BuzzLife

A 6-year old kiddo, with a chopstick in between his little fingers, mimicking someone lighting up a cigarette and puffing away. It is not funny at all. What alarming is the fact that the little ones are picking up the bad habits of their smoking parents. Monkey see, monkey do. What more frightening is the fact that these kids are exposing to the risk of cancer-causing chemicals such as carcinogens while inhaling the second-hand smoke.

Believe it or not, scientists have actually detected  the presence of cancer-causing chemicals associated with tobacco smoke in the urine of half of the babies of smoking parents based on a research. Source : ScienceDaily.com.

As a non-smoker, I sometimes find it really hard to understand why smokers are willing to burn their hard-earned money to damage their own health and the health of their loved ones around them. All I know from my own checking in google search is simply because of addiction to nicotine, a very addictive drug. It can be as addictive as heroine or cocaine. If quiting is so hard, why get into it in the first place? There must be hundred and one reasons!

The recent announcement in Budget 2007 of an increase of excise duty of 1 sen per stick does not help much too. In fact, regardless of how much tax government imposes, regardless of how much price increase, regardless how many of those TakNak campaigns, nothing is as strong as your own strong will to quit. That is, just decide to quit for your own reasons and let’s hope that it is does not need some life-threatening reasons to do so.

I can’t comment much about quitting smoking, I know nuts about that. What I can only share here is only what benefits you would get within 20 minutes of quitting: extracted from US National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

20 Minutes After Quitting
Your heart rate drops.

12 hours After Quitting
Carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.

2 Weeks to 3 Months After Quitting
Your heart attack risk begins to drop.
Your lung function begins to improve.

1 to 9 Months After Quitting
Your Coughing and shortness of breath decrease.

1 Year After Quitting
Your added risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.

5 Years After Quitting
Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a nonsmoker’s 5-15 years after quitting.

10 Years After Quitting
Your lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker’s.
Your risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney, and pancreas decreases.

15 Years After Quitting
Your risk of coronary heart disease is back to that of a nonsmoker’s.

Isn’t that good reason enough to at least try to quit?

Are we losing more brain cells as we grow older? Or is it because of some damaging habits that we have instilled unconsciously? Some tips on how to take care of our brain which I extracted from a Health Magazine. And remember to practice what you read ya..

1. Skipping Breakfast
People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar level. This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.

2. Overeating
It causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.

3. Smoking
It causes multiple brain shrinkage and may lead to Alzheimer disease.

4. High Sugar consumption
Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.

5. Air Pollution
The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our body. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.

6. Sleep Deprivation
Sleep allows our brain to rest. Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death of brain cells.

7. Head covered while sleeping
Sleeping with the head covered increases the concentration of carbon dioxide and decrease concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain damaging effects.

8. Working your brain during illness
Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damage the brain.

9. Lacking in stimulating thoughts
Thinking is the best way to train our brain, lacking in brain stimulation thoughts may cause brain shrinkage.

10. Talking Rarely
Intellectual conversations will promote the efficiency of the brain

Another piece of scaremongering news? Read on :

Via The Daily Mail, UK published on 25th August 2006

A gender-bending chemical found in babies’ bottles and tin cans may cause breast cancer, scientists have warned.

Bisphenol A, used in the manufacture of CD cases, lunchboxes, sunglasses, water bottles babies’ bottles and tin cans, has been linked to health problems ranging from cancer to miscarriage and infertility.

Industry has previously claimed the chemical is broken down by the body, making it safe to use. But new research casts doubt on this, with experiments showing the chemical remains carcinogenic.

The research has reignited calls for the compound - a manmade version of the female sex hormone oestrogen - to be banned.

The scientists looked at what happens to bisphenol A inside the body and whether it affects the growth of breast tumours.

They found that while the chemical is initially broken down, chemicals produced by cancerous tumours can lead to it quickly returning to its original state. Once back to normal, the chemical can go on to speed up the growth of the tumours.

Researcher Dr Theodore Widlanski said: "Enzymes present on the surface of breast tumour cells appear to convert the modified bisphenol A back into bisphenol A."

The Indiana University biochemist said the results meant he was unable to give the chemical a clean bill of health.

"We set out to show the opposite, that bisphenol A is not harmful," he said. "If the answer to any of our questions had been ‘no’, then we would have concluded bisphenol A was not dangerous. But we can’t do that, or we can’t do it yet."

Advising pregnant women and those with hormone disorders to be particularly wary of the chemical, he said: "It doesn’t mean that your bottled water is any less safe today than it was yesterday.

Industry profits

"It just means that if it isn’t safe, we might be able to explain why." He added that was unlikely that bisphenol A was ‘the only culprit’ in causing or speeding up breast cancer. Instead, it is probably one of a cocktail of cancer-causing chemicals.

The experiments - which were been done in the test-tube, rather than in the body - looked at the effects of levels of bisphenol A similar to those the average person would be exposed to over their lifetime.

The findings, published in the journal Chemistry & Biology, have alarmed British experts, who called for industry to re-think its stance.

Gwynne Lyons, a World Wildlife Fund chemicals expert, said: "This should be another nail in the coffin for bisphenol A. It is well known that this substance can derail oestrogen, the female hormone, and evidence for a potential role in breast cancer is now mounting.

"Unfortunately, proof will be very difficult to achieve, and regulators seem more concerned with industry profits than protecting our health."

There is also evidence that synthetic oestrogens affect the environment, leading to fish changing sex and snails’ reproductive systems going into overdrive.

DES, a pregnancy drug similar to oestrogen, has been linked to a string of health problems, including cancer an infertility.

The old saying, "Laughter is the Best Medicine" appears to be true when it comes to protecting your heart. According to research, laughter relaxes blood vessels and increases blood flow - the exact opposite of what your blood vessel do when you are stressed! In a small study of healthy men and women with normal blood pressure, watching a funny movie increase blood flow by 22%. American College of Cardiology of the University of Maryland says that 15 minutes of laughter on a daily basis is probably good for the vascular system.

And here’s more reason to lighten up and laugh.  A study by the European Congress on Obesity finds that laughing burns more calories than being glum! According to Maciej Buchowski, Ph.D, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, laughing increases our heart rate by 10% to 20%, thus raises the amount of energy we spend. Just 10 to 15 minutes of hearty laughter can burn up to 40 calories per day - that’s 4.4 pounds a year!

Folks, laugh your way to a better blood vessel function, laugh your way to a fabulous figure! Watch a funny flick, visit a humorous blog, or just spend time with people who tickle your funny bone… Laughter is afterall the Best Medicine..

Have you ever come across any cookbook all about fruits? I am sure you have but I believe the books will give you the traditional tips on the best way to prepare fruits, garnish them, recipes on making salads, juices, smoothies,  etc. How about recipes on how to cook fruit curry, baked fruit, puree, soup, pickles, jam, desert, sorbets, chutneys, etc? How does guava curry, jackfruit briyani, fruits kebabs sound to you?

Check out the book Fruitastic by Mohana Gill at MPH Bookstore, priced at RM120. It is an excellent guide to healthy eating and can act as an "encyclopedia" about fruits. I must say I am impressed with the extensive research done by Gill, especially the part describing origins of each fruit. I for one, didn’t know that jambu air is also known as Malay apple and ciku is known as sapodilla, etc. Hard cover, full of colors, big photos of fruits, large prints and the pictures of the recipe makes my saliva drools.. slurppp.. A fantastic book for those of you who are adventurous enough to use fruits for your exotic cooking.

Click the picture for more review on Fruitastic.

Sleep late? Wake up late? Skipping breakfast? And yet still feel healthy as ever? That’s me! At least I thought so until I receive this alert:

Evening at 9 - 11pm: is the time for eliminating unnecessary/toxic chemicals (detoxification) from the antibody system (lymph nodes). This time duration should be spent by relaxing or listening to music. If during this time, a person is still in an unrelaxed state such as working, doing housework, monitoring the children doing their homework, this will have a negative impact on health.

Evening at 11pm - 1am : is the detoxification process in the liver, and ideally should be done in a deep sleep state.

Early morning 1 - 3am: detoxification process in the gall, also ideally done in a deep sleep state.

Early morning 3 - 5am : detoxification in the lungs. Therefore there will sometimes be a severe cough for cough sufferers during this time. Since the detoxification process had reached the respiratory tract, there is no need to take cough medicine so as not to interfere with toxin removal process.

Morning 5 - 7am: detoxification in the colon, you should empty your bowel.

Morning 7 - 9am : Absorption of nutrients in the small intestine, you should be having breakfast at this time. Breakfast should be earlier, before 6:30am. for those who are sick. Breakfast before 7:30am is very beneficial to those wanting to stay fit. Those who always skip breakfast, they should change their habits, and it is still better to eat breakfast late until 9-10am rather than no meal at all.

Sleeping so late and waking up too late will disrupt the process of removing unnecessary chemicals. Aside from that, midnight to 4:00 am is the time when the bone marrow produces blood. Therefore, ideally we should sleep from 11.00pm to 5.00am to maintain good health.

Folks, change your sleeping habit now!

Tears welled up in my eyes as I read the headline in today’s theStar, Rosaline’s brave fights ends. No, I don’t know Puan Sri Rosaline. But I do read a lot about her hubby in Tan Sri Francis Yeoh who is one of the wealthiest men in Malaysia and his YTL empire in the property industry. What saddens me was even a wealthy family like theirs couldn’t fight cancer. They have all the material resources but still in the end, they lose the battle to cancer.

And as I flipped through the next 2 pages of the newspaper, another headline caught my attention : Blogger who wrote on life as cancer patient. With a heart of jelly, I just can’t bring myself to read news like this. So I continued to flip through more pages and bumped into this news : Leukaemia patient get his wish. More news on cancer, urghh..!

For a moment, I was speechless. All these news reminded me of Kak Endon, our late First Lady who succumbed to breast cancer last year after a long battle. And it reminded myself of this mild pain which I can feel in between my right arm pit and my right breast every month just before my menstruation period. Gynae said not to worry (it’s their normal and usual comment to every patient) saying that probably it happens because of my hormone changes. Ehh.. I am 36 going on 37 in a couple of days.. hormone changes? Is she suggesting that I am approaching early menopausal or what..

I hope the doctor is right, I mean there is nothing to worry about. (Not referring to her suggestion that I am having menopausal syndrome ). I am getting a second opinion anyway. Don’t want to take any chance. Meanwhile, I just have to be more conscious on what I am consuming. More fruits and vegetables with a booster anti-oxidant and chelated mineral, hopefully can increase further the anti-oxidant level in my body.

And most important of all, practice what Hippocrates who believed in the natural healing process of rest, a good diet, fresh air and cleanliness preached. He said :

"Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick, is to feed your sickness."

Yes, our food should be our medicine, our medicine should be our food. How true..

How long would most of us want to live? Or I should re-phrase, how long would we want to live healthily? I have never believe in true preventive medicine until I read the book, "What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killling You," by Dr. Ray D. Strand. His simple message says, "Let’s protect and care for our body, and may we all live until we die."

In simple terms, good health is very important in later years. It is sad that most people take their health for granted until an ailment or disease happens to them. As such, according to Dr. Strand, we should practice true preventive medicine rather than post-problem medicine. True preventive medicine involve encouraging to take a threefold approach which is the ingredients of a healthy lifestyle : eating healthily, practicing a consistent exercise program and consuming a high-quality nutritional supplements. Eating healthily simply means a healthy diet with low-fat diet, which includes at least 7 servings of fruits and vegetables daily and participate in a modest exercise program.

As for high quality nutritional supplements, here are some tips which I extracted from a Health Magazine on how to select the right supplements:

o Look for optimum rather than RDA levels of essential nutrients.

o Choose a combination of vitamin and plant antioxidants.

o With minerals, choose chelated minerals as these are minerals combined with organic molecules that are absorbed via active transport mechanisms in the small intestine.

o Select a quality supplement developed on the basis of current research that guarantees potency, uniformity and disintegration.

o Avoid taking single vitamins

o Choose a properly formulated balance of essential antioxidants and chelated minerals and consider the brand’s background level of experiences, credibility and science.

Folks, wake up, change your lifestyle today for a betterment health tomorrow. Address your health issues in your younger days instead, otherwise you may live to regret for the rest of your life.

Aisay.. this piece of news really caught my attention… Err.. wonder whether this vaccine will promote sexual promiscuity..Read on for details.

Extracted from today’s theStar :

CORRECTED : Young girls should get cancer vaccine, panels said:

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Girls as young as nine and young women up to age 26 should be able to get Merck and Co.’s Gardasil vaccine aimed at preventing a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cancer, a panel of U.S. experts said on Thursday. 

In a complicated vote, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices agreed to recommend the vaccine for three groups — all young girls aged 11 and 12; girls and women aged 13 to 26 who have not received the vaccine yet; and women who have had abnormal pap smears, genital warts, or certain other conditions. 

At their discretion, physicians could vaccinate as young as nine, the panel decided. The group also voted to include the vaccine in the federal Vaccines for Children Program, under which the government buys vaccines for uninsured or poor schoolchildren. 

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in turn advises school districts and other authorities. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensed Gardasil for use in women and girls nine to 26 years of age earlier this month. It protects against four types of human papilloma virus, also known as HPV or human wart virus. 

The idea is to vaccinate girls before they ever get infected with the virus. About 15 percent of U.S. 15-year-old girls are already infected with at least one strain of HPV, said Dr. Carol Baker of the National Foundation for Infectious Disease, who was at the meeting. 

The approval could make for blockbuster sales for Merck, with some analysts predicting annual sales of more than $3 billion within the next few years. 

"Merck has already been shipping Gardasil since its approval. We model Gardasil sales of $3.2 billion in 2010," said Dr. Tim Anderson, Senior Pharmaceutical Analyst at Prudential Equity Group. 

"I think this is going to be a great cancer prevention tool but it is not going to be effective for about 10 years," said Baker. 

This is because genital wart infection takes a while to cause cancer. 

PROTECTING GIRLS EARLY 

Clinical trials have shown that a three-dose course of the vaccine can prevent close to 100 percent of the lesions that can become cervical cancer, and genital warts. Women get regular Pap smears in most developed countries to detect these lesions before they turn into tumors. 

The virus also can cause much rarer penile cancer in men. The HPV 16 and 18 strains of virus are responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. 

The CDC says more than 50 percent of sexually active women and men will be infected with one or more genital HPV types during their lifetimes. 

Cervical cancer kills about 300,000 women worldwide each year, including about 4,000 in the United States. 

The CDC has no enforcement powers. It will be up to insurers to decide whether to pay for the $125-a-dose vaccine, school districts and universities to require or recommend it and individuals themselves to decide whether to get it. 

Dr. Cynthia Rand of the University of Rochester in New York said she believed most people would get the vaccine. She has started a series of studies on how many people would take the vaccine if offered. 

"The minority of parents we interviewed didn’t think their children wouldn’t be needing it because their children wouldn’t be having sex. But they thought it would be needed in the general community," she said in a telephone interview. 

At least one state legislative group, Women In Government, will be supporting the vaccine. 

GlaxoSmithKline also has a slightly different HPV vaccine in development. 

Insurer WellPoint Inc. said on Thursday it would reimburse patients for Gardasil. 

"We believe this vaccine is a medical breakthrough that will benefit adolescents and young women throughout the country," the insurer said in a release. 

Is teflon and other non-stick coated and stain-resistant products health hazardous? Are we at risk? According to an independent scientific review panel advising the EPA, animal studies have indicated that perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) used to make the coating long used in non-stick pans may cause cancer. 

DuPont, the producer of PFOA disagrees and reiterates no human health effects and consumers product are safe. "PFOA induces benign tumors in male rats, but only at high doses and by a mechanism that is not likely relevant to humans" said Dr. Samuel M. Cohen, chairperson of the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. "Thus, we can be confident that PFOA does not pose a cancer risk to humans the low levels found in the general population".

Hmm.. our daily appliances, be it rice cooker, frying pan, cooking wok are coated with non-stick material. As layman, as an ordinary consumer, we have no base to agree or dispute the above contradictory information. What I find disturbing is it seems that just about anything we do or eat these days allegedly causes cancer. Carcinogens or those things that increase our risk of developing cancer. And what is the one common denominator all of these carcinogens have? Increase oxidative stress!

It seems logical that if oxidative stress is indeed the cause of cancer, antioxidants used to bring free radicals back into balance would lower the risk of cancer. Dr. Bruce Ames, a leading cancer researcher, stated in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association that individuals who consume the least amounts of fruits and vegetables have twice the risk of cancer as those who consume more.

Well, it is afterall not so difficult to consume five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Let’s start to take more fruits and vegetables or you can make your very own fruit and vegetables juices.

A random study of 4,000 men in Petaling Jaya by Datuk Dr. Tan Hui Meng, a professor of Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya revealed that our average lifespan is now 72 years old BUT we spent the last few years battling ill-health. The alarm was the study also showed that 87% of the respondents had one chronic diseases while 67% had two!! What rotten years we have!

Heredity cannot be changed. Environment and health care services are hard to change. However, every individual can modify lifestyle, to attain best health. Adequate nutrition, habitual diet, exercise, and stress determine lifestyle. Every individual therefore has tremendous potential to prevent disease by changing his or her lifestyle. Small, positive changes can help prevent or delay the onset of diseases.

Remember it is always better to prevent than to cure, especially where chronic diseases are concerned.
 
Your health is in your own hands….