptance and peace in teenagers’ life.
  4. Social: Yoga helps to connect people with world. Yoga helps children to connect to the world. Teens who practice yoga will start accepting other individual and learn social skills. Yoga prepares them to face the world, to be non-judgmental and to be compassionate.
  5. Discipline and self-regulation: Another benefit of practicing yoga, yoga teaches how to be mindful and reduces impatience. It also brings discipline and teaches to be organized, less messy in day to day life.
  6. Helps to be creative: Practicing yoga increases imagination of mind, mind becomes flexible just like body. This develops confidence and brings out inner talent. Teen becomes creative and focused too!

If you have teenager at home, introduce them to yoga today. If you are a teacher, teach them how yoga can bring benefits in teens life.

Image courtesy: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Author: Sumana Rao | Posted on: May 23, 2023
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Three parents baby

Three People Babies – Baby With DNA From Three Persons Born In UK

From parents’ genetic disorders can be passed to offspring. This is the risk parents face when they plan on having babies. To prevent passing genetic disorders researchers at UK performed an IVF procedure which involved transfer of mitochondrial DNA or also known as Mitochondrial donation treatment MDT and therapy is called mitochondrial replacement therapy MRT.

Doctors at Newcastle Fertility Center in UK aimed to help women with mutated mitochondria to have healthy babies without genetic disorders.

HFEA: Mitochondrial donation treatment can be used by people with severe mitochondrial disease to avoid passing the condition onto their children.

Mitochondria which are known as powerhouse of the cell help in producing ATP which is source of energy for the body. Mitochondria being an organelle inside the cell contains its own DNAs or genes. Certain mutation in mitochondrial DNA has impact on energy supply and affects brain, heart, liver and muscles. Humans inherit mitochondria from their mother. If a woman has any such disorder in her mitochondrial gene, it could pass onto offspring leading to severe and progressive diseases. If the baby inherits a very small or tiny proportion of the mutated mitochondria, then baby might born healthy.

To prevent such diseases in future generation, UK researchers used Mitochondrial donation treatment. In this treatment the tissue from eggs of healthy women donors is used to create embryos by IVF method. Mitochondria of these women will be screened before proceeding with procedure. During IVF procedure donor nuclear material will be removed and destroyed and parents’ nuclear material will be placed inside donor egg where only the healthy donor mitochondria will be present. Fetus that develops will have DNA from both parents (99.8%) as well as a smaller portion of mitochondrial DNA that is, about 37 genes from the donor. Because of presence of three types of DNA in babies it is termed as “three-people babies”.

Newcastle clinic is the first and only center licensed to perform the procedure in UK. According to the reports, there are more than one babies born using this procedure that is approved by UK’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority – HFEA. How many babies are born is still not revealed to the press due to patients’ confidentiality. In 2016 Dr. John Zhang from New Hope Fertility Center of New York, attempted the mitochondrial transfer to get healthy baby in a couple. This was done in Mexico under the care of US fertility specialists. They had chosen Mexico because there was no rule and regulation in Mexico where as in US regulations were in place to do such IVF procedures. Out of five embryos doctors created, only one developed normally. In UK parliament changed the law in 2015 to permit MDT procedure and New Castle hospital is the first and only place MDT procedure is performed.

Peter Thompson, chief executive at the HFEA, said: “MDT offers families with severe inherited mitochondrial illness the possibility of a healthy child. The UK was the first country in the world to allow MDT within a regulatory environment … These are still early days for MDT and the HFEA continues to review clinical and scientific developments.”

General steps involved in the procedure are:

  • Sperms from father is taken and used for fertilization of both mother egg and healthy donor egg.
  • The nuclear material from donor’s egg is then removed
  • After fertilization of parents’ egg, fertilized egg is transferred to donor’s egg.
  • Donor’s egg will now have nuclear chromosomes of parents and mitochondrial DNA from donor.
  • Healthy egg is implanted in donor’s womb.

Mitochondrial donation treatment:

There are two techniques involved in MDT – Maternal spindle transfer or MST and Pronuclear transfer PNT. In both eggs are created using nuclear genetic material and healthy donor mitochondria. In MST mother’s genetic material is removed from egg and transferred to donor eggs which will have previously nuclear genetic removed. These eggs are later fertilized with sperms to form embryos.

In PNT eggs are fertilized with sperms to create embryos. From the embryos nuclear genetic material is removed and transferred into embryos created by donor eggs and sperms. The original nuclear genetic material is removed from donor embryos, only healthy mitochondria is retained.  

Risk factors: Sometimes the tiny portion of mitochondria inevitably carried along with mother’s egg showed multiplication in donors’ womb. This is named as reversion. Reversion could lead to similar genetic disorder as mother. What is the solution: Those women who have mitochondrial gene mutation can screen the IVF embryos for such mutations. Or can go with IVF procedure using donor egg itself.

This research was commenced few years ago, however recent COVID-19 pandemic caused delay in the research as donors were not coming forward for obvious reason. Mitochondrial donor will not have any rights on the child born as the DNA that is used is less than 1%.

As for as future research – more studies or prenatal testing and long-term observation of children born with this technique is needed. It is essential to observe baby’s growth, development and activities. This will also help to understand if there is any reversal occurred by mitochondrial genes of mother.

References:

https://www.hfea.gov.uk/media/2611/fourth_scientific_review_mitochondria_2016.pdf

https://www.bbc.com/news/

https://www.nature.com/

https://www.newscientist.com/

https://www.hfea.gov.uk/ (for more images and articles)

Image credit: Imagen de Elena Έλενα Kontogianni Κοντογιάννη en Pixabay(cc by 0)

Imagen de PublicDomainPictures en Pixabay (cc by 0)

Imagen de SkieTheAce en Pixabay (cc by 0)

Author: Sumana Rao | Posted on: May 19, 2023
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Organic food benefits

One Very Good Reason To Bring Organic Produce To Home

Health and diet are one of the most common topics that is involved in discussion, debate and daily talk. Health-conscious person understand why it is important to focus on good diet, what food we should be eating daily and how to focus on family health. Health-conscious individuals buy fresh produce, cook food at home and be selective while eating out. One of the important issues that these individuals should be concerned about is “where the produces are coming from, how they are grown”.

When you buy fresh produce from market you feel good about it. You will bring it home, wash it, process it and cook it to eat. However, have you checked whether the vegetables that you purchased and brought home are pesticide free?  When we buy fruits like grapes, oranges, apples – it is easy to identify pesticide mark on the fruit skin as it is easily visible to naked eye. But, when you buy vegetables, most of the time it is hard to see presence of any chemicals. Once you bring produce home, there is no guarantee that washing produces will remove chemicals totally from the surface. According to studies, residues of pesticides will be still present on the surface.

Research conducted on dietary exposure of nearly 5000 people from various cities of US. Analysis of organophosphates also known as OPs. OPs are linked to several conditions and known to have severe health effects, especially of farmers who are often exposed to insecticides. IN children these chemicals are linked to brain damage.  These are most common insecticides used in conventional method to grow vegetables.  Analysis showed that those individuals consuming conventionally grown vegetables and even fruits had significant number of OPs in their system.

 Try organic produce for a week and see the difference:

In the same study individuals who consumed organic produce had significantly lower levels of OPs in the system. Researchers were able to analyses OPs in both categories based on the amount and type of vegetables and fruits each participant typically consumes and the US depart of Agricultures’ measurements of chemical residue levels on those produces. Urine samples of the consumers were tested to compare the organophosphate pesticide levels.

In those individuals who consumed organic foods for a week, there was 95 percent drop in malathion (which is linked to brain damage in children). Another pesticide namely Neonicotinoids was dropped to 83%. This chemical is linked to loss of useful insects and pollinators.

Eating organic is healthy and organic foods taste better:

Above study was conducted by University of California and earlier similar studies were conducted by Cynthia Curl an assistant professor in Boise University School of Allied Health Sciences.

We as consumers eating organic food is not only best for our health, it is also good for farmers and workers those work in Agriculture field. When we consume organic food, demand for organic produces grows and keeps them healthy too. Conditions like autism, cancer, infertility, poor growth – these are prevalent in farmers and workers community. Chemicals that are used to control the pests and other insects can only harm us. If we use more organically grown food, it helps farmers to sustain. In addition, we consumers get good health benefits. A small amount of exposure to pesticide and its residue can result in hormone imbalance, brain damage, asthma, infertility, impaired cognitive development in children, vision problem, allergies etc.

Is eating organic produces solves the issue of pesticide intake?

Chance of exposure to pesticide reduces when you consume organic produce. It does not mean you should stop focusing on cleaning and  washing of produces once you bring home. It is important to note that, there will be cross contamination and could be other type of contaminations (like E. coli) when you buy any types of produces.  

Growing organic foods in your own garden:

As we all know buying organic food is costly for various reasons. This should not stop anyone from having access to healthy food. If you have place at home to grow your own vegetables, then try organic means or join community organic gardens where your neighbors and community members can grow and share organic produces. Support local farmers – go to local market with friends and families to buy organic foods. This is not only to support farmers, also to get organic foods at lower price.

For yours as well as your family’s health try organically grown foods.

References:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150205174835.htm

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765100/

Image credit: Imagen de NoName_13 en Pixabay (cc by 0)

Author: Sumana Rao | Posted on: May 16, 2023
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Happy Mother's Day

This Mother’s Day And Other Days Be There For Your Mom

There is a popular quote by Will Leamon ‘Because God Could Not Be Everywhere, Therefore He Made Mothers”

Every year in many parts of the world, the second Sunday of May month is celebrated as Mother’s Day. It is to honor, show respect and love to the woman who gave birth, stood strong, sacrificed, helped the children to shape life. How the Mother’s Day celebration started?

History of Mother’s Day:

In 1900s Anna Jarvis who was daughter of Ann Reeves Jarvis in USA initiated Mother’s Day to honor the sacrifices her mother made for the children. In May 1908 Anna Jarvis, organized first Mother’s Day celebration in a Church in West Virginia. She was financially supported by a Philadelphia Departmental store owner namely John Wanamaker who also organized Mother’s Day in Philadelphia store. Thousands of people participated in the event and later followed by its success Mother’s Day International Association was formed to promote the cause.

Anna Jarvis persistence to establish Mother’s Day was paid off in 1914 when president Wilson signed a measure to establish second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day. Jarvis was unmarried and had no children in her life. She wanted to add Mother’s Day in National calendar. Her efforts resulted in the recognition of Mother’s Day.

In the coming years, Mother’s Day became highly commercialized and Anna Jarvis who started the Mother’s Day began openly campaigning against those who profited from Mother’s Day including florists, retailers, bakery, confectioners etc. She spent most of her inheritance on legal fees.

Do you know? Mother’s Day is clubbed with International Women’s Day in many countries. While many of the countries celebrate Mother’s Day on same day as US, there are few countries who celebrate Mother’s Day on different day.

Why Mother’s Day celebration is needed? In Hinduism there is prayer called Maathru Devo Bhava. In Sanskrit it means “ Mother is God”.

We all know how a mother makes our life easy and comfortable. Motherhood is not just raising children. It is also caring, protecting and showering love for her offspring. All countries who celebrate Mother’s day have one purpose to celebrate “to show love and respect to the lady who gave birth” . It is to honor the mothers and women who have brought love, affection, peace and improvement not only to families but also to the world. It is a day that reminds us what mothers do for us. It is to show the utmost gratitude to mother.

It is very essential for us to show our affection to our mothers who fulfill duties in bringing us up. Our parents sacrifice a lot for our happiness and to fulfill dreams. As we grow, we should reciprocate and be responsible humans by showing affection and taking care of parents. A kid is mother’s child always even if he is 50 or 60, a leader, entrepreneur, business tycoon, actor. Mother has the capacity to shower unconditional love at all circumstances.  This distinguished quality makes her unique in a child’s life. Mother’s love is also emotional, she is first person who recognizes when we are sick, she understands our emotions, recognizes our problems without we even telling her. She knows how to comfort her child and make child feel better.

Mother has a much difficult task in a family. She is the bridge between children and father. She is the strength of the family and she works hard to keep family happy and safe. Mother’s Day was established and celebrated on Sunday to give mother rest and happiness.

Those gifts that we give sure matter to mothers and they will happily accept anything that we give. However, they will be happier if we be there for her and show how much we care, love and respect their selfless act. In fact, if we should think that each day is Mother’s Day and we should be there for her when she needs us. As children we should be grateful and thankful for Mother’s efforts in our upbringing, for her unconditional love and support that she keeps providing us throughout her lifetime.

This Mother’s Day Let us celebrate motherhood, mother, sisters, respect aunts and all those motherly personalities who are part of our lives.

Image credit: Imagen de Mollyroselee en Pixabay (CC BY 0)

Author: Sumana Rao | Posted on: May 11, 2023
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