Dheeraj Kumar death: Know causes, symptoms & risks of acute pneumonia
Veteran actor and producer Dheeraj Kumar, known for his contributions to both film and television, passed away at 79 due to acute pneumonia. He was hospitalised in Mumbai following breathing issues and placed on ventilator support. Kumar's career spanned decades, including roles in Punjabi and Hindi films, and he founded Creative Eye, a production house famous for mythological shows.
Agencies Dheeraj Kumar died of acute pnemonia Veteran actor and television producer Dheeraj Kumar passed away on Tuesday aged 79. He was reportedly battling acute pneumonia and had been hospitalised at Mumbai's Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital. According to reports, he was admitted earlier this week following severe breathing issues and had been placed on ventilator support in the ICU. Kumar started his career in the entertainment industry in 1965, leaving a lasting imprint on both film and television platforms. Between 1970 and 1984, he appeared in 21 Punjabi films before founding Creative Eye, a production house celebrated for its spiritual and mythological shows like Om Namah Shivay. He also featured in several acclaimed Hindi films, including Swami, Heera Panna, and Raaton Ka Raja.Pneumonia is a lung infection caused by bacteria, viruses, or fungi. It leads to the lung tissue being damaged and filled with fluid or pus. According to doctors, bacterial pneumonia is usually more severe than viral pneumonia, which often resolves on its own.
According to doctors, pneumonia develops when the immune system begins to attack an infection in the small sacs of the lungs, known as alveoli. It then causes the lungs to inflame and leak fluids. Many bacteria, viruses, and fungi cause infections that lead to pneumonia. According to experts, bacteria are the most common cause in adults, and viruses are the most common cause in small children.A few common illnesses that lead to pneumonia are:
Common cold, also known as rhinovirus
COVID-19
Influenza virus, or flu
Human parainfluenza virus, or HPIV
Legionnaires' disease
Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria
Pneumococcal disease
Pneumocystis pneumonia
Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV Pneumonia is not contagious in itself, but the bacteria and viruses that cause it are.
The bacteria that most commonly cause pneumonia, treptococcus pneumoniae , can be spread from person to person by touching infected surfaces or through coughing and sneezing. Further, pneumonia caused by fungi is not contagious. Fungal infections are not spread from person to person like viruses and bacteria.Doctors say you are at a high risk for pneumonia if you:
Are over the age of 65 or under the age of 2 years.
Are living with a lung or heart condition like cystic fibrosis, asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Are living with a neurological condition like dementia or Parkinson's that makes swallowing difficult.
Are in the hospital or at a long-term care facility.
Smoke.
Are pregnant.
Have a weak immune system. Symptoms of pneumonia depend on the cause, and they range from mild to severe. A few common ones include:
High fever, up to 105 F or 40.55 C
Cough with yellow, green, or bloody mucus
Tiredness and fatigue
Rapid and shallow breathing
Breathlessness
Rapid heart rate
Sweating or chills
Chest or abdominal pain
Loss of appetite
Bluish skin, lips, or nails
Confusion or altered mental state
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
12 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Stalin discharged from hospital
Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin was discharged from the city's Apollo Hospital on Sunday evening a week after he was admitted to the hospital. Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin was discharged from the city's Apollo Hospital on Sunday evening a week after he was admitted to the hospital (File photo) The chief minister, 'has been declared fit for discharge, after successfully recovering from the therapeutic procedure done by an expert team under Dr G Sengottuvelu,' the hospital said in a statement released at 5.20 pm following which the government released videos of Stalin walking out of the hospital. Dr BG Anil, director medical services, in the statement added that Stalin has been 'advised to resume his normal routine after three days.' Stalin has been working from the hospital during the past week. His cabinet ministers have been holding discussions with him at the hospital and via video conferencing. Stalin was admitted to the hospital on July 21 morning complaining of 'mild giddiness'. On July 24, the hospital said in its health bulletin that investigations revealed that symptoms of mild giddiness were due to 'variations in heart rate.' Based on interventional cardiologist Dr G Sengottuvelu's opinion, the chief minister underwent a therapeutic procedure to 'correct these variations…The diagnostic Angiogram done today was normal,' the hospital said on July 24 afternoon. After returning home, Stalin in a post on X, thanked all political leaders and others for wishing him well during his hospital stay. 'To the doctors, nurses, and everyone who provided excellent treatment and supported my swift recovery in the hospital -- once again, my love and gratitude. I will forever continue my duty to serve you with dedication,' Stalin said. On Sunday morning, Stalin tweeted a wish for Uddhav Thackeray's birthday and urged him to continue his 'bold resistance to Hindi imposition' and defend federalism.
New Indian Express
2 days ago
- New Indian Express
No pricking business: BITS Hyderabad develops smartwatch-based wearable for blood glucose reading
HYDERABAD: With an aim to offer a non-invasive, painless, low-cost alternative to conventional testing methods of glucose levels in the body, a BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus student and his mentor developed a smartwatch-based wearable diagnostic platform that would use sweat to measure the sugar readings. The research for platform which was developed by the co-founders Abhishek Kumar, a PhD scholar and Prof. Sanket Goel-Principal Investigator, is being translated toward commercialisation through Cleome Innovation, a spin-off from the MEMS (Microfluidics and Nanoelectronics Lab) of the BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus. The Startup is working to bring the wearable device to the healthcare market for proactive diabetes management, Abhishek Kumar said. "In my family, even around, I have seen diabetes patients. My father, my grandfather, my grandmother, many people are diabetes patients. So I used to test them using that finger prick method ( to draw blood for glucometer). And I literally sometimes used to feel their pain," Kumar told PTI when asked why he chose to innovate the non-invasive method. One of the most significant features of the platform is its cost-effectiveness and the team deliberately engineered the platform to be scalable, low-cost, and reliable. Each component has been selected to minimize cost while maintaining performance, said Abhishek Kumar. The wearable can detect, not only glucose levels, but also uric acid and lactate which are also important metabolic parameters, the research scholar said. According to him, as per the sample which they tested it has achieved a good accuracy of around 97 to 98 percent currently. Kumar said after clinical validation of the product , it would be submitted for regulatory approvals before going into commercialization. "The first trials may start in six months from now. So altogether it may take one year to get into commercial production," he added. This work is a significant improvisation from a turnkey, fully automated, self-testing diagnostic platform capable of detecting key diabetes-related biomarkers, but from urine and sweat samples, offering a painless, low-cost alternative to conventional testing methods. The study has been recently published in the Lab on a Chip journal by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), prof Goel said. Looking forward, the research team is working on translating the system into wearable formats, such as patch-based or flexible skin sensors, to enable continuous and real-time monitoring of multiple analytes, a step toward personalized, on-the-go health tracking, the professor further said. "Diabetes isn't just about glucose; complications can arise silently and early. By monitoring additional markers like lactate and uric acid, we gain a more complete picture of a patient's metabolic condition. Our system does this non-invasively, affordably, and in real time without requiring blood samples. Costing around Rs 2,500, the device continuously delivers results and is designed not just to replace finger-prick tests, but to enable broader metabolic monitoring using simple biofluids like sweat," said Prof. Goel. The team is anticipating working with the industry for technology transfer or enhancing, he added.
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Indian Express
The fault in our salt: The condiment's cultural pull in India — and why it comes at a cost to public health
In one of Hindi cinema's most iconic scenes, Kalia in Sholay swears by a pinch of salt — 'Sardaar, maine aapka namak khaaya hai' — as he pledges his loyalty to Gabbar. The ubiquitous grainy white condiment failed to save his life and in the 50 years since, a shift in consumption patterns and lifestyles has seen salt slowly eating away at Indians' health. While the permissible amount of salt consumption, as prescribed by the World Health Organisation, is 5 gm a day per person (2,000 mg of sodium or about a teaspoon of salt), several studies have pointed to how Indians consume more than double the amount, posing risks of hypertension, stroke and heart diseases. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Nutrition's (ICMR-NIN) 2024 Dietary Guidelines for Indians, existing evidence reveals a 'deleterious impact of high salt intake on blood vessels and blood pressure', which in turn can cause heart attack, stroke and/or kidney problems. High amounts of salt in the body results in water retention, which further increases the pressure on the heart to pump larger volumes of fluid, causing hypertension. The primary culprit, experts agree, is ultra-processed food. According to the NIN's Dietary Guidelines, processed foods such as 'snacks, savouries, soups, sauces, ketchup, salted butter, cheese, canned foods, papads, and salted dry fish, salted nuts/dry fruits contribute to higher intake of salt. Preserved meats/vegetables and ready-to-eat foods contain a lot of sodium'. Prompted by the 'alarming' salt consumption patterns, earlier this month, ICMR-NIE (the National Institute of Epidemiology) launched Project Namak, a three-year-long community-led programme that focuses on salt reduction in individuals with hypertension. Sharan Murali, senior scientist at ICMR-NIE and the principal investigator of Project Namak, says, 'Our research team evaluated the hypertension component of the NP-NCD (National Programme for Control and Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases) programme in 21 districts in the country and understood that 78 per cent of the individuals with hypertension who come for follow-up receive some counselling for behavioural change in the OPD. This opportunity may be used to counsel the individuals with hypertension on dietary salt reduction as an add-on along with the medications.' Over the last two decades, there have been several such studies, including those published in the Journal of Hypertension, Journal of the American Heart Association and Nutrients, among others, that point to high salt intake among Indians. According to India Salt Market Report and Forecast 2025-2034 by Claight Corporation published this year, the India salt market reached around USD 2.32 billion in 2024. The market is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 6.20% between 2025 and 2034, reaching almost USD 4.23 billion by 2034. With experts also warning against too little salt — Dr Vivekanand Jha of the George Institute of Global Health says 'physiologically, at least 500 mg of sodium is compatible with good health' — how does one strike a balance with something as ubiquitous as salt? Historians say that the earliest evidence of salt production in India can be traced to the Indus Valley Civilization, although consumption would date even further back, 'particularly 11,000 years ago or a little later when they realised that they need to add salt to their diet,' notes Kurush Dalal, archaeologist and culinary anthropologist. 'Salt is indispensable to all mammals. As a rule, hunter gatherers used to get all the salt they needed from the food they ate. They didn't need to add anything at all. It's only when we became farmers that we started adding salt,' he says. 'On every continent', notes Mark Kurlansky in his book Salt: A World History, 'once human beings began cultivating crops, they began to look for salt to add to their diet. How they learned of this need is a mystery… however, most people choose to eat far more salt than they need, and perhaps this urge — the simple fact that we like the taste of salt — is a natural defense.' With that, salt became one of the most valuable commodities of trade. Kurlansky notes, 'Where people ate a diet consisting largely of grains and vegetables, supplemented by the meat of slaughtered domestic farm animals, procuring salt became a necessity of life, giving it great symbolic importance and economic value. Salt was one of the first international commodities of trade; its production was one of the first industries and, inevitably, the first state monopoly.' In India, salt holds a deeply symbolic value given how Mahatma Gandhi shook an empire with a fistful of salt with his Salt Satyagraha. While the origins of salt consumption are global, Indians took to salt more organically. In the absence of any recorded evidence, SubbaRao M Gavaravarapu, scientist and Head of Nutrition Information, Communication and Health Education at NIN, cites 'traditional knowledge' to explain Indians' tendency to consume higher amounts of salt. 'We are a tropical nation and many of our people would work outdoors and perhaps to compensate for the sodium loss through sweat, sodium was incorporated through food,' he says. To understand the detrimental effect of this condiment, however, it is important to know that salt (NaCl, with sodium and chloride ions in a 1:1 ratio) is only as harmful as its sodium content. And that, given our shifting eating patterns, sodium comes from more than just the salt we consume. While, as the NIN guidelines say, 'a major amount of sodium does come from the visible addition of salt', there are also innocuous ways sodium makes its way into our bloodstream. For instance, there is sodium bicarbonate or baking soda, the indispensable ingredient in bakery products. There's also monosodium glutamate or MSG which gives food its umami or savoury flavour and is commonly present in canned food. Then there's sodium nitrite, which is commonly used by commercial meat processing units to preserve meat, and sodium benzoate, which gives acidic foods and beverages such as colas, soft drinks, pickles, salad dressings and jams and preserves their shelf life. And for those into carbonated drinks such as diet soda, there's sodium saccharin to reckon with — all of which add to our sodium intake without any real addition of salt itself or table salt as we know it. Food critic and historian Pushpesh Pant reiterates the need for broadening the understanding of salt to manage one's sodium consumption. 'In Sanskrit, the word for salt is lavana, which does not necessarily mean sodium chloride, which we know as table salt. It could mean potassium chloride, sodium bicarbonate. It could be anything which is alkali,' he says. Khar, the alkali ash that is commonly used in food in the Northeast, is sodium carbonate, he explains. Experts broadly agree that among the easiest ways to combat this excessive supply of sodium to our bodies is to consume less table salt — and achieve a better balance of flavours. In his seminal 1998 work, A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, the late food historian K T Achaya notes that there are six 'pure' tastes: madhura (sweet), amla (sour), lavana (salty), katu (pungent), tikta (bitter) and kasaya (astringent). 'Every meal was expected to include all the six tastes, and in the order just listed, according to Sushrutha (ancient Indian physician and doctor),' the book says. Traditionally, the use of salt in cooking has been in tandem with the other five tastes, Pant explains, while saying that different regional cuisines in India have their own equation with salt. 'If you are a coastal person, most of your salt would come from sea water fish. The pungency of mustard oil, which is used generously in Bengali cuisine, ensures a limited requirement of salt…Now, if you are a Maratha living away from the coast line, and you are eating millets, which are not very palatable on their own, you will increase the levels of salt and chillies. Or if you are having preserved foods like papad or bari, salt content is higher,' Pant says. Concerns of excessive salt intake and its detrimental effects on public health have prompted a host of studies and small-scale interventions to produce 'low-sodium' salt. This involves replacing a part of the sodium in sodium chloride with other additives, primarily potassium. But so far, these experiments haven't achieved the required scale in India. 'The concern in salt is the sodium. To reduce sodium, other kinds of salts are added. Mostly, it is replaced with potassium but there are issues with low-sodium salts — it is expensive and its supply is short,' says NIN's Gavaravarapu. The practice of adding potassium to packaged common salt, however, is yet to take off on a mass scale in the country given the lack of India-specific studies and with little clarity around its potential benefits or perceived risks. Dr K Srinath Reddy, founder president of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) who formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at AIIMS, says that following initial trials across the world, where part of the sodium in salt was replaced with either potassium or magnesium, there were concerns over whether it could 'cause harm to people with reduced renal and kidney function'. 'Potassium is a bit corrosive, so we would have to use it in concentrations that won't damage the lining of the stomach and intestines. There were also concerns over whether low-sodium salt would cause hyperkalemia (excess potassium levels in the blood) in the elderly with renal function though there were successful trials in the US that said it was safe for them. But the findings weren't accepted because the trials were small,' Reddy says, while pointing to a study conducted in China by the George Institute for Global Health. With a 'fairly large' sample size of over 20,000 participants from 600 rural villages in five provinces in the country, the China Salt Substitute and Stroke Study (SSaSS), published in 2023 and conducted over five years, found that 'replacing salt with a reduced-sodium added-potassium 'salt substitute' significantly lowers the risk of stroke, heart disease, and death'. The institute has submitted a funding request to ICMR to conduct a similar study in India, said Dr Vivekananda Jha, Executive Director at The George Institute for Global Health, India. 'The study in China proves the point that lower than usual levels of dietary sodium can be tolerated without ill-effects, and a certain amount of potassium is required to balance the sodium. But whether that's going to become public policy in India, whether people are going to accept the altered tastes, we will have to see,' says Dr Reddy, emphasising that 'ideally', potassium, which negates the effects of sodium, should be consumed in the form of fruits and vegetables rich in the mineral. 'One can consume bananas and coconut water. But everybody may not be able to take all of it all through the year. So introducing a salt substitute like in the China trial is something we should maybe consider… Do some pilots to see what the response is, what the safety is, and what the popular acceptance is,' he adds. The last time a population-level health intervention in salt was carried out was in 1962, when common salt was fortified with iodine under the National Goitre Control Programme. Presently, all packaged salt sold in India, from common salt to rock salt, is iodised. NIN's Gavaravarapu flags another, largely behavioural, concern regarding low-sodium substitutes not being 'salty enough'. 'People think that because it is low-sodium, they can have more of it. Ideally, you should use it even less than usual so that the benefit of replacing it with potassium is passed on,' he says. While we wait for more research and consensus on reducing the sodium component in common salt, experts advocate the need to create awareness among consumers. Dr Reddy and NIN's Gavaravarapu reveal that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), a statutory body under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, is looking at the feasibility of 'front of the package labeling' that would explicitly warn customers of high levels of sugar, salt and trans fat, among others. 'If a package notes that it has so many grams per cent of fat or carbohydrate or trans fats, unless I have studied nutrition, I wouldn't understand any of it. That's why you require warning labels that communicate clearly and help people recognise there's a problem with the salt or sugar in the product,' says Dr Reddy. The UK and Ireland, for instance, follow a 'traffic light packaging' model, where red, amber and green colours are used to indicate the levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt in food products. Public health scientist and epidemiologist Dr Monika Arora says the country needs a behavioural change in terms of salt consumption. 'Salt can be reduced in the food served in schools, hospitals and government canteens, which are regulated places. The tongue and palate get adjusted to a gradual reduction. Midday meal is an excellent way of going about it. Another way is to tax high-salt products, making it an incentive for the industry to start reformulating their products,' she says. Celebrity chef and entrepreneur Sanjeev Kapoor says he realised the dangers of excess salt much before it became a talking point. 'When I dived deeper into healthier food options, I realised that it is not only sugar that is the culprit, but also salt,' he says. He also joined hands with the government to raise awareness about healthy food habits through FSSAI's 'Eat Right Movement' that focussed on 'reduction of high fat, sugar and salt foods in the diet'. 'We have to understand that taste is something that you get used to. Your palate gets trained. Salt is a flavour enhancer. If there is low salt in a dish, other flavours may also seem muted. But it also hides flavours. Which means if you add too much salt in a dish, the top note is of salt and you never experience the real flavour of other ingredients. If you want to use less salt, you can start by enhancing the flavour with other ingredients. Lemon works really well as do herbs like mint, coriander, basil and tulsi,' he says. While cutting down on salt may seem like hard work, Kapoor's new catchphrase may hold the key — around 20 years ago, while he started with 'Namak Swad Anusar (salt as per taste)', he now swears by 'Namak Sehat Anusar (salt as per health)'.
