Health

Folic acid, or Vitamin B6, is present abundantly in green leafy vegetables, fruits such as mosambi and oranges, lentils such as beans and peas, cereals and rice. It is destroyed by cooking and excreted within a day from the body. Unlike fat-soluble vitamins, excess amounts are not stored. Its normal level in blood is 2-20 ng/mL in adults and 5-21 ng/mL in children.

One of the biggest challenges in engaging young children in physical activity is gender stereotype. 

It seems these days that every third person I meet is either already on the "Paleo" diet or planning to try it. Their goals are either weight loss or better health, but certainly not to save the planet.

Q I have been given the idea that eggs are bad for you. Is this true?

It has long been assumed that childhood is a time of innocence, free from the shackles of social conformity, when youngsters act naturally on instinct rather than by convention. But research shows that even by the age of two, children are already crippled by the scrutiny of others and will change their behaviour if they are being watched to boost their reputation.

E-cigarettes may be better than regular ones but are not exactly good for health. While cigarette smoking triples the risk of a heart attack, regular use of e-cigarettes doubles the risk of a heart attack. The study was recently published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Incidentally, the study found that about 66 per cent of those who smoke e-cigarettes also have an occasional smoke and in them the risk of heart attack is five times that of a non-smoker.

In traditional, rice-eating households in India, mothers and grandmothers have always insisted on feeding people a meal of rice before they leave home for school, college or work. While calorie-conscious youngsters would like to give rice a wide berth, nutritionists say that there is some scientific truth in grandma's wisdom. If you have been brought up on a regular diet of rice, the best way to stay energised all day is to have a balanced meal with rice in the morning or noon. Contrary to what many people think, a rice-based meal doesn't add too many calories and actually keeps blood pressure and heart problems under control.

People - young and old, male and, mostly, female - ask friends, relatives and physicians, "Do I look fat?" Often, the honest answer should be "yes". Visual perception of weight (thin, okay and fat) is usually correct. It needs to be backed up by scientific measurements for accuracy.

Almost a quarter of a century ago, the editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine drew attention in an article headlined "What should the public believe?" to the understandable perplexity for many induced by the constant flow of contradictory scientific studies implicating every aspect of daily life in some dire disease or other.

Mobile phones give off electromagnetic waves and regular use of these is exposing us to increasing amounts of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields in our daily life. Scientists are concerned about the effect of such fields on our brains but studies have not come up with any conclusive evidence of it.