COLUMNIST: DR. PRADNYA KULKARNI
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Dr. Pradnya Kulkarni is a specialist in clinical pathology. She graduated from B.J. Medical College in Pune, India, and later worked at Sassoon General Hospital, a 500 bed multi-specialty community hospital. She also held undergraduate teaching responsibilities during her post-graduate studies. She served as a consultant pathologist at a private practice in Pune for six years, handling around 100 cases a day. She also obtained specialized training in quality control in clinical laboratory science from Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, Britain. She enjoys writing and is now focusing on writing medical articles for the public.
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April 15, 2008Hong Kong, China — "Are you a vegetarian, Mr. Kumar?" asked Dr. Shailesh Chaugule, a psychiatrist from the Indian city of Pune. A senior citizen in his early seventies, Kumar had been feeling low for months. He lacked interest in everything, got tired easily, was awake at night, and often felt listless and anxious.
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March 11, 2008Hong Kong, China — Hormonally speaking, a woman's life has three important stages: the beginning of menstruation, the reproductive period and pregnancy, and the termination of the childbearing period with the end of the menstrual cycle, or menopause -- which can bring trying physical symptoms and psychological issues.
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February 26, 2008Hong Kong, China — One morning, Harish woke up with excruciating pain in his right ankle. An Indian in his mid-thirties, Harish had suffered a similar episode in the recent past. Being too stressed at his new office to care for his health, he had let it pass. But this time he went to a doctor, and was diagnosed with gout.
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February 05, 2008Hong Kong, China — Raju, a healthy 14-year-old boy weighing 60 kilograms, goes to a reputed school for the elite in the Indian capital city of New Delhi. "I love sports," he says, meaning he loves watching cricket on television. He hardly plays any games, except during his biweekly physical education class at school.
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January 22, 2008Hong Kong, China — Vitamin D is well known for its importance in maintaining good bone health. Recent studies suggest, however, that there is a positive relation between vitamin D and several types of cancers, autoimmune diseases, hypertension, heart diseases and even diabetes.
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January 15, 2008Hong Kong, China — Every night Mr. Cai prepares dinner for his wife; not with vegetables and meat, but with bags of nutritional products that he injects into his wife's veins. Cai's wife, Zhou Qisi, lost a large part of her intestines through surgery and has not been able to digest food for the past 20 years.
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January 08, 2008Hong Hong, China — Radha is a young girl living in an impoverished village in India. The floor and walls of her tiny hut are plastered with mud and cow dung. There is an infestation of sand flies in the dense vegetation around her house. Radha, 14, is the sole bread earner for her family, but of late even her health seems to be failing.
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January 02, 2008Hong Kong, China — People have misconceptions about walking as a form of physical activity. They think it is not a proper exercise. But actually it is a near perfect exercise. Walking is a safe, easy and inexpensive form of workout that has several positive outcomes on health.
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December 04, 2007Hong Kong, China — Depression is a very common mental disorder. Characterized by bad moods, a loss of interest or pleasure and feelings of guilt or low self-worth, it affects about 121 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
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November 27, 2007Hong Kong, China — Hypertension, or persistently elevated blood pressure, often accompanies diabetes in a deadly combination. A clinical trial published in October shows that tighter control of blood pressure in diabetic patients improves mortality and morbidity due to hear
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November 13, 2007Hong Kong, China — Globally, 17 million people die of heart disease every year; about 80 percent of these are in Asia. A number of factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking contribute to the risk of heart disease.
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November 06, 2007Hong Kong, China — Paul is a diabetic, with a big wound on his foot. To dress it, his surgeon reaches for a jar of honey, soaks a piece of gauze in it and pats it on.
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October 23, 2007Hong Kong, China — Burn injuries are a major health concern in India. Every year about 400,000 people suffer from burn injuries and they are fatal in about 120,000 cases.
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October 16, 2007Hong Kong, China — Recent studies have shown a strong correlation between levels of a "non-essential" amino acid called "glutamine" in the human body and the survival of patients in intensive care units. Glutamine is one of the 20 amino acids present in the human body and i
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October 02, 2007Hong Kong, China — Sujata, a healthy housewife in her late thirties in Pune, India, suddenly came down with a high fever in October, 2006. With the fever came severe ankle and wrist joint pain, which she had never experienced before.
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September 24, 2007Hong Kong, China — The benefits of consuming omega-3 fatty acids are well known. Supplementing the diet with fish oil, which is rich in this nutrient, has been proven to have protective effects on the heart.
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September 11, 2007Hong Kong, China — There are millions of betel-leaf chewers in Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Taiwan and Malaysia. A recent experimental study conducted in Taiwan shows that a novel component in the betel leaf, hydroxychavicol,
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September 04, 2007Hong Kong, China — Today, the whole world is talking about India's progress in information technology in the last decade. Presently, the IT and business processing outsourcing companies employ about 1 million workers directly and around 3 million indirectly.
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August 28, 2007Pune, India — Baby Nawathe is a 10-day-old child admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Pune, India. His weight is just 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds).
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August 10, 2007Pune, India — Changing lifestyles and food habits, lack of exercise and stress at work have long been incriminated as the risk factors for diabetes mellitus. But according to a recent study, a risk factor may be present right at birth if the mother is deficient in vita
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July 28, 2007Pune, India — Ramesh, (not his real name), a strong young man of 26 years, felt the sky had fallen on his head that day in 1999. In the hospital for simple lip surgery, he was told for the first time that he was HIV positive.
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July 20, 2007Pune, India — With the arrival of the monsoon season, Indian cities start experiencing outbreaks of rain- related diseases. Dengue fever is one of them, a viral fever that spreads through the bite of the female Aedes Egypti mosquito.
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July 13, 2007Pune, India — Every year half a million women are diagnosed with cervical cancer worldwide. About 270,000 of these will die from the disease.