7 Essential Facts about Postpartum Depression

It’s the season of rains, chilly winds, heavy downpours and excess humidity. While stepping out for work and other social commitments one is bound to get occasionally wet, or drenched, and may walk through flooded areas at times. Our immunity levels are low during this season making us prone to diseases. The humid environment also helps infectious diseases thrive and spread easily. Let’s make our food our first medicine and take preventative measures to avoid the common monsoon illnesses.

Here are some tips to make your diet a monsoon friendly one:

1. Include garlic, pepper, ginger, asafoetida, jeera powder, turmeric and coriander in food as it help enhance digestion and improve immunity. Use it liberally in warm dals and piping hot soups. It gives your body the much needed warmth and helps fight infections.
2. Avoid having vegetables in raw form. Instead of raw salads and sprouts steam them before consumption. Wash all vegetables thoroughly as they may contain worms.
3. Choose curd over milk. Instead of milk, prefer to have curd or yogurt as it avoids any possibility of bad bacteria entering the body.
4. Eat Seasonal Fruits like apples, jamuns, litchi, plums, cherries, peaches, papayas, pears and pomegranates. They are the best additions to your diet and help improve the immune system.
5. Have a glass of turmeric milk daily. Turmeric is not only a great antibiotic but is also known to have anti-inflammatory and healing properties which can really help in reducing inflammation in the digestive system.
6. Avoid all kinds of street foods completely. Most of these foods are prepared and sold in the open and come in direct contact with disease causing bacteria’s and thus increase your chances of falling sick.
7. Have medium to low salt food and avoid heavy salty food as they may cause high blood pressure and promote bloating and water retention.
8. Limit your meat intake. It is advisable to avoid as much as non-vegetarian food as possible due to the possible spread of bacteria. Instead of heavy curry dishes of meat prefer soups and stew.
9. Maintain the highest levels of personal hygiene this season. Wash your hands frequently with soap as most of the bacteria enter your body through mouth and nose.
10. Drink a good quantity of water. Do not cut down your water intake as summer is over. Lack of water makes you vulnerable to a number of infections and diseases. Water helps flush out toxins from your body. Have only boiled water during the monsoon and carry your own water when you step outdoors.
    Follow the above mentioned healthy diet suggestions and enjoy the beautiful monsoon season. In case of any symptoms of high fever or rashes or joint pain which maybe malaria, dengue or chikungunya consult a doctor immediately.

Day 1 – Practice day

We managed a much more relaxed breakfast this morning as it seems all the Para Games staff have left the hotel. After a small breakfast and relaxing in their rooms, the team headed off to the main arena for the first practice session in what was supposed to be tournament conditions. As it turned out the AC’s weren’t set at the tournament setting so that expectation wasn’t filled, but all in all it was great for Saina to get a good session in on the tournament surface, in the main arena.

All of the Indian contingent had a good session on the courts, and if practice is anything to go by I think we should she some strong runs this week. Saina is moving nicely and has no real complaints, the usual minor irritations that are part of a professional athletes life, but nothing we shouldn’t be able to work with his week. We just need to get on a bit of a run to build some momentum.

After practice the rest of the day was resting as the schedule only comes out the evening before play – so we don’t want to be hitting the gym with less that 12-18hours to recover. Any sessions during tournament weeks are tailored to fit into the schedule, and always lighter than normal, but you still don’t want to go into a gym session not knowing wether you are on court in either 12 hours or 20 hours. Eight hours recovery can make a big difference at the sharp end of professional sport!

We went out for a good meal at the local mall, which is perfect – has everything we could ask for. Badminton is obviously huge here in Indonesia as literally everyone recognizes Saina and wants a selfie (even more so than Malaysia last week). I’ve joked that we should get her a wig and glasses so she can walk through the mall in peace but she assures me she doesn’t mind at all and completely understands that the supporters mean well. I’m not sure I would have her patience, but I suppose she’s had more practice 🙂

Anyway, tomorrow is Round 1 for our half of the draw. Being an HSBC 1000 event there is no qualifying, only 32 entrants so round 1 is split over Tuesday and Wednesday. We’re off at around 6 pm so expecting tomorrow to be pretty relaxed too, with a possible light gym session in the morning.

Day 0 – Practice Day

We arrived earlier than normal as we weren’t around for the weekend last week in Malaysia. Silver lining is that we’ve had more time to acclimatise.

Unlike last week, when we couldn’t get onto the practice courts until late on Sunday and then only onto the match courts until 11pm the night before the first round, we were able to get onto the practice courts early this afternoon and have the match courts booked for tomorrow morning.

Another plus this week is the proximity of the hotel to the arena and practice facility – we’re a 5minute bus ride from everything. With the Asian Games around the corner the city has had a major facelift, and the areas around the main stadium and arenas has been well renovated, including the hotels.

This morning after a manic breakfast (the Asian Para Games teams and staff, players and staff attending an ITF tournament in Jakarta, as well as all the normal guests, are all in the same hotel as us), we did a good session in the gym and then had a good quality 50 minute practice session later.

Saina is feeling good after one or two complaints last week, so we’re hoping to get a bit of momentum in the next couple of days to hopefully carry us through to the weekend.

Tomorrow is the first official practice day, so we’ll be in the main arena.

Until then…

Day 4 – Round 2 vs Akane Yamaguchi

We found out late last night that Saina would be first out on court 1. Fortunately everyone had a decent sleep as we only had to be on the 11am bus. After a good breakfast we were on the bus to the stadium, which fortunately didn’t get lost this time.

The normal routine went well and all in all there was no sign that things wouldn’t go Saina’s way today. Unfortunately, the beauty of sport is the unpredictable nature of physical competition. Today we were on the wrong side of that competition as things just didn’t seems to land for Saina. All the narrow calls and shuttles on the line went to the Japanese no. 2 ranked player.

Every loss is very disappointing, but as I said, that is sport. No-one can win everything. All you can do is move forward. So tomorrow we start again in preparation for Jakarta next week. Wipe the slate clean and focus on the next game.

I’ll hopefully be writing with more success next week.

Until then…