All you wanted to know about wines

India is no stranger to wine. Tracing the history of the drink, its origins can be found in old religious writings. During the Vedic period, wine was often referred to as ‘Somarasa’. Hindu Gods Indra and Varuna are believed to have tasted a mixture of wine and herbs as per the Yajurveda. It’s no surprise that the drink is once again gaining popularity with Indians. Especially with rising incomes, people now have a reason to flaunt their affluence and there is no better way to do it than to be spotted swirling a glass of wine. Although the wine-growing culture in India is still in its nascent stage, its consumption is certainly witnessing a rapid growth. However, for most of us, the names of wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Beaujolais may be no more than tongue twisters, but if you want to know your drink, here’s a low-down... The wine connection There are a host of wine clubs to help people learn more about wines, host wine tasting sessions and dinners, arrange vineyard visits and other wine-centric events for its members. The Wine Society of India, one of the oldest of these organisations may be just a decade old but has managed to attract people interested in wines. The Delhi Wine Club is another such organisation that allows people to connect with other wine drinkers by hosting events. Ravi Sachdev, a businessman and a member of the Delhi Wine Club says, “I was a whisky drinker and it was the urge to try out something new and socialise that prompted me to become a member of the club. The club hosts wine tasting events and dinners where I get to taste wines from all over the world. I also get a lot of information on pairing wines with food.” And for people who are reluctant to join one of these ‘clubs’, there are other options to explore. The very appropriately named Tulleeho, for instance, is a beverage service provider open to everyone. But not everyone can become a member of these clubs. “We have a screening committee and prefer having only those people who are already wine drinkers,” says Subhash Arora, president of the Delhi Wine Club. “The wine culture in India is growing steadily without a doubt and its future is very rosy, but there is still a woeful lack of knowledge. At present, wine consumption is mainly in the metros but no longer confined only to the affluent consumer. Once Indians begin to enjoy wine with food and we can shop for wine like we buy our general provisions, we will reach the next level in our unfolding wine culture,” says Reva Singh publisher and editor of Sommelier India, the country’s only magazine dedicated to wines. “The most important factor contributing to its growth is that India is producing some really good wines. Many of these wines are making an appearance abroad and are becoming increasingly popular as a natural extension of Indian cuisine," she adds. All that you wanted to know about wines...

Trendy hairstyles

Last minute party plans?? Don't know what to do with your hair? Here are some tips to help you out. Curl your long or mid-length hair into an up-style. Wearing hair off your neck not only looks stylish but also very elegant. It's perfect for a formal party. If you don't like wearing your hair up, but want to style it off your face, try a hairstyle that's half up, half down. Hairstyles that are half up, half down can look elegant and give your hair a romantic style. Style your hair into large defined curls which sit beautifully on your shoulders while the top of your hair is pulled half back to create height and volume. This is an elegant style that is perfect for any occasion. Style your gorgeous long locks by adding lots of curls to the ends to create lots of weight and texture. To finish, style the top of your hair flat and smooth, making this a great combination hairstyle. Softly pin up your hair into captivating curls and wear a silk headband to add shape to your face and a touch of glamour to the classic style. You're sure to steal some hearts at the party.

Bag it: Bigger the better

The bigger the better seems to be the latest fashion mantra. This summer big, voluminous handbags have virtually replaced tiny pouches and wallets in offices, colleges and parties alike. So, we have huge bags in leather, jute, mattie and other materials in striking metallic shades of silver, golden, magenta, copper and the likes with big semi precious stones, huge bows and flowers. This chic clutter-carrier is a must-have for would-be fashionistas.And why not? The Summer Spring collection 2008 was titled ‘Big’ so here we have oversized bags, shoes, belts and earrings. Says model Sheetal Menon, “Remember, the Spring/Summer 2008 collection was titled ‘Big’? Now big and voluminous accessories will make their presence felt everywhere. Big bags, chunky jewellery, etc will dominate the fashion scene this season. Personally, I love big bags since they are extremely convenient. I can carry almost everything of my use – right from a water bottle to books to cosmetics. I love silver, golden, brown and green though my favourite is the big black colour bag in sheep leather.” For actress Shreya Saran, trendy big bags have come as a reliever as she used to carry a mini suitcase with her while travelling. She says, “Big bags are a must for me as I need to travel a lot. Earlier, I used to carry a mini suitcase with me. But now that I have a chic looking big bag, I just dump everything in it – be it my I-pod, cell phone, water bottle, books or my small makeup kit. These days I am flaunting a really smart black handbag which looks both formal and casual at the same time.” Trendsetters believe that the size of these accessories will get even bigger in the coming season. Prominent fashion designer of Kolkata, Suchismita Das Gupta, says, “Big size bags in the beach look are in these days. Metallic shades in all colours and especially gold, silver and copper are seen almost everywhere. In fact, next year, I see much bigger bags. Everything fashionable right from earrings, hair accessories to bags to belts, everything will just get bigger.” Not just models and actors but our city girls too have fallen for these big bags! Programming head of one of the popular radio channels, Ruchika Arora, says, “Big bags not just look trendy but they are super comfy as well. Whether it is monsoon or summer, you just put in your umbrella, water bottle, snacks, sunscreen and just about everything you wish to keep with yourself. I have a huge bag with a very sporty look.” These bags are also a great help for women with young children. All those pockets and compartments provide great storage space for items they can’t leave home without! Ravina Wadhawan, who recently had twin daughters, says, “I have to literally carry the entire household along with my twins. I have bought a very fancy pink metallic bag with two big roses embroidered on it. So, it serves both the purposes!” Call it flashy, loud, gaudy or a necessity, but the craze for big bags is here to stay!

Shopping's not just a stress-buster

Most of the people see shopping as a good stress-buster, and for the rest, it is a nice way of passing time. But, when we actually go out to the market to shop, it becomes a way of interacting with the world around us, says a researcher. According to Swedish ethnologist Erik Ottoson of Uppsala University, our relationship with objects is multi-layered and often very emotional, and this is expressed in the way we shop. Ottoson, in his research, has studied the way we look for things in shopping malls, town centres and flea markets. “Being a consumer sometimes means fantasising and dreaming about objects, and this is boosted when we come face-to-face with things that arouse various feelings of attraction and resistance,” says Ottoson, who has researched the way we look for things we want to acquire. He has observed how people behave in markets, make their way along shopping streets and through malls. According to Ottoson, searching in this way teaches us what is available and how we can track down what we are looking for. Agrees fashion designer Ranna Gill, “Shopping actually serves a manifold purpose for me – I enjoy it immensely. It’s great retail therapy and when you’re out shopping after a very busy and long period of work, it gives you a real high. After all, that’s when you congratulate yourself for a job well done.” At the same time, says Ottoson, shopping becomes an opportunity to look inside ourselves and explore our feelings when faced with what is actually available. “This means searching becomes a way for us to interact with the world around us, an experimental horizon where certain aspects loom large in the foreground while others are pushed into the background,” he says. Entrepreneur Timsy Anand says, “Everytime one goes out shopping, I make the most of the opportunity to interact with myself. And that’s also the time you sometimes strike up an interesting conversation with someone who’s there picking up something – so it also becomes a way of interacting with the world.” In particular, the research focuses on what is actually going on when we are window shopping. The people Ottoson has been studying search patiently for certain things, but more than anything, they are searching for the feeling of having found something that is better and finer that they could have imagined. Says Ranna, “Window shopping is amongst the best ways to stay connected with the latest. What’s more, it gives you a great topic of conversation when you’re with friends.” For Timsy, “Every time you go out shopping, the person you’re dreaming to be, comes alive.” The study also shows that what we call just looking is not just about looking with your eyes, it involves your entire body – walking till your feet ache, picking things up and putting them back and feeling things with your hands.

Drink coffee for a long life!

Drinking up to six cups a day of caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee everyday won't reduce your life span, according to a new research. What’s more, both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption is associated with a somewhat smaller rate of death from heart disease. "Coffee consumption has been linked to various beneficial and detrimental health effects, but data on its relation with death were lacking," says Esther Lopez-Garcia, PhD, the study's lead author. "Coffee consumption was not associated with a higher risk of mortality in middle-aged men and women. The possibility of a modest benefit of coffee consumption on heart disease, cancer, and other causes of death needs to be further investigated,” Lopez-Garcia added. Women consuming two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1980 to 2004 and involved 84,214 women) as compared with non-consumers, and an 18 percent lower risk of death caused by something other than cancer or heart disease as compared with non-consumers during follow-up. For men, this level of consumption was associated with neither a higher nor a lower risk of death during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1986 to 2004 and involved 41,736 men). The researchers analyzed data of 84,214 women who had participated in the Nurses' Health Study and 41,736 men who had participated in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. To be in the current study, participants had to have been free of zancer and heart disease at the start of those larger studies. The study participants completed questionnaires every two to four years that included questions about how frequently they drank coffee, other diet habits, smoking, and health conditions. The researchers then compared the frequency of death from any cause, death due to heart disease, and death due to cancer among people with different coffee-drinking habits. Among women, 2,368 deaths were due to heart disease, 5,011 were due to cancer, and 3,716 were due to another cause. Among men, 2,049 deaths were due to heart disease, 2,491 were due to cancer, and 2,348 were due to another cause. While accounting for other risk factors, such as body size, smoking, diet, and specific diseases, the researchers found that people who drank more coffee were less likely to die during the follow-up period. This was mainly because of lower risk for heart disease deaths among coffee drinkers. The researchers found no association between coffee drinking and cancer deaths. These relationships did not seem to be related to caffeine because people who drank decaffeinated coffee also had lower death rates than people who did not drink coffee.

Lost weight? Now stop putting it back

It may be quite a struggle, but most of us do manage to lose weight - but keeping it off is another matter. So now an ongoing study has set out to identify the most effective diet to help adults stop regaining weight after initial loss. As part of the study, adult family members were required to lose at least eight percent of their body weight, before the whole family was allowed to enrol in a "dietary intervention" programme involving one of five diets. About 760 participants were successful, losing between them a total of 8,500 kg, equivalent to the weight of four fully-grown bull elephants and 11.2 kg on average for each person. After this successful weight loss phase, 565 families (763 adults and 787 children) were randomly chosen to follow a diet either high or low in protein or high or low in the glycaemic index (ranking carbohydrate foods according to their effect on blood glucose.) The fifth diet, the control diet, was based on the family's usual diet but with additional advice on the inclusion of healthy foods. In Copenhagen and Maastricht centres, supermarkets set up for the study provided families with free food for six months, followed by six months of dietary advice and support. The other six centres (Britain, Bulgaria, Crete, Czech Republic, Germany and Spain) provided families with six months of dietary advice and support only. "The real target in this research study is the prevention of weight regain after initial weight loss," said Arne Astrup of the University of Copenhagen and coordinator of the eight-country study. "Most of us can lose weight if we set our minds to it - but we are not so good at keeping it off." Preliminary results from study will be unveiled at the forthcoming European Congress of Obesity.

Smoking harmful for both sexes

Women who smoke are no more likely than men to get lung cancer but, among non-smokers, women appear to have a higher risk than men, US researchers reported on Friday. Women who had never smoked were 1.3 times more likely to develop lung cancer than men who had never smoked, Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute and colleagues found. "We noted slightly higher age-standardized incidence rates of lung cancer in women who had never smoked than in men who had never smoked," Freedman and colleagues wrote in the Journal Lancet Oncology . His team looked at a survey of 279,214 men and 184,623 women aged 50 to 71 first questioned in 1995 or 1996. "The questionnaire asked participants about their past and current smoking status, demographics, alcohol intake, tobacco smoking, physical activity, and included a food-frequency questionnaire of 124 items," the researchers wrote. They were watched until 2003. "During follow-up, lung cancers occurred in 4,097 men and 2,237 women," the researchers wrote. Among men who had never smoked, 99 got lung cancer, compared with 152 women who never smoked. The researchers did not ask about how much anyone had smoked or whether they were exposed to second-hand smoke. Experts agree that second-hand smoke also causes lung cancer. "But when we compared smokers with similar smoking histories we noted that men tended to have slightly higher incidence rates than women. "Our findings suggest that women are not more susceptible than men to the carcinogenic effects of cigarette smoking in the lung," Freedman's team wrote. They said more study needs to be done to see if female non-smokers actually do have more of a risk of lung cancer. Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer worldwide, with almost 1.2 million deaths per year — 162,000 deaths a year in the United States alone.

Goodbye to high BP and obesity-TOI

Can a single pill treat problems of high blood pressure, reduce cholesterol level and act as a blood thinner? Seems like this may be possible soon. In one of the largest clinical trials being conducted for the first time, the impact of the 'wonder drug' is being assessed across 20 cities in India. The trials of the drug 'polypack' manufactured by Cadila Pharmaceuticals are being conducted on 2,000 subjects, between the age of 45 and 80 years, who have any one of the risk factors - age, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or high blood sugar. The 'polypack' contains a combination of five drugs in eight different formulations (three blood pressure lowering agents, an antiplatelet drug, a beta blocker, an ACE inhibitor, a diuretic and a statin) for treating cardio-vascular conditions such as reducing blood pressure and lowering cholesterol levels. Simply put, the polypack includes blood pressure lowering combinations, aspirin (blood thinner) and a statin, which is a cholesterol lowering agent. The trials are being conducted by St John Research Institute, Bangalore and Canada-based Population Health Research Institute. "We need to assess the impact (efficacy) of the different combinations on an individual who has cardio-vascular risk factors, and also the safety of these drugs taken together. The side-effects of the five medicines will also be studied," says Dr Rajeev Gupta of Fortis Hospital, Jaipur who is involved in the study. The subjects will be given the combination drug for three months and a follow up will be done in the fourth month. The trials will be completed by July and findings put together by end of the year. The second phase of trials will assess whether heart attacks and strokes can be prevented with the combination drug, Gupta added. Cardiovascular diseases are major causes of mortality in the Indian subcontinent, causing over 30% of deaths. It has been predicted that these diseases will increase rapidly and India will contribute to over half the cases of heart diseases in the world within the next 15 years. Coronary heart disease and stroke have increased in both urban and rural areas. The sharp rise in cardiovascular problems including heart disease and stokes is attributed to increasing number of smokers, obesity with high waist to hip ratio, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stress and sedentary lifestyle.

Chocolate-potent anti-cancer agent -TOI

We have all heard that eating chocolate is good for you - now here's a study that tells you why. A chemical synthesised out of a cocoa compound has accelerated the killing of human tumours in a lab environment, according to the study by Georgetown University researchers. The researchers described how four different tumour cell lines out of 16 tested sensitive to the chemical, known as GECGC. The strongest response was seen in two different colon cancers; growth was cut in half and most of the tumour cells were damaged. GECGC "seems to be safe... because it has a structure similar to a natural product in cocoa beans - the same beans that are used to make chocolate," said the study's lead author Min Kim. Researchers have long studied the beneficial effects of flavanols - molecules in vegetables and fruits that exhibit potent anti-oxidant and potentially anti-tumour properties. As part of these studies, investigators have been testing a new synthetic version of natural procyanidins, a class of flavanols, created and patented by a confectionery company Mars Incorporated. In these studies, the scientists tested the effects of three different doses of GECGC on the cancer cell lines - the first time that a synthetic cocoa derivative has been used to screen human cancer cell lines. None of the doses tested were extreme, Kim pointed out. "The effective concentrations were considered similar to what a person might eat or use," he said. They found sensitivity to GECGC in both colon cancer cell lines they tested, in cervical cancer cells and in one line of leukaemia tumour cells. Other cell lines were resistant, including ovarian and prostate cancer cells. Overall, GECGC showed the most effect in treating cancer cells that are normally fast growing, Kim said. And the fact that it demonstrated the most killing power in colon cancer suggests the chemical "could serve as a promising therapeutic for colon cancer," he said. "So far, these data are very convincing." The researchers do not yet clearly understand the mechanism by which GECGC disrupts tumour growth, but they think it inhibits the physical connections between cancer cells and blocks internal cell signalling pathways. The findings of the study have been published online Monday in the journal Cell cycle

Coffee Drinkers may live longer-Times Of India

Here's some good news for coffee buffs -- drinking large amounts of the caffeinated concoction does not increase the risk of an early death, and, if you are a woman, it may protect you from developing heart disease. A new research has revealed that drinking up to six cups of coffee a day has no negative effect on the health of a person and it could reduce the risk of women dying from fatal heart attacks and stroke by almost a quarter. Researchers have based their findings on an analysis of 84,000 women and 41,000 men who were tracked for 20 years. The participants completed questionnaires every two to four years about their coffee intake and habits like diet, smoking. According to study's author Esther Lopez-Garcia of the School of Medicine at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain, "Coffee consumption was not associated with a higher risk of mortality in middle-aged men and women. "(However) The possibility of a modest benefit of coffee consumption on heart disease, cancer, and other causes of death needs to be further investigated."

Good lifestyle can transform genes

Comprehensive lifestyle changes including a better diet and more exercise can lead not only to a better physique, but also to swift and dramatic changes at the genetic level, US researchers said. In a small study, the researchers tracked 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer who decided against conventional medical treatment such as surgery and radiation or hormone therapy. The men underwent three months of major lifestyle changes, including eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and soy products, moderate exercise such as walking for half an hour a day, and an hour of daily stress management methods such as meditation. As expected, they lost weight, lowered their blood pressure and saw other health improvements. But the researchers found more profound changes when they compared prostate biopsies taken before and after the lifestyle changes. After three months, the men had changes in activity in about 500 genes - including 48 that were turned on and 453 genes that were turned off. The activity of disease-preventing genes increased while a number of disease-promoting genes, including those involved in prostate cancer and breast cancer, shut down, according to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was led by Dr Dean Ornish, head of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and a well-known author advocating lifestyle changes to improve health. "It's an exciting finding because so often people say, 'Oh, it's all in my genes, what can I do?' Well, it turns out you may be able to do a lot," Ornish, who is also affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, said. "'In just three months, I can change hundreds of my genes simply by changing what I eat and how I live?' That's pretty exciting," Ornish said. "The implications of our study are not limited to men with prostate cancer." Ornish said the men avoided conventional medical treatment for prostate cancer for reasons separate from the study. But in making that decision, they allowed the researchers to look at biopsies in people with cancer before and after lifestyle changes.