Dr Anbarasu Mohanraj - Heart Surgery

Is your Samosa/Bajji from your favourite shop, heart healthy. Imagine an Indian street food without oil. It’s impossible. You get your favourite samosa or Bajji in the shop next to your office at Rs 10/-. How on earth is it possible when you know how costly cooking oil is when your buy it for your house-hold use? Indians have no clue of what we eat. Food Safely and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) recommends re-heating of cooking oil not more than 4 times or the Total Polar Compound reaches not more than 25. Cooking vegetable oil has a lower smoke point. Government figures quote that 60% of cooking oil in food industry is re-cycled. That means, used cooking oil from branded hotels and outlets get re-routed to street shops at a throw away price. The oil which is sold at dirt price to the street vendors has been already boiled multiple times in the branded outlet. The street vendor who buys it, is going to boil it an umpteen times more. In reality 80% of cooking oil by the street vend...

Women and Heart Attacks The recent episode of Sushmita Sen having a heart attack and an emergency Stenting to her blocked Coronary Artery has brought an age old discussion to the centre stage. HEART ATTACKS IN YOUNG AND MIDDLE AGED WOMEN When we were in Medical school, we were taught that women were immune to  Ischaemic Heart diseases due to the protection offered by hormones. This is no longer true. We as Heart specialists not infrequently see young and middle aged women coming in with heart attacks and blockage of coronary arteries.  A study by Indian Cardiologists from Jaipur states that between year 2000 and 2017, the annual mortality due to heart attacks rose from 8.5 lakh to 15.4 lakh, with the number of women dying rising from 3.2 to 6.2 lakh. The rise among men did not reflect such an alarming rate of rise.  Reasons for such alarming rise are Obesity, Diabetes, life style and oral infections. The incidence of central obesity among women is quite high in the previo...