It is a common phenomenon that we hear that people talk about losing weight and making special New Year resolutions to ooze out that extra fatty layer from their waists, but what about those who want to gain weight and add on a few extra kilos to get that perfect chubby look?

Let me tell you, if you want to learn the art of gaining weight, you don't just have to eat, eat and eat, but eat the right food and yes enough of them.

Read on to know the best tips to gain weight this season.


Increase calorie intake

Yes, you heart it right. You need to eat more than your usual calorie intake as this is the simplest way to gain those extra kilos. Eat a lot of protein rich food like beans, pulses etcetera. Then, add dairy products like eggs, fish, and meat to your platter. You can also gorge on starchy food like potato as they help in gaining weight early. But, remember to add only those many calories that are required and not too much that it converts into fat. Another important advice is try to stick to a time routine for consuming meals and you will see the difference yourself.

Snacking in between meals

It should be kept in mind especially for a person who wants to gain weight that he/she should never skip meals. Try eating every 2-3 hours. This will ensure that a consistent level is maintained and your body gets the necessary supplements without a break. You can divide your food into say 3 main meals with 3 in between small meals. One can try a handful of dry fruits, energy bars, granola, chikki and laddoo for snacks.

Say no to junk food

They are very tempting and finger licking good, but eating junk is not the answer to your weight gain query as they contain large amount of calories, bad fats and off course very little nutrition. So, a burger or a pizza or finger chips are a strict no as eating too much fast foods help weight gain through fat, not through healthy lean muscle. Also, as a healthy advice avoid consuming processed food.

Eat a balanced diet

In your quest to gain weight, one should remember to eat a balanced diet and include a variety of nutrients like proteins, starch, vitamins, minerals etcetera so that the body is not used to eating just certain foods. Also, while choosing a balanced meal, one should avoid eating foods that contain bad fats like Dalda, red meat, margarine etcetera as they are bad for the health of your heart and will only leave you more worried.

Stay hydrated

Drink plenty of water, milk, fresh juices and energy drinks to ensure you are properly hydrated. As a healthy advice drink at least 8-10 glasses of water each day. But, remember not to drink water before meal and in between the meal as it may decrease your calorie intake.

Researchers are developing a cutting-edge sensor that will help detect and diagnose cancers early, potentially saving many more lives.

The new technology is the vision of doctoral researcher Emma Carland from the Swinburne University of Technology.

Inspired by her experience helping sick children in intensive care at The Royal Children`s Hospital in Melbourne, Carland decided to use her biomedical engineering skills to give people a better chance against illnesses.

"I maintained and tested life-support medical equipment such as drug pumps and respirators, and saw how the kids rely on these tools in their day-to-day struggle for life," Carland said.

"This was a powerful motivation for me to embark on this research."

Her work is based on an optical-fibre touch sensor as fine as a human hair built by her supervisors, Paul Stoddart and Scott Wade, last year to prevent injuring delicate ear tissues during cochlear implant insertion, according to an university statement.

The sensor is built into an optical fibre - a technology that has revolutionised communications - that sends light between its two ends.

Due to its tiny size and fast transmission of signals, optical fibres are often used in medicine, including endoscopies and keyhole surgeries.
"A tumour is stiffer than cells from a healthy area," Carland said.

"So, the difference between the sensor`s signals tells you how stiff the tissue is - a diseased tissue, being firmer, will push back at the sensor with more force, resulting in a larger difference."

The long, thin and flexible structure of the fibre sensor will also allow it to be inserted into endoscopes that explore small tissue regions, such as ear, nose, throat cavities and the colon.

Researchers, after analyzing brain scans, have figured out why some people have better insight into their choices than others.

We`re constantly evaluating our options and making decisions based on available information. For example, investment bankers have to be confident that they`re making the right choice when deciding where to put their clients` money.

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, led by professor Ray Dolan, have pinpointed specific brain areas that compute both the value of the choices we have and our confidence in those choices, giving us the ability to know what we want.

The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in the brains of hungry volunteers while they made choices between food items that they would later eat, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports.

To determine the subjective value of the snack options, the participants were asked to indicate how much they would be willing to pay for each snack. Then they were asked to report how confident they were about making the right choices, according to a University College statement.

It has previously been shown that a region at the front of the brain, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, is important for working out the value of decision options.

The new findings reveal that the level of activity in this area is also linked to the level of confidence participants placed on choosing the best option.
Steve Fleming, Wellcome postdoctoral fellow, now based at New York University, says: "We found that people`s confidence varied from decision to decision. While we knew where to look for signals of value computation, it was very interesting to also observe neural signals of confidence in the same brain region."

It is a known fact that active maternal smoking during pregnancy has negative effects on child health, such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).



However, a new research has suggested that second hand smoke, or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), may be just as harmful.



In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing examined data from 646 mother-child pairs in China, where more than 70 percent of men smoke, and concluded that 25 percent children of whose mothers were exposed to smoke exhibited behavior problems compared to 16 percent of children of unexposed mothers.

"Such findings could inform public health efforts to reduce public smoking and underscores the need for including ETS avoidance as a potential component of prenatal care among pregnant women," lead-author Jianghong-Liu, PhD, RN, FAAN, associate professor at Penn Nursing, said.

Using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), a widely used, 99-item scale for assessing behavioral and emotional problems in children, researchers determined children of mothers with ETS exposure had 10 percent more prevalence of externalizing behavior problems than children of unexposed mothers.

The results took factors like parental education, occupation, psychological problems and marriage status into account.

Externalizing behavior problems included attention problems and aggression.
Children of passive smoking mothers demonstrated worse performance on tests of speech and language skills, intelligence, and behavioral outcomes (conduct disorders).

The study is published online in the journal NeuroToxicology.

Doctors say HIV infection when left undiagnosed and untreated for a long time, can trigger off a dormant virus called cytomegalovirus (CMV), which can lead to blindness.

Cytomegalovirus is the most common cause of blindness in people who have HIV.

Dr Linda Visser, the academic head of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, has been treating eye conditions in HIV-positive people since 1999.

She says Aids-related cytomegalovirus retinitis affects the retina, the neural tissue of the eye. If the tissue is damaged, it cannot be re-generated. However, if the part of the retina that is responsible for vision is not affected, the condition can be treated.

"They get necrosis of the retina, which is the white area. And the macular is the centre of the retina and once your macular has become necrotic, you cannot see. There's nothing one can do to bring it back. Luckily, not in all patients will the centre of the retina be involved. Sometimes it's on the periphery. Then, we can treat it," News24 quoted her as saying.

According to Dr Visser, about 75 percent of HIV-infected people will experience some form of eye problem, while about 10 percent will go totally blind in one or both eyes.

She said blindness in immune-compromised people, such as HIV-patients, is most commonly caused by a viral infection called cytomegalovirus, which normally thrives on a weakened immune system.

"It is actually only seen in patients who are in immune-compromised. We never see it in immune-competent patients. And because in our set-up, HIV is the most common cause for immune suppression, we see it probably 95 percent or even more in HIV-positive patients. But I have seen it in patients who have had transplants and I have seen it in patients with leukaemia and other cancers," she said.
She stated that in HIV-infected people, the infection manifests when they've left their condition for too long without having it treated and their CD 4 counts have fallen to dangerous levels.