Archive for the 'Health' Category
Recent reports from the States reviewed some Chinese brand toothpastes contain some chemicals that’s not suitable to be used in toothpastes. The latest report reviewed that there is counterfeit Colgate being sold in some States which may contain diethylene glycol, a chemical found in antifreeze, allegedly the same chemical found in Chinese brand toothpastes. These counterfeit Colgate comes in several flavors and are all printed with “Made in South Africa” on the box.
I used to get new plastic bags for all my market/supermarket purchases and I saved them for bagging daily household garbages. I had tons of them saved up over the years and when I stopped asking for new bags early this year, only in the past few days that I have used up all the saved plastic bags. This however does not solve the problem of using too many plastic bags. Instead of keep saving them for future use, I have only deferred the usage. I have been using the exact same number of plastic bags everyday even after I have started using reusable shopping bags in lure of getting new plastic bags. Now that I have used up all the saved up plastic bags, I am trying to think of a new way to manage my household garbage in order to not getting any more plastic bags; but what am I to do?
The local Government is looking into putting a new tax or a levy on plastic bags as a method to curb the usage of plastic bags which is quickly filling up our garbage landfills. Just how does a levy make it more environmental friendly is beyond me.
To those who could or would go without plastic bags, they would stop or use less without question. To those who must get new plastic bags on every purchase, even if they had to pay for the bags they simply would. An extra cost would either be ignored or would be passed on to the next levelon the chain of economy. So in turn, everyone pays more and plastic bags would still be used. This levy certainly does not help me at all in finding a new way to manage my household garbage.
In order to stop using plastic, there must be a replacement - a replacement that is just as good or at least almost as good but much more environmental friendly than plastic.
A TV program last night addressed such an issue. It reviewed that we do have environment friendly bags at about 30% higher wholesale price than regular plastic bags rendering them unpopular among shop owners.
Should there be a levy on plastic bags, in order to really help the environment, the levy should be taxed on regular plastic bags only and not on environmental friendly bags, and that the levy should be so high that makes the regular plastic bags cost as much as the environmental friendly ones if not more. The levy however, must be put back into environmental research for more and better environmental friend product as well as better recycling measures so we could lower the costs of using environmental friendly products or methods. Not just pocketing the levy and imagine a good deed has been done.
Unfortunately, we only have lazy boneheads as head government officials thinking that money would solve all problems!
Has successfully been elected as the next WHO’s Director-General.
We can’t be sure how she would react when there is another potential pandemic; however, we can be sure her daily intake of chicken would not be any less, ever, as she had stated publicly. And yes, she had also assured us that there is nothing wrong with US Mad Cow beef or contaminated can food from China so long as they have been imported. She is full of… experiences.
Update (10:36am) :
陳馮正在電台新聞報道訪問時指出：”事後孔明永遠都係最易做既。”
不錯，這句說話的確很易用來粉飾自己的過錯， 即使人家在自己說話後已即時作出批評而並非事發後才作指控， 也可作其粉飾之用！
Former Director of Health of Hong Kong, Dr Margaret Chan is a candidate. She was the one who insisted on not wearing a medical mask herself and told everyone in Hong Kong that it was not necessary to wear a medical mask despite the medical community deemed wearing a medical mask was one way to curb the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong. Whether or not she was coerced to say so by her superiors is uncleared. Nevertheless she announced that statement publicly disregarding public welfare for whatever reason she might have at the time.
Some “healthy suggestions” being suggested in the news that one should not sleep-in but take a nap after work only and do not eat excessively watching the 3:00am’ish World Cup games.
Why not go to bed early like 10pm’ish, tape the game, and then get up at 5am and watch them before the news and work like a truly healthy sleeping habit?! One can even skip the halftime ads and save ample time. If it’s the crowd, the beer, and the smoke they were after, a diet coke is not gonna help 40 bags of chips!
Had an ever so slightly bitter orange last night. At first bite, I thought the orange might be rotten. It however looked fine and I thought perhaps it was just a bit too ripe, so I finish it. I have been very cautious about rotten oranges. Many years ago, twice I had a bitter orange and twice that put me down in bed for 5 days with constant diarrhea and vomits. Nothing I took would calm my upset stomach.
A couple of years ago, a friend brought me a few bottles of Oil of Oregano. This stuff works wonders. Antiseptic, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-viral. I take it inside and out and everywhere. Even those smelly towels that even boiled in water would come back smelly in a couple of days, a couple drops of this stuff in one wash would take care of it for months.
Just before Chinese New Year, the mother-in-law had a major diarrhea. It was the afternoon just before our year end family get together dinner. She did not want to go to the doctor’s. So I asked M to take a bottle of Oreganol over and gave her a few drops in water to drink. Just before she drank it, she vomited. When M called me and told me this, I told M to take her to the hospital right away but mom would not go. So I told M to give her the drink, and stay and see how it went.
Mom took the drink and she stopped vomiting and no more diarrhea. I asked M to tell the maid to cook some congee for mom for later as she fell asleep. All was fine since.
Although Oreganol has always worked with just about any kind of upset stomach almost instantly I have seen so far, it couldn’t quite stop the bitter orange type from last night right away. I had three drinks of it last night and each time the pain stopped for about an hour and it came back. After the third drink I felt good enough to fall asleep, but this morning the pain came back. I had two more drinks this morning and I fell good enough to come to the office. Still a tiny bit of stomach upset and the occasional pain. I asked the maid to cook me some congee for lunch so I’ll head home for lunch today. I feel a couple of more drinks of Oreganol should take care of it.
Not quite instantaneous this time but at least I am not out for 5 days.
Be very careful with bitter oranges.
with NicoHale by Air 2.
Now all you smokers can prolong your lives and join all the chronic second hand smokers at the deathbed around the same time frame. Kinda inline with their company name.
I bought one of these TFA100 Terraillon body fat scales yesterday. Weight-wise it registered me at about 6 lbs more than my 10 year old scale does. Which brings me back to my old weight before my training. Since Terraillon is much more renowned as far as scales go than my old Wing On department store special digital scale, I’d just have to trust the new one. Which is alright, I’ll just keep working them off.
It also shows that I have a percentage body fat of about 30% and a water fluid level of about 50% this morning. Which, according to the chart in its manual and this chart, my %BF is high. It is, however, nice to see my water fluid level is nominal for my weight and age, meaning my weight loss by training so far had not been due to loss of water.
My goal was about 138lbs. According to the charts a 15% body fat would have a body weight of about 144 lbs and at 20%BF would be about 153lbs. So, my previous training program which got me to about 144lbs 5 years ago was about right. However, I would still like to aim for 138lbs. Which might be a little too optimistic since more muscle in the future would render a heavier sans fat weight. We’ll see how it goes.
There are basically three individual aspects that constitute Down Syndrome in a human fetus. With a normal human cell, there are 23 pairs of Chromosomes. In Down Syndrome, we look at the 13th, the 18th, and the 21st pair of Chromosomes. If anyone of these pair have an extra Chromosome, ie 3 instead of 2, it would be considered as Down Syndrome. Trisomy 21 means the 21st pair has an extra Chromosomes, which it the most common kind of Down Syndrome.
In case of Mosaic Trisomy 21, the fetus has both normal cells and cells with Trisomy 21. Since both normal and abnormal cells are found, the severity of Down Syndrome depends on their ratio.
During a pregnancy between 11-13 week, a mother can take a blood test, OSCAR, to determine the possibility of conceiving a fetus with Down Syndrome. The test results contain some numbera of probability that the pregnancy may result in Down Syndrome. It is the ratio of “Adjusted Risk of Trisomy 21″ that the doctors are most concerned. With an ART21 ratio of greater than 1:300, no more test is considered necessary in the medical community. With an ART21 ratio of less than 1:300, further tested is suggested.
However, this 1:300 ratio border is only arbitrarily set with no specific medical reasons at all. The medical community seems to not want everyone flocking to get further tests and therefore have this border set at such. No guarantee is given to those who have an ART21 ratio of great than 1:300 to conceive a perfectly normal child. Further more, although Down Syndrome mostly happen to fetus with elder age mother, it is however those young mothers who neglected to test for Down Syndrome gave most births to Down Syndrome children. Although the border is set as such, a “normal” mother could have an ART21 ratio of over 1:10000.
In case of M, she had an ART21 ratio of 1:507. Knowing that a normal mother could have such a high ratio, we decided to take further tests against the doctor’s suggestion.
During the 16-20 week, an amino test of both karyotyping and PCR can be performed. It involves in taking a sample of the “water” within the womb. The results come in two separate tests with one within 5 days and another within 21 days. It is said that the 5 day report only has a 95% accuracy, and the 21 day report has a 100% accuracy.
Personally, I didn’t even want to look at the 5 day report, but it did prepare me for the worst. When Mosaic Trisomy 21 was confirmed at the end, there is basically no choice but to abort. Although the severity is determined by the ratio between good and bad cells, the ratio really has no other meaning but the confirmation alone. Since the ratio only represents the skin cells alone, there is no telling what ratios are among other types of cells, so the number really has no meaning unless zero abnormal cells were found which would be highly unlikely when the 5 day test had a confirmation.
It should be noted that the amino test has a 5/1000 (1/200!) fatality rate. Doctors generally warn parents about this. Yet to me, after careful considerations, any rate is worth the test as one can’t just stick the head in the ground and pretend nothing could go wrong. So long as there is a test for anything, it is worth all the risk. As of the costs of the tests, any amount spent now, are negligible compare to having a child with all kinds of problems to come. Besides, to the child, the problems are for life.
It should also be noted that the timing of the tests are crucial. Any delayed decisions would render them useless.
To me, the entire ordeal was nothing more than something not so ideal. And we Chinese have all heard the saying that not so ideal things happen 8 out of 10 times in life. So, when the financial situation was not a problem in dealing with such a case, there was basically no problem at all. As we live in a day and age that we have the medical know how to test for such a problem and we have to medical technology to safely abort the pregnancy, there is really not much we could ask for.
It is however, the psychological impact to the mother that we all should take very good care of. To the father, it may seem like nothing more than a bad case of diarrhea. But to the mother, it is exactly the same as loosing a new born child. It is because the fetus may have responses to the mother’s feelings inside the womb, so it does mean a lot more to the mother than to the father. That’s why I had asked M not to look at the fetus when it came out. There is no knowing what kind of negative impact the image could do to the mind. To avoid chronic depression, don’t play tricks to the mind at all costs, and take good care of the mother afterwords. The real challenge comes after the abortion.
There maybe friends and relative who may gossip over these things. As we now have the medical knowledge to know that Down Syndrome is not genetic or hereditary, it only happens by pure chance and there is no medical explanation for it, one should not discriminate against those who has Down Syndrome, and should really be talked about openly rather than gossiping or avoiding such a topic. It is quite a natural phenomenon.
WhaUSay?!