Ahmedabad's first 'green' hospital comes up near Sola

Author : http://sify.com 

The latest latest addition to the city's string of multi-super speciality hospitals, Care Institute of Medical Sciences(CIMS) Hospital, boasts of being one of the few hospitals in the country that has a 'green' building.

Milan Chag, managing director of CIMS, claimed that it is one of the first eco-friendly hospitals in the country. "We have over 40 per cent open space filled with courtyards and gardens. Here we have ensured that natural light is abundant within the premise, besides the use of eco-friendly construction materials, installing rain-water harvesting pits, sewage plants to recycle water apart from using NComputing to save electrical energy", he explained.

The cardiac unit of the 150-bed hospital is operating since the last three months, while the entire facility would start from November 21. The overall investment in the hospital has been around Rs150 crore, and CIMS plans to scale it up to 450-beds in the future. "We have already submitted a primary project report to the state government to expand the facility into a 22 storey one in the future. Additional investment could be to the tune of Rs150 crore. But, the expansion project is likely to take off only after two-three years", Chag informed. CIMS has around 5,000 square yard land available for expansion at site. The current investment has been funded through a mix of debt and equity. "Around 35 per cent is debt from private equity players and banks, while the remaining is equity", he added. CIMS claimed that it would aim to operate in the lines of a community hospital, offering services at rates cheaper that prevailing market rates. "Cost of services here would be at least 10 per cent cheaper compared to major corporate hospitals", Chag claimed. CIMS has been operating a heart clinic at Rajkot since the last 10 years. It does not plan to expand to other cities of Gujarat at the moment. The Ahmedabad multi-speciality hospital would primarily cater to patients from Gujarat, parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Source - http://sify.com/finance/ahmedabad-s-first-green-hospital-comes-up-near-sola-news-equity-kltb5Ldhdgb.html

5 Spices That Can Help You Lose Weight

Indian Spices Help You Lose Weight

India, particularly South India, is known for its spices: cinnamon, pepper, cardamom, turmeric, red pepper, among others. These aromatic spices have long been used to cure common ailments and are in fact, in Indian tradition, hailed as “medicines of the kitchen”.

The west has woken up to this fact – some of these spices are now being sold in tablet form to help alleviate symptoms of many lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cholesterol build-up.

Super foods like kale and broccoli are not easily available in India – if you don’t count supermarkets. To keep off weight, improve absorption of sugar into the bloodstream or reduce harmful cholesterol, adding or increasing the amount of these spices in your diet will go a long way in helping you feel light and energetic.

However, do take note that a doctor’s advice is of utmost importance before you increase your intake of these five spices. Excess intake might lead to other complications.

five spices that can help you lose weight:

Although we’re inclined to scour the Web in search of the best diets and meal plans, the truth is, some of the tools to weight-loss success are already on your spice rack! Here are five ingredients that not only add flavor to your favorite dishes but can help in your battle against the bulge.

1. Cinnamon

A 2003 study published in Diabetes Care showed that as little as one teaspoon of cinnamon per day can boost the body’s weight-loss ability by reducing blood sugar and promoting healthier processing of carbohydrates. It also lowers LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) by seven to 27% and total cholesterol by 12 to 26%. Plus, cinnamon has been shown to prevent the metabolic syndrome commonly seen in pre-diabetics. But before you go on piling the spice by spoonful, note that cinnamon contains a chemical called coumarin, which can lead to liver damage if consumed in very large amounts.

2. Cayenne

The main ingredient in spicy cayenne—capsaicin, which is also found in other hot peppers—has long been studied for its fat-burning abilities and thermogenic properties (the stimulating of the central nervous system to produce heat in the body, leading to an increase in calorie burning). In fact, Nicholas Perricone, M.D., cites several of these studies in his wildly popular The Perricone Weight-Loss Diet and concludes that capsaicin acts as an appetite suppressant. Many think that cayenne pepper promotes weight loss because it’s simply difficult to overindulge in spicy food. However, later studies performed by the Journal of Obesity also found that the spice increases fat oxidation, “ramps up energy expenditure, and stimulates activity by the sympathetic nervous system”—all which help the body to shed excess weight. Not a fan of fiery cuisine? Not to worry! Research has found that cayenne’s ability to reduce appetite is equally effective whether ingested as food or in capsule form.

3. Black Pepper

Among the dozens of health benefits of this common household ingredient is its ability to improve digestion and promote the absorption of nutrients in tissues all over the body. Plus, its main component—piperine (which gives pepper its pungent taste)—boosts fat metabolism by as much as 8% for several hours after ingesting it. If you want your pepper to pack the most punch, use freshly ground pepper, which has the most concentrated amounts of piperine.

4. Mustard Seed

Like the other hot ingredients on this list, spicy mustard helps boost metabolism and allows you to burn fat more quickly, thanks in part to its thermogenic properties. Scientists at England’s Oxford Polytechnic Institute recently found that eating just one teaspoon of hot mustard can “boost metabolism 20 to 25% for several hours after eating, resulting in an additional burn of about 45 calories if a 700-calorie meal is consumed.”

5. Ginger

Long used for its medicinal properties, ginger is also an effective diuretic (a substance that increases the elimination of urine). It improves gastric mobility (i.e. it pushes food and waste through the digestive system) and hinders the absorption of cholesterol. Although according to the Mayo Clinic, more study is needed, preliminary evidence suggests that this versatile spice helps to increase metabolism.

Source : http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/5-spices-that-can-help-you-lose-weight-2392858/ and http://in.yfittopostblog.com/2010/10/07/india-the-mistress-land-of-spices/

Less sleep can spoil your diet impact

From last one month I am trying to lose my extra 5kg body weight and I am losing good amount weight every day since last one month but today I found that I have gained 500 grams of weight and I am shocked that why this is happened because I follow strict diet and exercise routine. Then I went to my dietitian and she told me that you might have taken less sleep and she was right, from last 2 days I didn’t have full sleep at last 2 night coz of my social media stuff and some online work.

I was just reading news and suddenly I found one latest news article on Sleep less, spoil diet impact and I thought to publish this information on my blog.

So if you are doing effort to lose weight and you have lack of sufficient sleep then it may interfere with efforts to lose weight. A study by US researchers has released today suggests that people trying to lose weight through diets should also get the right amount of sleep. So have a good sleep to get more benefits from your efforts of diet and exercise.

The study provides new experimental data to show that insufficient sleep can reduce the effects of diets and increase hunger. The findings appear in today’s issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

“If your goal is to lose fat, skipping sleep is like poking sticks in your bicycle wheels,” Plamen Penev, a researcher at the University of Chicago and study director, said in a statement released through the university.

The study observed 10 volunteers on a standard calorie-restricted diet and found that when people slept for about 5.5 hours instead of 8.5 hours, the fat loss was reduced by 55 per cent. Insufficient sleep was associated with an increased loss of lean muscle mass, instead of loss of fat, which is the main goal of weight-loss initiatives.

The findings are in line with a previous study by Penev and his colleagues two years ago which showed that cutting on sleep appears to make people consume more food through extra snacks — not regular meals.

The new experiments also showed a similar pattern of increased hunger, evident through differences in a hunger-stimulating hormone called ghrelin that reduces energy expenditure and increases food consumption.

Participants who slept for 8.5 hours had no change in their ghrelin levels, but those who slept for 5.5 hours, displayed an increase in ghrelin from 73 nanograms per litre to 84 nanograms per litre.

Researchers not associated with the study said it provided insights through a laboratory study into how sleep deprivation was linked to efforts to maintain healthy weight, but cautioned that the findings needed to be verified.

“A major problem with sleep laboratory studies is their applicability in real life, where multiple other factors influence a person’s ability to maintain a diet,” Shahrad Taheri from the University of Birmingham in the UK and Emmanuel Mignot from the Stanford Sleep Medicine Centre in the US wrote in a commentary in the same issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Shahrad and Mignot have pointed out that there may also be other mechanisms to explain the link between insufficient sleep and energy expenditure by the body.

Sleep deprivation, they wrote in their commentary, may lead to increased fatigue during the daytime which may in turn make people turn away from physical activity, and thus contribute to weight gain.