Support Failure

If, like most women, you aren't wearing your bra right, you could be inviting more harm than an ugly decolletage.

It's one of the most intimate pieces of garments for women and has apparently been around since 2500 BC, yet studies have revealed that most women don't know how to wear the bra right. But an ill-fitting bra does more than spoil the look of the sexy outfit that you just bought, as a 16-year-old from Bandra discovered.

The teenager, complaining of a severe, constant, deep dull ache, traveling down her arm and extending to the back of her head, consulted Dr Raashi Khatri-Panjabi, founder of The Centre for Orofacial Pain India, Juhu and Kemps Corner. Various diagnostic tests were conducted and after all other factors were eliminated it was found that the bras this girl was wearing were to blame. 

While Indian women have never been known to understand how to wear this piece of lingerie well - Deekhsha Dadu, co-founder of strapsandstrings.com, an online lingerie-selling portal, says four out of five women who visit them wear the wrong size - a study conducted in Australia found that more than 80 per cent of the women there didn't get it right. Dr Khatri-Panjabi says, "Most women wear improperly fitted bras and this is a major contributor to shoulder/arm complaints; tension across the shoulders and neck, headaches, cervical spine problems and also lower back pain."

She adds that the ill-fitting, heavily padded bra that her teenaged patient would pick up put undue pressure on her trapezius muscles — a triangular muscle that extends from the base of the skull, across the back of the neck, upper shoulders all the way down the back to nearly the waist level. "The poorly-fitted bra can can cause problems ranging from a lower spinal pain to constant headaches," explains Dr Khatri-Panjabi.

She points out that most women wear ones that are unsuitable for the current needs of their body - the size and shape of the breast is known to change at least five times in a lifetime - and are ill-fitting. "In these cases, the positive effect of a bra on the body and breast tissue is completely lost and, quite the reverse, it becomes a potential health hazard," she adds.

Support yourself well

Head of the orthopaedics department at Parel's KEM Hospital, Dr Pradeep Bhosle says, "Tight straps contract the muscles and affect blood circulation. Because of this, you may experience tension across the shoulders and neck, headaches, cervical spine problems and back pain in the lower spinal region."

But if you thought these troubles were all that a tight bra could cause, there's more, Dr Mohan Thomas, the Medical Director of Bandra's Cosmetic Surgery Institute, says, "Women who suffer from acid reflux and heartburn should avoid tight bras, as they will aggravate these conditions. Also, their breathing is constricted since their backs and breasts are choked."

Colour them right

It's not just the back, a wrong bra can also give you skin problems, especially in the under-bust area. Dermatologist Dr Manohar Sobhani says, "A tight-fitting pushup bra puts pressure on your breasts, which causes red itchy bumps known as urticaria or hives."

The colour needs to be carefully chosen as well. Dr Sobhani says it's best to stick to pastel colors, as bright hues tend to be dyed, which, when stuck to the body can cause rash. "Synthetics fibers like nylon tend to cause fungal infection. Keeping Mumbai's hot and sultry climate in mind, it's best to stick to cotton bras."

And a last word from Dr Thomas for those who think a bra is meant to enhance the cleavage: "Creating cleavages by using push-ups is like wearing stilettos, which in the long run will cost you your health."

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG IF...

• The only things supporting your breasts are your straps.
  

• The straps and/or band dig into your body

• The band rides up your back

• Your breasts spill out of the underband/underwire when you raise your hand.

• You either have a double bubble - the flesh sticks out of your shoulders and back if it's a tight fit - or the fabric folds - which means that the cups are too big for you.

• You wear underwires during pregnancy as such bras are not suitable for growing breasts.

• The wires are digging in or sticking out. 

• They should nestle under your breastbone and sit comfortably next to your ribcage. 

• If they push against the ribcage, you may need a larger size.

What do men need?

A space to talk with peers and address the silence that surrounds their stress and mental health, say experts.

Earlier this month, British comedian Stephen Fry spoke of his suicidal impulses and bipolar disorder. "I am the victim of my own moods," Fry said in an interview, and admitted to attempting suicide last year.

"You may ask how is that someone who has it all would want to end it all. That's the point. There is no 'why'," Fry, also the president of UK-based mental health charity Mind, said. The 55-year-old actor's admission throws light on a neglected area of mental health - no one's asking if the average urban man is okay.

For 36-year-old financial consultant Rajiv Singh (name changed to protect identity), this silence nearly cost him his marriage of 12 years. Singh wed his college sweetheart and moved from New Delhi to Mumbai six years later. His work pressures increased as annual targets reached crores. He began to display traits of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), an anxiety disorder characterised by irrational fears and repetitive behaviour.

At one point, Singh worried that he had contracted an STD and underwent a blood test every month for nearly a year to confirm that he was safe. He refused to meet a therapist - no one knew what Singh or his wife was going through for more than a year-and-a-half. It was only when his wife told him that she wanted to end their marriage that Singh visited a psychiatrist to seek treatment, and was prescribed medication. He refused to visit a counsellor. "I can handle this," he said. The two-year silence had taken a toll on his wife, who slipped into clinical depression, but unlike him, chose to seek a counsellor's help.

Strong men can cry too

For Kenny D'Cruz, founder of a UK-based men's support group and active participant in the Men's Health Week held in the UK last week, Singh's assertion indicates a larger social issue - men aren't brought up to talk about their mental well being. To admit to a problem then is a sign of vulnerability and shame. "Men have a paranoia of abandonment and humiliation. They are used to internalising their emotions, as society doesn't 'allow' them to be ill or weak. As a result, mental health concerns of men are not caught fast enough."

Dr M Manjula, associate professor at the department of clinical psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, specialises in youth mental health would trace the imbalanc to 'gendered' upbringing. "To feel sad or scared is considered 'womanly'. The messages we give our boys - 'Why are you crying like a girl?', 'Be a man!' - only serve to increase father joined them nine months later, D'Cruz took it upon himself to look after his family. Before long he began to develop symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome with spontaneous, uncontrollable tics, depression, paranoia and eating disorders. "My mental health issues felt like my dirty secret," he says.

In 1999, he started Menspeak to create a space where men could talk. "I feel the way forward is talking. Telling the truth and moving on," adds D'Cruz, who will be visiting India to start a similar support group here.

Greater awareness needed in India

If reports are to be believed, such initiatives are needed in India, a country with more than two crore citizens in need of attention for mental health issues, 35 lakh in need of hospitalisation. In a recent article, a volunteer from suicide prevention helpline Samaritans Mumbai said of the 1,800 calls they received in 2011-12, 1,000 were from men.

But India has less than 3,500 registered psychiatrists in the country. Dr Soumitra Pathare, a Pune-based consultant psychiatrist and member of a policy group appointed by the Union health ministry to frame a national mental health policy, says that the need of the hour is to have a "buffet of services" that encompass peer support groups, district mental health centres, and more institutions.

"The two headline mental health issues that affect young men is a high rate of suicide and alcohol abuse." Peer support groups have worked wonders in both instances, Dr Pathare points out.

Vandana Gopikumar, founder of The Banyan, a Chennai-based mental health NGO, says she'd like to see more people engage with each other. "We're becoming increasingly 'I-me centric' and moving away from a culture that looked at itself as a community."

Closest Habitable Planets Revealed

Scientists have discovered a record breaking three potentially habitable planets in a triple star system that is just 22 light-years away from our solar system.

A team of astronomers has combined new observations of Gliese 667C with existing data from HARPS at ESO's 3.6-metre telescope in Chile, to reveal a system with at least six planets. A recordbreaking three of these planets are super-Earths lying in the zone around the star where liquid water could exist, making them possible candidates for the presence of life. This is the first system found with a fully packed habitable zone.

Gliese 667C is a very well-studied star. Just over one third of the mass of the Sun, it is part of a triple star system known as Gliese 667 (also referred to as GJ 667), 22 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). This is quite close to us - within the Sun's neighbourhood - and much closer than the star systems investigated using planethunting Kepler space telescope.

Previous studies of Gliese 667C had found that the star hosts three planets (eso0939, eso1214) with one of them in the habitable zone. Now, a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of Gottingen, Germany and Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has re-examined the system. They have added new HARPS observations, along with data from several large telescopes, to the already existing picture. The team has found evidence for up to seven planets around the star.

These planets orbit the third fainter star of a triple star system. Viewed from one of these newly found planets the two other suns would look like a pair of very bright stars visible in the daytime and at night they would provide as much illumination as the full Moon. The new planets completely fill up the habitable zone of Gliese 667C, as there are no more stable orbits in which a planet could exist.

"We knew that the star had three planets from previous studies, so we wanted to see whether there were any more," says Tuomi. "By adding some new observations and revisiting existing data we were able to confirm these three and confidently reveal several more. Finding three low-mass planets in the star's habitable zone is very exciting!"

Three of these planets are confirmed to be super-Earths - planets more massive than Earth, but less massive than planets like Uranus or Neptune - that are within their star's habitable zone, a thin shell around a star in which water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right. This is the first time that three such planets have been spotted orbiting in this zone in the same system.

"The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is much greater if we can expect to find several of them around each low-mass star - instead of looking at ten stars to look for a single potentially habitable planet, we now know we can look at just one star and find several of them," adds co-author Rory Barnes (University of Washington).

Compact systems around Sunlike stars have been found to be abundant in the Milky Way. Around such stars, planets orbiting close to the parent star are very hot and are unlikely to be habitable. But this is not true for cooler and dimmer stars such as Gliese 667C. In this case the habitable zone lies entirely within an orbit the size of Mercury's, much closer in than for our Sun. The Gliese 667C system is the first example of a system where such a low-mass star is seen to host several potentially rocky planets in the habitable zone.

Video Algorithm Helps Detect Heart Disease

A software program that can accurately gauge your heart rate by measuring tiny head movements in video data could ultimately be used to easily diagnose cardiac ailments.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new algorithm that can accurately measure the heart rates of people depicted in ordinary digital video by analysing imperceptibly small head movements that accompany the rush of blood caused by the heart's contractions.

In tests, the algorithm gave pulse measurements that were consistently within a few beats per minute of those produced by electrocardiograms (EKGs). It was also able to provide useful estimates of the time intervals between beats, a measurement that can be used to identify patients at risk for cardiac events.

Guha Balakrishnan, a graduate student, and his two advisors - John Guttag and Fredo Durand - describe the new algorithm in an upcoming paper.

A video-based pulse-measurement system could be useful for monitoring newborns or the elderly, whose sensitive skin could be damaged by frequent attachment and removal of EKG leads. But, Guttag says, "From a medical perspective, I think that the long-term utility is going to be in applications beyond just pulse measurement."

For instance, Guttag says, an arterial obstruction could cause the blood to flow unevenly to the head. "Can you use the same type of techniques to look for bilateral asymmetries?" he asks. "What would it mean if you had more motion on one side than the other?"

Similarly, Guttag says, the technique could, in principle, measure cardiac output, or the volume of blood pumped by the heart, which is used in the diagnosis of several types of heart disease. Indeed, he says, before the advent of the echocardiogram, cardiac output was estimated by measuring exactly the types of mechanical forces that the new algorithm registers: In a technique called ballistocardiography, a heart patient would lie on a table with a low-friction suspension system; with every heartbeat, the table would move slightly, with a displacement corresponding to cardiac output.

"I think this should be viewed as proof of concept," Guttag says. "It opens up a lot of potential flexibility."

How it works

The algorithm works by combining several techniques common in the field of computer vision. First, it uses standard face recognition to distinguish the subject's head from the rest of the image. Then it randomly selects 500 to 1,000 distinct points, clustered around the subjects' mouths and noses, whose movement it tracks from frame to frame. "I avoided the eyes, because there's blinking, which you don't want," Balakrishnan says.

Next, it filters out any frame-to-frame movements whose temporal frequency falls outside the range of a normal heartbeat - roughly 0.5 to 5 hertz, or 30 to 300 cycles per minute. That eliminates movements that repeat at a lower frequency, such as those caused by regular breathing and gradual changes in posture.

Finally, using a technique called principal component analysis, the algorithm decomposes the resulting signal into several constituent signals, which represent aspects of the remaining movements that don't appear to be correlated with each other. Of those signals, it selects the one that appears to be the most regular and that falls within the typical frequency band of the human pulse.

Why cancer spreads??

Why cancer spreads: Scientists discover that healthy cells follow diseased ones around the body, paving the way for a cure

• Researchers have identified a mechanism known as the ‘chase and run’ effect, where diseased and healthy cells follow each other around the body
• The breakthrough could prove vital in finding a cure for cancer

By Lucy Osborne

Scientists believe they may have finally discovered why cancer spreads, which could be vital in developing a cure.

Scientists believe they may have finally discovered why cancer spreads - a finding which could be vital in developing a cure.

In a major breakthrough which could save millions of lives, a study has identified a mechanism known as the ‘chase and run’ effect, where diseased and healthy cells follow each other around the body.

The discovery, by researchers at University College London, may lead to a revolutionary therapy that blocks the action and keeps tumours in one place.

The researchers claim it will be 'relatively easy' to stop the 'chase and run' effect.

Cancer claims more than 150,000 lives each year in the UK, but study spokesman Professor Roberto Mayor said: ‘Most deaths are not due to the formation of the primary tumour.

‘Instead, people die from secondary tumours originating from the first malignant cells, which are able to travel and colonise vital organs of the body such as the lungs or the brain.’

He added: ‘This happens because the cells get healthy ones to follow them. Nobody knew how this happened, and now we believe we have uncovered it.

‘If that is the case, it will be relatively easy to develop drugs that interfere with this interaction.’

The study, published in Nature Cell Biology, used two types of embryonic cells to simulate the roles of cancerous and healthy cells.

 

The key to the findings was ascertaining why cancerous cells attach themselves to healthy cells in the first place.

The scientists mimicked what happens by using comparable types of cell and observing their behaviour.

Breakthrough: Researchers looked at frog and zebrafish embryos and have yet to look at actual cancer cells, like the one pictured

The researchers, who conducted the study using frog and zebrafish embryos, are confident the process in which cancer cells attach to healthy ones in order to migrate around the body works in a similar way.

The find has been welcomed by Dr Kat Arney at Cancer Research UK, but she also advised caution.

She told the Daily Telegraph: 'This research helps to reveal some of the fundamental biological processes that might be at work as cells move around the body, but the scientists have only looked at developing frog and zebrafish embryos rather than specifically looking at cancer cells.

'So there is a very long way to go to see whether this knowledge can be translated into new treatments for cancer patients.'

The team were unable to find out what causes cancer in the first place.

Health Tips for Call Center Agents

If you work for a BPO or a call center chances are that you work at least some of your shifts at night. Working in a call center environment requires you to work during sleeping hours for most people and making your day time as your sleeping hours. Aside from having reverse working hours, they are constantly exposed to high stress situations, which is a common problem associated with front-line jobs where employees deal directly with rude and abusive customers. Here are some tips that can help you stay alert and energized during those grueling long graveyard shifts.

Health Tip 1: Get enough sleep

Call center agents belong to the group of people who are chronically sleep deprived, thus getting enough sleep and rest are a must for them. Studies have consistently shown that sleep plays a vital role in promoting physical health, longevity and emotional well-being. This explains why after a restful sleep, you feel better, your thoughts are clearer and your emotions are less fragile. Without adequate sleep, your judgment, mood and your ability to learn and stay focus are weakened.

Health Tip 2: Eat the right food

Eating a balanced meals and enjoying a wide range of foods are important for a healthy lifestyle. By providing your body with the essential nutrients, it will give you enough energy to withstand the demands of your work shift and you will be able to stay awake and enthusiastic all night. A note to ponder, skipping meals usually make you dizzy and you will find it hard to concentrate when you are on the floor.

Health Tip 3: Keep yourself hydrated

Drink a healthy amount of water is vital to your health. Water is used by the body to help flush out toxins and waste products from the body. Did you know that our brain is mostly made up water? Thus drinking water helps you think better, be more alert and be more productive at work. Drink lots of fluids, preferably water during your entire shift.

Health Tip 4: Exercise

Exercise has a lot of benefits, people who exercise are stronger and have greater endurance than people who are sedentary. Exercise gives you energy and boosts your metabolism. Being fit and healthy are very crucial to your work, thus having a regular exercise routine will improve your capacity for endurance, you will feel more energized the rest of the day and will also help you from binge eating all day.

Health Tip 5: Say no to too many vices

Call center agents are more exposed to vices such as excessive smoking and drinking, not all CCAs may be smoking or drinking but some of them have their own outlet to stay awake by drinking a ton of coffee or indulge into binge eating. If you must have a vice, you must take into account that moderation is the key. But you can find other outlet to release your stress like joining a fitness gym or sports.

Health Tip 6: Everyone deserves a break

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It means that without time off from work, a person becomes both bored and boring. You need a bit of relaxation from time to time to keep your sanity intact from working in a high-stress environment. Relaxation is the antidote to stress. When you relax, you are giving your body an opportunity to unwind; it refreshes your mind and revives your spirit.

Pregnant in six months, or your money back?

Pregnant in six months, or your money back? New programme claims it can make ANY woman pregnant in 24 weeks

• Claim relates to women of childbearing age only
• Neuroscientific Fertility Treatment helps patients conceive naturally 
• If natural methods do not work clinic can help prepare the body for IVF
• Techniques include acupuncture, mindfulness and healthy eating
• The natural method has success rates of up to 77 per cent

·         Tragically, for increasing numbers of couples, starting a family isn't as simple as it's supposed to be.

·         Whether it's polycystic ovaries, a low sperm count or, worst of all, unexplained infertility, many are forced to make the heartbreaking decision to spend their savings on IVF or give up on their dreams of family life altogether.

·         But a solution could be on the horizon courtesy of a groundbreaking new method called 'Neuroscientific Fertility Treatment', which is claimed to have results within 24 weeks.

·        

·         Healthy: Neuroscientific Fertility Treatment improves wellbeing as part of helping would-be mothers conceive

·         The new treatment focuses on removing mental blockages that prevent pregnancy and reducing the stress hormone cortisol, which can also impede conception.

As well as improving patients' mental state, the treatment programme also helps boost physical health - creating the optimum conditions for conception.

Other recommendations include having regular sex throughout the cycle in order to reduce pressure during fertile times and staying hydrated.

Created by neuroscientist, Michael Arnold, the programme is totally natural and, according to Arnold, has a success rate of between 66 and 77 per cent depending on the reason for infertility.

Other research carried out by Arnold and his team found that 75 per cent of couples who committed to at least 20 treatments over a six month period achieved a successful pregnancy, compared to just  32.3 per cent with IVF.

Effective: According to Dr Arnold, 77 per cent of patients are pregnant within 9 months of having acupuncture

WANT TO TRY IT? MICHAEL ARNOLD'S TOP 12 TIPS FOR QUICK CONCEPTION

1. Have regular intercourse

Research has shown that couples who have regular intercourse (at least three times per week) throughout the cycle can double their chances of getting pregnant. Couples who have intercourse that is mainly concentrated around ovulation will take longer to conceive.

The fertile window is much larger than most people realise as both sperm eggs can live for several days inside the womb, prior to fertilisation. What's more, the stress caused by figuring out the 'most fertile time' can actually reduce your chances of success.

2.  Stay hydrated

Flow is an essential principle of Five Elements Acupuncture, which teaches that body, mind and emotions are interconnected as modern research in psychoneuroimmunology and neuroscience is now corroborating.

Staying adequately hydrated is essential to maintain flow. For cells to function properly, for organ systems to connect and work well together,  and  to maximize fertility, drink at least 1 1/2 litres a day of filtered or bottled water.

Your urine should be a light yellow, straw-like colour. This prevents the accumulation of unwanted and waste materials, which can lead to fatigue, stress, blocks and stagnation in joints, gut, blood, body organs, thoughts and feelings.

3. Eat breakfast every morning between seven and nine

Your body follows daily rhythms and patterns. Certain organs have times of peak activity. For the stomach, this time is between seven and nine every morning. At this time, the body is most receptive to taking in vital nutrients. It is therefore essential to ensure that you eat a good breakfast every morning.

If this window is missed, you will not be able to make up for it later in the day. Conversely the stomach is least active between seven and nine in the evening so this is the worst time to have your biggest meal of the day. When people say breakfast is the most important meal of the day they are not joking.

To maximise your nutrient intake follow the adage 'Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince, Dinner like a Pauper'.

4. Forget five a day

Instead, you should be aiming for nine a day, as the natural antioxidants help protect the egg, sperm and developing cells from daily damage.

5 . Make sure you're asleep by 11pm

Nighttime is when your body goes into growth and repair mode. Healthy sperm and eggs develop and the whole body regenerates. It is therefore essential that you make the most of this period.

It has been scientifically proven that the period between 11pm and 8am is when the best sleep is possible. According to ancient Chinese wisdom, 11pm marks the start of a new phase of activity - characterised by physical and mental rejuvenation.

Obviously the odd late night does you no harm but if you regularly go to bed after 11pm your body will not get the full benefits of a good night's sleep.

6. Exercise for 30 minutes, three times per week

Regular exercise is essential to ensure your body is in the optimum condition for conception to occur. Not only does it stimulate the heart and circulatory system, it also increases the body's capacity to take in and use oxygen.

This is the vital substance that every cell in the body needs to create energy and growth. Regular exercise also leads to reduced stress levels, which is another vital ingredient in a successful pregnancy.

7. Get in touch with nature

With our busy lives and our concrete cities, we tend to forget that, as human beings, we too are a part of nature. Five Elements Acupuncture is governed by the laws of nature and puts us back in touch with our own unique nature.

Healing is a natural function. When you cut yourself you don't have to figure out how to make the cut heal. Nature takes care of that. At least once a week  remind yourself of this by taking a walk  in the countryside, a park or wood, or just sitting by a river or flowing water. Look at the sky and listen to the birds sing reconnect, slow down and appreciate being a part of nature.

This restores balance and harmony to your body, emotions and mind, and regulates body chemicals and hormones, essential for fertility. Neuroscience now backs what we all instinctively know to be true - that being in touch with nature is good for you.

8. Get your fat balance right

Sperm health, hormone balance and healthy circulation all depend on it, so limit saturated fat from intensively reared animals and include daily well-chewed or ground seeds.

Avoid foods fried at a high temperature and all hydrogenated fats. Also take a purified fish oil, or safer still an algae oil, supplement.

9. Avoid alcohol and caffeine

In men both have been shown to reduce fertility and make pregnancy take twice as long to achieve.

10. Get tested

Before people start the programme, we test their hair for potentially harmful heavy metals which can hinder fertility and run an adrenal stress test to help determine whether their cortisol and DHEA levels need support to optimise fertility.

11. Be mindful 

To reduce your stress and cortisol levels, restore balance to your internal organ systems, and maximise fertility, it's essential to play the 'Inner Game of Health', so your brain sends the right signals to your body.

Take a moment, maybe a minute, out of every hour when you are at work to become aware of your breath, check through your body and notice how you are feeling. Accept this without judgement  or evaluation, take one big deep breathe, exhale completely,  and move on.

Even 20 to 30 seconds will help reduce stress,  rewire your brain and promote healthy changes in your body.

12. Avoid environmental toxins where possible

In particular the hormone disrupting chemical, BPA  found in plastics and lined tin cans, which may hinder implantation.

Especially avoid buying, storing and heating high fat foods such as oils and cheese and acidic foods such as tinned tomatoes.

Online abuse of women increasing in India

Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, was abused and threatened with rape at a web chat, organized by a portal in Delhi in late April to discuss anti-rape protests.

A person wrote on the chat: "Tell women to not wear revealing clothes, then we will not rape them" and then, "Kavita tell me where I should come and rape you using condom."

Shocking as it is, such threats are reportedly the most typical incitement to violence against women online. And they are increasing. This is corroborated by a study done by Internet Democracy Project (IDP), "An exploratory study of women and verbal online abuse in India". Its final report is awaited, but the initial draft says that "to be a woman online — just like to be a woman walking the streets of an Indian city, town or village - is to transgress an unwritten law of patriarchy; to cross over into a space that isn't meant to be yours."

Anja Kovacs, director of IDP in India, says, "Threats are being used to silence women. Online abuse of women is increasing in India because more people are coming online." According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India's 2013 report, 52% of working women and 55% of non-working women are using social media in India.

The IDP study of such women found that some of the hateful trolling that they faced included being called everything from "whore" to "bitch" to "terrorist", getting their defaced pictures posted online, receiving threats. The trigger could be anything - a blog on Modi or a peace process, a tweet on rape or on even innocuous issues and photos.

One Facebook user was messaged: "Oh, but you're a woman, you don't understand this" and "Go back to playing with your dolls". When Twitter user and author, Sumona started an online campaign against child sex abuse, a user tweeted back child pornography links to her.

The idea is to silence women, says Anja. Men too face online abuse, but the quality and content are different. "The abuse directed at women is about their body, sexualisation, swear words. The sexual abuse that men receive is also directed at the women in their lives — mother, sister, wife," she adds.

Debarati Halder, advocate and MD of Center for Cyber Victim Counselling in Tirunelveli, agrees: "Women get abused more than men. This is because they can be easily targeted for their gender." By extension, their right to have an opinion in a male-dominated space is also attacked.

However, understanding the scale of the problem and combating it is difficult as not many Indian women report it. Says Debarati, "Many prefer to remove these abusive posts (or) remain silent. They feel (i) it will be harassment once the police start interrogating them and (ii) their names would be published in the media." Blogger Bhavia V agrees: "Some sent me emails saying they would rape me hard so that my feminist ego is gone. I have not complained because of the fear that it would end in a blame game where the authorities would tell me to shut up."

There is a fear that internet regulation to curb such harassment can be misused to curb free speech. But Anja believes that something will shift eventually. "The positive thing is more people are recognising there is a problem and are discussing women's rights, especially after the Nirbhaya case. Women too need to fight back, block and report abusers, create a supportive community online," she says.

Laws might not end sexism and misogyny online; but more awareness and outing the abusers might.