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June 25, 2023 By Dr Supriya Vhatkar 3 Comments

Light and White Skin Patches? All You Need to Know About Vitiligo!

Have you ever come across someone with lighter or white skin patches? Ever wondered what was wrong with them? Ever been curious enough to research? What these individuals suffer from is called Vitiligo. As today is World Vitiligo Day, let us understand this skin disorder.

Vitiligo occurs when pigment-producing cells (melanocytes) die or stop producing melanin — the pigment that gives your skin, hair and eyes color. The involved patches or affected area of the skin become lighter or white.

Common Symptoms

Patchy loss of skin color
Premature whitening or graying of the hair on the scalp, eyelashes, eyebrows or beard
Loss of color in the tissues that line the inside of the mouth and nose (mucous membranes)
Loss of or change in color of the inner layer of the eyeball (retina)

Onset: Vitiligo can start at any age, but often appears before the age of 20.

Different Types of Vitiligo

Generalized Vitiligo: This is the most common type. The patches appear on most parts of the skin. The discolored patches often progress similarly on corresponding body parts (symmetrically).
Segmental Vitiligo: In this type, only one side or part of the body gets affected. It tends to occur at a younger age and progresses for a year or two, and then it stops.
Localized (Focal) Vitiligo: In this type, one or only a few areas of your body get affected.

It is difficult to predict how the disease will progress. Sometimes the patches stop forming without treatment. In most cases, pigment loss spreads and eventually involves most of your skin. In this condition, the skin rarely gets its color back.

What Causes Vitiligo?

The most common causes of vitiligo may be related to:

A disorder in which your immune system attacks and destroys the melanocytes in the skin
Family history (heredity)
A trigger event, such as sunburn, stress or exposure to industrial chemicals

Diagnosis

Medical History and Examination: If your doctor suspects you have vitiligo, he or she will ask about your medical history, examine you and try to rule out other medical problems, such as dermatitis or psoriasis. He or she may use a special lamp to shine ultraviolet light onto the skin to determine whether you have vitiligo.
Skin Biopsy & Blood Draw: Take a small sample (biopsy) of the affected skin, draw blood for lab tests to look for underlying autoimmune conditions, such as anemia or diabetes

Treatment

Many treatments are available to help restore skin color or even out skin tone. Results vary and are unpredictable. Some treatments have serious side effects. Your doctor may suggest that you first try improving the appearance of your skin by applying self-tanning products or makeup.

If you and your doctor decide to treat your condition with a drug, surgery or therapy, the process may take many months to judge its effectiveness. And you may have to try more than one approach or a combination of approaches before you find the treatment that works best for you.

Even if treatment is successful for a while, the results may not last or new patches may appear.

Medications

No drug can stop the process of Vitiligo — the loss of pigment cells (melanocytes). But some drugs, used alone or with light therapy, can help restore some skin tone.

Creams That Control Inflammation: Applying a corticosteroid cream to affected skin may help return color, particularly if you start using it early in the disease. You may not see a change in your skin’s color for several months. This type of cream is effective and easy to use. But it can cause side effects, such as skin thinning or the appearance of streaks or lines on your skin. Milder forms of the drug may be prescribed for children and for people who have large areas of discolored skin.
Medications That Affect The Immune System: Ointments containing tacrolimus or pimecrolimus (calcineurin inhibitors) may be effective for people with small areas of depigmentation, especially on the face and neck. This treatment may have fewer side effects than corticosteroids and can be used with ultraviolet B (UVB) light. However, the Food and Drug Administration has warned about a possible link between these drugs and lymphoma as well as skin cancer.

Surgery

This may be an option if light therapy doesn’t work. Surgery can also be used with those therapies. The goal of the following techniques is to even out your skin tone by restoring color.

Skin Grafting: In this procedure, your doctor removes very small sections of your normal, pigmented skin and attaches them to the areas that have lost pigment. This procedure is sometimes used if you have small patches of vitiligo. Possible risks include infection, scarring, a cobblestone appearance, spotty color and failure of the area to recolor.
Blister Grafting: In this procedure, your doctor creates blisters on your pigmented skin, usually with suction. He or she then removes the tops of the blisters and transplants them to an area of discolored skin.
Tattooing (micropigmentation): In this technique, your doctor uses a special surgical instrument to implant pigment into your skin. It’s most effective in and around the lips in people with darker complexions.

Lifestyle & Home Remedies

The following self-care tactics may help you care for your skin and improve its appearance:

Protect your skin from the sun and artificial sources of UV light. If you have vitiligo, particularly if you have light skin, use a broad-spectrum, water-resistant sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30. Apply sunscreen generously and reapply every two hours — or more often if you’re swimming or sweating.
Seek shade and wear clothing that shields your skin from the sun. Don’t use tanning beds and sunlamps.

Protecting your skin from the sun helps prevent sunburn and long-term damage. A bad sunburn can make your condition worse. Sunscreen also minimizes tanning, which makes the contrast between normal and discolored skin less noticeable.

We hope this article helped you understand the symptoms, causes and treatment of Vitiligo. Do you have any doubts? Let us know in the comments below!

Find more articles on skincare and remedies here. You can also reach out to an expert by subscribing to GOQii’s Personalized Health Coaching here.

#BeTheForce

June 24, 2023 By GOQii Leave a Comment

Ashima Dalela Beats Gut Health Issues and Anxiety With GOQii

You might have heard the saying, “Almost all diseases begin in the gut.” If gut health issues are left unchecked, it can get worse and affect your mental health too. Our Player Ashima Dalela suffered from gut health issues which led to severe anxiety and she visited around 15 doctors who were unable to identify the cause. But, she was able to fix the issue with simple lifestyle changes suggested by her GOQii Coach. How did she tackle her gut and anxiety issue? Let’s find out!

Life Before GOQii

Ashima Dalela is a young working professional based in Ghaziabad. For the longest time, she suffered from stomach issues and anxiety. Multiple doctors were unable to diagnose what was wrong, with some saying it was GERD and stomach infection. One doctor told her that it was IBS and her gut problem has combined with anxiety. Finally, one of the doctors she visited suggested GOQii.

Identifying the Issue & Making Lifestyle Changes

Since she onboarded, Coach Meenakshi was assigned to Ashima Dalela. Coach Meenakshi began by tackling the stomach issues and acidity. She prescribed specific foods to improve her gut health. She coupled nutrition with exercises such as asanas for the stomach, all of which slowly and steadily brought about a change.

Initially, Ashima faced some difficulty in walking. So she was tasked with completing 2k steps a day. She was also skipping meals due to her situation and her condition was only getting worse. Despite some hurdles, Ashima stuck to the habits given by her GOQii Coach. Thanks to her dedication and her GOQii Coach’s constant motivation, she was able to fix her gut health issue as well as her anxiety. She now enjoys the live sessions on the app and always browses through Healthy Reads. She also enrolls for challenges within the app.

Initially, her mother was skeptical about the coaching aspect but after seeing positive results, she is convinced that the coaching works. In fact, the entire family has adopted healthy habits. Her goal now is to stay active and gain healthy weight.

What Are Coach Meenakshi’s Thoughts About Ashima Dalela’s Journey?

When Ashima came on board, she was very nervous about her health issues. She wanted to control:

GERD with symptoms like acidity in the morning, vomiting sensation, stomach upset, burning sensation, bloating and gas after meals
Anxiety (20%, 1-2 anxiety attacks in a month because of health problems related to the gut) with symptoms like dizziness, increased heartbeat and numbness in hands and legs.

Now, her GERD has reduced by 95% without any symptoms after introducing habits like lemon water, detox water, eating slowly, adding curd, rice, kanji, etc. Anxiety levels reduced by 95% without any symptoms. Now, she can cope easily with any arguments/bad news.

She has been practicing meditation, deep breathing and is generally more positive. Ashima doesn’t feel stress and anxiety while handling physical, mental and emotionally taxing situations.

We changed to a new health goal on 15 August 2020 as she wanted to be more active in 3 months as she was unable to do any activity in the morning and evening because of work. She felt lethargic in the evening after office work. She was also facing haemorrhoid issues and irregular cycles.

She feels 85% improvement in activeness with asanas, exercise and daily walks. Her bowel movement is fine with more water and salad intake. Menstrual cycle also continues now in September with the habit of seed cycle.

We’re now working with a new health goal from 10 March, 2021 – She wants to gain weight up to 53kg (weight was 50kg on March 10). Her current weight is 51kg thanks to the added habits of eating nuts and seeds, post workout meals and employing strengthening exercises.

To take a glimpse into Ashima’s inspiring journey with GOQii, watch her GOQii Health Story session with our Founder and CEO Vishal Gondal along with her GOQii Coach Meenakshi, Doctor Viral Thakkar and Divya Thampi here –

If you suffer from similar issues or know someone who does, share this article with them and subscribe to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

Find more inspiring health stories here.

#BeTheForce

June 14, 2023 By Dr. Viral Thakkar 2 Comments

Is Blood Donation Really That Important?

Priyanka struggled to get blood for her father who was undergoing a surgery. The blood bank did not have her father’s blood type. As things got tougher, she tried to get in touch with other blood banks but none of them had it. In fact, she was ready to pay, but the blood banks did not have the blood type! Time was running out. She also started getting in touch with her friends but to no avail. Her friends all refused to donate blood due to their preconceived notions and myths.

Due to the shortage of blood, within a few hours, Priyanka lost her father. While she was inconsolable, what shattered her completely was the fact that in India, a country with such a large population, she could not garner enough blood for him, even though every human possesses it.

Timely, affordable access to screened blood is essential to the provision of safe surgical care. This depends on three key aspects:

Adequate volume of blood supply
Safe protocols for blood donation and transfusion
Appropriate regulation to ensure safe, equitable and sustainable distribution.

Different medical procedures require different components of blood. However, due to the lack of facilities, much of it goes to waste. Many low-income and middle-income countries experience a deficit in these categories, particularly in rural areas. This is coupled with lack of donor awareness and information.

The WHO recommends that the blood requirement of 1% of a country’s population be used as a ballpark estimate of its blood needs. By this measure, India was short of 1.9 million units of blood according to the data presented on March 2018.

One requires blood transfusions in various emergencies like women with complications during childbirth, anemia, accidents, complex medical surgeries, patient with thalassemia, sickle cell disease or it is also used to make clotting factors for people with hemophilia. Among other issues coupled with low donor rate, the blood banks in India face a crisis of blood almost every year.

Physical Benefits of Blood Donation

1. Lower Risk of Heart Disease: Blood donation may lower the risk of heart disease and heart attack since it reduces the blood’s viscosity. It also significantly lowers the total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, protecting against cardiovascular disease. Researchers note this is consistent with findings in other studies which found that blood donors had a lower risk of heart disease and heart attack.

According to a study, donating blood regularly may also lower iron stores which may reduce the risk of heart attack. The risk of heart attacks increase when the body stores a lot of iron.

2. Donating blood is an opportunity to get a basic health checkup done for free since the technician checks your:

Pulse
Blood pressure
Body temperature
Hemoglobin levels

This is an insight into your health! The blood is also checked for:

Hepatitis C
HIV
West Nile virus
Syphilis
Trypanosoma cruzi

Psychological Benefits

Donating blood has a feel good factor. It tends to improve one’s emotional well being. Hence, it might have an impact on stress reduction and providing a sense of belonging

Side Effects of Donating Blood

Post donating blood, one might feel

Nauseous, lightheaded or dizzy after donating blood. This usually settles in a few minutes
There might be slight bleeding at the site of the pick, or you might develop a bruise. I believe it is all good since it is for a wonderful cause!

However, get in touch with a doctor or your blood center if you:

Still feel lightheaded, dizzy, or nauseous after drinking, eating, and resting
Develop a raised bump or continue bleeding at the needle site
Experience arm pain, numbness, or tingling

Where to Donate Blood

I personally suggest citizens to donate blood at a blood bank or nearby government run tertiary health centers. Otherwise, get in touch with Red Cross centers near your house and donate! Avoid donating at generic blood camps since one is not sure of the storage procedures. But ensure that you do donate!

People’s lives are usually at stake just because of myths people have on donating blood. Priyanka’s friends, even though educated, did not understand the importance of blood donation! Donating blood is giving the gift of life. As a human being, it is the duty of every person to donate blood at least once a year as a service to mankind! The decision to donate your blood can save a life, or even several if your blood is separated into its components — red cells, platelets and plasma — which can be used individually for patients with specific conditions.

June 10, 2023 By GOQii Leave a Comment

How Nitya Kishore Upadhyay Lost 12kg In 6 Months With GOQii

Are morning walks by themselves a miracle cure for health issues? Can they help manage and lower cholesterol levels or help you lose weight? Managing lifestyle diseases requires a combination of lifestyle changes, and there’s no room for guesswork. This is what our player, Nitya Kishore Upadhyay, figured out when he joined GOQii. Let’s take a look at how his health story unfolded.

Managing Weight & Cholesterol Issues With Morning Walks

As an employee for a pharmaceutical company, Nitya Kishore Upadhyay was always surrounded by doctors and healthcare professionals. He used to do a blood test every six months. Being in sales and marketing, he was on-field most of the time and used to eat out. As a result, he was overweight and also had a history of high cholesterol and vitamin B12 deficiency.

To manage these conditions, he used to take morning walks, but they barely helped. He was using another company’s fitness tracker but didn’t find much use for it because, apart from the data on the device, there was no one there to guide him.

He wanted a device that did more than just track steps. So he began searching for a solution online and came across GOQii. After some research, he purchased a tracker and subscribed to GOQii’s personalized health coaching plan.

Interacting With A Coach & Making Lifestyle Changes

After activating his coaching subscription and speaking with Coach Anukriti, he had no doubt that GOQii was the right choice for him. He says that he was impressed with the in depth guidance he received from his coach. His initial goal was to lose 8-10kg, manage his cholesterol and vitamin B12 deficiency.

Keeping that in mind, GOQii Coach Anukriti suggested that he increase the intensity of his morning walks. He asked him to clock in at least 10,000 steps a day. Along with walks, he was also asked to jog at intervals. Before, we would go for morning walks on an empty stomach, but Coach Anukriti suggested that he eat sabja seeds and begin his morning with lemon water.

She set up a morning breakfast routine, midmorning fruits, and also guided him on what to eat and avoid. Along his health journey, they used to make frequent calls and change his routine as per his schedule. Slowly, he was asked to add more salads to his meals. Later, the sabja seeds were replaced with jeera water – which helped him greatly, he says.

He was also introduced to intermittent fasting, which he says benefited him a lot. Apart from this, based on his schedule, he was also suggested exercises he could perform and was asked to meditate as well.

Right from the beginning of his journey with GOQii, Nitya Kishore says that everyone in the GOQii ecosystem was helpful. Even the classes he attended on GOQii PRO were detailed, and the coaches guided him well. He said that the coach was very understanding and introduced changes slowly as per his schedule and lifestyle, so it wasn’t too overwhelming for him to make changes suddenly.

How did these changes help Nitya Kishore Upadhyay?

Due to all these changes, Nitya Kishore managed to lose 12kg in 6 months. His cholesterol levels and Vitamin B12 levels are also normal. “Nityaji is a very good player and follows all my suggestions and habits regularly,” says Coach Anukriti. She further added that, “He is feeling more healthy and energetic than before.”

His friends and family say that he looks younger and more dynamic than before. He has also been actively advocating GOQii to his friends and family members. He says, “I want to thank Mr. Vishal Gondal for keeping such good people who guide and motivate others”.

He is impressed with GOQii and always appreciates how GOQii is working for people. Like Mr. Nitya Kishore Upadhyay, would you like GOQii to work for you as well? Know someone who needs help managing lifestyle conditions?

Well, visit the GOQii Store and subscribe to Personalised Health Coaching here to make a positive lifestyle change today!

You can also read more inspiring Health Stories here.

Stay healthy and #BeTheForce