Herbs that heal

Gardeners everywhere are rediscovering the benefits of herbs, not just for the fresh flavour that they add to food, but also for their medicinal properties. So, just as we keep a First Aid Box of medicines in our homes, how about growing our own Herb Aid Garden? Try it, it's easy to do. For herbs, no matter how exotic, are pretty easy to grow-as long as you meet their sun and shade requirements. You don't even require a big garden, they can easily thrive in potted plants in terraces or balconies or even window sills. Here's how to get your Herb Aid Box started:

Aloe vera: This magic herb is used for skin problems, indigestion and even diabetes. One-inch thick piece of a mature leaf, cut into small pieces and chewed daily helps bring down sugar levels. For indigestion, for which its use is miraculous, add black salt and ajwain to the gel or pieces. To grow, plant its cutting in a potting mix of loose and sandy soil. Select a big pot as aloe needs lots of room to grow. During winter, water once every two to three weeks and during summer, water when slightly dry. A good amount of sunlight through the day is a must.

Lemon grass: Herbal tea using fresh lemon grass relieves stress and nervousness. Plant saplings in rich, moist garden soil in an area which gets good sun. When growing in a container, use one-third compost, one-third topsoil and one-sixth vermiculite. Start the seeds in a six-inch pot and move into successively larger pots as the clump grows.

Brahmi: It is known for its effectiveness in enhancing memory and promoting alertness. It's also used for treating various mental conditions, besides being a great antioxidant. You can chew four to five brahmi leaves in the morning or add them to a sandwich-filling. If growing in the garden, water well during dry weather as the roots are fairly shallow. If growing in a pot, move it to a warm, sheltered spot in winter as it is frost-prone.

Stevia: Gaining popularity as a herbal substitute for sugar, all you need to do is pluck off a few leaves, crush them and put them in your tea or dessert. You can also dry the leaves and store them as powder. A semi-humid subtropical plant, stevia can be grown easily like any other vegetable crop even in the kitchen garden. It thrives in well-drained red soil as well as sandy loam soil but not in saline soils. Since seed germination rate is very poor, it is propagated vegetatively.

Basil (tulsi): Every part of basil is useful, that's why it is considered very auspicious in Indian homes. It is an effective preventive aid for many diseases and its fresh leaves can be chewed to cure mouth ulcers as well as cough and cold. It also has anti-stress, antihypertensive and anti-bacterial properties. For planting, scatter seeds in a nursery pot or flat tray filled with any standard potting soil and cover them with a small amount of soil. Water gently but thoroughly and place it in a sunny location. Expect germination in about one week. When young plants are three to four inches tall, transplant them to a sunny spot in the garden. After they're established, they require little water. Tulsi plants will self-sow and often reward you with new plants the following spring.

Ashwagandha: Also called the Indian ginseng, its roots, leaves and fruits (berry) possess tremendous medicinal value and are used as sedatives, cardioprotective and anti-arthritic agents as well as antioxidants. Two leaves eaten with lukewarm water with half a spoon of honey and a pinch of black salt help reduce obesity. It grows well in sandy loam or light red soil and requires dry season during its growing period.

For planting, sprinkle tiny seeds onto the surface and rake in lightly. Mist regularly so that the surface does not dry out at till the seedlings have developed a deep root system. High humidity is good for initial germination but will encourage fungal problems later. Seedlings can be transplanted when 10 cm tall and germination should be expected within two weeks. So, water generously while young and sparingly when older.

Citronella: This plant has been used for years to keep annoying bugs away. So it makes sense to grow it in your garden, doesn't it? It looks especially good when grown as an ornamental grass in mixed borders. It requires abundant moisture and sunshine for good growth. Sandy loam soil with abundant organic matter is the most suitable for its growth, while heavy clay soils and sandy soils are to be avoided.

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US Study confirms what a healthy weight really is

What is the healthiest weight to be? People hoping for a little jiggle room may be disappointed -- it is the weight already identified by public health experts using body mass index or BMI.

There had been some suggestion that it may be healthier to be pleasantly plump, but the team at the U.S. National Cancer Institute crushed any such idea with a study of 1.5 million adults published on Wednesday.

The healthiest BMI is 22.5 to 24.9, they found -- at the upper end of where the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups have said people should be.

Body-mass index is the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters. A BMI of between 25 and 30 is overweight and a BMI of 30 or over is obese.

A person 5 feet 5 inches tall (165 cm) is classified as overweight at 150 pounds (68 kg) and obese at 180 pounds (82 kg). A 5-foot-10 inch (1.8 meteR) tall person who weighs 209 pounds (95 kg) has a BMI of 30 and is obese.

Being overweight or obese raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers and arthritis. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, confirms that having a BMI of 25 or more also makes a person more likely to die than someone the same age who is slimmer.

"There is a small increased risk of all-cause mortality associated with being overweight -- about 10 percent compared to having a normal BMI," Amy Berrington de Gonzalez of the National Cancer Institute, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

But the severely obese -- those with a BMI of 40 or more -- have 2.5 times the risk of dying than people of a healthy weight who are the same age.

The original BMI guidelines were set using some data on health, but Berrington said several recent studies had suggested that people considered overweight may be less likely to die of cancer and other conditions. So she and an international team of experts took another look at the data.

NOT TOO FAT, NOT TOO THIN

"We used 19 studies that had been conducted all over the world," Berrington said. One caveat -- they were all in mostly white, westernized populations in Europe, Australia and the United States.

Their studies included 1.46 million white adults and 160,087 deaths.

WHO guidelines say the lowest "normal" BMI is 18.5 but Berrington's team found it is not healthy to be too thin.

"What we found was that a low BMI -- below 20 -- was also associated with an increased risk of death," Berrington said. This could be because people that thin already have disease, she said, and added that her team will check.

The researchers took into account smoking and other factors that are known to raise the risk of death, and found the association between weight and death was consistent across age, sex and where people lived.

"Previous studies led some to imply that being a little bit overweight might actually be beneficial, with some headlines suggesting that 'putting a little meat on your bones' was good for you," Dr. Michael Thun, of the American Cancer Society, said in a statement.

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Scientists trick cells into switching identities !!

Scientists are reporting early success at transforming one kind of specialized cell into another, a feat of biological alchemy that doctors may someday perform inside a patient's body to restore health.

So if a heart attack damages muscle tissue in the heart, for example, doctors may someday be able to get other cells in that organ to become muscle to help the heart pump.

That's a futuristic idea, but researchers are enthusiastic about the potential for the new direct-conversion approach.

"I think everyone believes this is really the future of so-called stem-cell biology," says John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania, one of many researchers pursuing this approach.

The concept is two steps beyond the familiar story of embryonic stem cells, versatile entities that can be coaxed to become cells of all types, like brain and blood. Scientists are learning to guide those transformations, which someday may provide transplant tissue for treating diseases like Parkinson's or diabetes.

It's still experimental. But at its root, it's really just harnessing and speeding up what happens in nature: a versatile but immature cell matures into a more specialized one.

The first step beyond that came in 2007, when researchers reversed the process. They got skin cells to revert to a state resembling embryonic stem cells. That opened the door to a two-part strategy: turn skin cells from a person into stem cells in the lab, and then run the clock forward to get whatever specialized cell you want for transplant.

The new direct-conversion approach avoids embryonic stem cells and the whole notion of returning to an early state. Why not just go directly from one specialized cell to another? It's like flying direct rather than scheduling a stopover.

Even short of researchers' dreams of fixing internal organs from within, Gearhart says direct conversion may offer some other advantages over more established ways of producing specialized cells. Using embryonic stem cells is proving to be inefficient and more difficult than expected, scientists say. For example, the heart muscle cells developed from them aren't fully mature, Gearhart noted.

And there's no satisfactory way yet to make mature insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, which might be useful for treating diabetes, says George Daley of Children's Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

So direct conversion might offer a more efficient and faster way of getting the kinds of cells scientists want.

A glimpse of what might be possible through direct conversion emerged in 2008. Researchers got one kind of pancreatic cell to turn into another kind within living mice.

But far more dramatic changes have been reported in the past year in lab dishes, with scientists converting mouse skin cells into nerve cells and heart muscle cells. And just this month came success with human cells, turning skin cells into early stage blood cells.

The secret to these transformations is the fact that all cells of a person's body carry the same DNA code. But not all the genes are active at any one time. In fact, a cell's identity depends on its lineup of active genes. So, to convert a cell, scientists alter that combination by inserting chemical signals to activate particular genes.

"This is something that's really caught fire because it's an easy strategy to use," Gearhart said. "Everyone's out there trying their different combinations (of chemical signals) to see if they can succeed."

But success is not so easy. "There's a lot of experiments failing," Daley said. "A lot of people are just taking a trial-and-error approach, and that's fundamentally inefficient. And yet, it may create a breakthrough."

Even when the experiments work, there are plenty of questions to answer. Can this technique reliably produce transformed cells? Are these new cells normal? Or do they retain some hidden vestiges of their original identity that might cause trouble later on?

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