Insufficient time, fatigue and laziness has lead to most people substituting healthy eating and cooking for food offered at hotels and fast food restaurants. Though delicious, these meals are not healthy.

Cooking at home helps develop a healthy relationship with food and is best for people with long term weight loss goals. Here are some healthy cooking tips that help make a meal as healthy as possible.

1. While preparing chicken and any meat, make sure you remove its skin and fat before cooking. This helps avoid unnecessary calories and fat in your meal.
2. While cooking meals, try to restrict your usage of oil. Though some cooking oils like olive and sesame oil are healthier fat options, they can add unnecessary calories if eaten in excess.
3. You can limit your consumption of cooking oils by coating pans with cooking spray or chicken broth instead of traditional cooking oil before cooking. These sautéed meals are not only healthy for you, but are equally delicious.
4. Instead of using whole cream in your dishes, use skim milk. It helps trim fat and calories from your meals. Buttermilk is a better option than curds and low fat cheese and mayonnaise, a better option than its full counterparts.
5. Instead of using cooking oil while baking, use applesauce. However it is definitely better to cut down on your consumption of baked goods, especially those with large amounts of sugar.
6. Cut down the usage of salt in your dishes and compensate with fresh spices. It not only adds flavor to your meal, but reduces the dangerous effects of salt. However be careful when using packaged seasoning mixes as they usually have high levels of salt that may destroy the benefits of using spices in your meals.
7. Practice using healthy cooking methods. This means you have to limit frying food and instead, steam, grill or bake food. These healthy cooking methods help preserve the nutrients and colors found in vegetables.
8. Cook sufficient for several meals so that you can freeze the excess food and have a readymade, home cooked meal ready for you the next time you are too tired to do your own cooking.
9. As canned, preserved and processed foods have high sodium content, look for low sodium veggies. It’s better to compare sodium levels of various similar products, and choose and use the product with minimal sodium.
10. While cooking, use more of whole grain products like whole-wheat flour, oatmeal and whole cornmeal instead of highly refined products like all-purpose flour. Whole grain products contain more of vitamins, minerals and fiber, which is healthy for the body.
11. Smoothies are great when you are in too much of a hurry for elaborate cooking. Just throw in a banana, frozen berries, kiwi or any fruit, some fat free yoghurt and protein powder into a blender and blend. A single smoothie offers 4-5 servings of fruits and is not only tasty to make, but is also refreshing, cool and healthy.

Practice these healthy cooking tips in your day to day cooking, and you will definitely find a marked improvement in your health.

Cryptococcus is a pathogenic fungus which is found worldwide, causing cryptococcosis in humans and animals, usually in the form of meningitis or as pulmonary disease.

The cells of Cryptococcus are round or oval-shaped. During sexual reproduction of Cryptococcus, two fungal cells fuses, and develop a thread-like extensions called hyphae. At the end of the hypha, there is a club shaped structure called the basidium, that produces spores. When the Cryptococcus spores are inhaled by humans, normally the immune system prevents the development and reproduction of these fungus inside the body. If the immune system is weak, the spores will replicate inside human body, causing the clinical symptoms associated with cryptococcosis.

The genus Cryptococcus includes around 40 species. Among these, C. neoformans and C. gattii are the only species that causes serious disease in human beings. Less pathogenic species of Cryptococcus are; C. albidus and C. laurentii.

Cryptococcus gattii cause pulmonary and systemic cryptococcosis of humans and animals. C. gattii affects a wide variety of native and domestic animals. C. gattii causes large mass lesions in lung or brain (cryptococcomas) and may result in death. These type infection is endemic in Papua New Guinea, Africa, the Mediterranean region, India, south-east Asia, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay and Southern California.

Presence of Cryptococcus gattii in wood, bark, leaves, and plant debris of Eucalyptus trees of Australia is well known for scientists from 1990. Now it is believed that, C. gattii is established ecological adaptation in trees other than Eucalyptus in many parts of the world.

The spread of C. gattii may be triggered by export of trees and woody products, air currents, water currents, birds, animals, and insects.

More information available at Cryptococcus site

Author: Paul Varkey.

In pre-historic medicine, plants, animal parts and minerals were used to treat wide variety of medical conditions. In many cases these materials were used ritually as magical substances by priests, shamans, or medicine men.
The Greek physician Hippocrates (460 BC – 370 BC), considered the "father of medicine",laid the foundation for a rational approach to medicine. Because of the lack of scientific knowledge, rational approach did more harm to patients than benifits.
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician, is the father of Homeopathy and formulated the basic principles of Homeopathy in 1796. Actually homeopathic treatments are used in conditions with spontaneous recovery. These treatments are widely considered to have an effect in some patients. However, despite the large number of comparative trials carried out to date there is no evidence that homeopathy is any more effective than placebo therapy given in identical conditions.
Homeopathy (homoeopathy) is a form of alternative medicine, that attempts to treat patients with heavily diluted preparations.
Based on Samuel Hahnemann's law of similars, homeopathic practitioners believed that, preparations which cause certain symptoms in healthy individuals can be given as the treatment for patients exhibiting similar symptoms. Homeopathic remedies are prepared by serial dilution with shaking by forceful striking, which homeopaths term succussion, after each dilution under the assumption that this increases the effect of the treatment. Homeopaths call this process potentization. Dilution often continues until none of the original substance remains.
Facts:
1) Depending on the dilution, homeopathic remedies may not contain any pharmacologically active molecules, and for such remedies to have pharmacological effect would violate fundamental principles of science.
2) Modern homeopaths have proposed that water has a memory that allows homeopathic preparations to work without any of the original substance; however, there are no verified observations nor scientifically plausible physical mechanisms for such a phenomenon.

The regulation of homeopathy practice is variable from country to country. There are no specific legal regulations concerning its use in some countries, while in others, licenses or degrees in conventional medicine from accredited universities are required. Some homeopathic treatment is covered by the national insurance coverage of several countries; in others it is fully integrated into the national health care system. In many countries, the laws that govern the regulation and testing of conventional drugs do not apply to homeopathic remedies.

Safety
As homeopathic remedies usually contain only water and/or alcohol, they are generally safe to use.

Conclusion
Homeopathy's efficacy is unsupported by the collective weight of modern scientific research. The extreme dilutions used in homeopathic preparations usually leave none of the original material in the final product.

You decide, is it safe to treat your sick baby with homeopathic medicine?

Author: Paul Varkey.

Note: This article does not reflect the views of parvathy.com.