Think Fast - Test your first-aid skills with this quiz

1. If a child swallows poison, give liquids.
   
2. Put ice on a burn.
   
3. Place a knocked-out tooth in milk.
   
4. Only cuts longer than 2.5cm need stitches.
   
5. Leave a chocking person as is.

Answers

1. False. Call a doctor or hospital emergency instantly. Experts there can tell you whether to induce vomiting, give liquids, or stop worrying.
   
2. False. Ice reduces blood flow, which can slow healing, "It also hurts like hell," says David Vukich at the American College of Emergency Physicians. Instead, run cool water on the burn for at least ten minutes. Then look at the spot: If it's blistered or charred, go to a hospital.
   
3. True. Milk's minerals and consistency closely match the environment in your mouth. To have a good chance of saving the tooth, get to a dentist within 45 minutes.
   
4. False. A cut can be short but deep and still require attention. If you can see into the cut or if bleeding doesn't stop after 15 minutes of applying direct pressure, call a doctor.
   
5. True. But only if the person can speak or is coughing. If he isn't, he's not breathing. Call a doctor and perform the Heimlich manoeuvre: Link your arms slightly above his navel and pull up sharply.

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How to be more commanding

All set to confront, negotiate, or impress? Take care! These top ten distracting behaviours can cost you the upper hand:

• Touching your hair
  
• Licking your lips
  
• Playing with rubber bands or paper clips
  
• Twirling your moustache
  
• Drumming your fingers
  
• Clicking pens
  
• Biting your fingernails
  
• Tapping your feet
  
• Picking your teeth
  
• Repeatedly adjusting your glasses.

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A Real Heel

Women, you're not doing your legs any favours by wearing those fashionable wide-heeled shoes instead of stiletto pumps, according to Harvard researchers. Using a barefoot stride for comparison, the researchers recorded the jump in knee stress as 20 women walked in shoes. Heels at least five centimeters tall -- regardless of width -- boosted pressure by about 24%. The doctors say you're better off sticking with flats. » Continue reading

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Pet Poison Control

To prevent a life-threatening situation for your pet, be aware of these common house-hold hazards:

• Chocolate. In dogs, it can cause irregular heartbeat and seizures. Just 85 grams of chocolate can even kill a 10-kilo dog. Other paws-off foods: onions, onion powder, yeast dough and mouldy foods.
  
• Plants. For dogs and cats, ingesting common plants can cause depression, tremors, even death. Among poisonous plants -- both indoor and outdoor varieties -- are castor bean (seeds), sago palm, dieffenbachia, rhododendron, azalea, oleander, hyacinth, lily and tulip. Also read Pets are at risk outside too for the symptoms of consuming poisonous outdoor plants.
  
• Chemicals. Cleaning agents, lawn chemicals, rat poisons and automotive products should be kept completely out of reach. Just one teaspoonful of automobile coolant could kill a cat; less than one tablespoon could be lethal to a 10 kilo dog.
  
• Medications. Administer pet medicines exactly as prescribed. And keep your own medications safely away.

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Tired? Water Works

Fatigue is an early sign of mild dehydration, according to experts. Staying on top of your liquid intake will keep you fresh. Though you can get a third to a half of your daily water needs from food, you still require eight-plus cups of fluid to feel right. Make sure at least five of them are water, say experts, and add a cup every time you down diuretics -- beverages that drain body fluids -- like coffee or liquor.

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Breakup Predictors

Want to know if a relationship will last? Ask the woman's friends. According to Christopher R. Agnew of Purdue University, USA, they're particularly astute. His team studied 74 couples and their friends. All were asked to judge the couple's commitment. Her friends proved better at predicting outcome than anyone, including couples themselves. » Continue reading

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Healing Power of Forgiveness

Forgive and forget. Most of us find the forgetting easier, but maybe we should work on the forgiving part. "Holding on to hurts and nursing grudges wears you down physically and emotionally," says Stanford University psychologist Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good. "Forgiving someone can be a powerful antidote."

In a recent study, Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, an assistant professor of psychology in Michigan, USA, and colleagues asked 71 volunteers to remember a past hurt. Tests recorded steep increases in blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tension -- the same responses that occur when people are angry. (Research has linked anger and heart disease.) When the researchers asked volunteers to imagine empathizing and even forgiving the people who had wronged them, they remained calm by comparison.

What's more, forgiveness can be learnt, insists Luskin, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project. "We teach people to rewrite their story in their minds, to change from victim to hero. If the hurt is from a spouse's infidelity, we might encourage them to think of themselves not only as a person who was cheated on, but as the person who tried to keep the marriage together."

Two years ago Luskin put his method to the test on five women from Northern Ireland whose sons had been murdered. After undergoing a week of forgiveness training, the women's sense of hurt, measured using psychological test, had fallen by more than half. They were also much less likely to feel depressed and angry. "Forgiving isn't about condoning what happened," says Luskin. "It's about breaking free of the person who wronged us."

The early signs that forgiving improves overall health are promising: In 2001 a survey of 1423 adults by the University of Michigan's Institute for social research found that people who had forgiven someone in their past also reported being in better health than those who hadn't.

However: While 75 percent said they were sure God had forgiven them for past mistakes, only 52 percent had been able to find it in their hearts to forgive other. Forgiveness, it seems, is still divine.

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Healing Power of Laughter

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