Christian Notepad

• Be chilled-out: Summer is all about shedding your shy guy image and reinventing Mr Cool. Give it some thought. You’re on vacation, far away from home — a stranger among strangers. So shed your inhibitions, flirt a bit, play the field and live it up!

• Solo does it: Be adventurous and bring out the lone ranger in you. Go on a vacation this summer all by yourself and discover the joys of meeting and chitchatting with fellow single travellers. Try this great opening line: ‘Anyone sitting here?’ Trust us it works like a charm… every time!

• Look available: Body language is everything, and flirtation doesn’t hurt either. Smile at everyone and invite yourself into others’ conversations. All it takes for a man to break the ice with a woman is one simple word: “Hi.”

• Look lost: You’re new in town; you don’t know your way around. Play dumb (but not too dumb) and ask for directions — even if you know you’re standing right on top of your destination. Or ask someone to point out the best local hangout or place to eat; it’s a great ‘quiet’ invitation into asking her to join you.

• Define your needs – now…and in future. Research has established that most small offices have a need for mono printing and occasional colour. You must also study your workload and select printers that have the right duty cycle.

• Create a workgroup – It will bring down your cost per user significantly. Plus you can provide more features in the same cost per head.

• Choose the right printer – Choose a printer based on your printing requirements. New Business Inkjet printers like the HP OfficeJet Pro K550 offer running costs of up to 25 per cent less than mono-lasers and 30 per cent less than colour lasers. You can find your choice of printer paying off in savings in running costs.

• Isolate cost guzzlers – and replace them. Old printers have high costs of consumables, maintenance and performance. Negotiate a trade-in, and you will find that you can spin gold from the old printer you had in your office.

• Maximise productivity, build on reliability – Imagine firing a print job on a network printer – and having to feed paper in the input tray every few minutes. Deep input trays minimize user intervention, add convenience and productivity. Maximise user productivity in positioning your printer location.

• Build on reliability – There are a number of brands to choose from. What is the installation base of the vendor? Will he be able to provide cartridges and support reliably?

• Finally, listen to your reseller – but make your own choices. Is he really knowledgeable? Does he know everything about that different types of printing technologies available? Or, is he just looking to make a quick buck?

What is Information Therapy?
The most common complaint patients have about doctors is that they don’t communicate properly. They either don’t have the time or they use medical jargon with the results that patients don’t understand what’s exactly happening to them. Today, most doctors do not spend enough time talking to their patients leading to a further widening of the doctor-patient communication gap. That’s where judicious use of Information Therapy can play a role. Just like medication, health information can be prescribed by a health care provider. Information therapy is the prescription of evidence-based medical information to a specific patient, caregiver, or consumer at just the right time to help the person make a specific health decision or behaviour change. When information therapy is prescribed as a part of health care, it can be as important as any test, surgery or medicine.

How relevant is Information Therapy in the Indian context?
Indian patients are becoming increasingly involved in their own healthcare. Every patient wants to know what his options are. The use of this therapy makes it easy to source information that people want. The transition will come soon in India too. Do you see Information Therapy as a possible substitute for a doctor’s counselling? Information Therapy cannot be a substitute but will definitely supplement a doctor’s counselling. Studies show that patients forget over half of what the doctor tells them because of the stress of consultation. Giving them printed educational material to read at home will help them remember as well as ensure patient compliance, as the printed word is often useful in reinforcing medical advice and instructions.

Individuals who make good health decisions have better health and lower health care costs. In the future, prescriptions of evidence-based medical information are slated to become an essential part of every medical encounter. Overall, Information Therapy can help reduce medical errors and health care costs-and can help you receive better care. Information therapy is powerful medicine. How important is knowledge about his condition to a patient and to what extent should it be imparted to him? Information therapy changes the way health care is delivered. By getting information prescriptions, patients and doctors are better able to communicate, especially when time is limited. A patient is the custodian of his own health and has right to know more about his diagnosis and treatment options.

Should the onus of imparting health education lie on the doctors or should it be other healthcare workers?
A patient has to be a partner in health education along with a gamut of healthcare providers including the doctors, paramedics, nurses, pharmacists as well as health insurers. In today’s age, people increasingly suffer from chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart, cancer etc. In such a scenario, what a patient does for himself even in terms of food and exercise affects his quality of health. How has this been implemented in the US? Some leading organisations like the Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute, California and Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Los Angeles have implemented Information Therapy programmes.These are becoming increasingly popular even with individual doctors. Unlike free-floating health content on the Web, information therapy prescriptions are delivered to the patient as part of the process of care, with only the information relevant to his or her current moment in care. Correctly prescribed, information becomes medicinepowerful medicine.

1. Avoid wire transfers.

2. Use a search engine. If it’s a scam, it’s likely someone else on the Internet will have published a complaint

3. Use the telephone. Nigerians will be very reluctant to give out a phone number and will try to negotiate most of the transaction over e-mail. That buys them time to answer hard questions

4. Verify the legitimacy of a bank

5. Always use a credit card. Consumers have wide protection when paying for Internet-based transactions with a credit card. Cheques are easily forged

New York: Scientists have discovered why it is harder to keep weight off than to lose it. A team at Columbia University has shown the body’s internal systems act to restore fat levels in people who have slimmed down. The body appears to interpret the loss of weight as a deficiency in the appetite hormone leptin, and acts to try to restore the usual balance. The study features in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
   It is estimated that more than 85% of obese people who have lost weight eventually put at least some of it back on. Research suggests this is due to a number of changes in the functioning of the metabolic, hormonal and nervous systems.
   The team gave doses of leptin to lean and obese volunteers who had recently lost weight. They found that most of the metabolic and hormonal changes which mean people cannot keep the weight from creeping back on were reversed once leptin levels were restored to pre-weight loss levels.
   Leptin is produced by the body’s fat (adipose) tissue. It is known to play a role in controlling appetite, but as yet the exact way that it works is unclear.
   The researchers suggest that, after people have lost weight, the body feels the need to make more leptin and so forms new fat tissue to enable it to do that. Restoring leptin to preweight loss levels would mean it no longer feel that need. Injections of leptin have been used to help morbidly obese people with a deficiency of the hormone to lose weight, but a similar approach has no effect on obese people with normal leptin levels.
   The researchers said it might eventually be possible to develop new drugs to keep weight off that work by targeting the way the body monitors leptin levels.
   Lead researcher Dr Michael Rosenbaum told a website that historically it made sense our ancestors to defend their fat reserves, as they were often subjected to periods when food was scarce.
   “We would predict that the human genome is heavily enriched with genes that defend body fatness and relatively lacking in genes that would oppose weight gain. We essentially have lived through hundreds of thousands of years of an environment that would encourage us to eat more and move less to preserve energy. We are in an environment where those traits are maladaptive.” NYT News Service

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Advice from Tal Ben-Shahar.

1. Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions — such as fear, sadness, or anxiety — as natural, we are more likely to overcome them. Rejecting our emotions, positive or negative, leads to frustration and unhappiness.

2. Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning.

3. Keep in mind that happiness is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our status or the state of our bank account. Barring extreme circumstances, our level of well being is determined by what we choose to focus on (the full or the empty part of the glass) and by our interpretation of external events. For example, do we view failure as catastrophic, or do we see it as a learning opportunity?

4. Simplify! We are, generally, too busy, trying to squeeze in more and more activities into less and less time. Quantity influences quality, and we compromise on our happiness by trying to do too much.

5. Remember the mind-body connection. What we do — or don’t do — with our bodies influences our mind. Regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating habits lead to both physical and mental health.

6. Express gratitude, whenever possible. We too often take our lives for granted. Learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in life, from people to food, from nature to a smile.