Beat Depression By Eating - Reading Comprehension

 “Better diet quality, no matter which way you measure it, is associated with an approximate 30% reduction in the risk for depression,” says Felice Jacka, PhD, director of the Food and Mood Centre at Deakin University in Australia and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research. She’s also written a book on the subject, Brain Changer: The Good Mental Health Diet.

In September, an analysis of 26 previous studies found that psychiatry, along with following a Mediterranean diet full of green vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, olive oil, and seafood could ease symptoms of depression. It also found that people who ate more meat, dairy, and processed foods had a higher risk of becoming depressed. Of the 26 studies included, only a handful showed no relation between diet and mental health. And a small randomized controlled trial, published a few weeks ago, found that college students with symptoms of depression saw their mood improve in just 3 weeks on a similar diet. That type of trial is considered the “gold standard” among researchers.

But before you toss your antidepressant and run to the nearest farmers market: None of this research suggests that diet alone can cure or prevent depression. The idea is that improving your diet gives you a strong foundation for healing, no matter what other treatments you may try.

Keto for Severe Cases?
Not everybody is sold on the merits of the Mediterranean diet for fighting depression, or at least not for depression that hasn’t responded to other treatments. Chris Palmer, MD, is director of the Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA, and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “The evidence that we can effectively treat patients with clinical depression with dietary intervention is marginal at best,” he says. “Part of it is that these are really difficult things to study, because you can tell a patient to eat more fruits and vegetables, eat less junk food, but actually understanding what they're eating is almost impossible -- we can’t know what they really did.”

None of this research suggests that diet alone can cure or prevent depression. The idea is that improving your diet gives you a strong foundation for healing, no matter what other treatments you may try. 

What Should You Eat?
If you want to make a change today, without medical supervision, Jacka and Ramsey encourage people to eat more plant-based foods in general -- leafy greens and other vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts and seeds, whole grains -- along with healthy fats, seafood, and lean animal protein. In other words, eat many of the same foods you’ll see on almost any “healthy” diet program. To support your gut health, Ramsey also recommends fermented foods like pickles and sauerkraut.

“The simple message is that a healthy diet is important for brain and mental health, just as it is for physical health,” says Jacka. “Unlike many other factors in our lives that may predispose us to depression, we have a choice over what we eat. All the evidence we have now tells us that a healthy diet can both prevent and treat depression and may be important for other aspects of brain health, such as dementia. This is true for people across the lifespan -- even very young children.”

And if you do decide to adjust your diet, you don’t have to make sweeping, extreme changes. Adding more leafy greens and seafood could make a good start. “I’ve found that eating better, even when it’s not 100% of the time, it does make a difference,” says McCarthy. “There’s a happiness factor.”

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Reading Comprehension

Q1. Diets rich in leafy greens and seafood help manage your moods?
a. Research doesn’t know
b. Research points to yes
c. Research points to no

Q2. What field of science focuses on how your diet affects your mental health?
a. Psychiatry
b. Nutritional psychiatry
c. Biology

Q3. What makes 30% reduction in the risk for depression?
a. Medicines
b. Meat
c. Better diet quality
d. None of the above

Q4. How many previous studies found green vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, olive oil, and seafood could ease symptoms of depression?
a. 20
b. 30
c. 26.
d. 16.

Q5. What makes people at higher risk of becoming depressed?
a. Smoking
b. Vegetable
c. Meat
d. None of the above

Q6. Can diet alone cure or prevent depression?
a. Yes.
b. No.
c. Maybe.
d. Sometimes.

Editable Worksheet for Teachers:
Click here to download above Reading Passage and Questions;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wzVn1X-nvNwcMqDXli8eBYG25ONl-uYn/view?usp=sharing

Reference:
(https://www.webmd.com/depression/news/20191202/can-you-eat-to-beat-depression)

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Food Related Vocabulary

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Family Related Vocabulary

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Important Adverbs With Their Meaning

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Common Words in BBA, B.com, MBA, M.com

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Idioms for class 9th and 10th

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How Money Began - Comprehension IELTS 5

Paragraph-1
Picture a large picture large, open space a small group of people suddenly appear, lay down some food and an axe and some people simple clothing. Soon another group appear, inspect the goods, take some of them, and offer others in exchange - some chickens, perhaps some knives and a sack of corn. What is happening is the very early form of buying and selling, in other words the process known as 'bartering'.

Paragraph-2
In effect, this early system of buying and selling went on for a very long time effect before money as we know it appeared. Of course, bartering seems laborious compared to the convenience of coins and notes for buying things. But often this simple form of trading relied on something that had a common value for everyone. In many ancient communities this came in the form of cattle. A warrior's armour could be worth a hundred oxen, or even human beings, principally those who were employed as servants, could be valued in terms of cattle. One servant might be priced at four oxen.

Paragraph-3
Moreover, cattle were easily movable, and had practical worth; they meant food or the ability to work the land. In some communities, horses came to be seen as a form of money, especially in wild, open country where they represented the only method of travel. Until quite recently, for people living in the vast, lonely plains of southern Russia, the number and quality of the horses they owned decided how wealthy they were. Their necessity as a means of travel gave them all the value that other people came to calculate later in terms of coins and notes.

Paragraph-4
Yet the system of bartering could not last forever. As communities grew and developed, the greater the variety of goods there was for bartering. So it became more and more difficult to decide what one thing was worth compared with another. In a world without money, how do you work out how many apples you need to get something like a pair of boots or a cloak? Eventually, a very basic form of money appeared, often things such as knives, swords or axe-heads , made in a small size. Being fashioned out of metal, they had a special value, since it required a great deal of labour to extract metal from the earth.

Paragraph-5
However, a currency emerged which would remain popular for a very long time and over a wide area, and that was the cowrie shell. His shell is a small oval shape, and home to a small shellfish. The fact that it varies in size from just over a centimeter to 9 or 10 centimeters made it an ideal type of ‘coin’. The bigger the cowrie shell, the greater its buying power.

Paragraph-6
For hundreds of years, cowrie shells were shipped abroad from one source, namely the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, to countries in Africa and the Middle and Far East. Nut the numbers of shells reaching these distant countries were small, and because they were scarce, their power to purchase things increased. Cowrie shells were easy to handle and count up in contrast to the more cumbersome metal implements such as axe-heads and swords, no matter how small their size. What made a cowrie shells a unique form of currency was that they defied any sort of imitation, and imitation was later to threaten the early use of metal coins.

Paragraph-7
Inevitably, though, the cowrie shell began to lose its value, as increased amounts were shipped abroad not only from the Maldives, but elsewhere. Thousands and tons of cowries were sent to Africa alone and this vast quantity meant that their value as money was seriously diminished. Yet right upto the middle of the 20th century the cowrie shell was still used as money in parts of West and East Africa, and little children would hunt for lost cowries on market days, hoping to find enough of them to buy a small toy or something to eat.


Paragraph-8
One country was quietly developing a system of metal coinage long before other ancient communities and that was China. As early as the 12th century BC the Chinese were making coins. Admittedly they were made of cheap metals, but the state guaranteed their value, and made sure that the coins conformed to a recognized shape and design. Each of these coins had a hole bored in it, so that they could be strung together. Since most of them carried a low value, extremely large quantities would be required in everyday trading. The emergence of this new money encouraged an increased in merchants and traders, who in turn ensured that this use of coins would continue to flourish.

Paragraph-9
There was another form of money, too, which China was the first to develop. Although silver or gold could be used when large purchases were involved, these precious metals had to be weighed out in precise amounts, not counted as coins were. To avoid the elaborate procedure of weighing, China developed a substitute form of payment – the banknote. These pieces of paper first appeared in general use in the 9th century A.D.  and thereafter found a permanent place in Chinese money. They were issued under the authority of the state, and carried a value equal to a specific number of the metal coins. But it was the guarantee of the state as to the value of these notes that mattered. In fact, the system proved so successful that such banknotes have remained in use throughout the Chinese history. Other countries did not turn to this idea for another six hundred years. When we hand a banknote across the counter of some shop or at a market stall, it is worth remembering that the Chinese invented such a convenient form of money.  

Paragraph-10
Later on, other countries were to follow the lead of China and produce metal coins. In Eastern Europe gold and silver were mined in significant quantities and in the leading cities coins were fashioned from these precious metals. Their value earned them a widespread reputation as money worth acquiring in turn their production by the leading cities of Eastern Europe meant that these cities flourished as the most successful trading centers of their time.

Paragraph -11
So the foundations of our modern money system were laid, first by China with its simple metal coinage and useful banknotes, and then by the European cities with their gold and silver coinage. For over two thousand years, coins made of silver or gold or of bronze – for small sums – became the means of payment in more than 80 communities. But gradually cheap imitations would circulate, made of worthless materials and this undermined the value of the real coins. In addition, people began to chip off some of the valuable metals of the coins. Governments were forced to call in all coins, melt them down and then re-issue them. To cover some of the expenses, less of the precious metals would be included in their production.

Paragraph-12
Gradually, coins in circulation lost their value in terms of the metal in them, and nowadays so-called silver coins are made not from silverbut from some cheaper copper based material. However, their buying power is determined by the government authorities, with an official mark stamped on them. Similarly, modern banknotes have this official guarantee as to their value. It seems that we have gone down the same road as the early money men of China. Cheap metal makes up modern coins, as it did in their day, and banknotes have followed the pattern that appeared early in China.

Reading Comprehension

1.       What does the author believe was the major disadvantage of bartering?

2.       Why did metal objects acquire a ‘special value’ as money? Explain in your own words.

3.       Summarize the given passage in 100-150 words.

4.      Which process is known as bartering?
a)      Process of copying
b)      Process of exchange
c)       Process of creating
d)      Process of skipping

5.      Pick the right synonym for the word ‘laborious’.
a)      Difficult
b)      Endearment
c)       Ample
d)      Easy

6.       In open countries, what was considered as the only method of travelling?
a)      Horses
b)      Bugs
c)       Cars
d)      None of the above

7.     Why bartering couldn’t last forever?
a)      It became difficult to determine the value of the goods.
b)      Bartering was not a long term solution
c)       It diminish the value of things
d)      The needs were increasing

8.     Which was the first currency and remain for a long time?
a)      Cowrie shell
b)      Metal coins
c)       Body parts
d)      None of the above

9.     Why did the cowrie shell lose its value?
a)      The export of the cowrie shell increases
b)      The import of the cowrie shell increases
c)       The metal coins replaced the cowrie shell
d)      None of the above

10.  When did Chinese start using the banknote for the first time?
a)      12th Century
b)      20th Century
c)       9th Century
d)      None of the above

Editable Worksheet for Teachers:
Click here to download above Reading Passage and Questions;
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-sc_uiMW0Mhp45Nv-bl1jGgPdOzn1yui

Reference:
(Reference: GCE O Level Exam Paper November 2003, Paper-2)

(MCQ prepared by Mahrukh Fatima)

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Commonly used Medical Abbreviations

What is the vocabulary? and why is it important. Click here to read it.

Everyone visits hospitals and physicians use different abbreviations in the prescription. Not everyone understands them. There comes a list their original meaning.

Abbreviations	Full forms
ALS	advanced life support
Bx	biopsy
b.i.d.	twice a day (from Latin bis in die)
BP	blood pressure
BR	bedrest
CAT / CT	computed tomography
CCU	coronary care unit
CTU	cancer treatment unit
CFS	chronic fatigue syndrome
C/O or c/o	complains of...
CPE	cardiogenic pulmonary edema
CRF	chronic renal failure
CRTx	chemoradiotherapy
C/S	Caesarean section
CSR	cumulative survival rate
CT c/a/p	CT scan of chest, abdomen, and pelvis
CXR	chest x-ray (chest radiograph)
DS	diagnosis
D/O	died of, disorder
DOB	Date of birth
DOH	Department of Health
ECG	electrocardiogram
ECHO	enteric cytopathic human orphan virus
ECP	emergency care practitioner
ED	emergency department
ER	emergency room
ESR	erythrocyte sedimentation rate
ENT	Ear nose and throat
Fx	fracture
F/C/S	fevers and/or chills and/or sweating
FP	Family Planning
Hx	history
H/A	headache
HIV	human immunodeficiency virus
h.s.	at bedtime (from Latin hora somni)
Int	Internal
IR	insulin resistance
IV	intravenous
Ix	Investigation(s)
Lytes	electrolytes
Mod	moderate
Na	sodium (from Latin natrium)
NAD	no abnormality detected
NB	newborn
NCS	nerve conduction study
NED	No evidence of disease
NLP	no light perception (highest degree of blindness)
Non rep.	do not repeat
OB-GYN	obstetrics and gynecology
OD	overdose
Od	every day (from Latin omni die)
PMD	primary medical doctor
q6h	once every 6 hours
q.n.	every night
q.i.d.	four times each day
RXN	Reaction
Sz	seizure
SXR	skull x-ray
Tx	Treatment
Txp	transport (by ambulance)
XRT	radiotherapy used in cancer treatment
y/o	years old

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