Take Care of Your Heart

A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty, Narayana Hrudayalaya (Heart Specialist) Bangalore was arranged by WIPRO for its employees .    Qn: What are the ways in which the heart is stressed? What practices do you suggest to de-stress? Ans: Change your attitude towards life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life. Qn: What are the thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart? Ans: 1. Diet - Less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil 2. Exercise - Half an hour's walk, at least five days a week; avoid lifts and avoid sitting for a longti me 3. Quit smoking 4. Control weight 5. Control blood pressure and sugar Qn: Which is the best and worst food for the heart?  Ans: Fruits and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil.  Qn: Which oil is better - groundnut, sunflower, olive? Ans: All oils are bad . Qn: Does consuming bananas help reduce hypertension? Ans : No. Qn: Is eating non-veg food (fish) good for the heart? Ans: No  Qn: Will consuming more coffee/tea lead to heart attacks? Ans : No. Qn: How do irregular eating habits affect the heart ? Ans: You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body's enzyme release for digestion gets confused.  Qn: How would you define junk food? Ans : Fried food like Kentucky , McDonalds , samosas,Haldirams, Gardens and even masala dosas. Qn: What is the main cause of a steep increase in heart problems amongst youngsters?  Ans:  Lifestyles, smoking, junk food, lack of exercise in a country where people are genetically three times more vulnerable for heart attacks than Europeans and Americans. Qn: You mentioned that Indians are three times more vulnerable. What is the reason for this, as Europeans and Americans also eat a lot of junk food? Ans : Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately, Indians are vulnerable for the most expensive disease.   Qn: Is walking better than jogging or is more intensive exercise required to keep a healthy heart? Ans: Walking is better than jogging since jogging leads to early fatigue and injury to joints  Qn: Sometimes, due to the hectic schedule we are not able to exercise. So, does walking while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house, work as a substitute for exercise?   Ans : Certainly. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair and sitting helps a lot.   Qn: Can yoga prevent heart ailments? Ans: Yoga helps.  Qn: How can one keep the heart in a good condition? Ans : Eat a healthy diet, avoid junk food, exercise everyday, do not smoke and, go for health checkup if you are past the age of 30 ( once in six months recommended) .... Qn: Many of us have an irregular daily routine and many a times we have to stay late nights in office. Does this affect our heart ? What precautions would you recommend? Ans : When you are young, nature protects you against all these irregularities. However, as you grow older, respect the biological clock.    Qn: How do you differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble? Ans: Extremely difficult without ECG. Qn: Is it possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy? Ans: Yes. Qn: What are the first aid steps to be taken on a heart attack? Ans: Help the person into a sleeping position, place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum casualty takes place within the first hour.   Qn: Why is the rate of heart attacks more in men than in women? Ans : Nature protects women till the age of 45. Qn: It's still a grave shock to hear that some apparently healthy person gets a cardiac arrest. How do we understand it in perspective?   Ans: This is called silent attack; that is why we recommend everyone past the age of 30 to undergo routine health checkups.  Qn: Does cholesterol accumulates right from an early age (I'm currently only 22) or do you have to worry about it only after you are above 30 years of age? Ans: Cholesterol accumulates from childhood.. Qn: How can I control cholesterol content without using medicines? Ans: Control diet, walk and eat walnut.  Qn: What is the routine checkup one should go through? Is there any specific test?  Ans: Routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol is ok.. Check BP, Treadmill test after an echo.  Qn: Does headache pills increase the risk of heart attacks? Ans : No.  Qn: Will taking anti-hypertensive drugs cause some other complications (short / long term)? Ans : Yes, most drugs have some side effects. However, modern anti-hypertensive drugs are extremely safe. Qn: What are the modern anti-hypertensive drugs?   Ans : There are hundreds of drugs and your doctor will chose the right combination for your problem, but my suggestion is to avoid the drugs and go for natural ways of controlling blood pressure by walk, diet to reduce weight and changing attitudes towards lifestyles. Qn: Are asthma patients more prone to heart disease? Ans : No. Qn: Do, in any way, low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count lead to heart problems? Ans : No. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity. Qn: Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems for the child. Is it true? Ans : Yes, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities and you may not have a software engineer as a child Qn: Is there a relation between heart problems and blood sugar? Ans: Yes. A strong relationship since diabetics are more vulnerable to heart attacks than non-diabetics. Qn: What are the things one needs to take care of after a heart operation? Ans : Diet, exercise, drugs on time , Control cholesterol, BP, weight..

Another browser to check out...

Just days after writing about the Minefield browser, there is another browser launched that deserves a look. Apple released Safari 4 Beta! Does any one launch a finished product any more? :-) Apple claims that Safari is the fastest browser. It is pretty fast and sleek. And its available on OS X and Windows both.

I didn't like the Safari browser on windows before but this release is pretty sleek. I downloaded it on windows and showed it to a co-worker. He asked - "is it chrome?" :) I am not saying anything more.

When you launch Safari, the blank screen comes up with the Top Sites you visit are presented in a nice galary kinda display. And Apple claims 150 features in Safari. Now if only I can flip the windows in my laptop's screen....

I am still playing around with it. It renders unicode just fine on windows. I vaguely remember that being a problem in the previous round. And I also just remembered that I am still supposed to be playing with Minefield...

How to keep your computer malware free...

People used to call me rarely when their PCs were infected before. In the past few weeks, that rate has alarmingly increased. One of my friends, who is very careful, was infected with tidserv trojan and ended up reinstalling the OS. Two friends are still battling some virus/trojan problem that left them without the internet.

There are a few steps you can do to stay free of malware. Let's go thru them one by one.

1.  Don't use Windows!

Switch to some linux variant - Ubuntu is very pleasant and easy to use  - trust me. Or you can get a Mac and live happily in the OS X land. You can try Ubuntu without installing. If you think this is an extreme step, skip this and head to #2 below. You brave soul, just head over to Ubuntu site and download their desktop version.

You can download the disk image, burn it in a CD - blank CD if I might add, pop it in the machine, well - its already there as you just made it - reboot and try without install option. You have browser, open office and a bunch of games right off the CD and you can also get on the net with it.  You know what's cool? If you have room in your disk - say 5 to 10 10GB, you can install Ubuntu on the same machine. At boot time, you can decide which OS to boot into.  To do this, start windows, pop in the Ubuntu CD and follow the instructions to install. It's pretty easy.  The Wubi installer is awesome! If you are scared to try it, ask your 8 year old to do it. May be Ubuntu guys should run a 'cave man' commercial on this :-)

So you don't have anything to lose. You can try and work with Ubuntu. And if you have  some thing that works only in windows - old windows game, some windows software that you can't live without - boot into windows only to use them and get back to the Ubuntu Land.


2. Secure your computer

So you want to stay in Windows land. There are a few steps you can follow listed in this site. Spend a few minutes and go over the steps.

How To Secure your Computer or Network - A Step by Step Approach

The above site has been very good. Please go over the 4 steps and 8 steps and see which suits you. I use the following steps that have served me well.


3. Use non-IE  browsers

Screw political correctness. Use Mozilla's Firefox! Period. If a site doesn't work in Firefox, give it a miss :-)  If your bank or some work related site works only in IE, use the IE tab extension of Firefox and configure them to use IE engine from within firefox. So you can always use Firefox and those sites alone will use the IE rendering engine.



4. Block unwanted parasites with a hosts file

Do you get the joke in 'There is no place like 127.0.0.1'? :-) In a nutshell, thats what this site does. This site is so popular, it comes up as top one or second when you google for 'hosts file'. 
The site lists all sites that can potentially affect your web surfing experience and with their copy of hosts file, you can block all traffic to those sites from your computer. Just follow the simple instructions on that site and stay parasite-free. You can join their mailing list and you will be notified whenever there is an update to their hosts file. You can also learn more from their blog. Are you camped out in youtube nowadays? Then you should read about malware invading youtube!



5. Use Promomitron or Proximodo


Proxomitron is a proxy you use with your browser. Quoting from Proximodo site: This is a proxy server that you can install locally and use to remove ads, banners, harmful scripts or tracing headers on-the-fly while you surf the web. It was written by Scott Lemmon who is no more.   You can find lots of information in the official site: http://www.proxomitron.info  You can also find a lot of support in these pages including a yahoogroups mailing list. The yahoogroups mailing list also has a lot of filters and goodies to work with Proxomitron.  Proximodo is a clone of Proxomitron and hopefully will be taken further.


6. Tools to fight malware

You can use these tools to rid your machine of malware.  Try the tools listed in this page. To that list, add Microsoft's Windows Defender and Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware.

So start with any of those and every month spend some time to update yourself on the tools and techniques. Also update your tools and run them periodically. Good luck and stay safe!