Go for a life audit

Where is our life headed? It’s a question we all ask ourselves as we step into a new year. Let 2017 be the year when you take up your life’s ledger and do an audit. Times Life tells you how… A new year has a way of making us happy and sad at the same time. As we spend time around our family, party with friends, there’s also that knot in the tummy, that nagging thought that doesn’t leave us. Will this year be any better or worse than the…

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Good news! That cuppa coffee is key to your long life

The finding that coffee drinkers tend to live longer than people who abstain has long puzzled scientists. US scientists believe they’ve found the answer – and it’s to do with caffeine. It helps to block chemicals in the blood that promote inflammation, they say. The study was published in Nature Medicine. Drinking coffee and tea may help people to live longer by reducing chemicals in the blood that can trigger heart disease, researchers have found. Now researchers at Stanford University believe they may have hit on a reason why having…

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I started living my life to my highest potential: Malini Ramani, fashion designer-turned-yoga guru

I started living my life to my highest potential: Malini Ramani, fashion designer-turned-yoga guru This New Year, we start a column on people whose life has been transformed by walking the spiritual path I’ve been learning yoga since I was six years old. My mother had gifted a children’s yoga book and I started experimenting with fun poses. The journey from being a learner to a teacher of yoga has changed my life. It was in 2006 that I turned to spiritual yoga – more meditative. The transformation from a…

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Modern Life, Bad Habits: Africa Faces Deadly New Illnesses

When Rose Kariuki first felt a lump on her left breast, the spectre of cancer — a disease she had only heard of on television — was the last thing on her mind. “To me, cancer was nowhere near us. It was shocking, I feared death, I feared so many things,” the 46-year-old Kenyan school teacher told AFP. Rose is one of a growing number of Africans suffering from cancer, one of the lifestyle diseases — along with diabetes and heart problems — proving increasing deadly on the continent. A…

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Climate Change Affects Nearly All Life on Earth

Most life on Earth is already being changed by the warming climate, even though the rise in global temperature since pre-industrial times has been rather slight, researchers warned on Thursday. The study in the journal Science found that 82 percent of key ecological processes — including genetic diversity and migration patterns — are being altered by global warming. These effects extend to land, oceans and freshwater environments, even though temperatures have risen just about 1.87 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) over pre-industrial times due to fossil fuel burning. “We now…

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Life Expectancy in Australia Hits New High: Report

Life expectancy in Australia has hit a new high, with babies born in 2015 expected to live two years longer than those born in 2005, according to a report issued on Friday. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report showed that life expectancy had hit 84.5 years for females and 80.4 years for males, but demographics expert Peter McDonald of the University of Melbourne said that the statistics assume no improvements in healthcare and were therefore conservative estimates. “They are not any individual’s lifetime; they are just telling you the…

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