A long-term study of nearly 3,000 adults, aged 57 to 85, found that those who could not identify at least four out of five common odors were more than twice as likely as those with a normal sense of smell to develop dementia within five years.

With Indian doctors’ prowess giving foreigners a confidence to seek treatment here, India has come a long way since independence in healthcare. The country has a booming medial tourism industry, coupled with improved score in health indicators like life expectancy, infant mortality and fertility rate.

  Mother’s milk, which consists of a complex and continually changing blend of proteins, fats and sugars, helps protect babies against bacterial infections.

Malnutrition among populations – particularly the children, is an interplay of multiple factors like illiteracy, ignorance, poverty, large families, lack of resources including food / nutrition insecurity and poor access to health care services. Since long, our government’s endeavour has been to reduce morbidity / mortality rates by implementing multi-pronged strategies for breaking the inter-generational cycle of under-nutrition. Events leading to malnutrition often predate child-birth; maternal under-nutrition, teenage pregnancies, closely spaced child-births and high parity are the major contributors to pre-term / low birth weight deliveries.  Escalating malnutrition among children aged below two years is indicative of poor infant feeding practices. Therefore, appropriate infant feeding practices coupled with adequate maternal nutrition are crucial for healthy growth / development of the child; and for this a life cycle approach is imperative.

Restricting how much you eat without starving has been shown to robustly extend lifespan in more than 20 species of animals including primates. How this works is still unclear. In a new study published in PLOS Genetics, neuroscientists from Florida Atlantic University show that it’s not just what or how much you eat that matters. Smelling food in addition to consuming calories could influence the aging process. And, what’s “eating” you or more specifically your cells may provide clues to healthy aging.

Scientists studying how aging affects the biological clock’s control of metabolism have discovered that a low-calorie diet helps keep these energy-regulating processes humming and the body younger.