Myths about Caffeine: The Roast Theory

Have you ever heard of light, medium, and dark roast in coffee? Do you think the amount of caffeine in coffee depends on its roast? Well, if you have been wondering, the answer is yes. The repercussions of coffee are quite personal: Jitters, restlessness, nausea, increased alertness, and many more. Even then, for coffee lovers, the feeling of having that warm cup in their hands or even the smell of a freshly brewed coffee is beyond amazing. With so much affection for coffee in our hearts, it’s definitely difficult to give up on it. But, what if you are told caffeine intake can be altered based on different roasts?

The Roast Levels

The coffee beans, extracted from a coffee plant, are green in color. These smell like grass, are soft and spongy to bite, and flavorless. So how does something so tasteless turn into something so delicious? The answer is ‘Roasting’. First, the beans undergo coffee processing. Followed by that, these beans are roasted to transform their physical as well as chemical properties, to bring in the characteristic flavor of coffee. This process is followed by coffee brewing. There are various levels of roasting, but they are broadly characterized into three: light, medium, and dark.

Light roasts, sometimes also called as Cinnamon roast, Light City, Half City, or New England, are light brown, tan in color, and they lack oils on their surfaces. This is because they are not roasted long enough and hence, the coffee oils don’t break through the beans’ surface. They are the most acidic of all the beans and retain the most of the original coffee characteristics.

Medium roasts, also known as Breakfast, American- as they are mostly preferred in the US, City, or Regular roasts, are a shade darker brown than the light roasts and look richer. They also have a non-oily surface, but some of them are covered in small amount of oil- they are called as medium-dark roasts or Full City. The medium roasted beans start developing aromas and flavors while losing some of their original qualities. They have less acidity and fuller body.

Last of these are the dark roasted beans. They go by the name Continental, Italian, French, European, New-Orleans, Viennese, or Spanish roast. These names are due to the fact that dark roast coffee is mostly preferred in Europe. Also, most of the espresso roasts are dark roast. They are dark brown, some almost black, in color, usually resembling chocolate. At this point, oils are clearly visible on the beans. The taste, aroma, and flavors in these roasts are enhanced and the brightness is replaced with the body. Most of the qualities of the original coffee are lost in these.

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Turmeric – An Eminent Element of Natural Cures

“Leave your drugs in the chemist’s pot if you can heal the patient with your food” – Hippocrates

The practice of Ayurveda has been considered as an ancient one, which is extremely well documented in various historical scriptures. The best part about it is how relevant it is even in the modern world. This form of healthcare finds its origination over 5000 years ago. Essentially, it is not just about consuming an herbal concoction and awaiting results. Rather, it pushes people towards valuing their own body and working towards healing it naturally. There are innumerable remedies mentioned in the Ayurveda which use products that are commonly found in every household. One among them is Turmeric, a root plant and a commonly used spice. Its stark yellow color and the distinct fragrance is how one can identify it. It holds multiple benefits which make it an important substance required to maintain good health.

Unearthing the Unprocessed Goodness of Turmeric

The rhizome’s primarily comprises of curcumin which provides the unlimited benefits present in it. This yellow root also contains over essential oils such as germacrone and zingiberene. It is interesting to note that one ounce of turmeric provides over 26 % of the daily pre- requisite of manganese and 16 % of iron. There are plenty more reasons to implement turmeric into the daily diet. Here’s a glimpse into how important turmeric can be for the overall health of humans.

Natural Painkiller- Turmeric’s primary component curcumin, has anti – inflammatory properties. It assists in the reduction of pain which may be caused due to surgery or even burn injuries. It also provides relief from neuropathic pain and these painkiller properties are said to be similar to an analgesic. This is also why turmeric is advised for those individuals suffering from osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Safeguards the Human DNA from Damage – Another function of the herb is to act as a shield for the DNA due to its geno – protective quality. According to a certain study, turmeric in an aqueous form may provide over 80 % protection from any kind of harm to the DNA.

Providing Digestive Benefits – Turmeric is a boon for those facing digestive issues. The spice helps in healthy functioning of the gallbladder, hence producing the required amount of bile to ease digestion. It also assists in relieving the stomach from gas and any acid reflux. Additionally it also soothes any ulcers or inflammation within.

Assures a Healthy Respiratory System- To those who may have a habit of smoking, turmeric is the most significant element to add into their system. The curcumin works excellently as an antioxidant while healing the lungs of any inflammation that may have been caused due to the cigarette smoke. One of the most significant ways that turmeric heals is by aiding in healing cold and cough. It is one of the most ancient ways that the spice has been used so far.

Alleviating Brain Health and the Mood – Various studies have tried, tested and suggested that the curcumin content in Turmeric acts as an antidepressant. Depression is said to be a mental illness that leads to reduced level of brain – derived neurotrophic factor and also shrinks the hippocampus which is related to the learning and memory functions of the brain. Turmeric has the ability to boost these levels and also reverse any effect the illness may have had. It is also said that curcumin may be capable of enhancing the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. If an individual is displaying signs of Alzheimer’s, turmeric can be used as it also functions as an agent to reduce beta amyloid plaque. This may help in slowing down the symptoms and eventually completely eliminate the illness.

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Healthcare and Patient Satisfaction – The Essential Elements

The success or failure of any organization depends on the quality of service they provide to the customers. In case of healthcare organizations, patient satisfaction is of prime concern. These establishments work day-in and day-out to improve the quality of patient service, provide exceptional patient care, and enhance the patient experience.

Quality of Service is Indicated by Patient Experience Measures

Patient satisfaction surveys play a very important role in assisting healthcare institutions to transition to value-based healthcare services. Recent research states that quality of care is directly influenced by patient experience. But, in spite of various factors influencing organizations to pay more attention to patient satisfaction, many healthcare providers are still skeptical about it due to conflicting research. Some studies state that patient experience has no relation with the quality of care, while other studies found that it is directly associated with better outcomes.

Major Factors Influencing the Patient Experience of Care

Even though there are many inconsistencies in terms of defining patient experience, research states that improvement in patient experience and development in quality of care are clearly connected. There are five major procedures that can help healthcare organizations in radically improving patient experiences and utilizing innovative technology to their advantage.

Proper Monitoring of Patient Satisfaction and Implementation of Appropriate Measures

Improving patient experience is a basic and necessary approach towards improving outcomes. If a patient is given proper treatment and is receiving proper care from the doctors and nurses, then they will feel better about the hospital authority. As a result, they will properly follow the treatment recommendations. Institutions should use patient satisfaction as a balance measure, and not as a catalyst for outcomes. Balance measures assist health systems in making proper quality of care improvements and also taking care of potential negative impacts. Using patient experience as balance measure also helps healthcare institutions make sure that improvements one area doesn’t hamper another area.

Evaluation of the Complete Care Team  

A major step towards the improvement of patient care experience is to gather data as a whole instead of gathering information about individual care interactions. Surveys should be conducted to assess not only individuals, but also the entire team. They should include individual oriented questions along with questions that concern the entire team, like ‘how well were the nurses and physicians working together’, and so on.     

Judicious Utilization of Healthcare Analytics

Systems have to understand, use, and act on the patient satisfaction data to improve the patient experience. Concerned authorities can use an enterprise data warehouse and patient experience applications to research and identify how patient experience, clinical outcomes, and employee satisfaction are related.

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Circadian Rhythms: The Clock that makes us Rise and Shine Every Morning

“A human body can think thoughts, play a piano, kill germs, remove toxins, and make a baby all at once. Once it’s doing that your biological rhythms are actually mirroring the symphony of the universe because you have circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, tidal rhythms you know they mirror everything that is happening in the whole universe.”—Michio Kaku

Last year on the 3rd October 2017, three scientists, Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael Young, won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. Their research on circadian rhythm, a regular patterned tempo that all living beings tend to follow, enabled them to win the prestigious award.

Circadian rhythm is the cycle that tends to make one tired at night and wake up in the morning. The internal biological clock pushes the Circadian rhythms, by anticipating the day/night cycles. There are various physiological and behavioral parameters of an organism that are governed by Circadian rhythms. It affects not just the sleep cycle, but large parts of our society from working schedules, school routine, to rush hour traffic— almost everything is in sync with the circadian rhythm.

How it works?

“Circadian” means “about a day”. This biological clock establishes over a period of time during the first few months of the life. It controls the day-to-day changes in the biological patterns, like body temperature, blood pressure, and also the release of hormones. The concept of the biological clock may sound metaphorical; however, there is a distinct region in the brain that is in charge of keeping track of the time. It is an area called as the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (or SCN), placed above the point where the optic nerve fibers cross in the brain. This unique location of SCN near the optic nerves enables it to receive cues directly from light in the environment, and eventually this helps keep time.

There are numerous genes that govern the normal functioning of the internal biological clock. The most important one which was discovered by researchers, who were awarded the Nobel Prize last year, is the ‘period’ gene. The period gene is responsible for production of the protein PER, which in turn inhibits the period gene. This works like a feedback loop, and causes the level of PER protein to cycle incessantly. A high level of PER protein stops more PER from being formed, up until levels are low, and it starts manufacturing more again. This loop works over a period of about 24 hours, therefore it is called the period gene. This mechanism was first discovered in the fruit flies. Humans have a biological clock which is run by the mechanism which is very much similar to that of the fruit flies.

Sleep: The Dynamic Interplay between Metabolism and Relaxation

“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”— Benjamin Franklin

Our body’s biological clock is governed by structures inside our brain, which regulates our sleep-wake cycles. Sleep is basically a series and amalgamation of distinctive physiological stages, which a person goes through. Each step has an important function and purpose behind it, that helps keep the brain and body healthy. At night our sleep is alternating between stages of quiet or deep sleep and periods of REM (dreaming) sleep. While the chief function of quite sleep is to restore the body, dreaming sleep helps restore the mind, and plays a definitive role in learning and memory.

Growth, hormonal regulation, and physical renewal all occur during deep sleep. Throughout this period the brain receives a reduced blood flow, which helps cool it down.  The beginning of this stage marks the release of the growth hormone by the pituitary gland, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Scientists have also found that there is an increased level of constituents that activate the immune system in the blood, during the deep sleep. This has led to the speculation that deep sleep plays a vital role in fighting against infections. The lack of deep sleep may lead to illnesses, depression, and gaining an unhealthy amount of weight.

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New-age Techniques that can Prevent Life-threatening Diseases among Infants

Every parent wants their child to be delivered healthy and live healthy. While living healthy after birth depends upon many factors like nurturing, proper diet, health awareness, exercises, good sleep, and more, the circumstances during the childbirth are quite different. There are things which one couldn’t control earlier, that is the case of some defective genes in father, mother or in both. But with the advent of landmark IVF treatment and successive progression towards its improvements have gifted this world many popular, sometimes controversial but effective medical techniques that can prevent the transfer of faulty genes into the child and ensure a good health of baby on its arrival. Karyomapping and three parents IVF are the few techniques which have even got the acceptance (both in legal and societal aspect) in many countries, including the UK.

Karyomapping

People are often affected with lethal genetic diseases, which many a times transfer to their dear ones and drastically affect their health and well-being. While in the process of expecting a child, its health is always a matter of great concern for the families and especially for the parents. With hectic life schedule, bad food habits, work pressure, loneliness, depression, and more, people often suffer from many life-threatening diseases like diabetes, mental illness, and many more.

No parent, even after knowing that they are suffering from a particular genetic disorder, will ever want to let affect the health of their new baby in a negative way.  Now with the advent of Karyomapping, a couple can avoid passing a genetic disorder on to their offspring. In this revolutionary technique, embryos get screened before getting implanted into the mother’s womb (uterus). This method is also known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis or PGD for short.

In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is needed to carry out this technique successfully. In this process several eggs get collected from the ovaries and then are fertilized outside the body using previously extracted sperm, to produce embryos. Each embryo is then screened, on various parameters, to check its health. Karyomapping technique scrutinizes the chromosomes of the mother, father, and the reference at 300,000 different points. Through this method, doctors can find the defective embryos and precisely remove those from the IVF process. Only the embryos that are free from any genetic condition are transferred to the uterus. In this way one can ensure a healthy life for the new born and can also reduce the probability of miscarriage, significantly.

Three Parent IVF or Pronuclear Transfer

Mitochondria are small organelles that sit inside our cells and provide vital energy to it. Mitochondria also play a vital role in the respiratory process. But when this significant organelle of our body gets defected, it invites a plethora of life-threatening diseases.

A recent study revealed that many children every year are born with faulty mitochondrial DNA, caused by mutations in them that affect mitochondrial function. Its symptoms includes: heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, poor growth, loss of muscle coordination, muscle weakness, neurological problems, autonomic dysfunction, and dementia.

Mitochondrial disorder becomes worse when the faulty mitochondria present in the muscles, cerebrum, or nerves as these vital parts of our body require more energy as compared to other parts. Mitochondrial diseases strike early in childhood and get worse steadily and even prove fatal before adulthood.

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Nutritional Desideratum during Pregnancy

Pregnancy is a significant moment in the life of a woman. This is the period of time where the individual will need to take good care of herself and ensure that a healthy pregnancy includes an equally healthy diet. This is where the nurturing of the child starts and helps it grow in an ideal environment. The fetus growing inside the womb relies entirely on the food consumed by the mother. It is hence necessary to implement foods containing more calcium, folic acid or folate, iron and proteins. The intake of fruits and vegetables needs to be taken seriously as adding a large variety of them into the diet can prove to facilitate more vitamins and minerals within the body.

Implementation of Nourishment for the Fetus

Food is the element that helps humans live and provides them with energy to carry out their day to day tasks. The ingested nutrients upon getting absorbed into the body start building up the body and repair it from within. Similarly, for women who are expecting, they need double the nutrition as it needs to be balanced out for the growth of the baby as well as energy for the mother. Here are some of the things to add into the diet compulsorily to ensure a healthy pregnancy.

Dairy Products – The need to consume foods that are rich in protein and calcium are at its –peak as this is a major requirement for the fetus’ bone health. The high quality protein mainly casein and whey are found in dairy products along with magnesium, phosphorous and zinc. Yoghurt is a rich source of all the above nutrients especially calcium which assures that the babies developing bones, teeth and muscles are healthy. Some variants of yoghurt also contain probiotic bacteria which are very important for digestive health and assist in constipation during pregnancy. Consumption of milk may also help in reducing the chances of pregnancy related complications.

Legumes – These small pods are rich in iron, protein and folate. During the first trimester it is essential that both the mother and fetus receive folate as it is possible that the chances of low birth weight are reduced. The fibers present in it also help in preventing hemorrhoids for the duration of the pregnancy.

Fish – This is also a natural source of vitamin D which is good for the hair as well as nails. Consumption of fish helps in providing the body with Omega 3 fatty acid. The fetus’ brain and eyes are built using this nutrient but fish like salmon should be consumed in moderation. The risk of impurities or large quantity of mercury does exist, but nonetheless, the occasional sea food can help in completing this very important dietary requirement.

Broccoli and Dark Leafy Greens – The presence of fiber, vitamins C, K, folate and potassium in these vegetables holds various benefits for both. These are rich in anti – oxidants that may help in preventing cancer, arthritis and Parkinson’s disease as well. It can also help in reducing the risk of low birth weight. The likes of Spinach, Kale and Arugula are crucial for the purification of blood as well.

Whole Grains – Grains like whole wheat, whole oats, barley and quinoa help a pregnant woman fulfill the daily calorie requirements. This is especially necessary during the second and third trimester as the growth of the fetus is the fastest and the body requires energy to carry out everyday functions as well. They also contain magnesium which may help in relaxing the muscles and also preventing the uterus from contracting prematurely.

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