Archives for February 2017

February 26, 2017 By Tasneem Jawadwala 1 Comment

Healthy Weight Gain

Every time I visit the gym, I see a lot of people doing really well trying to lose weight. However, the real strugglers are those who are looking to build muscles. Unfortunately, most are unable to gain muscles as they indulge in variety of foods and workouts to increase their appetite and gain weight.

Let’s see what is it that most do wrong in a weight gain program?-

I) Proteins– Gym trainers and dieticians often suggest including more proteins, some in the form of powders and others suggest natural sources such as egg, sattu, curd, cottage cheese and the likes. However, calculating the right amount of protein required is often missed. One requires around 1.25g/kg ideal body weight proteins, to build up muscles. For example if you are 60 kgs then the required amount of protein required by you on a daily basis to build muscles is 75g.

If you aren’t having enough or the required amount of protein then you will not see a difference. Hence, take out time and consult professionals who can help you calculate.

For building muscles you also need to take care that you have enough carbs, antioxidants and workout properly.

(i) Carbohydrates- While focusing more on proteins, maximum people lose focus off carbs. Don’t forget if approx 60% of your diet isn’t from carbohydrate sources, your body will utilize proteins to supply energy, hence you will lack proteins for tissue building.

(ii) Antioxidants– Fruits and salads are often flawed to be used as a weight loss diet. Vegetables and fruits are the best source of antioxidants that help in tissue repairs, prevent injuries and inflammation. So include selenium, zinc, vitamin C and Vitamin E on a daily basis.

(iii) Workout- Your workout should focus more on strength training however,make sure you still do some amount of cardio for better functioning of your heart and lungs. This will prevent you from falling ill during your program.

Foods that will help in building muscles-

Dates – They are loaded with iron, natural sugar and antioxidants. Have 4-5 dates before the workout as datescan provide you with instant energy and prevent muscle damage.
Sweet Nuts or Pulse balls (Chikkis)- These is a sweet dish made up of pulses, nuts or seeds. It isnothing but roasted whole gram, peanuts or sesame seeds and jaggery. It’s a perfect combination of proteins and carbohydrates. Munching on them as mid meal snacks would be an energy booster.
Nut shakes – A big serving of dry fruits is difficult to consume at a time, hence having them in a powdered form with milk will help provide a large serving of proteins.
Fruit smoothie – Adding a fruit to curd will help add on some antioxidants to your protein dose.
Combination of cereal and pulse – Just having a pulse at a time will really not help as it doesn’t provide us with good quality proteins but, when combined with a cereal, it will not only help us with gaining the benefits of proteins but also supply the required carbohydrates. Hence, options like dal Paratha (Pulse Flat Breads), PuranPoli (Sweet Jaggery filled flat breads), khichdi (mix of pulses and rice and vegetables cooked together) and idli (steamed rice pan cakes) should be considered.
Adding vegetables to meat – Having a separate serving of vegetable becomes difficult .The meal size may exceed if we have 1 serving of vegetable for vitamins & minerals and 1 serving of non-veg preparation for proteins. The best option I feel is to combine a non-vegetarian source with vegetables. For instance, Spinach (Palak) chicken, tomato omelet and capsicum stuffed with mince.
Peanut butter- Many often overdo with regular butter and get major changes in lipid profile but no change in weight. Ideally one should apply peanut butter on their bread slice for the right fats and protein combination.

The key rule for healthy weight gain is to go fornutrient dense meals. These healthy compact meals do not require an extreme appetite boost. Focus on healthy weight gain and be patient while you are in a weight gain program as it’s easy to cut on fats but takes time to add on muscles.

Remember, it took 9 months to give you around 3 kgs of weight while birth.

February 21, 2017 By Anusha Subramanian Leave a Comment

Sports for Social Inclusion

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do”—– John Wooden

GOQii supports Social Premier League (SPL)

Sports they say is a great leveller. It can bring the privileged and the underprivileged on the same platform to compete with each other in true spirit. Sports can very well be used as a tool for social inclusion and to bring about a social change. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that when applied correctly, sport can create bridges where boundaries usually exist, giving participants a lesson in teamwork, empathy for their teammates and respect for their opponents. It helps develop a strong sense of morality; and the development of an appreciation of diversity.

Sport is clearly not just about competition and exercise, but also regulates behaviour and creates a feeling of belonging, which in turn leads to the strengthening of democracy.

Singing Footsteps Foundation (SFF), is one such organisation in Patna, Bihar that is trying to bring about a social change through sports. The organisation started by Toni Sharma, a professor at NIFT and currently pursuing PhD (ECONOMICS) at IIT aims at bringing about true equality in human lives as well as balance in the ecology, using sports as the driving force to bring together the youth and achieve the social balance.

Sharma is a strong proponent of an egalitarian society, a philanthropist and a social activist at heart. He also mentors startups and advises various incubation centres. His idea with SFF is to showcase and effectively address the most burning and plaguing issues of our society at a large scale, on a single platform.

He says, “Our vision is to bring about social change by harnessing the power of youth and sports. We are constantly focusing on social changes through innovative strategies. We believe in the intent backed by invention”.

So what does SFF do with sports? It has started a league cricket game called ‘Social Premier League’ (SPL), to bring together the virtues of sports to fight the inequities of the society.SPL is a cricket tournament involving the entire youth and corporate fraternity to effectively spread the message of social integration and awareness. It is an initiative that endeavours to bring together the youth from all backgrounds in a relaxed and natural environment that are ideal for harnessing the power of sports to engage communities and change lives.

This year’s SPL that was held at the beginning of this month included Autorickshaw drivers, slum children and, girls and boys of premier colleges.

By way of the cricket tournament, SFF has been able to bring about a behavioural change among the auto drivers such as being more responsible on the road, minimising honking etc. “We have seen a tremendous change in the attitude of the auto drivers since they have been playing this tournament. They have developed empathy and we realised that we can create awareness about lots of issues along with them. If we enable them with the right tools they can help us in disseminating information and creating awareness,” says Sharma.

As participation in the league tournament, each of the auto drivers teams was also asked to pick a social cause that they would like to create awareness about. The two issues that the auto drivers were keen on creating awareness about was Cancer and Malnutrition. They carried messages on these issues in their auto.

SFF is now working towards a financial inclusion of these auto drivers by opening bank accounts for them and after this, they will conduct health check-ups for their children and family as a whole.

According to Sharma, “Sports is the most powerful and the only stimulus in the world that can help build a positive attitude, instil fearlessness and leads to significant overall development.”

“We believe that to make a significant contribution we need to employ the best of youth to uplift those at the lowest rung of the society. We believe in concentrating on the weakest. We believe in mutually beneficial relations that help us raise resources in a way that others can’t. And yes, we don’t settle for the second spot, in order to give the best to those who need our help the most,” Sharma concludes.

As a company, GOQii has been supporting several causes through its Karma Platform. As part of our ongoing efforts to do good karma in the society and get our players to do the same. Supporting SPL and SFF is one such initiative in this direction. GOQii believes that giving to others gives an inner happiness to one while also improving one’s own health.

February 21, 2017 By Anusha Subramanian Leave a Comment

Know your HeartBeat

Heart disease has been a leading cause of death for both men and women. Bad lifestyle is one the main reasons for people developing heart ailments at a young age.It’s remarkable that heart attacks are so common and cause so much pain (emotional and physical) disability when they can more often than not be prevented.

The good news is that people are getting aware of the risks of a bad lifestyle leading to many taking to fitness and indulging in activities such as running. They have become more conscious of their well-being and their bodies. With the heart being one of the most vital organs, they at every juncture are keen to monitor their heart rate.

What is heart rate? Heart rate is the number of heartbeats per unit of time. Simply put, it is also how well your heart is able to pump oxygenated blood.

Keeping in mind the above factors and also as a part of extending their services, GOQii, one of the leading health ecosystem and preventive healthcare platform has launched its latest service offering-GOQii Heart Care which focuses on cardiovascular health.The key feature of this service is its ability to connect consumers to cardiovascular specialists through the GOQii application and a new GOQii tracker which has capabilities to monitor heart rate.

Today, there are so many devices generating huge data most of which is essentially junk if not analysed and acted upon. “When we launched the GOQii service, we launched it precisely with personal coaching so that the user is aware of the data and the coach can help him or she follow a routine and lifestyle based on that data. Similarly, the GOQii Heart Care is a one-stop solution that tracks and analyses data generated by the Heart Rate trackers and can connect the GOQii user to the GOQii doctor who can help make sense of the data. It is a unique offering as compared to any other wearable device or service available in the market,” says Vishal Gondal, CEO, GOQii.

To use this new feature, all that the GOQii users have to do is share their health and heart rate data via the new GOQii tracker with the GOQii Doctor for his analysis. The doctor will go through this data and provide specific inputs to the users on how to maintain good heart health. In specific cases, if required the GOQii doctor will refer the user to a cardiac specialist at Max Hospital and other partner hospitals. GOQii has partnered with max Hospitals.

The constant rise of cardiovascular cases across the globe was one of the primary reasons behind the development of this specialised offering. With this new service, GOQii aims to create the world’s leading health eco-system which connects the GOQii users to leading professionals in the fitness and healthcare space. Having said that, the heart care service is not a replacement for a regular doctor and does not apply to any emergency medical or chronic situations.

Consumers can upgrade their existing wearable devices with the new service as well. With regards to third party hardware which includes the Heart Rate Monitor, consumers can avail of the service by paying a nominal consultation fee. The services along with the new GOQii Heart Rate tracker will be available at a subscription Rs 2999 for 6 months and 3999 for 12 months respectively.

February 17, 2017 By Dr Darshana Salve Leave a Comment

Blood should circulate – Donate Blood!

We only understand the importance of blood donation when someone close to us is in need of it. A few days back my cousin contacted me to know the availability of blood for her friend’s father who met with an accident. Unfortunately, we lost him due to excess blood loss. We know of this incident because it’s a dear friend’s father but, on a daily basis there are so many such cases where there is loss of death due to non-availability of blood.

Statistics show that roughly every year in India there are 234 million major operations, 63 million trauma-induced surgeries, 31 million cancer-related procedures and 10 million pregnancy related complications which require blood transfusions.

Apart from these there are also disorders like sickle cell anemia, thalassemia and hemophilia that require repeated blood transfusions.

One of the main reasons for lack of blood is, many people are skeptical about blood donation. They have fears of contracting infections during blood donation, fear of the needle or feeling weak after blood donation. Human body approximately has 4.7-5.5 L of blood, out of it only 350/ 450 ml of blood is withdrawn during blood donation drives and it takes only a day or two to replenish the fluid volume in the body and three months for the regeneration of red cells to donate more blood.

There is no substitute for human blood. Blood cannot be manufactured – it can only come from
volunteer donors like you and me. One blood donation can save 3 lives. But, unfortunately only 1 % of volunteer donors come forward to donate blood and majority of the blood donation comes from replacement donors.

Replacement donors are friends and relatives of a patient who donate blood as replacement for the blood given to the patient.

At times, these replacement donors (friends and relatives) are more likely to harm the recipients by hiding or overlooking the many don’ts of donation.

Though voluntary self-referral to donate without citing reasons is widely accepted, replacement donors rarely adhere to it either to hide their high-risk behavior or due to pressure to meet the immediate demand for certain units of blood. As a result, the prevalence of HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C is much higher among family donors when compared to voluntary donors, according to a 2012 study published in the Asian Journal of Transfusion Science.

Donation of safe blood can be achieved only when replacement donors are replaced by healthy volunteer donors to meet ‘over 95 per cent of blood requirement’. This can be done through increased awareness, providing appropriate facilities for people to donate blood, and improved donor retention.

While donating blood always be truthful about your health status!

Do not donate blood if you have any of these conditions

Cold / fever in the past 1 week.
Under treatment with antibiotics or any other medication.
Cardiac problems, hypertension, epilepsy, diabetes (on insulin therapy), history of cancer, chronic kidney or liver disease, bleeding tendencies, venereal disease etc.
Major surgery in the last 6 months.
Vaccination in the last 24 hours.
Miscarriage in the last 6 months or have been pregnant / lactating in the last one year.
Had fainting attacks during last donation.
Have regularly received treatment with blood products.
Shared a needle to inject drugs/ have history of drug addiction.
Had sexual relations with different partners or with a high risk individual.
Tested positive for antibodies to HIV.
If you are Underweight ( below 50 KGs)

Pregnancy and Menstrual Cycle

Females should not donate blood during pregnancy and lactation.
Females should not donate blood if they are having heavy menstrual flow or menstrual cramps.

Do donate blood if…

You are between age group of 18-60 years.
Weight is 50 kgs or more.
Hemoglobin is 12.5 gm% minimum.
Last blood donation was 3 months earlier.
You are healthy and have not suffered from malaria, typhoid or other transmissible disease in the recent past.

It’s time that we take up the responsibility to do voluntary blood donation. Donate Blood without waiting for a call.