Drinking more than five cups of espressos is bad for health

If you are consuming more than five espressos worth of caffeine every day, you are putting you health a risk. According to the European Food Safety Authority, excess caffeine consumption could cause problems like increased heart rate, higher blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, tremors, nervousness, insomnia and panic attacks, reported the BBC. If healthy adults had 400mg a day, they were still in the safe zone with no health consequences. For pregnant women, the limit is 200mg a day due to the impact on the growing foetus, while in kids 3mg per day for every kg  the child weighs. Te researchers also found that there was no extra risk caused by combining caffeine and alcohol. 

Mediterranean diet can reduce womb cancer risk 

A new study has claimed that foods like vegetables, fish, fruits and nuts, reduce risk of womb cancer by a massive 57 per cent. Italian researchers looked at the diets of over 5,000 Italian women. The diet includes eating lots of vegetables, fruits, nuts, pulses, cereals and potatoes, fish, monounsaturated fats but little meat, milk and other dairy products and moderate alcohol intake. Researchers found that women who adhered to the Mediterranean diet most closely by eating between seven and nine of the beneficial food groups lowered their risk of womb cancer by more than half. Those who stuck to six elements of the diet’s components reduced their risk of womb cancer by 46 per cent and those who stuck to five reduced their risk by a third (34 per cent). But those women whose diet included fewer than five of the components did not lower their risk significantly. Experts say cancer risk is affected by age and genes but a healthy lifestyle  reduces the risk of some cancers. The research is published in the British Journal of Cancer. 

Tell children what to eat

If you want to inculcate healthy eating habits in your child, tell him what he ‘can’ eat rather than telling him what he ‘can’t’, advises a new study. “Telling your child to eat an apple so they stay healthy will work better than telling them not to eat the cookie because it will make them fat. “Don’t” messages don’t work for most of us,” researchers at Cornell University said. The findings showed that focusing on ‘Do’ is better than on ‘Don’t’. That is, stressing the benefits of eating healthy foods is more effective than warning against the harm of eating unhealthy foods. The researchers analysed 43 published international studies that involved either negative or positive nutrition messages. They found that while negative messages tended to work best with experts — like dieticians and physicians — who were highly involved and knowledgeable in the area, most people who did not know a lot about nutrition would rather be told what they should eat and why it is good for them. The researchers recommended that when designing public health messaging campaigns, focus on positive consequences of target healthy behaviours rather than focusing on the negative consequences. 

Tattoos come with long-term problems

If you are considering getting yourself inked, just a word of caution. It may leave you prone to some chronic complications that may require surgical intervention, says a new study. Researchers at New York University have found that 6 per cent of adult New Yorkers who get tattooed have experienced some form of tattoo-related rash, severe itching or swelling that lasted longer than four months and, in some cases, for many years. “We were rather alarmed at the high rate of reported chronic complications tied to getting a tattoo,” said experts. The data showed that most long-lasting complications occurred in skin regions injected with the two most common tattoo ink colours, red and black. They said some adverse skin reactions are treatable with anti-inflammatory steroid drugs, but others may require laser surgery. For stronger reactions, surgery is sometimes necessary to remove tattooed areas of the skin or built-up scar tissue and granular skin lesions, which can rise several millimetres on the skin and cause considerable itching and emotional distress. “It is not yet known if the reactions being observed are due to chemicals in the ink itself or to other chemicals, such as preservatives or brighteners, added to them or to the chemicals’ breakdown over time,” experts said. The skin is a highly immune-sensitive organ, and the long-term consequences of dyes and coloured inks on the body’s immune system  are poorly understood. The study appeared online in the journal Contact Dermatitis.— Agencies