Video addiction, junk food main suspects

Juvenile diabetes: Growing concern

Dr. Turin Chowdhury

There has been a growing concern about the recent sharp increase in reported cases of type-II diabetes in children and adolescents. This recent increase, which some health professionals have dubbed as an epidemic, is very much a bi-product of the 'videoisation' and 'junk-foodisation' around us.
   We need energy for our bodily activities. This energy is derived from glucose. Glucose is the body's primary source of fuel. Whatever food we consume is transformed into glucose in our body. This glucose is then transported to our body cells by blood to be used as energy source. In this phase we need a hormone named Insulin which assists glucose in the blood to enter in the cells. Insulin hormone is secreted from the Pancreas. Pancreas is an organ located behind our stomach. When blood glucose levels rise, cells named beta cells in pancreas release Insulin which is then taken in the body cells. Moreover our liver acts as a glucose storage and re-manufacturing center. When glucose levels are low our liver releases the stored glucose into the bloodstream to keep blood glucose level within a normal range.
   If we have diabetes, this process of glucose metabolism begins working improperly. Instead of being transported into body cells, glucose starts building up in the bloodstream. This occurs when body cells become resistant to the action of Insulin or Pancreas cannot secrete enough Insulin to fulfill the body need or does not secrete Insulin hormone at all. Diabetes mellitus is categorised into two types depending on the Insulin situation:
   1) Type-I diabetes mellitus: In this case diabetes is caused by a defect in our body immune system which leads to destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Thus there is absolute or near-absolute stop of insulin production in our body.
   2) Type-II diabetes mellitus: In this case diabetes is caused by Insulin deficiency due to other factors. There is Insulin production in the body but the body cells become resistant to the action of Insulin. Exactly why the cells become resistant to Insulin's effects is still not clearly known.
   
   Diabetes in children
   Previously Type-I diabetes has always been considered the only type of diabetes in children and adolescents except in rare instances. The type-I diabetes was even called "juvenile diabetes". However, some recent research findings suggest that growing number of newly diagnosed children with diabetes may indeed have type-II diabetes. Type-II diabetes used to be known mainly as "adult onset diabetes", most often occurring in people in the 50s or later. This finding of increasing number of children are having type-II diabetes has created a concern among the health professionals because Type-II diabetes has been linked to have a stronger connection with the lifestyle factors. On the other hand Type-I diabetes genetic or influenced by body immunology.
   
   Young diabetics
   Diabetes is like a two-way knife. It poses risk of danger both as short-term and long-term complications. And this is especially true for children. Controlling diabetes is difficult and keeping it under control is more difficult. A child or a teenager does not have the mental strength or realisation regarding the control of diabetes, and expecting that attitude from them will be an irrational thing. Some more the long some ones diabetes duration is, the more is his or her chance to develop diabetic related complications in the body. So we can see that getting the disease in an early age creates is management problem leading to acute problems. Also getting the disease in an early age means the disease will be with the person for a long time which poses the risk of developing the long term complication to cut into in an earlier age. So for treatment and control of diabetes it is very important for special care for the young.
   
   Symptoms
   Diabetes is in general a silent condition. It has no overt physical symptoms. In fact, lots of people have diabetes and do not know having it because symptoms, if any, will develop very gradually. Thus people often do not recognize them. Some people have no symptoms at all. Some more at the time of diagnosis, it may not be possible for the classification (Type-I or Type-II) to be correctly determined, because symptoms and findings often are similar. Normally for the diabetic children the diagnosis is accidental. In lots of cases the parents take their children to the doctors with the complaints of unexplained weight loss (related to type-I diabetes), obesity problem (related to type-II diabetes), slow growth, very recurrent infections, etc symptoms and as a process of medical check-up the diabetes problem is diagnosed. The classic signs and symptoms of diabetes, which may include, excessive thirst, frequent urination, constant feeling of hunger, etc are very difficult to be identified in the children and children themselves are also not in a position to identify these symptoms and report them.
   
   Causes
   To discuss about the causes we better look at the issue from two angles:
   1. Cause of Type-I diabetes in children: Our body immune system always try to protect our body from danger by identifying and destroying cells (mainly foreign cells) which poses harm risk to our body. But in some instances some malfunction of the body immune system makes it to identify the insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas as a harm risk to our body and this leads to destruction of the insulin producing cells by our own body immune system. So there is stoppage of insulin production leading to the onset of diabetes. Puberty is important in the development of type-II diabetes in children. During puberty the human body undergoes great physiological changes resulting in great alteration in hormonal activities. Changes in hormone levels during this period cause insulin resistance and decreased insulin action leading to diabetes.
   2. Cause of Type-II diabetes in children: Type-II diabetes is extremely complex. There is an underlying genetic susceptibility that, when exposed to a variety of social, behavioral and environmental factors, unmasks diabetes. While this genetic background is important, the alarming increase in new cases of children with type-II diabetes underscores the role of environmental factors. Obesity is another significant factor for type-II diabetes. Obese children produce too much insulin to meet the body need due to over consumption and when the need for more insulin arises, they are likely to be unable to produce enough more. In addition, the presence of too much fatty tissue, known as adipose cells, leads to insulin resistance ultimately leading to diabetes.
   
   Current dilemma
   Urbanisation is taking its toll on young kids of our society. If you look around yourself you may recognize more overweight boys and girls than ever before. And with this life style changes the chronic disease like diabetes is taking the face of epidemic. The problem not only lies here - it also lies in the future of the child. Because these children have every chance to carry their life style related into their adulthood. These overweight, physically sedentary, junk / fast food frenzy children will turn most likely into similar characteristics adults. As a result they have more chance to develop the typical age onset diabetes mellitus. So the life style of the present is not only putting the children of the present in risk of danger but also putting the adult of the future in a risky position. These behaviours not only are suitable for diabetes but also very much suitable for developing hypertension, heart disease and stroke. A life long risky behaviour is in the making for a smooth path for getting diseased.

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Singapore population

Rayyan Kamal

Most of my flat mates are spending the weekend in Kuala Lumpur so I virtually have the apartment all to myself. Last night I decided I would spend today being an unimaginative tourist and exploring (in)famous Orchard Road, drifting from one over-priced mall to the next. Sadly, it was raining when I got out of bed at noon, so I thought it would be a better idea to waste the whole day, splitting it between watching TV and chatting with friends online. Of course, if I weren't feeling as lazy as I was, I would have bought an umbrella and not let the rain serve as an excuse.
   While watching television, I wondered, not for the first time, why the majority of advertisements in Singapore feature white people. A Reebok (Adidas?) billboard in the mall shows Maria Sharapova. The walls of stores for baby apparel assail you with images of blond-haired, blue-eyed babies being cared for by their even blonder and bluer-eyed mothers. I'm not saying that it's a rare sight to see a Singaporean in such an advertisement. What I am saying is that the number of ads with white people is high enough that most of my flat mates have pointed it out to me on separate occasions. I can only wonder what effect this has on the average ethnically Chinese Singaporean.
   On a different note, apparently in a few years the average Singaporean may not even be ethnically Chinese. In the face of a low fertility rate and an aging population, Singapore is opening up its borders to skilled foreigners. The goal is to raise the population from 4.5 million to 6.5 million by 2023. This is all well and good, but I wonder if the small island will really be able to accommodate two million more people. I probably shouldn't doubt clinically efficient Singapore, though. I'm sure the government has a foolproof plan involving the construction of residential, commercial and industrial buildings. But on the way to work every morning I already feel like the subway train is about to burst it's so full of people.
   Many of them are South Asian. If you want proof that the number of desis in Singapore is already large enough to be reckoned with, just make a trip to Little India. Unsurprisingly, it is the most crowded district of Singapore. Strewn with stores that have names like Kalam's Sweetmeats, Lakshmi Jewelers and Royal India Tandoor; teeming with women wearing cotton saris and men wearing Bata, Little India is a place where you won't see a single non-South Asian. Little India's pride and joy is Mustafa's, the shopping complex where you can really get everything: from clothes to cars to visas. And, of course, everything South Asian. I've heard that Mustafa's boasts a revenue that exceeds that of even Takashimaya, Singapore's premier over-priced mall on Orchard Road.
   The desis I see here are of two sorts: the low-wage laborers and the high-post holding executives of financial firms. There is nothing in between. "Well, what were you expecting?" a much wiser friend from Bangladesh asked me when I made this (in my opinion) profound observation. "Yuppies?"
   Rayyan Kamal is a sophomore at Yale University

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CBC News

Scientists studying Mars say they have new evidence to back a theory that suggests an enormous ocean once covered much of the Red Planet's surface.
   Mars is seen in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA)
   Few debate that Mars once held more water than can be observed today, but the theory the planet was once home to a vast ocean has been hotly debated since images taken from the Viking spacecraft in the 1980s revealed two possible ancient shorelines near the planet's north pole.
   Subsequent observations from the Mars Global Surveyor in the 1990s appeared to be a blow for the ocean theory. It recorded the elevation of features on both shorelines and found they rose and fell with altitudes varying by several thousand metres. In contrast, Earth's shorelines are typically constant when measured relative to sea level.
   Variation in shoreline elevations could be explained by the movement of the planet's poles in response to the redistribution of mass on the planet, Harvard University scientist Taylor Perron said in a statement released Wednesday.
   He and co-authors Michael Manga and Mark Richards from University of California, Berkeley, will publish their findings in this week's issue of Nature.
   Planets tend to spin with a bulge at their equator, like a spinning top, so that the Earth and Mars are not actually spheres but have a shape called an oblate spheroid.
   When a major shift of mass occurs on a planet, the axis it spins on will tend to move so that the areas with the larger mass are at the equator.
   On Earth, for example, scientists have suggested that Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo rests on such a bulge and is actually closer to the moon than Mount Everest, though it has a lower listed elevation than Mount Everest because we measure elevation on this planet relative to sea levels â€" which would also be affected by the bulge.
   Likewise, the most massive bulge on Mars is the Tharsis rise, a range that formed four billion years ago just north of the equator that contains the planet's largest volcano, the Olympus Mons.
   Perron suggest two subsequent changes in mass distribution following the formation of Tharsis could have moved the poles and would have had a profound impact on the surface of Mars â€" enough to have disrupted the landscape of normally flat ocean shorelines, said Perron in a statement.
   "On planets like Mars and Earth that have an outer shell, or lithosphere, that behaves elastically, the solid surface will deform differently than the sea surface, creating a non-uniform change in the topography," he said.
   According to the authors, the older Arabia shoreline on Mars varied in elevation by up to 2.5 kilometres, while the younger Deuteronilus shoreline varies by about 0.7 km.
   Perron and his colleagues suggest a shift of 50 degrees from today's pole would account for the disruptions noted on the Arabia shoreline, while a subsequent shift of 20 degrees would account for the variation of Deuteronilus's shoreline.
   Today's north pole and the two suggested ancient poles are all equidistant from the Tharsis rise, the authors said, suggesting the changes in mass distribution were smaller than the Tharsis rise, since the planet would orient to keep it near the equator.
   "This alignment is unlikely to occur by coincidence," the team wrote.

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Book launched to celebrate
Mosharraf's 62nd birthday

Staff Correspondent

Rotarian Dr Mosharraf Hossain focussed on the crucial importance of nurturing management skill which is a keystone in development of development and progress. He was speaking on management in which field he is an authority. Founder Chairman and Managing Director of Rapport Bangladesh, Dr Hossain has been a dedicated educator and practitioner for the last 36 years. A man of amiable disposition, his singular credit was to invite and bring Mother Teresa to Bangladesh in the 80s. Involved in philanthropic activities, his training modules have benefited hundreds of people.
   An anthology of articles felicitating Rtn. M. Mosharraf Hossain, an eminent management counsultant, was launched on June 20 last at a city hotel with Dr. Sa-adat Husain, Chairman, Public Service Commission, as chief guest. Shaheen Mahmud was the special guest, while Prof. Hafiz G. A. Siddiqi, VC, North-South University, was the guest of honour. The book has been published to mark the 62nd birthday of Dr Hossain. A select gathering of elite attended the programme.
   The book titled "Harbinger of Management Development in Bangladesh" includes 57 articles by eminent persons, who know him as fellow traveller, co-professional or colleague. Dr Sa-adat Husain extolled his admirable activities as a noted management specialist in the forward to the book edited by Dr Muhammad Mahboob Ali which can be bought at Zeenat Bhaban (3rd floor), 41/1 Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, Dhaka. Email: rblbd@bdcom.com

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