Features

By Dina Halaseh

Educational Psychologist

Is your child not putting in any effort or refusing to do assignments? Does it take too long to complete homework? Does your child refuse to do homework alone or postpones it until the last minute?

Research now shows that proper parental support can have more effect on school success than a student’s intelligence or school setting. However, all too often, parents end up hindering their child’s progress. 

Advantages of effective involvement

• Higher grades

• Better attitude and behaviour

• Willingness to do homework

• Will reach higher educational levels

Tips for helping your child succeed at school

• Ensuring you have a proper study environment in your home — no television, media, tablets or any electronics on before or during homework time

• Equipping the study area with the tools and materials needed for homework

• Creating a positive attitude about homework time

• Reviewing homework when they finish (only for younger children)

If your children are in elementary or middle school, it is essential to talk to them about their schoolwork and ask to see if they finished all the assigned homework. 

You can check for notes and comments by teachers and discuss how the skills they are learning in school are important in everyday life.

Linking academics 

to everyday life

Your child must see you reading, writing and even using maths, such as the use of fractions in baking! 

This way, you are linking what your child is learning in maths to everyday life. Linking what your children are being learning in school with their goals and interests is the best approach. 

Children should do 

their homework alone

All children need help, but let’s remember to provide guidance only, not answers. If your child is supposed to do homework alone, then avoid interfering. And if you are supposed to help, then help, but only when teachers ask you to take a role in homework. This is important because you want to help build your child’s own studying skills — children should do their homework on their own.

It’s a bit different with teens; they usually do not want parents to check their homework or go through their books, and they are being tired of lectured about their future. At the same time, they usually want you to show up to their teachers’ meetings.

It’s essential to set, communicate expectations and actively plan for your child’s future. Our goal should always be to nurture an independent student from an early age. 

Teaching them how to study rather than teaching them the material itself allows them to learn and grow.

Reprinted with permission

from Family Flavours magazine

The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine

Miko Peled

US: Just World Books, 2012

Pp. 221

The journey named in the subtitle of this book is both a physical/geographic and a political/moral one. Born into the Israeli establishment, the author, Miko Peled, is the son of Matti Peled, one of Israel’s top generals who was a prominent advocate of peace with the Palestinians from the early 1970s until his death. The senior Peled studied Arabic, and upon retirement from the army, pursued an academic career as a professor of Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University.

Throughout, he remained a staunch Zionist, considering the two-state solution the best option for both Israel and the Palestinians. In the mid-1970s, he called on the Israeli government to negotiate with the PLO, and began meeting with important PLO leaders, including the late chairman Yaser Arafat. His son describes the consequences: “It wasn’t long before friends stopped inviting him and my mother to social events. He became a political and social pariah.” (p. 57)

The obvious question posed by the book is whether Miko will follow in his father’s footsteps. This is the political/moral journey he outlines, combining the events of his personal life with those in the Middle East. 

Raised in a West Jerusalem home where it was a given that Israel should return the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, Miko admired and shared his parents’ leanings, but was not inclined to duplicate his father’s activism. Still, his Israeli classmates called him out as an “Arab lover”, although he had not a single Palestinian friend. Miko’s account of his childhood is fascinating, especially as he describes the diverse backgrounds of his grandparents and gives personal glimpses of prominent Israelis. It is also remarkable in revealing how separate the two societies were. 

After a rather harrowing training experience in the Israeli army, Miko is attracted to the art of karate: “Unlike military training, where the aim is to break you down and then turn you into a killer, Sensei Dan [his karate instructor in Jerusalem] wanted to build us up and develop us as confident and compassionate people.” (p. 90)

Eventually, Miko establishes a successful karate school in Southern California, but he is ever-alert to developments “back home”. The fall of 1977 was a turning point: Two young Palestinians blew themselves up in a Jerusalem street, killing his niece, Smader. “Up to that point, I was fine with the decision I had made many years earlier not to be active politically, but after Smader was killed I was no longer content to sit still.” (p. 107)

From then on, Miko’s political/moral journey accelerates. He seeks out Jewish-Palestinian dialogue groups in San Diego, and reads the books of the Israeli “New Historians” at the suggestion of his brother Yoav, a political science instructor at Tel Aviv University. Dialoguing and reading expose him to the other side of the story, most crucially, the events of 1948. 

He gains a real friend in Nader Albanna, a Muslim born in Nazareth, and they embark on a joint project to donate wheelchairs to Palestinian and Israeli patients. Soon, the regular visits Miko makes to his family in Jerusalem expand to include his new Palestinian contacts. He writes very honestly about battling the fears that he had unconsciously absorbed and is soon venturing into areas considered off-limits to Israeli Jews, including Area A of the West Bank: “I was beginning to believe that the security reasons cited by Israeli officials for the wall and the checkpoints, which were keeping us from visiting and getting to know people on the ‘other side’ were merely scare tactics designed to prolong the conflict.” (p. 138)

Visiting Beit Ummar, Bil’in, Nabi Saleh, Ramallah, Gaza and many other Palestinian communities, participating in their non-violent resistance activities, and teaching karate classes in Duheisheh refugee camp, pushed Miko into new discoveries about himself and the conflict. He had long conversations with community leaders, including a number of ex-long-term prisoners in Israel jails, adding to the narrative of the injustices done to the Palestinians and the resilience they displayed. In the author’s words: “cracks were forming in my conviction that there was a need or even a justification for a state that was Jewish”. (p. 212)

In the end, Miko did follow his father’s footsteps, but also went beyond: “I came to the realisation that establishing a secular, pluralistic democracy that includes all of Palestine/Israel was the best thing for Israelis and Palestinians and that the two-state solution was not a solution at all… My views… changed largely as a result of my travels throughout the West Bank and having witnessed Israel’s tremendous investment in infrastructure to attract Jewish settlers and thereby exclude Palestinians — to whom the land belongs… I became convinced that universal freedom in a shared homeland was the best thing for both peoples.” (pp. 215-6)

“The General’s Son” is packed full of facts, emotions and discoveries. It is a highly readable contribution to a major debate. Miko’s intellectual and moral honesty, and the way he intertwines details of his own life with vital questions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, make it more compelling than a straight-up political testimony. There have been many changes in the situation since the book was published, but they only make its message more important.

OLESNICE, Czech Republic — For Jiri Danzinger, settling on a line of work was a no-brainer: he grew up in a Czech family with a long tradition in blueprint dyeing.

The 40-year-old craftsman is the 11th generation of a family living off the UNESCO-listed technique in the eastern village of Olesnice.

“Nobody ever forced me, but I also never had another job offer,” the bespectacled Danzinger told AFP in one of the Czech Republic’s two surviving blueprint workshops, his hand resting on an age-old rolling press.

Blueprint, which made its way to Europe in the 17th century, uses so-called resist printing, which involves dipping a large wooden stamp — typically with a floral pattern — into a gum Arabic paste.

Artisans like Danzinger then apply the pattern to white cotton fabric before submerging it in a tub of water dyed indigo blue.

When he pulls out the fabric using a creaky handle, it is blue but the design remains white.

Clover and oat grass

UNESCO added blueprint dyeing to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2018 following a joint bid by the Czech Republic and Austria, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia — where the technology has also survived.

“We live in a poorer region so we use simple motifs such as clover or oat grass,” said Danzinger, whose workshop has 250 different designs.

“Wealthier regions use fancier patterns,” he added before smoothing wrinkles from a fabric using a rattling rolling press.

Marketa Vinglerova, deputy head of the textile collection at Prague’s Museum of Decorative Arts, said blueprint came to Europe from Asia, notably the traditional indigo-dyeing countries of India, Indonesia and Japan.

Thanks to the Dutch East India Company, founded in the 17th century to trade with the Far East, blueprint made its way to the Dutch court and then to central Europe, including the Baltics and Poland.

“It was popular among aristocrats but then it spread to small towns and villages and the nobility abandoned it,” Vinglerova told AFP.

“For a long time, it was the only decorative technology the villagers could afford.”

Olesnice’s dyeing tradition dates back to 1520. Before indigo, dyers used woad leaves to turn scarves, bed covers and aprons blue.

Face masks

Danzinger’s workshop makes a range of products from stuffed toys to bags, handkerchiefs and ties.

During the coronavirus crisis, it switched to making face masks after the government made face coverings mandatory in public.

From one day to the next, “we were churning out face masks at full speed. We agreed it was necessary”, Danzinger said.

The workshop first produced white cotton masks to hand out to local residents, but later also supplied the police as the country faced a nationwide shortage of medical material.

“When we met the demand after two weeks, we started producing blueprint face masks. We sold more than 1,000 of those by the end of June,” Danzinger said.

In the renovated village house where he lives and works, Danzinger said he feels a lifelong “obligation” to continue what his ancestors started.

“People come and go but the craft will hopefully stay the same forever.”

PARIS — Doctors in France have described what they said was the first confirmed case of a newborn infected in the womb with COVID-19 by the mother.

The baby boy, born in March, suffered brain swelling and neurological symptoms linked to COVID-19 in adults, but has since recovered, they reported Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Earlier research had pointed to the likely transmission of the virus from mother to foetus, but the study offers the first solid evidence, said senior author Daniele De Luca, a doctor at Antoine Beclere Hospital near Paris.

"We have shown that the transmission from the mother to the foetus across the placenta is possible during the last weeks of pregnancy," he said.

Last week, researchers in Italy said that data on 31 pregnant women hospitalised with COVID-19 "strongly suggested" that the virus could be passed on to unborn infants.

A JAMA study in March reporting on a similar number of pregnant COVID-19 patients came to a similar conclusion.

But evidence remained circumstantial.

"You need to analyse maternal blood, amniotic fluid, the newborn's blood, the placenta, et cetera," De Luca said by phone.

"Getting all of these samples during a pandemic with emergencies everywhere has not been easy. This is why it has been suspected but never demonstrated."

De Luca and his team pulled together this data for the case of a pregnant woman in her twenties admitted to his hospital in early March.

Because the baby was delivered by caesarean section, all of the potential sources and reservoirs of the virus remained intact.

The concentration of SARS-CoV-2, the technical name given to the virus, was highest in the placenta, the researchers found.

"From there it passed through the umbilical cord to the baby, where it develops," De Luca said. "That is the pathway of transmission."

'Bad news'

The baby began to develop severe symptoms 24 hours after birth, including severe rigidity of the body, damage to white matter in the brain, and extreme irritability.

But before doctors could settle on a course of treatment, the symptoms began to recede. Within three weeks, the newborn had almost fully recovered on his own.

Three months later, his mother is without symptoms.

"The bad news is that this actually happened, and can happen," De Luca said. "The good news is that it is rare — very rare compared to the global population."

Among the thousands of babies born to mothers with COVID-19, no more than one or two per cent have tested positive for the virus, and even fewer show serious symptoms, said Marian Knight, a professor of maternal and child population health at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the research.

"The most important message for pregnant women remains to avoid infection through paying attention to hand washing and social distancing measures," she said.

Others said the case study shed light on how the virus passes from mother to child.

"This report adds knowledge to a possible mechanism of transfer to the baby, via the placenta," commented Andrew Shennan, a professor of obstetrics at King's College London.

"But women can remain reassured that pregnancy is not a significant risk factor for them or their babies with COVID-19."

By Marlowe Hood

How many apps do you have installed on your smartphone? How many do you really use? Are you happy with the performance of each of them?

Mobile apps constitute a tech world on their own. These small software programmes (or applications, hence the short form “app”) have become a must, and most tasks you can think of and that be performed using a mobile device, typically a smartphone of course, have an app associated with them.

The main, the major ones are well understood and their purpose clear. These would be, for instance, Google Maps, the phone’s Gallery, your phone operator’s App (Orange, Zain, etc.), Shazam, the phone’s Camera, Skype, Messenger, or Facebook. The list of these essential apps does not really exceed a hundred or so.

There is at the same time a flabbergasting number of other apps out there, whether on App Store if yours is an iPhone, or on Google Play if you live in Android land. The first holds some 2 million apps and the second about 13 million, according to statistics dating to the beginning of the current year.

These numbers are a problem per se. For obviously there are not millions of categories of apps, but hundreds, or maybe thousands. The huge number just comes from the fact that for each kind of app you may look for, you will find tens if not hundreds of apps that claim to do the same thing. Choosing the best is a headache and a time-consuming work. It is only by trial and error, by experimenting, by reading the reviews or checking with your friends, that you can — hopefully — find that ideal app.

And yet, one should not feel overwhelmed by the numbers and give up the search too easily, for there are many really useful apps out there, some of which you can hardly think of, and that might prove to be very useful to you.

A sampler. A very humble one.

Open Camera is one such app. The camera software that comes with your phone is simple and does a decent job. But its somewhat limited settings do not do justice to the device’s camera full possibilities. Open Camera is one of the apps that allows you to treat and use your smartphone camera almost like a professional DSLR and even more! The extent of the settings range is mind blowing and will let you in the end take photos that you think were not possible.

Ever wondered why your phone or tablet did not charging fast enough? Did you suspect a poor quality cable, a defective charger of simply your device itself? Ampere can help you troubleshoot the issue. The nice, free and small app will show you exactly how fast (or how slowly) the charge is being done. It will also show you how fast your phone is discharging, when not connected to a charger.

Package Disabler app helps you tame bloatware, these annoying applications that come pre-loaded in your smartphone, that you never asked for in the first place, and that you are not allowed to uninstall. Package Disabler will let you easily and nicely disable or enable them one by one, selectively. It is smart and clean, and will preserve your phone’s processor and memory resources for the really important job you want to use it for.

I love Caffeine, and not just in the morning. This truly intelligent small app lets you keep your screen awake for the time you like: seconds, minutes or all the time. You can also decide if your device’s screen should stay up in specific cases or conditions: when connected to USB external equipment, or when specific applications are running, etc. There is no equivalent to Caffeine in the apps or the settings that are built in your smartphone.

Again, this is but a modest sampler. By searching the apps stores one can find countless little really useful software jewels.

TOKYO — The Tokyo art exhibit opened to enthusiastic visitors, but many of those circulating weren’t just there to soak in some culture — they were casing the joint for a midnight raid.

Hours after the gallery closed for the night, a crowd had gathered ready to pounce on the artworks. The police station was nearby, but officers only intervened for crowd control, because all the pieces at the Stealable Art Exhibition were up for grabs.

The event was intended as “an experiment”, to alter the relationship between artists and visitors, organiser Tota Hasegawa told AFP.

It was originally conceived as a low-key event that might attract some covert thievery, but word spread so fast on social media that a crowd of nearly 200 people packed the streets near the gallery hoping for a chance to grab a prize.

Would-be robbers were told they could raid the gallery from midnight, but the crowd was so big that the theft started half an hour earlier, and the exhibition that had been billed as running for up to 10 days was emptied of art in less than 10 minutes.

Yusuke Hasada, 26, was a rare winner, gripping a crumpled 10,000 yen ($93) banknote in a frame, which was part of the “My Money” installation by Gabin Ito. 

He arrived an hour before midnight only to see a crowd had already formed.

Since there was no apparent queue, he manoeuvred himself into a spot right in front of the gallery.

“The moment the staff said they should open early due to the big crowd, people rushed in from behind me. I was in the front, and I almost fell over,” he told AFP.

“It was scary.” 

Auction resales

Hasada said he plans to hang the work, among those on display supplied by 10 contemporary artists, in his home.

But not everyone stealing the items appeared to have the same idea, with several artworks appearing on online auction sites within hours with price tags as high as 100,000 yen. 

Even after the exhibit was emptied out, would-be thieves continued arriving, forcing a nearby police station to dispatch officers for crowd control.

“You are blocking traffic!” officers shouted.

Yuka Yamauchi, a 35-year-old systems engineer, showed up 15 minutes before midnight but was too late.

“I entered with my husband and it was just packed with so many people... We saw larger artworks taken out by those who came earlier,” she said.

“I haven’t seen so many people in a long time as we have been refraining from going out due to the coronavirus.”

But Yamauchi didn’t leave completely empty-handed.

“I’ve got a clip... It must have been one of those used for the cloth installation. I found it dropped, so I picked it up as a souvenir,” she said with a laugh.

‘Well-mannered’ thieves

Yamauchi recognised the clip because she was at a preview of the artwork six hours earlier to “case” the venue.

She said she would happily come back for a similar “participatory” art event, where some of the artists showcased work that was purpose-made for those hoping to make off with it.

Naoki “SAND” Yamamoto’s work “Midnight Vandalist” was composed of a stack of peelable pages with printed illustrations.

Another work was a large cloth printed with lines to be cut along with scissors.

But would-be thieves were responsible for organising their own getaway vehicles. A notice was posted at the entrance: “We do not assist art thieves with packing or transporting artworks, so you are responsible for everything.”

Organiser Hasegawa told AFP he later met with police — perhaps not used to such large-scale larceny in Japan, with its ultra-low crime rate — to clear up any misunderstandings about the event and the crowd it attracted.

He said the budding thieves had proved to be “well-mannered”.

They might have been there to stage robberies, but when “someone lost a bag with a wallet in it, it was passed onto a staffer and safely returned to the owner ”.

The second smallest of the German manufacturer’s line of various size SUVs and crossovers to suit most tastes, the Audi Q3 is a compact and convenient daily drive proposition, with improved technology, efficiency, driving dynamics and cabin room.

Winner of the 2020 Middle East Car of the Year award’s best Sub-Compact Premium Crossover prize, the second generation Audi Q3 is ideally sized as a young family vehicle with plenty of comfort, combined with compact and easy to manoeuvre dimensions, and during test drive in regional entry-level drive-line guise, proved impressively intuitive and nimble to drive. 

Characterised by its dominantly large octagonal grille with its matte metallic outline, the Q3’s sporty and assertive look echoes that of other Audi SUVs, and features slim squinting headlights with a dramatic LED signature. Meanwhile, big faux side intakes and contrasting lower wheel-arch cladding and sills play up its sportingly rugged styling sensibilities, and prominent wheel-arch surfacing is a direct nod to Audi’s most defining and original 1980s Quattro sports coupe, and the four-wheel-drive system that takes its name from it. Optional S-line 19-inch alloy wheels meanwhile better fill in the muscular wheel-arches.

Compact and confident

Driven in Q3 35 TFSI, Audi’s compact crossover is powered by a small but comparatively prodigious 1.4-litre turbocharged direct injection 4-cylinder engine. Mounted transversely and powering the front wheels as driven (or all four wheels with bigger engine variants) the Q3 35 TFSI develops 147BHP at 5,000-6,000rpm and 184lb/ft torque throughout a wide 1,500-3,500rpm mid-range band. Channeling power through a slick shifting 7-speed automated dual clutch gearbox, the Q3 carries its moderate if not quite lightweight 1,495kg mass to a 206km/h top speed and achieves frugal 6.6l/100km fuel economy on the combined cycle. 

Perky and punchy given its small displacement, the Q3’s engine is responsive and eager after the briefest moment of turbo lag from idling engine speed, before it dispatches the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark rather briskly in 9.2-seconds. Pulling confidently from low-end and with a versatile mid-range for easy drivability and on the move acceleration, the Q3 35 TFSI also benefits from low CD0.32 aerodynamics to improve efficiency and reducing wind noise at highway speed. Small yet willing and capable, the Q3’s 1.4-litre engine is also happy being revved hard to deliver its best performance.

Nimble handling

Driven in front-wheel-drive guise with a quick-shifting dual clutch gearbox and a small turbocharged engine that like to be revved hard, the Audi Q3 TFSI proved more fun than expected for a family-oriented crossover. In fact, without the added weight or mid-corner rear activation of a front-biased four-wheel-drive system, the Q3 felt almost like mid-size hatchback, not too dissimilar to a higher and heavier Volkswagen Golf or its own Audi A3 sister model. Underlining this was the Q3’s quick and direct electric steering, and eager chassis set-up, which delivered both nimble handling and committed cornering.

An agile and fun compact crossover with almost hatchback-like playful characteristics, the Q3 is eager flicking into corners, gripping tidily in, and willing to adjust its weighting and cornering lines throughout. Brisk and confident through successive corners, the Q3 is manoeuvrable and lively, yet delivers good body control and reassuring road-holding through long and fast bends. Meanwhile, its hunkered down, well-adjustable and supportive seating, good front visibility, compact dimensions, chunky steering wheel and well-weighted steering action kept one feeling involved and the centre of the proceedings, when placing it on road through quick corners or slow urban manoeuvres.

Sporty style

Riding on MacPherson strut front and torsion beam rear suspension along with optional 235/50R19 tyres the Q3 felt comfortable and forgiving on all but the most jarring bumps, as driven on mostly smooth Dubai roads. For lumpier and bumpier Jordanian roads, a taller sidewall and smaller alloy wheel option would be better suited. That said, the Q3 was stable on highway and in town, with a refined and reassuring ride, if slightly on the firm side, while vertical movements were settled and its steering was well-damped, and provided good directional stability at speed.

Classy in design and materials inside, the Q3 features a split-level dashboard, plenty of matte metallic accents, black gloss trim and user-friendly controls and layouts. Seating is spacious, comfortable and supportive in front, while rear space is decent and luggage room good. Well-equipped as driven, the Q3 featured Isofix child seat latches, three rear head rests, dual zone climate control, smart phone interface, and parking aid and speech dialog systems and much more. Optional equipment included sporty S-line interior, rear view camera, lane change assistance, rear armrest and Audi’s configurable Virtual Cockpit instrument display screen.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.4-litre, turbocharged, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 74.5 x 80mm

Compression ratio: 10:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed dual clutch automated, front-wheel-drive

Ratios: 1st 3.19; 2nd 2.75; 3rd 1.897; 4th 1.04; 5th 0.793; 6th 0.86; 7th 0.661; R 2.9

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 147 (150) [110] @5,000-6,000rpm

Specific power: 105.7BHP/litre 

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 184.4 (250) @1,500-3,500rpm

Specific torque: 179.2Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 9.2-seconds

Top speed: 206km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 6.6-litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 153g/km

Fuel capacity: 58-litres

Length: 4,484mm

Width: 1,849mm

Height: 1,585mm

Wheelbase: 2,680mm

Track, F/R: 1,584/1,576mm

Overhang, F/R: 896/908mm

Approach/departure angles: 18.8°/16.2°

Loading height: 748mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.32

Headroom, F/R: 1,054/976mm

Shoulder width, F/R: 1,440/1,400mm

Luggage volume, min/max: 530-/1,525-litres

Unladen/kerb weight: 1,495kg/1,570kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning Circle: 11.8-metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/4-link

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres: 235/50R19 (optional)

By Abeer Jabaji

Classical Homoeopath and Personal Development Coach

When a person is sick, symptoms frequently involve the mental, emotional and physical areas of the body.

Many people around the world practice homoeopathy because of its holistic approach and healing outcomes.

Homoeopathy at a glance

Homoeopathy is a 200-year-old form of holistic medicine believed to stimulate and strengthen the body‘s ability to heal itself. The World Health Organisation recognises homoeopathy as the second largest system of healing in use in the world — by 500 million people.

Conventional medicine views symptoms of disease as part of the illness and aims to suppress or abolish the symptoms. Homoeopathy sees symptoms as the body’s reaction against illness in the attempt to overcome it, and therefore seeks to stimulate the body’s natural responses rather than suppress them. Homoeopathy seeks to treat the root cause of the disease on all levels (mental, emotional and physical).

Dr Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy, was born in Germany in the 18th century, coined the word homoeopathy, derived from Greek and Latin, meaning “like disease”. The main principle of homoeopathy is called the law of similars: a substance of natural origin that produces certain symptoms in a healthy person which will cure those same symptoms in a sick person.

Hahnemann experimented on himself by taking the substance Cinchona from the bark of the tree used to treat malaria. He developed the symptoms of a malaria-like fever as well as flu-like symptoms (chills, muscle aches, tiredness and diarrhoea.) Through the observation of the effects of Cinchona on himself (a healthy individual), Hahnemann realised these were, in turn, the very symptoms that the bark could cure. He then used the substance to successfully treat a woman with the symptoms of relapsing fever.

Remedies

More than 2,000 remedies have been derived over the years, all made from natural plant, animal and mineral sources. The whole plant is used with no chemical additives. The remedies are extracted from these natural sources and are then diluted in a water and alcohol base to such a degree that not even the original substance is found in the liquid.

One drop is taken of the substance is diluted with 100 drops of water and then again one drop of this is taken and diluted it with another 100 drops of water. The more diluted the substance the more potent it becomes. It is then shaken or succussed at each step of dilution. Millions of remedies can be made from that one drop. This extreme dilution process enhances the curative properties of the medicines while the toxic side effects are eliminated.

Homoeopathic treatment aims to find the smallest effective dose in order to stimulate a healing response in the body without the risk of side effects. Only enough is administered to initiate the healing process. Homoeopathic remedies stimulate the entire body to heal itself, not merely to suppress symptoms.

Provings

The method by which homoeopathic remedies are “tested” on healthy volunteers for their emotional, mental and physical effects is called “proving”. Conducting these “tests” on the healthy ensures that the symptoms recorded will be from the substance alone and not from symptoms of a pre-existing illness. If the substance is able to produce a set of symptoms in healthy provers, it will have a curative effect if prescribed for those unwell with similar symptoms — the homoeopathic principle of “like cures like”. People with the same disease don’t get the same homoeopathic remedy.

Why is homoeopathy 

so popular?

• Homoeopathic treatment works with your body’s healing powers to bring about health and well-being

• You are treated as an individual, not as a collection of disease labels

• Homoeopathy treats all your symptoms, at all levels of your being — mental, emotional and physical and finds the ‘like cures like’ match for them

• Homoeopathically prepared remedies, providing a minimum dose, are gentle, subtle and powerful. They are non-addictive and not tested on animals

• It is called a complete holistic system because it restores health at all levels: mental, emotional and physical

• Homoeopathic medicines are safe to use as they rarely cause side-effects. This means when used appropriately, under the guidance of a qualified homoeopath, they can be taken by people of all ages, including babies, children and pregnant and breastfeeding women

Treatment

The two main categories of treatment in homoeopathic medicine are acute and chronic.

• Acute treatment is for the illness of recent onset; it may be like the common cold or it may be an illness that progresses if not treated; for example, pneumonia. The body might overcome a cold sooner or later but the appropriate remedy gently stimulates the body to recover more quickly and efficiently

• Chronic treatment addresses a recurrent health problem. The length of treatment depends on many factors, including the nature of the problem, family medical history, previous treatment and more. The goal is to help you return to a state of wellbeing through individualised homoeopathic treatment

• Classical homoeopathy focuses on selecting one right remedy for treating the whole person. Only one remedy is given at a time, often only once and only as a single tiny pill

So is homoeopathy real medicine or is it magic? Based on my expertise as a classical homoeopath, I think it is so real that its effect is truly magical! 

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

PARIS — Hunger, poor nutrition and obesity not only present a health burden in developing countries but carry a hidden economic penalty that costs businesses up to $850 billion a year, according to a recently published report.

Researchers said malnutrition reduces the resilience of populations to risks such as infectious disease outbreaks and extreme climate events, as well as causing a reduction in productivity and earnings. 

With the coronavirus pandemic expected to drive millions more into hunger and poverty, they called for governments and businesses alike to focus on nutrition as part of recovery efforts. 

“While the costs of undernutrition and overweight/obesity to societies and governments are well explored, the costs and risks to companies created by malnutrition in the workforce and the wider community have remained under the radar,” said lead researchers Laura Wellesley, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. 

“We show that the costs and risks are significant and that it is in the interests of businesses to take action.”

The report, which was compiled with the Vivid Economics group, defined malnutrition as both undernutrition and overnutrition — encompassing conditions from stunting and anaemia to being overweight and obese. 

In developing nations where the prevalence of malnutrition is high, researchers estimated that the direct costs of productivity loss would total between $130 billion and $850 billion a year. 

That is equivalent to between 0.4 per cent and 2.9 per cent of the combined gross domestic product of those countries.

The report extrapolated the results from modelling 19 lower- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa, Central America and Europe.

According to the 2020 Global Nutrition Report, around one in nine people globally are hungry or undernourished, while one in three people are overweight or obese. Almost a quarter of children under five are stunted. 

Poverty warning

Problems that once existed at opposite ends of the wealth spectrum are increasingly converging in poor and middle-income countries as populations, households and even individuals face a “double burden” of being overweight and undernourished. 

“Both obesity and undernutrition are outcomes of poor nutrition, and both should be tackled together if we’re to ease the malnutrition burden on companies and societies,” Wellesley said. 

She called for efforts to reduce both problems, such as paying a fair living wage, subsidising nutritious food for staff, providing breastfeeding support for mothers and education on how to eat healthily.

The report stressed that action to tackle malnutrition is in businesses’ best interests. 

Direct costs for companies include the reduction in productivity associated with staff ill-health and limits to workers’ physical and cognitive capacity, Wellesley said. 

It also traps households into poverty meaning, they have less money to spend as consumers, thus impeding the development of a healthy workforce. 

The report comes as Philip Alston, the former United Nations envoy on extreme poverty and human rights, slammed the international community for fostering a misleading narrative that global poverty is being eradicated when in fact he said it is rising. 

He warned that the pandemic is expected to push hundreds of millions into unemployment and poverty, while increasing the number at risk of acute hunger by more than 250 million.

“Even before COVID-19, we squandered a decade in the fight against poverty with misplaced triumphalism blocking the very reforms that could have prevented the worst impacts of the pandemic,” he said.

Alston criticised the use of the World Bank’s international poverty line — currently $1.90 per day — as “flawed”, saying it gives a deceptively positive picture.

PARIS — Potentially fatal COVID-19 complications in the brain including delirium, nerve damage and stroke may be more common than initially thought, a team of British-based doctors warned Wednesday.

Severe COVID-19 infections are known to put patients at risk of neurological complications, but research led by University College London suggests serious problems can occur even in individuals with mild cases of the virus.

The team looked at the neurological symptoms of 43 patients hospitalised with either confirmed or suspected COVID-19.

They found 10 cases of temporary brain dysfunction, 12 cases of brain inflammation, eight strokes and eight cases of nerve damage.

Most of those patients with inflammation were diagnosed with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) — a rare condition typically seen in children after viral infections.

"We identified a higher than expected number of people with neurological conditions such as brain inflammation, which did not always correlate with the severity of respiratory symptoms," said Michael Zandi, of UCL's Queen Square Institute of Neurology and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The research, published in the journal Brain, showed that none of patients diagnosed with neurological problems had COVID-19 in their cerebrospinal fluid, suggesting that the virus did not directly attack their brains.

Perhaps crucially, the team found that ADEM diagnoses "not related to the severity of the respiratory COVID-19 disease".

"Given that the disease has only been around for a matter of months, we might not yet know what long-term damage COVID-19 can cause," said Ross Paterson from UCL's Queen Square Institute of Neurology.

"Doctors need to be aware of possible neurological effects, as early diagnosis can improve patient outcomes."

With more than 11 million confirmed infections worldwide, COVID-19 is known to cause a variety of health complications in addition to lung infection.

While the results of the study suggest that brain complications could be more common among virus patients than first thought, experts said it didn't mean that brain damage cases were widespread.

"The scrutiny that the pandemic attracts means it would be very unlikely that there is a large parallel pandemic of unusual brain damage linked to COVID-19," said Anthony David, director of UCL's Institute of Mental Health.

By Patrick Galey