Last month, US president Barack Obama commented that it is not necessary for Americans to travel to India so that they may attain “cheap healthcare.” Guy Williams of Alaska, who is a basketball coach, didn’t agree with him. He laughed while mentioning that comment.

Williams said, "Obama must be crazy. Healthcare is extremely expensive in the US and so is health insurance, which is unaffordable for some 50 million Americans."

Williams recently enjoyed the prompt services of Apollo hospital in Chennai where he underwent a hip-surfacing surgery. He chose to travel from Alaska to Chennai for that surgery because it was impossible for him to afford that same medical service in US. The cost of same medical service in US is about $58,000. In India, he got much better and precise iPad navigating surgery for just $8,000.

The clinical strength of India is certainly able to offer much better results that a patient can achieve in the US and that too at much less fees. William is very happy about the outcome of his choice for India as his medical destination. He enjoyed his stay at the hospital and he is planning to get his brother to India so that he may also get benefited from the same treatment.
 
It is very common story. Many people from the United States prefer to travel to India for a medical tour. A few months ago, Ron Lemmer, a 65 years old American citizen decided to visit India so that he may live longer. He needed an immediate heart transplant which was seemingly difficult for him to achieve in the U.S. There were many people who told him that such a medical tour to a India may prove to be hazardous, however, Ron Lemmer paid no heed to such advices.

He visited India with his wife Shelly so that she may take care of him and proceedings when he goes through heart transplantation. He also chose to visit Apollo Hospital, a private health and medical care center situated at Chennai.

His doctors at Minnesota US warned them about the possible dangers of opting for heart transplantation in India. Shelly informed, "[They said] we were making a terrible decision: I'm going to come back with my husband in a box.”

However, those warning proved to be fake calls. Ron Lemmer achieved a successful heart transplant and Shelly now is quite happy as her husband is now completely healthy and both of them hope to enjoy life for long.

Ron said that he felt no pain when he woke up next morning after the heart transplant. Medical staff informed him about the success of transplant. They also informed him that he is now living with the help of the heart of a 36 year old Indian laborer. The laborer died in a road accident and so Ron got that piece of Indian heart. Feeling overwhelmed, Ron tried to seek the address of donor’s family. However, he failed because the donation was anonymous.

Back in US, there still were no chanced for Ron to get a heart transplant. Around 3,100 more people were on the US national list, who were desperately looking for a heart transplant. A donor’s heart is difficult to get. Once a heart becomes available for transplant, that patient gains it who is chosen by medical authorities according to his seriousness of illness. Other criteria is the period for which a person is waiting for the heart transplant. Ron Lemmer’s doctors informed him that it may take 18 more months for him to be able to achieve a heart transplant in US.

Last year, 359 heart patients died in the United States while waiting for a heart transplant. On an average, a person suffering the same critical conditions in which Ron Lemmer was (1 B priority level), may need to spend at least 73 days while waiting for a life saving transplant. However, the data of United Network for Organ Sharing suggest that many people wait for years and a good number of patients dies while waiting for a transplant.

As you can see, US president Barack Obama may comment again that Americans don’t need to visit India for gaining proper and cheap medical services, but the reality is just opposite. In America, medical services are not only rare, they are extremely costly.

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As a young pregnant woman enters the latter stages of her pregnancy, she becomes conscious about the changes that occur in her body and life. It is not easy to raise a child, but it certainly is rewarding.
A pregnant woman often try to know as more as she can about raising a healthy child. She looks for every book in her local library to know everything that may help her in caring a baby, changing diapers and breastfeeding.

Importance of breast feeding

Breast milk is naturally formulated for a newborn’s digestive system. It is rich in antibodies which help the child to fight against viruses and bacteria and hence, breast milk is not only the most nutritious food for a newly born child, it actually is a life-giving medicine for the child. A mother’s breast milk is so naturally adjusted with the child that in the course of child development, the composition of her milk changes to adapt with the nutritional necessities of the developing baby.

If it is the first time for the woman to be a mother, breastfeeding techniques will be the vital new skills she will have to learn. However, breastfeeding is not something that one can learn by reading some book or guidelines. Breast feeding is a natural act that a mother and her baby need to learn together just after the infant takes birth.

According to doctors and experts, breast feeding should commence within the two hours of a baby’s birth. A newly born child may take 80 percent or 4/5th of the feed within the first ten minutes of breast feeding and then the baby may suckle mother’s breast for another few minutes. Babies need to be fed whenever they demand. A newly born baby may require to be fed after every two or three hours and during every feed period, a mother may need to invest 10 to 40 minutes. Every expert and pediatrician will recommend breast feeding till a baby is at least six months old, however, it will add to good health of the baby if a mother keep breast feeding him or her for longer periods. There are no specific technical steps that you need to learn before you may ably breast feed your infant.

According to gynecologist Dr. Suman Bijlani, a woman is not required to do anything special to get herself ready for breast feeding. Dr Bijlani says, "No massaging of breast or nipple stretching exercises are needed during pregnancy. Be ready with breastfeeding accessories like nursing bras, breast pads and breast pumps. It is a good idea to get adequate and correct information regarding breastfeeding from your doctor or even attend antenatal lactation sessions. This gives you confidence, which is the best preparation a mother can have."

Benefits of breast feeding

The simplest, most healthy and natural way to feed your infant is breast feeding. Breast milk contains the appropriate mix of nutrients like proteins with perfect equilibrium of amino acids, sugars, fats, water, vitamins, minerals, antibodies and enzymes for your newly born child.

Breast milk boosts a baby’s immunity and offer protection for your infant against diarrhea, respiratory infections, ear infections and many more illnesses. A baby enjoying breast feed will show lower chances of diabetes, allergic conditions and obesity while he will also enjoy better cognitive and physical development.
Breast feeding is a natural and effective birth control method. If a woman hasn’t got her period in a time less than six months post her delivery and if she is solely breastfeeding her child, then she is 98 percent protected from another pregnancy.

Breast feeding produces such situations close to her womb that comforts the baby and makes them feel safe and protected. Breastfeeding is also beneficial for mothers because it decreases the amount of blood loss after delivery to a significant degree.

The following breast feeding tips may help a young mother and her child

• Both mother and baby should be in a comfortable position. While breastfeeding, keep the body and neck of the baby in a straight line.
• The body of baby should be held close to her own body by the mother at right angles. The right way is to bring the baby towards your breast rather than bringing your breasts towards the infant.
• Proper positioning will help you latch the baby easily. A mother should encourage the infant to suckle on the surrounding breast tissues along with the nipples.
• As the skin of a baby comes in contact with the skin of his/her mother after delivery, the baby gets stimulated with natural instincts to search for the breasts.
• Feed your infant frequently with breast milk because it will ensure ample breast stimulation to continue good milk production and flow.
• A mother should try to keep her breasts empty either by feeding her child frequently or by pumping out the milk. This helps the mother to maintain milk flow and it also helps her in preventing health problems like painful lumps in the breasts. 

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The problems of hip pain often arises when a person feel constantly tight flexor muscle of her hips. This tightness in the hip muscles leads to pain and discomfort. Regular yoga can relieve the tightness in hip flexor muscles to help you attain relaxation through resistance and stretching exercises. Popular yoga asnas of hatha yoga and bikram yoga are able to help you in stretching and strengthening hip muscles while providing enough support to your buttocks.

How can Yoga Help fight hip Pain

Yoga is a great way to achieve complete well being and optimum body composure. Yoga can be extensively applied for improving your health and well being. There are several asnas or poses which are particularly aimed to isolate or combine specific muscles and muscle groups in upper and lower part of your body both.

The integral part of yoga includes core strength and ability to balance. This increases resistance while providing healthier musculature against common pains and aches like hip pains.

Strengthen your muscles with Yoga: you can increase the range of motion of your body by performing yoga regularly. Hatha yoga and Bikram yoga include asnas or poses that can effectively help you for fighting muscle stress and removing any ache in your buttocks.

The technique of yoga is simple and it included opening up of joints while distributing the load and tension of the hip towards a larger surface area. This helps in restoring your body’s natural movement and comfort. As hatha yoga and bikram yoga strengthens your hip joint, your buttocks suffer lesser stress due to your body weight.

Hatha Yoga: it is one of the most popular pattern of yoga. Hatha yoga is specifically associated with treating and relieving pain. Some of the popular postures of Hatha yoga are Tree Pose, Corpse Pose and Child Pose. Hatha yoga helps in decreasing pain as it helps in regulating your breath intake and it also reduces stress levels along with reducing chronic stress.

Bikram Yoga: Bikram yoga is often termed as hot yoga and it is a popular way of dealing with pain in buttocks. Bikram yoga includes strenuous work out in temperature range of 38 to 45C (110 to 120 F). In such hot temperature, the muscles get warmed up and ligaments ably allow the muscles to stretch up to limits comfortably.

Your physician or yoga teacher will suggest you to avoid performing Ashtanga and Iyengar yoga poses specially when you are already suffering from acute hip pain. However, if you have no complaint of pain in buttocks and you are looking forward to opt for prevention of any hip pain, it would be better to start yoga workouts with Ashtanga and Iyengar yoga postures.

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It is very important to understand that a woman needs specific diet to remain healthy and this is because a woman’s physical and mental health remains dependent on the hormonal balance and status in her body.

The hormonal balance and status signifies the interaction between female sex hormones namely, estrogen and progesterone, thyroid hormones such as TSH, T4, T3, and stress hormones specially cortisol.

 Proper production and balance of sex hormones is essential for a healthy women and proper balance is necessary to maintain appropriate levels of stress hormones. Excessive stress may disturb the production of estrogen and progesterone while creating harmful inflammation in women’s body.

By maintaining a good nutritious diet regularly, women can attain proper balance of hormones in her body and this will help her in attaining better mental and physical health along with providing her natural beauty. The following nutritional constituents should be included by every women in her diet to attain a better hormonal balance and healthy body.

Green and Leafy Vegetables

Green leafy vegetables are essential constituents of every ones diet who is seeking for a healthy living. A woman cannot meet her nutritional requirements without including green leafy vegetables in her regular food. Fenugreek leaves, legumes, lettuce, asparagus, spinach, France beans and broccoli are easily available in abundance.

These vegetables are rich sources of Vitamin C and K, iron, folic acid and fibre. These vegetables will also provide magnesium, potassium and calcium along with iron and hence by including them in regular diet, a girl can attain better protected vision and strength in bones.

Every girl should try to eat leafy vegetables daily.


Whole Grains

While refined grains are easily available in market, one should try to include whole grains in their diet. Whole grains are more nutritious and they contain around 96% more fibre and essential vitamins and nutrients than refined grains.

Often nutrition and diet experts advises women to have whole wheat bread, brown rice, and whole wheat pasta as they provide essential nutrients and the major advantage is, whole grains do not contribute to weight gain. To achieve a healthy and sexy girl persona, you should include whole grains in your daily food. You may choose to start your day with a whole wheat bread toast or whole wheat cereal.

Nuts

Nuts should be an essential constitutes of a woman’s diet. You may eat nuts while sprinkling them on breakfast cereals or on salads or you may choose to mix them with your yoghurt. Nuts will provide you the much required proteins, vitamin B & E and magnesium.

Nuts will also protect you against cancer and heart disease. While nuts are rich in fat calories, but the fat achieved through nuts doesn’t hurt your heart. You may also eat nuts along with your evening tea as snacks.

However, ascertain that you are not over-eating them. Around 15-20 cashews, almonds, walnuts are good enough in a week.

Yoghurt

If you are worried about you weight, you may choose to eat low fat yoghurt as both low fat and plain yoghurt are high resources of protein, vitamins and calcium. The healthy bacteria of yoghurt will also provide you strength to fight various diseases.

Expert dieticians will suggest three to four cups of yoghurt for women in a week. However, you should avoid adding sugar to yoghurt. Better is to take yoghurt with salt or you may choose plain yoghurt and add berries or fruits to it.

Berries will make you merry

Berries are considered to be essential constituent of any fiber rich diet product. This is so because berries are the richest source of fiber while they will also help girls to curb excessive weight. Berries are rich in protective plant antioxidant than any other eatable.

The antioxidants of berries will also help you strengthen your memory and to fight against memory loss. You may eat a full bowl of berries thrice in a week. You may use fresh or frozen berries as both are beneficial.

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According to recent statistical studies worldwide, an average of 1 out of 20 women have experienced and survived the ordeals of breast cancer or are in the middle of the ordeals of this breast disorder. Many women lose their life because of breast cancer.

While even males can suffer the problems of breast cancer, it is 100 times more common in women than breast cancer in men. In the year 2008, 458.503 women lost their life worldwide because of breast cancer. It was 13.7% of all cancer deaths in women.

American women in the United States suffer breast cancer more than any other type of cancer while skin cancer is exception. Breast cancer in women in United States is second only to lung cancer and breast cancer is major cause of cancer death of women in US.

The symptoms of breast cancer varies significantly from lumps in breasts to swelling of the breasts to skin changes on breasts and in many cases, breast cancer patients have no obvious symptoms at many times. It is certainly not easy to pre-diagnosis breast cancer and the proper diagnosis becomes very difficult especially in developing countries like India, Pakistan because of lack of medical facilities.

However, women can prevent breast cancer through proper lifestyle, nutrition and healthy regimen. While it is necessary to alter your lifestyle and to reduce alcohol consumption, it is also necessary to remain physically active to avoid the menace of breast cancer.

There are certain yoga asnas or exercises that will help in preventing the issues of breast cancer. These yoga exercises will not only help women in preventing breast cancer; rather they will also work for improving the shape of breasts and to keep happy and healthy breasts.


Significance of a Healthy Lymphatic System

The lymphatic system of a woman sustains the health of her breasts. The lymphatic system holds the responsibility to keep potentially harmful entities away and to channelize clean flow of blood to breast tissues and cells while avoiding any infections.

Yoga exercises can help in improving the health of lymphatic system by maintaining proper coordination between breathing and body movement. By doing so, Yoga exercises helps in proper circulation of blood while supplying imperative energy in all parts of the lymphatic system of a woman.

A few Yoga Exercises for Breasts
Diagonal Stretch:

Energetic breathing and powerful movements of diagonal stretch helps the lymphatic system to get in proper motion.

How to Perform Diagonal Stretch Yoga Exercise:

• Comfort yourself in a sitting position while placing your thumbs on the palms of the hands at the end of your little fingers.
• Ascertain that your fingers are resting in straight line. Now pull your arms gradually to the sides while ascertaining that they remain parallel to the ground and your palms should be facing downwards.
• Raise your right arm while bringing down the left arm. Take deep breath in while the right arm goes up and breath out as it goes down. Continue this exercise for 20-25 times.

Reach for Health: Snapping Back Exercise

This yoga exercise is very similar to martial arts exercises. This exercise involves the movement of snapping back that helps in activating and energizing lymph and breast cells and tissues.

Method:

• Comfort yourself while sitting on your heels and remove the pressure from your knee joints by keeping a firm pillow below your buttocks and thighs.
• By tucking your thumbs inside, make a fist of our palms. Bring your hand to the height of your breasts while pulling your elbows back.
• Extend your arm in forward direction to its maximum while taking powerful breath in. Open your fingers in a fashion of grasping something. Close your fingers while grasping the air and making fist of your hands while snapping the arm to the body side while exhaling the breath out.
• Repeat the same exercise with other arm and continue these steps for 2-3 minutes with both arms in succession.

Frog Pose

This yoga exercise helps in increasing the flow of energy upwards to all parts of the body.

Method of Frog Pose Yoga Exercise

• While standing in a comfortable position, place your heels together close to each other and then squat down while keeping your heels above the ground.
• Touch the floor with your finger tips while straightening your spine and back as much as you can.
• Breathe in while straightening your legs and bring your head closure to the knees. Your finger tips should not move from the floor.
• Breathe out and come back to the squatting position.
• Perform this exercise for at least one minute or till you feel it is comfortable. Gradually increase the time for this exercise.

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