I watched a video this morning, which I friend posted on Facebook. It’s about melanoma. It’s moving, and I think it matters to everyone.
Not About Fear
Category Archives: health
Slow Food
3 Ways to Practice the Slow Food Movement
– Dr. Weil’s Daily Tip
Yes. Our modern lifestyle is making it harder and harder to make good nutrition and mindful eating part of daily life.
another hole in my head
I broke a tooth Thursday afternoon. I didn’t get in a fight with anybody, if that’s what you’re thinking. I was just minding my own business – a peaceable pilgrim passing through this worrisome land – when life said:
Tada! Here’s a reminder that you ain’t gettin’ any younger, Hooplehead.
I will spare you the grisly details. I went to the dentist yesterday and it’s hopeless, says he. The rest of the tooth will have to be pulled. And supposedly he has a great deal of experience doing so.
After I recover from the extraction action – in 4 to 5 months – I can have either a plant …
No, no. An implant. But trust me, there are no visual depictions of that concept, in all of Googledom, that are even slightly amusing.
… Or I can have a bridge.
I guess a viaduct is out of the question. It used to be a staple of all your better waterworks, but maybe they don’t do that anymore. But you gotta admit, it looks a lot like a bridge.
Don’t cry for me, Argentina. I had a root canal on the tooth that gave up the job, a few years back. So no pain. Just another hole in my head, now patched up temporarily with really cool space age composite goo.
… OK, OK, I know what you want. Here’s a canal.
the no stress mess
Brazilian Mint Tea for Pain
The tea doesn’t taste much like mint - more like sage, a plant in the mint family - but it seems to work as well as aspirin to relieve pain, at least when tested on mice. The mint tea has been used in Brazil for centuries to treat headaches, stomachaches and other minor complaints. To learn how it might work, a research team at England’s Newcastle University first studied the traditional method of preparing Brazilian mint (Hyptis crenata) tea for medicinal purposes. This involves boiling dried leaves for 30 minutes and allowing the concoction to cool before drinking it. When tested on mice, the tea proved as effective for treatment of pain as a synthetic aspirin, Indometacin. The investigators are now planning clinical trials to see how well the potion works for pain relief in humans.[Link]
I have questions.
Why test it on mice? It’s tea, not a cytotoxin, for crapsakes.
How do you know when a mouse has a headache, and when he feels better?
Are the human trials going to involve exposure to Sarah Palin YouTubes? You could control headaches in me with that. Turn it off, and I’ll bake cookies for the mice to go with their tea. Though I suspect they might prefer a nice chamomile, which would probably be just as good for a little headache.
the shot heard hardly at all
I have reconsidered my last post, about H1N1 vaccinations being hard to get. I was wrong.
The fact that well- educated, hard-working scientists were able to devise a vaccine for a new strain of influenza, and get millions of doses into the hands of physicians and nurses, in a matter of months, is a helluva lot to be proud of. It’s not easy, I’m sure, and everything takes time.
The important thing is that there is a vaccine which can be provided to the most vulnerable among us. Because Death, left to it’s implacable devices, just loves to weed out the weak.
Vaccination vacillation
I’ve been wondering whether I should look into getting a shot for the new flu this year. I got my regular seasonal shot last week, as I do every year. But I think some of the furor over the swine flu is nothing but that – furor. Emotion, panic. It’s a virus, not the black death. Almost everybody who gets it gets better; it’s no more likely to make one seriously ill or seriously dead than the regular old flu. In fact, it’s probably less likely, from the stats I’ve read in the news. In any case, I guess this answers my question:
“If you’re generally healthy and come down with the H1N1 flu this season, staying home and riding out normal flu symptoms is probably your only option.
A limited supply of vaccines in Santa Barbara County are being targeted for those who are especially high risk: If you’re a pregnant woman or a medically fragile child or young adult, those vaccines are for you.”
[Noozhawk.com]
The H1N1 virus has been a major issue for months and months. This isn’t a sudden disaster. But it hasn’t been possible to make enough vaccine for the people who might want to have it to protect themselves and their families from suffering, and to keep themselves on the job so that this illness doesn’t cause yet still again another major glitch for the staggering economy.
It was ever thus; it’s not the fault of the individuals currently in authority at any level. This is a systemic failure of public policy priorities. It goes back a generation, and it ain’t no way to run a railroad.
That being said, I’d like to ask what the hell is going on with the price of a flu shot. I paid $30 this year, $20 last year, $10 in 2007, and $5 in 2006. Seriously, WTF?
let them eat junk
SACRAMENTO — — California became the first state to require restaurants to cook without artery-clogging trans fats, such as those in many oils and margarines, under restrictions signed into law Friday by the health-conscious governor.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a physical-fitness advocate and crusader against obesity, sided with legislators who said the measure would help get the fat out of Californians who are too dependent on fast food.
Trans fats can preserve flavor and add to the shelf life of foods but have been linked to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
Look, it’s true: you should be warned that the average restaurant is trying to kill you. Not just by cooking with far too much fat and sugar, but by enormous portions. The average guy, if he’s a normal weight and getting some exercise, needs maybe 2000 calories a day to be well. And most of that should come from fresh fruit and vegetables, not chimichangas. I doubt you could get out of a restaurant anymore with less than 700 – 1000 under your belt, and very little good nutrition from it. But I have a problem with laws like this.
I don’t think The State should be taking it upon itself to raise us like we’re children. I don’t like paternalistic laws, and California is just getting carried away with them lately. Like the stupid cell phone law. We have to use hands-free devices when driving, which is just as distracting as holding a phone to your ear. And the law is too narrowly drawn: They should have strengthened the law against driving while distracted, period. Because people are different; we react differently to stimuli. And whether someone is distracted is a matter of specific circumstances and facts, not generalized situations. But I digress.
We don’t need to fix the restaurants that have been cooking with trans fats. The public should be educated about their homicidal tendencies, so people stop eating there and the restaurants go out of business. Because even after they fix their brand of grease, they’ll still be serving up unhealthy craptastic anti-food. We don’t need those places at all; we need to choose for ourselves a new lifestyle, and teach it to the kids, so they don’t learn to rely on factory fabricated, bio-miodified tummy-fillers in place of nutrition and wellness.
your tax dollars
I just saw on the TV that the FDA is broken had can’t do produce inspections properly. The FDA claims it needs $275,000,000 to hire 490 new people for its staff, so it can inspect our food and keep it safe.
Excuse me?
That’s almost 600 grand per person. Why would it cost $600,000 to hire a food inspector? Let’s try this:
$60,000 per year salary, two weeks vacation, major medical and dental.
Now you can get 500 people for about 4 million, instead of 275 million.
Why are the inmates running the asylum anyway?
getting your C?
Dr. Weil explains why it’s important to get your vitamin c.
Guess I think it’s important too, or I wouldn’t stray so far from the topic/s.
aw crap
I’m coming down with a cold. It started hitting me this afternoon, when I got back from my bike ride. Seems to be coming on like a freight train. This sucks.
The switch operator got the message on time,
Said there’s a Northbound limited on the same main line,
Open up the switch I’m gonna let him through the hole,
Cause the monkey’s got the locomotive under control.
use your real soap
Here’s something I learned on the Internets today.
Plain Soap as Effective, Less Risky, than AntibacterialsAntibacterial soaps show no health benefits over plain soaps and may render some antibiotics less effective, according to analysis done at the University of Michigan.
In the first known comprehensive analysis of whether antibacterial soaps work better than plain ones, a UM School of Public Health team found that antibacterial soaps at formulations sold to the public don’t remove any more bacteria from the hands during washing than plain soaps. Also, the main active ingredient in many antibacterial soaps – triclosan – may cause some bacteria to become more resistant to drugs such as amoxicillin, by fostering mutations that help bacteria keep their cellular walls intact. The study was published in the August, 2007, edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.
I’m very concerned about the thoughtless proliferation of antibacterial soaps, which is essentially a marketing gimmick that does consumers no good and dumps tons of mutation-promoting chemicals into the environment. The current “superbug” news – that MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphlococcus Aureus) infections may be twice as common as previously believed – may prove to be just the beginning of a long siege by antibiotic-resistant infectious agents. If consumers don’t buy antibacterial soaps, manufacturers will stop making them, so remember: Plain soap and water are all you need to stay clean.
What does this have to do with writing? Absolutely nuthin. Just thought you should know. Don’t you wish everybody did?
Metaphor 