Taro or dasheen corms have more calories than potatoes. 100 g provides 112 calories. Their calorie value chiefly comes from complex carbohydrates in them known as amylose and amylopectin. Nonetheless, the roots are very low in fats and protein than in cereals and pulses. Their protein levels can be comparable to that of other tropical food sources like yam, cassava, potato, plantain, etc.
The corms, however, are free from gluten. They carry high-quality phyto-nutrition profile comprising of dietary fiber, and antioxidants in addition to moderate proportions of minerals, and vitamins.
Taro is one of the finest source dietary fibers; 100 g flesh provides 4.1 g or 11% of daily-requirement of dietary fiber. Together with slow digesting complex carbohydrates, moderate amounts of fiber in the food help gradual rise in blood sugar levels.
Taro leaves as well as yellow-fleshed roots have significant levels of phenolic flavonoid pigment antioxidants such as ß-carotenes, and cryptoxanthin along with vitamin A. 100 g fresh taro leaves provide 4825 IU or 161% of RDA of vitamin A. Altogether, these compounds are required for maintaining healthy mucus membranes, skin and vision. Consumption of natural foods rich in flavonoids helps to protect from lung and oral cavity cancers.
It also contains good levels of some of the valuable B-complex group of vitamins such as pyridoxine (vitamin B-6), folates, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, and thiamin.
Further, the corms provide healthy amounts of some of important minerals like zinc, magnesium, copper, iron, and manganese. In addition, the root has very good amounts of potassium. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that help regulate heart rate and blood pressure.
What is fitness? What does being physically fit mean?
What does fitness actually mean? What specific attributes make people fit?
According to the The United States Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS)1, physical fitness is defined as "a set of attributes that people have or achieve that relates to the ability to perform physical activity".
This description goes beyond being able to run long distance or lift a lot at the gym. Fitness is more than simply a questions of listing which activities you do or how long you do them for.
Despite being important, these attributes only address single areas of fitness.
This Medical News Today information article provides details on the five main components of physical fitness, which include:
Contents of this article:
Cardiorespiratory endurance
Jogging can help improve your cardiorespiratory
endurance.
Cardiorespiratory endurance is how our body is able to supply fuel during physical activity via the body's circulatory and respiratory systems.
According to Folsom Lake College2, there are two parts of cardiorespiratory endurance:
Activites that can help improve your cardiorespiratory endurance include those that cause an elevated and safe heart rate for a sustained period.
These activities include swimming, brisk walking, jogging, and cycling.
It is important to begin these activities slowly and gradually increase the intensity.
Muscular strength
The USDHHS defines muscular strength as the ability of muscle to exert force during an activity.
You can strengthen your muscles by making them work against resistance, hence the term "resistance training". A muscle has to be overloaded to be strengthened. This can be achieved by lifting weights.
Alberta Education3 recommends starting with a resistance of around 80 percent of the maximum weight you can lift at one time and doing 3-9 repetitions of this weight through 3-5 sets for effective muscular benefits.
Muscular endurance
Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle to continue exerting force without tiring out.
According to Dixie State University4, muscular endurance training helps develop the slow twitch fibers in your muscles.
As opposed to hard twitch fibers, slow twitch fibers handle low levels of force over relatively long periods.
Endurance can be improved by cardio-respiratory activities such as jogging, dancing, and cycling.
Body composition
The relative amounts of muscle, bone, and fat make up body composition, i.e. the body's muscle-bone-fat ratio. Despite someone's weight not changing, that does not mean that their level of fat is the same.
People with a high muscle (lean mass) ratio weigh more than those with the same height and waist circumference who have less muscle. Muscle weighs more per cubic inch of volume than fat.
According to The University of New Mexico5, common methods of calculating body composition include: skinfolds, circumference (girth) measures, hydrostatic weighing, bioelectrical impedance, and near-infrared interactance.
Flexibility?
Flexibility is the range of movement across a joint. Flexbility is important because it improves the ability to link movements together smoothly and can help prevent injuries.
The different types of flexibility, according to The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)6, are:
To improve your flexibility try stretching or engaging in activities that lengthen the muscles such as swimming.
What is health? What does good health mean?
The word health means different things to different people, depending on the situation. If somebody says "I was worried about my husband's health when he climbed Mt. Everest", it is clear that the woman is referring to her husband's physical health, possibly his heart, skin (frostbite) and risk of developing hypothermia (when the body's temperature drops too low.
On the other hand, if you hear the phrase "With all these deadlines, presentations and working weekends, I wonder what the effect will be on her health," most likely the word "health" refers more to mental health than physical health (although the two are often linked).
The words "health" or "healthy" can also be used in non-medical contexts. For example "A healthy economy needs an ideal GDP growth rate that is sustainable, one that remains in the expansion phase of the business cycle as long as possible."
The English word "health" comes from the Old English word hale, meaning "wholeness, being whole, sound or well,". Hale comes from the Proto-Indo-European root kailo, meaning "whole, uninjured, of good omen". Kailo comes from the Proto-Germanic root khalbas, meaning "something divided".
World Health Organization's (WHO's) definition of "health"
The most famous modern definition of health was created during a Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.
"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
The Definition has not been amended since 1948.
During the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion in 1986, the WHO said that health is:
"a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities."
The Lancet questions WHO's definition of health
An article in The Lancet states that health is not a "state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being". Neither is it "merely the absence of disease or infirmity". The article says the WHO definitions of health will not do in an era marked by new understandings of disease at molecular, individual, and societal levels. (The Lancet, Volume 373, Issue 9666, Page 781, 7 March 2009).
Two aspects to health
Famous health quotes
"There are some remedies worse than the disease."
Publilius Syrus
"We must turn to nature itself, to the observations of the body in health and in disease to learn the truth."
Hippocrates
"Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"I am convinced digestion is the great secret to life."
Sydney Smith
"Nature, time and patience are three great physicians."
H.G. Bohn
"Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense."
Henry Miller
"Time is the great physician."
Benjamin Disraeli
"A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools."
Spanish Proverb
"I am dying with the help of too many physicians."
Alexander the Great
"God heals, and the doctor takes the fee."
Benjamin Franklin
"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."
Mark Twain
"Time is the great physician."
Benjamin Franklin
"The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."
Voltaire
"Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia."
Napoleon
"It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."
Mahatma Gandhi
"A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses."
Hippocrates
"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance."
Plato
"As you improve health in a society, population growth goes down. You know, I thought it was... before I learned about it, I thought it was paradoxical."
Bill Gates
"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly."
Buddha
"The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat."
Albert Eisntein
Most people accept that health can be divided into two broad aspects - physical and mental health.
Determinants of health
The health of individual people and their communities are affected by a wide range of contributory factors. People's good or bad health is determined by their environment and situations - what is happening and what has happened to them, says WHO. WHO says that the following factors probably have a bigger impact on our health than access and use of health care services:
WHO says the main determinants to health are:
As our good health depends on the context of our lives, praising or criticizing people for their good or bad health is wrong. Most of the factors that contribute towards our good or bad health are out of our control. According to WHO, these factors (determinants), include the following, among others:
What is wellness?
The term wellness was first used by a doctor called Halbert L. Dunn, USA, who published a small booklet entitled "High Level Wellness" in 1961. The term is much more widely used in North American than in the United Kingdom.
According to the Mickinley Health Center, University of Illinois, wellness "is a state of optimal well-being that is oriented toward maximizing an individual's potential. This is a life-long process of moving towards enhancing your physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental well-being."
The University of East Carolina defines wellness as "the integration of mind, body and spirit. Optimal wellness allows us to achieve our goals and find meaning and purpose in our lives. Wellness combines seven dimensions of well-being into a quality way of living. Overall, wellness is the ability to live life to the fullest and to maximize personal potential in a variety of ways. Wellness involves continually learning and making changes to enhance your state of wellness. When we balance the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, occupational, spiritual, and environmental aspects of life, we achieve true wellness."
Deepasha, the female calf, born through hand-guided cloning technique at the National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal. A Tribune Photograph
Parveen Arora
Tribune News Service
Karnal, January 4
Scientists of the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) in Karnal have achieved another milestone in the field of cloning through hand-guided cloning technique. They successfully produced a female clone (named Deepasha) of endangered wild buffalo of Chhattisgarh on December 12. "It is the clone of the lone wild buffalo (named Asha) in the country. This is the state animal of Chhattisgarh which is also known as 'ban bhainsa'. Asha is at the Udanti Wildlife Sanctuary in Chhattisgarh," said AK Srivastava, director, NDRI. "After the confirmation in the third party DNA parental testing today, I have the pleasure to inform that scientists of the NDRI have proved that besides multiplication of superior germplasm, the conservation of endangered species through cloning has a great potential," the director said. Talking to The Tribune, Srivastava said, "This buffalo is a schedule-1 animal under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and is in the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It is an endangered animal as there is only one wild buffalo in the country. Deepasha is the second female of its species." "Earlier, Asha had delivered male calves after natural mating. It was a major concern of the Chhattisgarh authorities to protect it due to its old age and other risks. The Wildlife Trust of India, the technical partner of Chhattisgarh state, approached the NDRI for assistance and our team of scientists visited the state," the directed said. "Team members collected somatic cell from the lone buffalo Asha and cultured it in the NDRI, which has resulted in the birth of clone Deepasha," Srivastava said. "The calf took birth by normal parturition and its weight at the time of birth was 32 kg. It is in good health," he added. "My team of scientists, including SK Singla, MS Chauhan, RS Manik, P Palta, SS Lathwal, Anuj Raja and Amol Sahare, has proved its mettle and has brought laurels to the institute and the country in the world as it accepted the challenge to explore the possibility of cloning the endangered buffalo," said the director. Srivastava stated that the Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, S Ayyappan, had congratulated the team and said the achievement had opened a new era in cloning technology. He said they would keep Deepasha under the vigil of scientists for a year at the NDRI and would monitor its growth. Later, they would try to produce more buffaloes of the species through it by natural process.Learn how to select a barcode scanner or bar code reader for any application.
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A new study has revealed that the shift to farming and more sedentary lifestyles over time has resulted in modern humans having more fragile bones.
The comparatively light bone structure of modern humans compared to early human species and other modern primates may be due to the modern abandonment of the constant physical activity, which was inherent in the life of early hunter gathers.
The most plausible explanation, is that a lack of constant physical activity causes the bone in the head of the femur, the long bone in the thigh, to become thinner and lighter than that found in more mobile populations or modern primates such as chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.
The other two possible explanations is that humans and non-human primates have different bone structure because of genetics, with humans evolving to a lighter, more gracile structure, or that the large joint surfaces required for upright, two-legged movement decrease the strain on bone and therefore the development of strong bones, do not appear to be true.
Ryan, working with Colin N Shaw of the University of Cambridge, UK, looked at the hip joint to determine which of the three possible explanations was likely. The researchers found that the agriculturalists had significantly lower bone mass than the foragers. However, the bone characteristics of the more mobile foragers overlapped with those of the nonhuman primates. This knowledge might aid in prevention of osteoporosis and hip fracture in the elderly.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
