The Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC) now rec­om­mends 11 to 12 year olds get two dos­es of HPV vac­cine—rather than the pre­vi­ous­ly rec­om­mend­ed three dos­es—to pro­tect against can­cers caused by HPV. The sec­ond dose should be giv­en 6-12 months af­ter the first dose.

Cer­vi­cal can­cer treat­ment op­tions in­clude surgery, ra­dio­ther­a­py, chemother­a­py, or com­bi­na­tions of these.

Women who have had a to­tal hys­terec­to­my (re­moval of the uterus and cervix) should stop screen­ing (such as Pap tests and HPV tests).

This month of Jan­u­ary marks a new year on the cal­en­dar, a month to make res­o­lu­tions for a bet­ter and health­i­er you. Jan­u­ary is al­so des­ig­nat­ed as In­ter­na­tion­al Cer­vi­cal Can­cer Aware­ness Month. This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a res­o­lu­tion where women’s health is con­cerned.

At the be­gin­ning of every new week, month or year, many peo­ple make a prac­tice of tak­ing time to re-eval­u­ate their lives, by mak­ing lists of goals and things-to-do while crit­i­cal­ly as­sess­ing where they are as op­posed to where they would like to be.

My first en­counter with Cur­tiun was such a mem­o­rable one. He was shy, soft spo­ken and very ar­tic­u­late. He was mak­ing bead­ed chains and rub­ber-band bracelets. I lat­er found out he sat the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion and was not sur­prised with the re­sults.

The Ox­ford Dic­tio­nary de­fines self-care as “the prac­tice of tak­ing an ac­tive role in pro­tect­ing one’s own well-be­ing and hap­pi­ness.”

In­fluen­za comes from the Ital­ian words for “in­flu­ence.” It goes back to the 1500s when peo­ple did not know what caused these epi­demics of cough­ing, headache, mus­cle ache and even death. So peo­ple be­lieved their health was be­ing “in­flu­enced” by the stars.

Christ­mas is here and it’s the most won­der­ful time of the year. It is al­so the busiest sea­son, al­so re­ferred to as the “sil­ly sea­son,” be­cause, in­ter­est­ing­ly, while it is a very fes­tive and jol­ly time, Christ­mas is al­so when many in­ci­dents and in­juries oc­cur. And many peo­ple bring in the new year with pain and dis­abil­i­ty, while some are un­avoid­able, ma­jor­i­ty could be pre­vent­ed and save your­self ad­di­tion­al spend­ing on re­cov­ery or less time out of work (es­pe­cial­ly for self-em­ployed) in the new year.

So you go to the gym sev­en days a week and yet you have trou­ble main­tain­ing your de­sired weight. What am I do­ing wrong you ask. Sounds fa­mil­iar?

I have come to re­alise that it was no ac­ci­dent that I was po­si­tioned, last year, in the fall, at New York’s icon­ic Fash­ion In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy when the Com­mon­wealth Fash­ion Ex­change (CFE) dis­play was show­cased at the Pomer­antz Art and De­sign Cen­ter, for the first time out­side of the UK. There, I proud­ly wit­nessed the won­drous ‘Moth’, an in­tel­li­gent de­sign by Meil­ing us­ing the prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able ex­cel­lence. For this am­bi­tious CFE ini­tia­tive, part­nered with the sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­sul­tan­cy, Eco-Age, the for­mi­da­ble de­sign­er was paired with Do­mini­can ar­ti­san Vanes­sa Win­ston whose corset belt, in­tri­cate­ly dec­o­rat­ed with ham­mered but­ter­flies, matched or­gan­i­cal­ly with her co­conut-fi­bre wo­ven gown. I re­mem­ber ob­serv­ing the guests, from the world of art and fash­ion, be­com­ing en­am­oured by the hand-em­broi­dered gown of or­gandie, silk and leather, trans­par­ent­ly sheath­ing a pair of trousers made from up-cy­cled In­di­an fab­ric. In ad­di­tion to my own land­mark in­road at FIT, I was fur­ther con­sumed with na­tion­al pride and be­sot­ted with re­gion­al pres­tige.

Mes­sages of self love, self care, pre­serv­ing one’s peace and pro­tect­ing one’s space rip­pled across so­cial me­dia in 2018 in tsuna­mi-like waves. From skin care to med­i­ta­tion, trav­el, ad­ven­tures in­to na­ture, and every­thing in be­tween, this re­dis­cov­ery of self love and tak­ing care of one­self was the ul­ti­mate kum­baya. As I be­gan to nav­i­gate the whole con­cept of pre­serv­ing one’s space and peace, I re­alised that there is a down­side to a lot of what is be­ing preached.