Eigh­teen years lat­er af­ter her mur­der, they still hold on to her favourite scarf, though her scent from it has fad­ed, her par­ents say “hold­ing it takes them back”, and re­turns them to her cheer­ful smile. Eigh­teen years lat­er, there is still no jus­tice or even change as last week, we lost an­oth­er young girl sense­less­ly.

It is not un­com­mon to feel dis­or­gan­ised and de­railed when you are feel­ing over­whelmed by trau­mat­ic events. But did you know that over the long term, trau­ma may change your brain in ways that af­fect your mem­o­ry?

When Melis­sa Ram­nar­ine and the Palance 868 Ad­ven­tures Club sat down to have re­fresh­ments on one of their trips to Paramin about two years ago, they got the fright of their lives.

Har­vard Health states, “About one of every three per­sons will de­vel­op some form of ma­lig­nan­cy dur­ing his or her life­time.” CDC states, “Can­cer is the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death in the Caribbean.” De­spite these grim sta­tis­tics, doc­tors have made great progress in un­der­stand­ing the bi­ol­o­gy of can­cer cells, and they have al­ready been able to im­prove the di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of can­cer.

To­day, we know more about can­cer than ever be­fore. Through in­vest­ing in re­search and in­no­va­tion, we have wit­nessed ex­tra­or­di­nary break­throughs in can­cer care, di­ag­nos­tics, and sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge.

The world is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an un­prece­dent­ed, life-al­ter­ing chal­lenge due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Many per­sons are still be­com­ing ad­just­ed to this new re­al­i­ty and “work-from-home” is now a part of every­day ver­nac­u­lar and life. While it is hard to pre­dict ex­act­ly when this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic will sub­side, the world has been grap­pling with an­oth­er pan­dem­ic for years: Seden­tary lifestyle, Phys­i­cal In­ac­tiv­i­ty (PI) and what the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty coined as the “Sit­ting Dis­ease”.

“De­spite glob­al progress, one per­son still dies every 40 sec­onds from sui­cide,” said WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al, Dr Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus. “Every death is a tragedy for fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues. Yet sui­cides are pre­ventable.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Clin­i­cal En­docri­nol­o­gists (AACE), thy­roid dis­ease is a more com­mon dis­or­der than di­a­betes or heart dis­ease, how­ev­er, many pa­tients re­main un­di­ag­nosed.

Mon­ey is a com­mon source of stress for all adults. This pro­por­tion of stress brought on by in­ad­e­quate fi­nances and em­ploy­ment woes in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly in 2020. In fact, ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion (APA), 72% of adults re­port feel­ing stressed about mon­ey, whether it is wor­ry­ing about job sta­bil­i­ty, pay­ing rent, or feel­ing trapped by debt. This is pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant giv­en fi­nan­cial stress is linked to so many health is­sues.

Car­ni­val and so­ca may be in Ron­nie McIn­tosh’s blood, but while oth­ers are dou­bled over in de­spair from the loss of this sea­son, the cul­tur­al icon has got­ten over his Car­ni­val ta­ban­ca for 2021. The so­ca vet­er­an and mas­mak­er feels that as far as the fes­ti­val is con­cerned, all of its stake­hold­ers should use the down­time for a to­tal re­set.

Does this sound bizarre? It is not. In fact, re­cent re­search sug­gests that near­ly half of all heart at­tacks are silent heart at­tacks.

At your last vis­it to the doc­tor, you may have re­ceived one of the most im­por­tant pre­scrip­tions of your life, one that on­ly you can fill at a nom­i­nal cost: ex­er­cise. Or it may be one of your New Year res­o­lu­tions. But how do you be­gin? If you have nev­er had a for­mal ex­er­cise pro­gramme, or your ex­er­cise rou­tine lapsed over the years be­cause of ill­ness, changes in sched­ules, in­creas­ing de­mands dur­ing the pan­dem­ic; the idea of start­ing now may seem daunt­ing. What kind of ex­er­cise should you do and how much? How can you be sure you will ob­tain the health ben­e­fits?