Nutrition during #Exams for students & parents in India

Exams are approaching, students and parents alike are anxious to beat the examination stress smoothly.

Here are few tips for Students and Parents to relieve a part of this stress-

1. Always start your day with fruit for improving concentration in class and during exams.

2. Never skip your breakfast, homemade breakfast like poha, daliya, upma, parantha etc. will keep you alert and productive all day though.

3. Try and carry portable meals in your bag when going for classes-peanuts, makhane, channe, sprouts, fruits, ladoos or chikki to snack on when you get packish between lectures.

4. When staying up to late study, have grilled sandwich or chapati with jaggery and ghee or fruit smoothie.

5. During exams, eat foods that are familiar with. 

Avoid chips, biscuits, processed packed products for better memory.

6. The night before exam, opt for rice based meal- khichri, curd-rice or dal-rice-ghee is ideal to stay satisfied and keep anxiety under control.

7.Avoiding green leafy vegetables,poha, sprouts, amla, lemon can cause iron deficiency called anaemia.

8. Watching TV,mobile,laptop,tabs while having food interferes in absorption of good nutrients in body. Stop use of gadgets 60 mins before going to bed.

9. Prepare healthy snacks in evening instead of junk and street food like sprouts chaat, channa chaat, panner salad, egg salad, vegetable poha etc.

10.Opt for healthy options while eating out with friends after exam like choosing Indian cuisine instead of burgers and pizzas.

11. Include brain foods in your diet like walnuts, almonds, coconut, flaxseeds, figs, pumpkin seeds, fruits and vegetables.

12. Exercise 150 mins per week. Habits formed now, goes forever with you.

Love yourself. Good luck for exams.

Written by the Resident Dietitian, Ms Pratibha, at Charak Clinics, Advanced Eye & Child Care center in Mohali, Punjab, India

Scores of monkeys killed in Rio yellow fever panic, Feb 2018

Fears of spreading yellow fever are behind the illegal killing of scores of monkeys in Rio de Janeiro, complicating efforts to fight the virus, authorities say.
Locals, mistakenly believing that the animals can spread yellow fever to humans, are blamed for the surge in killings.
Just this year, 238 monkeys have been found dead in Rio state, compared to 602 in all of 2017, said the city sanitation service, launching a campaign against the killings. Of those, 69% showed signs of human aggression, mostly being beaten to death and some poisoned.
Last year, the proportion found killed by humans was 40%. The rest died of natural causes.
Yellow fever numbers have spiralled in parts of Brazil, causing 25 deaths in Rio state since the start of the year. The government has launched a mass vaccination programme but does not have enough vaccine to give everyone the full, lifetime dose.
The monkeys’ bodies are collected at an autopsy lab at the Rio Veterinary Centre, where co-ordinator Fabiana Lucena said panicking residents were making a big mistake by attacking the animals.
“People should understand that it’s the mosquito transmitting the yellow fever virus. The monkey is a victim and if there are no more monkeys in the countryside, then mosquitoes will come to attack people,” she said. “Monkeys serve as sentinels — they show us where the virus has gone,” she said.
“To have a more effective vaccination campaign, we have to identify the zones where monkeys are dying from yellow fever. When people kill them, the virus is harder to trace.” 
A dozen small dead monkeys lay on a table at the lab in preparation for examination.
“Here, you see multiple fractures to the jaws, cervical area, as well as numerous skull traumas,” she said, showing a primate’s head.
Some of the victims are found right in Rio city, where monkeys are commonly seen in forested areas.
Source

Carnival lights up Rio despite crime wave, yellow fever scare, Feb 2018

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Carnival festivities took over Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, as revelers danced and drank at block parties with names like “fire in the underpants,” despite an extended crime wave in the city and a spike in yellow fever cases throughout Brazil.

Over 6 million people, including 1.5 million visitors, are expected to take to the streets of Rio for the annual celebrations, which pit the city’s 13 best samba schools against one another in ornate parades that can cost over $2 million a piece.

To launch the ‘world’s biggest party’ on Friday, officials handed a glittering key to the city to King Momo, a figurehead who presides over the partying and who, according to legend, was expelled from Mount Olympus before moving to Rio, the so-called “wonderful city.”

But the celebrations this year come amid escalating violence.

Gains made after police began a ‘pacification’ program in 2008, pushing drug gangs out of favelas, have been unraveling. An economic crisis dried up funding, and critics say the government did not make good on promised social advances for the slums.

Reports of shootings averaged 22 per day in January 2018, up from 16 last year, said Fogo Cruzado, a group which tracks armed violence in Rio.

In recent days, a three-year-old girl was killed in an attempted robbery and a thirteen-year-old boy died after being caught in crossfire between police and traffickers as he made his way home after a soccer game.

“We live with our hearts torn apart by so much violence,” Rio’s mayor Marcelo Crivella said on Friday at an event inaugurating the festivities. “Carnival at this moment is about resurgence, about hope,” he added.

Rio will beef up its police force to around 17,000 for the bacchanalia after the federal government denied a request for troops to help enforce security. Source

Brazil is also battling a spike in yellow fever, a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes in tropical regions, with 98 deaths and 353 cases now confirmed since July, 2017.

The outbreak of the disease, which is still a major killer in Africa but had been largely brought under control in the Americas, has hit the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais hardest.