This is reported as one of the most common questions posed by the people who are in the phase of checking the pregnancy results. It is the curiosity or the anxiety for positive or negative results of pregnancy. Similarly, it is the most common myth or misconception that people have in their minds that a pregnancy test is affected by the consumption of drugs or alcohol. To know the facts of it, one has to understand the actual concept behind it.

Pregnant women have a special hormone in their urine called the HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) and consumption of alcohol and its content in the blood stream has nothing to do with the pregnancy test. The hormone still produces irrespective of the fact that you may have consumed liquor. However, the consumption surely affects your baby in an adverse way.

Though the alcohol consumption does not affect the results of a pregnancy test, many other factors do influence the investigation which may be misrepresented as a change due to alcohol consumption. Hence, it is necessary to understand the actual time taken to conceive after having intercourse and the time taken for your body to convey it to you when you try to investigate it with the help of a pregnancy test.

As a sperm is live for 5 days once it enters your body, it is difficult to assess your precise conception date. The sperm might have entered and stayed in your body 5 days ago and may try to fertilize an egg today. An egg released today may unite with a sperm after a couple of days of sex as it can be live for 24 hours to 48 hours. However, egg fertilizing or conceiving is not just enough to get positive results in your pregnancy tests. It again takes some time to appear as the HCG is not produced as soon as you get pregnant and it is usually a week after the conception that it releases in the body.

This is still not enough to turn the pregnancy test positive as the amount of HCG produced in the body is not enough to rule out your pregnancy as positive. The hormone usually multiplies its content in not less than 2-3 days and hence it is usually after 10 – 15 days after the conception that a pregnancy test can get you the actual result. The higher the time after an intercourse, more chances of the results being accurate in the test that you conduct for yourself.

Since, the above information explains it all, we can now establish the fact that alcohol and drugs consumption does not affect the pregnancy test in any way but can cause fatal congenital diseases for your baby. A woman consuming alcohol or under drug abuse potentially increases the risk for her fetal baby. The addiction can jeopardize the growth of the baby’s cells. Impairments in brain and spinal cord may occur due to the damage done in pregnancy by consuming alcohol. Also, it is an established fact that a woman who quits the addictions even before she gets pregnant has more chances of having a healthy pregnancy and thereby having a healthy baby. Hence, the healthcare professionals always suggest getting de-addicted before one plans for a pregnancy.

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I have seen many women celebrities from the fashion world who were reigning divas till their forties trying to maintain the same physique even in their fifties and sixties. They cannot even accept gray hair as part of their ageing process and want to be remembered by their adorers in the same frame as they used to be in their twenties. Although they maintain a slim stature, their fingers with more obvious knuckles and nails tell us the real story. We should rather accept what we are and emphasize on looking beautiful at every age with the additions that childbirth and ageing does to your body. I cannot take my eyes off when I look at petite teens below twenties, beautiful pregnant women below forties or women reaching their menopause with half gray hair on their foreheads and the older women with pleasant grays and a shook body.

Body naturally goes on adding weight after childbirth and women start to gradually feel this change. As it is apparent that childbirth transforms a woman, we need to understand the fact that women and men to that matter have to undergo the nature’s ordeal and accept every role. We need not stick ourselves to when we were in ours 20’s and 30’s as if it is the golden age of beauty. Many other women delay pregnancies to look younger for a longer duration of time but their children may be affected with Down’s syndrome and many congenital diseases due to delayed child bearing. Nature has perfection in it and has set every ordeal with extreme perfection. Let us start appreciating nature’s build and flaunt ourselves in every phase.

Many presume pregnancy to be a weight gaining task. It is also a myth that pregnant women need ample rest and should consume loads of food. Women in pregnancy need only an extra 300 to 500 calories towards the third trimester. The tiny soul in your fetus needs very little food but nutritious one. Exercise is recommended throughout the pregnancy. Apart from some heavy tasks not recommended by your caregiver, women are expected to be active as a normal woman does even in pregnancy. Nature has equipped our bodies and birth canal with an amazing elastic property where they go back to normalcy within months post childbirth. Abdominal binders help your belly to get tightened again providing you indulge in sufficient physical activity.

Do not get afraid of gaining in weight in pregnancy as it is very necessary for you and your baby to be safe. Feel that you are entering into another phase of beauty where you look different from what you are now. However, both of the looks are equally adorable as you are with extreme grace mentally. Flaunt every new pound that adds to your body and every new curve that joins your stature to promote you to the life’s crucial role of being a mother. Remember, you may need to continue eating extra calories even after the child birth to accommodate your baby’s feeding needs. Every inch growing on your body would be sure to add that motherly bliss and grace to your personality and you will be loved even more for what you are irrespective of your shape. However, staying healthy and mentally elevated is very essential which is the real beauty to every woman.

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Comeback stories are inspiring. They give us hope for the future. This story is about Dream Alliance, a horse whose comeback story to recover from Achilles tendon injuries will offer hope for many. Wondering why this is a big story? Read on.

The Achilles tendon is the largest tendon in our body that connects the calf muscle with the heel bone. The Achilles tendon goes through a lot when we run or jump or lead an active life. This is the reason that many athletes and players suffer from Achilles tendon injuries. However what makes it worse is, almost 25 to 45% of these injuries need surgery and the patients’ lives largely depend on the crutches.

Dream Alliance went through an Achilles tendon injury while running in a race in 2008. He cut a tendon in the front leg. His condition was so critical that he was almost considered to be euthanized. But a stem cell treatment helped him recover from his injury and at the same time get back on his career. The process was very simple. Bone marrow was collected from the hip of the horse and mesenchymal stem cells were isolated. The mesenchymal stem cells were moved to a petri dish in order to create millions of cells. Once the required amount of cells were produced, they were injected into the affected tendon directly.

The procedure conducted by the researchers at the University College of London and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital proved successful for the horses. Now the team is conducting a stem cell clinical trial to treat Achilles tendon injuries in humans. Andrew Goldberg, the team lead of the study explained, “Tendon injuries in horses are identical to those in humans, and using this evidence from the 1500 treated horses] we were able to persuade the regulators to allow us to launch a small safety study in humans.”

So far the trial involving humans is going well and is showing positive results. One of the patients, who was suffering from Achilles tendon injury said, “I worried, because no one had ever had it before, except a horse. But I was more worried I’d end up in a wheelchair. The difference now is amazing. I can do five miles on the treadmill without pain, and take my dog Honey on long walks again.” The 46-year old used to lead a very busy life until she started feeling a severe ankle pain, as a result of an Achilles tendon injury.

The team at the University College of London and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital is still unsure on how this therapy works to heal the tendon injury; however, they have used the mesenchymal stem cells, which have the regeneration ability. They are also known to reduce inflammation. The first case’s being successful is very motivating. Researchers are hopeful that they will be able to find out a definite cure for Achilles tendon injuries for humans. For an effective result, researchers need a large number of patients, so that they can gather the varied data in one single study.

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Recently, close friends Jayesh and Simran delivered a second baby boy, Kiann. Like responsible parents, they believed in their child’s healthy future and went for private cord blood banking in spite of having preserved the umbilical cord for their firstborn a few years ago. In just 3 months’ time, their newborn was diagnosed with osteoporosis. This is possibly a condition where Kiann’s bone formation could be at risk and may lead to a fatality. The couple were optimistic because they were told that stem cell transplantation could actually save their newborn’s life.

In the rarest of cases, when Kiann’s stem cells were taken for testing, the parents found out that Kiann’s cord blood cells contained the same genetic deficiency that caused his disorder. Jayesh and Simran were distraught. But there was light at the end of the tunnel.  Precedence suggested that doctors could explore using donor cells from a close match. In order to treat a genetic disorder known as Fanconi’s anaemia, the first successful sibling-to-sibling cord-blood stem-cell transplant was performed in 1988.

There was hope yet for Kiann. Since Jayesh and Simran had opted to invest in storing their firstborn’s cord blood cells a few years ago, the doctors on testing that sample were able to get a reasonably compatible match. The doctors chose to go ahead with the stem cell transplantation and Kiann is now well on his way to recovery.

So the question that most parents spend a lot of time on is whether there is a need to store the cord blood and tissue for each individual child? In Jayesh and Simran’s case, the fact that they preserved the cord blood cells for both their children actually helped to save the life of their second born child.

According to the Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood Foundation, “Two full siblings have a 25% chance of being a perfect match, a 50% chance of being a half match, and a 25% chance of not matching at all.” However, Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, MD, Program Director of the division of Paediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Duke University Medical Center and one of the earliest to perform an unrelated cord-blood transplant in the U.S says, “One of the wonderful things about cord blood banking is that unlike bone marrow, you don’t always need a perfect match in order for it to work.”

Apart from the medical point of view of why one must consider storing the cord blood and tissue for both children, there is an additional take from a parenting perspective. By opting to bank the cord blood and tissue of a single child, most parents forget that it may lead to a regrettable situation where they may realize that they had made an unequal key medical decision.

Storing the stem cells of each child individually will allow you and your children access to a greater number of stem cells through which their future disorders and diseases can be cured. Dr. Jordan Perlow, MD, a maternal-foetal specialist in Phoenix, post attending medical conferences and having examined and analyzed findings about advances in stem-cell treatments now urges his patients to privately cord blood bank if they can meet the expense of it because he’s confident that it might save their child’s life or the life of another family member.

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In order to understand how stem cells are useful to us, we first need to understand what stem cells are. Stem Cells start in the embryo as immature biological cells, then become specialized to create bone, muscle, skin, the heart, the brain, and over 250 other types of specialized cells. This is why they are of such value to scientists doing both basic types of research in the lab and medical research in the clinic. They have the potential to regenerate tissue and cells that have been lost because of disease or injury.

Stem cell therapy has been used to cure a number of health conditions such as heart diseases, neurodegenerative ailments, and diabetes, with bone-marrow transplant being the most commonly used for stem cell therapy. There are many ways in which stem cell therapy can be conducted, however, stem cells derived from the umbilical cord blood are the safest to use for treatment. Moreover, stem cells from young individuals possess superior naivety and plasticity than stem cells from adults.

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is the most commonly found abnormality at birth, where the structure and function of the heart are not normal. In 2014, this congenital anomaly affected more than 1% of live born infants and accounted for more than 2.5 million affected children per year worldwide. CHD now occurs in approximately 7–8 out of 1000 live births, a slight improvement. Recent estimations reveal that up to 80% of newborns and infants with CHD are likely to reach adulthood, which can result in a high likelihood of complications later in life.

The cause of congenital heart disease is usually a combination of genetic and environmental factors. While some congenital heart diseases can be treated with medicine alone, others need to be treated with one or more heart surgeries.

In 2006, research at the Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that the heart has its own source of stem cells. These heart stem cells can form two major types of heart cells: myocardial cells (the muscles that, together, contract to make the heart beat) and smooth muscle cells (the lining of the heart’s blood vessels). This finding by Stuart Orkin, MD, and Sean Wu, MD, PhD, gave researchers a better insight into how the heart forms, and also gave a fillip to the concept of treating diseased or defective heart tissue with heart stem cells.

In January 2013, a study led by Bernhard Kuhn at the Boston Children’s Hospital found for the first time that young humans (infants, children and adolescents) are capable of generating new heart muscle cells. These findings gave rise to the possibility that scientists could stimulate the production of new cells to repair injured hearts.

A team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital reported in PNAS Early Edition (July 2013 issue) that they were able to create blood vessels in laboratory mice using human stem cells. The authors explained that using stem cells to repair or regenerate blood vessels could eventually help treat human patients with cardiovascular and vascular diseases.

Stem cell-based strategies to cure heart failure in adults has been investigated with promising results; however, stem cell therapy strategies for the paediatric population with heart failure are in its infancy. Further clinical trial studies will be needed to understand the cell biology in order to optimise their regenerative potential.

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