In a world where modern lifestyles often lead to dietary imbalances and health concerns, the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda emerges as a beacon of holistic well-being. Ayurveda, the “science of life,” offers profound insights into maintaining balance and harmony within the body, particularly those grappling with diabetes. The Ayurvedic diet, deeply rooted in this ancient Indian tradition, serves as a blueprint for fostering physical health, and a sustainable and balanced way of life.

For people with diabetes, the daily struggle centres on managing blood sugar spikes and dips. But what if there existed a natural, food-based approach to navigating this challenge? Enter Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of holistic medicine, offering a powerful lens through which to view and manage diabetes.

Understanding Ayurveda’s Foundation: Doshas

At the heart of Ayurveda lies the concept of doshas — three fundamental energies that govern our bodily functions. Vata, Pitta, and Kapha are the building blocks of our body and an imbalance in these doshas is believed to be the root cause of various health issues, including diabetes.

For those with diabetes, understanding their predominant dosha becomes crucial. Ayurveda suggests that balancing the doshas through diet can alleviate symptoms and promote overall health.

Here’s a simple guide to embracing the Ayurvedic diet for diabetes:

Pacifying Foods: Vata, characterised by air and ether elements, is associated with irregularities and fluctuations. To pacify Vata, focus on warm, grounding foods. Opt for nourishing soups, stews, and cooked grains. Include healthy fats such as ghee and olive oil to lubricate the digestive system. Avoid raw and cold foods, as these can exacerbate Vata imbalances.

Pitta-Pacifying Foods: Pitta, fueled by fire and water elements, is linked to heat and intensity. For those with a Pitta imbalance, cooling and soothing foods are key. Embrace sweet, bitter, and astringent tastes found in fruits like apples and berries as well as leafy greens. Limit spicy and acidic foods, as they may aggravate Pitta.

Pacifying Foods: Kapha, grounded in earth and water elements, is associated with stability and structure. To balance Kapha, opt for light, warm, and stimulating foods. Incorporate a variety of spices, such as ginger and turmeric, to enhance digestion. Minimise dairy and heavy, sweet foods to prevent excess mucus production.

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Mindful Eating Practices: Beyond selecting foods based on doshas, Ayurveda places significant emphasis on mindful eating practices. Chew your food thoroughly to support digestion, and savour each bite to enhance the overall dining experience. Eating in a calm and relaxed environment promotes healthy digestion and assimilation of nutrients.

Herbs and Spices as Medicine: Ayurveda harnesses the power of herbs and spices for their medicinal properties. Turmeric, with its anti-inflammatory benefits, and fenugreek, known for its blood sugar regulation, are valuable additions to the Ayurvedic diet for diabetes.

In a world inundated with fad diets, the Ayurvedic approach to nutrition stands out as a time-tested and sustainable solution for managing diabetes. By embracing the wisdom of doshas, choosing nourishing foods, and adopting mindful eating practices, individuals can cultivate a harmonious relationship between their bodies and the food they consume.

In the realm of the Ayurvedic diet, food is not merely sustenance; it is a conduit to balance, vitality, and holistic well-being. As we navigate the complexities of modern health challenges, perhaps the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda can guide us back to a place of equilibrium — a place where health is not just the absence of disease but the presence of vitality in mind, body, and spirit.

(Dr Govind is the Chief Innovation Officer of Kapiva)

Influenza is a common respiratory infection. Although most cases are relatively mild, flu can cause more severe illness in young children and older people.

Influenza virtually disappeared from Australia during the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic when public health restrictions reduced contact between people. Since 2022, it has returned to a seasonal pattern, although the flu season has started and peaked a few months earlier than before 2020.

It’s difficult to predict the intensity of the flu season at this point in the year, but we can sometimes get clues from the northern hemisphere. There, the season started earlier than usual for the third year running (peaking in early January rather than late February or March), with a similar number of reported cases and hospitalisations to the previous year.

Influenza vaccines are recommended annually, but there are now an increasing number of different vaccine types. Here’s what to know about this year’s shots, available from this month.

What goes into a flu vaccine?

Like other vaccines, influenza vaccines work by “training” the immune system on a harmless component of the influenza virus (known as an antigen), so it can respond appropriately when the body encounters the real virus.

Influenza strains are constantly changing due to genetic mutation, with the pace of genetic change much higher than for Sars-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid). The strains that go into the vaccine are reviewed twice each year by the World Health Organization, which selects vaccine strains to match the next season’s predicted circulating strains.

All current influenza vaccines in Australia contain four different strains (known as quadrivalent vaccines). One of the strains appeared to disappear during the Covid pandemic, and the WHO has recently recommended dropping this strain from the vaccine. It’s expected trivalent (three strain) vaccines will become available in the near future.

What’s different about new flu vaccines?

There are eight brands of flu vaccines available in Australia in 2024. These include egg-based vaccines (Vaxigrip Tetra, Fluarix Tetra, Afluria Quad, FluQuadri and Influvac Tetra), cell-based vaccines (Flucelvax Quad), adjuvanted vaccines (Fluad Quad) and high-dose vaccines (Fluzone High-Dose Quad).

Until recently, the process of manufacturing flu vaccines has remained similar. Since the development of the influenza vaccine in the 1940s, influenza viruses were grown in chicken eggs, then extracted, inactivated, purified and processed to make up the egg-based vaccines that are still used widely.

However, there have been several enhancements to influenza vaccines in recent years.

Older people’s immune systems tend not to respond as strongly to vaccines. In some flu vaccines, adjuvants (components that stimulate the immune system) are included with the influenza antigens. For example, an adjuvant is used in the Fluad Quad vaccine, recommended for over 65s. Studies suggest adjuvanted influenza vaccines are slightly better than standard egg-based vaccines without adjuvant in older people.

An alternative approach to improving the immune response is to use higher doses of the vaccine strains. An example is Fluzone High-Dose Quad – another option for older adults – which contains the equivalent of four doses of a standard influenza vaccine. Studies suggest the high dose vaccine is better than the standard dose vaccine (without an adjuvant) in preventing hospitalisation and complications in older people.

Other manufacturers have updated the manufacturing process. Cell-based vaccines, such as Flucelvax Quad, use cells instead of eggs in the manufacturing process. Other vaccines that are not yet available also use different technologies. In the past, manufacturing issues with egg-based vaccines have reduced their effectiveness. Using an alternative method of production provides some degree of insurance against this in the future.

What should I do this year?

Given indications this year’s flu season may be earlier than usual, it’s probably safest to get your vaccine early. This is particularly important for those at highest risk of severe illness, including older adults (65 years and over), those with chronic medical conditions, young children (six months to five years) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Influenza vaccines are also recommended in pregnancy to protect both the mother and the baby for the first months of life.

Influenza vaccines are widely available, including at GP clinics and pharmacies, while many workplaces have occupational programs. For high-risk groups, four of the vaccines are subsidised by the Australian government through the National Immunisation Program.

In older people, a number of vaccines are now recommended: Covid and influenza, as well as one-off courses of pneumococcal and shingles vaccines. In general, most vaccines can be given in the same visit but talk to your doctor about which ones you need.

Are there side effects?

All influenza vaccines can cause a sore arm and sometimes more generalised symptoms such as fever and tiredness. These are expected and reflect the immune system reacting appropriately to the vaccine, and are mostly mild and short-term. These side effects are slightly more common in adjuvanted and high dose vaccines.

As with all medications and vaccines, allergic reactions such as anaphylaxis can occur after the flu vaccine. All vaccine providers are trained to recognise and respond to anaphylaxis. People with egg allergies should discuss this with their doctor but in general, studies suggest they can safely receive any (including egg-based) influenza vaccines.

Serious side effects from the influenza vaccine, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological complication, are very rare (one case per million people vaccinated). They are thought to be less common after influenza vaccination than after infection with influenza.

Allen Cheng is professor of infectious diseases at Monash University. This article was originally published in the Conversation

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mayo Clinic and Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation announced today a research collaboration centered on improving organ transplant outcomes.

Beginning in April, Mayo Clinic biomedical researchers and Terasaki Institute scientists will work together on two core areas: real-time monitoring of donated organ health from procurement to transplant surgery and developing predictive technologies to determine which transplant recipients have a higher likelihood of rejection. That will be done by creating prognostic signatures and assays for antibody-mediated rejection of organ transplant. These initial projects are expected to take 24 to 30 months to complete.

“As the largest organ transplant provider in the United States, Mayo Clinic is deeply invested in finding innovative solutions to improve transplant care for patients. That is why we are so excited about this new collaboration with the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation,” says Burcin Taner, M.D., chair of the Transplant Center at Mayo Clinic in Florida and chair of Mayo Clinic Transplant Specialty Council. “Bringing these two institutions together with the same goal of improving transplant outcomes for patients will positively affect many lives.”

“We are also very excited about our collaboration with Mayo Clinic,” says Ali Khademhosseini, Ph.D., director and CEO of the Terasaki Institute of Biomedical Innovation. “We’re looking forward to conducting impactful research to enhance the quality of life for transplant patients, and we are happy to build upon the work of Dr. Paul I. Terasaki, a pioneer in the field of organ transplantation, who founded the original Terasaki Institute.” 

More than 103,000 people in the U.S. are on the waiting list for an organ transplant. Every eight minutes, another person is added to the transplant waiting list.

This latest collaboration is part of Mayo Clinic’s Transforming Transplant initiative, which has the bold goal of providing organ transplants for everyone who needs one. The initiative was created as a collaboration between Mayo Clinic’s Transplantation programs and Mayo Clinic’s Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics. Its goals include:

• Restoring donated organs by optimizing them for best outcomes and decreasing discard rates.
• Preventing organ failure in patients who have received organ transplants.
• Preventing organ failure and the need for a transplant through early diagnosis of organ dysfunction.
• Engineering new organs, subsequently eliminating the uncertainty of organ donation and long waits.

Mayo Clinic Transplant Center, with locations in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota, has performed more than 32,000 organ transplants since 1963.

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About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

About the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation

The Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation is accelerating the pace of translational research by supporting the world’s leading scientists with an open, entrepreneurial environment for bioengineering new materials, biological models and advanced technologies to address critical challenges to the health of the planet and its people. The Institute’s worldwide collaborations with academic, clinical and entrepreneurial partners provide a rich foundation for translating innovations to the real world.

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It is not often consumers consider their refrigerator or television as a tool that gives their healthcare providers personalized health data, but LG NOVA is considering the possibility of consumer electronics becoming data collectors for preventative care measures.

Atul Singh, general manager of digital health at LG NOVA, sat down with MobiHealthNews to discuss how the North American Innovation Center of LG Electronics works to improve the provider/patient healthcare experience in the clinical setting, and is considering how it can evolve its consumer electronics to improve health outcomes.

MobiHealthNews: How does LG work in the digital health space?

Atul Singh: LG has been in the healthcare space for decades, but it’s primarily in the area of displays, TV monitors and radiology equipment in hospitals. So, essentially, we sell hardware to hospitals.  

What we are doing differently now is we are helping hospitals maximize their investment into these devices that they have purchased over the years to extract further value from it. 

The services we have are basically virtual health-related services. These are telehealth services. Imagine virtual nursing, where a remote nurse can work with a bedside nurse or the floor nurse to assist them with a variety of tasks. And these tasks could be as simple as medication sign off, for example, where they need dual signatures, some elements of discharge, or even nurse training. A senior nurse remotely can train junior nurses who are by the bedside on a variety of tasks. 

The other use cases are patient monitoring. So, [in the Smart Cam Pro] device, there’s a camera, a bunch of sensors, and an infrared camera. So, this device essentially allows a remote nurse to monitor multiple patient rooms. They could monitor up to 16 rooms today, but that number can easily grow. So, from a remote location, they can monitor 16 patients and basically converse with them if they need to. Otherwise, they are just passively monitoring for activity. 

It’s two-way in the sense that we have built AI capabilities within the device. So, the device is monitoring, because you can imagine a remote nurse watching 16 patients at a time 24/7 is very draining and it causes fatigue, screen fatigue, and they may not be paying attention.  

So, what they can typically do is they can set the parameters for each patient that they want to monitor and the system will then keep an eye on that. 

MHN: Does the capability exist where notes can be generated for a physician?

Singh: We are introducing that capability now – ambient listening. So, the device has four microphones on top. So, it’s listening to the conversation that’s actively going on, whether it’s between the nurse and the patient, physician and the patient. And what we are doing is cataloging the entire conversation, and then summarizing the key output of the conversation so it can go in the patient chart. 

We haven’t deployed it yet. We are testing it just to make sure, because it’s clinical conversation, so some of the words that the doctor might be using or the nurse might be using may be clinical in nature or medical terminology. We don’t want the AI engine to misrepresent. So, a lot of testing needs to happen in that space.

This is where we are starting, but our ultimate vision is to follow the patient to the home. So, in the home the customer or the consumer knows us through their interaction with our devices or appliances – the TV, the fridge, the washing machine and dryer, and so on.

We want to then extend the care from the hospital once they get discharged into the home, and we want to enable these appliances and the devices that they already have made investments in to start offering care services. 

We have about 500 to 700 appliances in the market right now with consumers, and a large majority of them have intelligent sensors already built-in that are capable of collecting and analyzing information on user behavior. 

So, how often they use the device, when they use it, basically general patterns of usage, as well as the device itself or the appliance itself monitoring for the life of the device so that if something is going to go bad, we can alert the customer and proactively address it before the appliance breaks down.  

We have a lot more data about how the individual uses the appliance also – what time of day, how many times and so on.  

For example, how often do you walk in front of your refrigerator? So, it can tell, and if there’s a pattern that it has established that every day between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., there is some movement in front of the fridge, a few times, that’s normal behavior. Then when we notice that there’s been no movement or the movement starts now at nine o’clock for 10 minutes only, overtime, we can start using that data with other datasets to see if there’s something medically that is creating a challenge for this individual that, instead of the six to eight, they have shifted their window. 

Or they completely stopped walking in front of the fridge. Did the location of the fridge change, or is there a medical issue that they’re not able to now come to the kitchen and do their regular tasks? But that’s a very loose data point. We cannot drive any inferences from there.  

But if we marry that with other datasets, like how often is the washer being used, the air purifier or the TV? And we know the location of these appliances generally because of where the customer is, their zip code. 

Then we start looking at social determinants of health-type data and ultimately connect it with the clinical data of their providers to see, is there a change in the pattern? And if there is, can we do something with these appliances, with the smart TVs that they have, to start alerting the patient that, hey, you may want to do this or your doctor wants you to try something different. Or here’s just a simple alert that your medication is going to be up in three days. Do you want to refill? 

So, there are a lot of simple data points that we have right now, but in aggregate, they can bring intelligence to the interaction with the individual. 

MHN: How may these consumer electronics evolve to include health-related services?

Singh: Ultimately, you can imagine 10/15 years, whatever the time horizon is, to be able to do predictive analysis. So, if you see reduced usage of certain things, or a different time frame, or what have you, there could be predictions made on that. There could be an onset of a medical episode, and can it be stopped or addressed ahead of time? But that’s far. Right now, we are in the hospital learning, adjusting, improving the quality of care there, and then moving into post-acute care into long term, and eventually home.

Tech has to catch up a little bit. Regulatory framework has to catch up. Payment models have to catch up, but everybody is moving in that direction.