The rushed and stressful life-style of an average city-dwelling young professional can leave little time for taking exceptional care of one’s health and body. However, some signals from your body must be heeded if they are to be prevented from becoming more severe and limiting ailments. Here’s a list of common symptoms and their likely meaning.

When you are always either going in for a cold, or not able to recover from one, there could be a variety of reasons.

Sniffling, a runny nose, or sneezing often usually mean allergies. A head cold could be the result of moving in and out of air-conditioned environments from cold to hot and humid and back, as well as drinking very cold and very hot fluids – cold water and hot coffee.

The age of doldrums is what many prefer to call teenage. And it is true for more than one reason. Teenagers go through a series of physical, mental, emotional and hormonal changes which makes life for them. fairly difficult. However, the complexities of the life of teenagers today is steadily becoming a cause for concern for the rest of the society.

For one, ninety percent of teenagers today suffer from poor body image. This is especially true for girls. The message that attractiveness, success and happiness depend on being thin is everywhere. Teenagers face an assault on their self-image and consequently their self-esteem almost everyday, everywhere.

The internet, and magazines all barrage these young girls and boys with images of perfection, which is closely linked with “thinness.” As a result research findings reveal a shocking result. Only about fourteen percent of teenage girls are satisfied with the way they look. More than fifty percent of teenagers today are struggling to cope with poor body image. And surprisingly despite such awareness and struggle to be the “right size”, obesity among teenagers has tripled in the last ten years.

Yoga can help achieve marital bliss, says Brahmasri Professor K.S. Sundareysan of Patanjalee Yoga Foundation, Chennai.

Yoga can help improve marital life and bring back cheer into the hearts of couples, said Brahmasri Professor K.S. Sundareysan, a renowned yoga master and founder of Patanjalee Yogaa Foundation in Indira Nagar, Chennai.

“Modern world is undergoing lot of frustration and the only way to come out of it is to learn and practice yoga. The yoga we teach is not one of renunciation but one of acceptance. You don’t need to give up all your bad habits like smoking, drinking etc to take up yoga. You can simply live your life as you normally do when you take up yoga. It is guaranteed that even as little as 10 minutes daily practice on a regular basis will improve greatly the quality of life and your bad habits will slip away automatically,” he said.

In the business of medicine, the fastest burgeoning branch is the fat factory. Slimming clinics, easy weight-loss diets, fat-to-fit strategies, colonic irritation, ayurvedic magic potions, instant allopathic tablets, you name it, it’s there screaming in your face, in newspapers, hoardings and unasked for flyers sneaked into Sunday papers. And beyond that is Anorexia Nervosa, a desperate diet-till-you-die disorder, more than a thousand times worse than being ‘FAT’. Sonali Behl discovers some shocking truths

“Doctor, I’m getting married in two months and I want to lose weight.”

A most reasonable aspiration for a lissome figure and glowing skin tone for the biggest day in her life, but what the words do not adequately convey on paper is the fierce desperation in her voice. Confronted by the young woman’s obvious distress, the doctor walked her to the glass door at the entrance to his office, overlooking the waiting lounge, and pointed to a 40-year-old extremely thin woman, waiting patiently for her turn.

There is food for health, food that makes you more beautiful and then there is food for love. Food, that promises to help you experience to the hilt the physical expression of this rather exotic human emotion called love. Since time immemorial man has believed in the powers of certain foods to help enhance this experience. A number of scholars have tried to prove that the so called “love foods” are just a figment of imagination of the human mind. Some have given scientific data to prove their point. Yet the belief still holds strong. Probably because, “love foods” bring together two of the most potent human needs and passions-sex and food.

In ancient times aphrodisiacs were much sought after for promoting both fertility and sexual appetite. And in reality they are good foods that improve our health. Healthy minds and healthy bodies are the two pre-requisites for better sex. Besides, it naturally follows that a well nourished person is naturally expected to have a healthy sexual appetite and will be in a better position to conceive and enjoy better sex than a malnourished person, the experimentation with aphrodisiacs or “love foods” went on.