Some Knowledge

For the last two months I’ve been having a lot of pain in my fingers from typing so much on this blog.  I tried aspirin and acetominophen, but these were little help.  Yesterday I remembered the tin of extra strength Tiger Balm I had on a shelf.  I thought “what the heck, give it a try.”

Tiger Balm is pretty potent stuff.  It’s basically menthol and camphor, with some other ingredients like cajeput oil and oil of cloves and cassia.  The smell of the stuff is strong but not unpleasant.  I rubbed some of the greasy ointment on the back of my fingers and wiped the excess off my palms so I could still handle objects.  You have to be careful with this stuff that you don’t get it in your eyes.

After a few minutes the Tiger Balm started working.  My hands felt warm and cool all at the same time.  The pain diminished.  Four hours later I repeated the treatment.  So far the stuff is working.  This morning there is very little pain in my fingers as I am typing this.  Tiger Balm also works for strained muscles and general aches and pains of joints.  The product is not overly expensive, and one tin of it has lasted me five years.

If you are suffering from some annoying pain that is chronic and is in a joint or muscle, you might want to try some Tiger Balm on it.  It seems to have helped me after two months of annoying finger pain.  Tiger Balm is sold at many pharmacies and health food stores, which is where I picked up my supply.  It works far better than aspirin and has none of the annoying side effects.  Just be careful not to get it in your eyes or on any sensitive body parts.

Wulong is one of the Chinese words for oolong tea.  Oolong tea is a partially-oxidized tea that is between green tea and black tea in color and flavor.  Many companies are selling so-called Wu-Long tea as a diet aid and claiming it can help you lose weight.  Reading some of the literature on websites that sell this tea, I can see exactly how this works.  You drink the tea, and eat a sensible diet, and exercise.

Tea contains many different phytochemicals.  Caffeine, theophylline, tannins, theobromine, flavonoids, and many others.  For a short analysis of tea chemistry, try this site.  Some of these chemicals are stimulants, some are anti-oxidants, some have sedative properties, some are smooth muscle relaxants.  When consumed, tea has a combination of stimulant and sedative properties.  It wakes you up and calms you down all at the same time.

There have been some studies done linking consumption of green tea with weight loss.  Since green, oolong, and black tea all come from the same plant, this research could just as well apply to other varieties of tea.  There are other health benefits to drinking tea, such as boosting the immune system, positive effects for diabetes, and possible anti-cancer activity.  Tea has also been shown to boost mental alertness and promote higher levels of activity, as it is a stimulant due to the caffeine it contains.

Now, should you pay extra for special slimming teas?  Some of the Wu-Long tea products sell for ridiculous amounts of money.  I have seen 60 tea bags go for $97 on the Internet.  This is an astronomical price for oolong tea.  I don’t believe there is anything special about a tea just because the label says it will help you lose weight.  The bottom line is that tea is tea, and despite the many varieties, it all comes from the same plant.

If you want to try oolong tea for weight loss, find a Chinese market in your area.  These stores usually sell a great variety of teas, oolong tea being very popular.  Oolong tea is also available at health food stores, but the price will tend to be much higher.  You might also try Whole Foods if you can’t find an asian market in your area.  As a last resort, look for low-cost oolong tea on the Internet.  You will have to pay shipping, but the price will be reasonable.  Two low-cost brands to look for online are Foo-Joy and Sea Dyke oolong tea.  These are also the brands commonly sold at Chinese markets.  A good retail price for oolong tea is $2.99 for 100 tea bags.  You may have to pay as much as $7.99 if you buy these online.

It’s entirely possible that oolong tea may aid you in losing weight.  You will also have to watch your diet and get some exercise.  Do not be mislead by claims for expensive products you see advertised online.  Oolong tea is a common grocery item that can be purchased locally in most areas if you know where to look.  Paying exorbitant prices for some magical tea brand is not necessary.

There is a hormone found in the urine of pregnant women. This hormone is called hCG or human choriogonadotropin. 

In 1954 a British doctor, A.T.W. Simeons, published a report on the use of this hormone in weight loss. The diet did not catch on very quickly. Over the years interest in this hormone-augmented weight loss method has peaked and ebbed. Recently, there has been renewed interest in this diet.

In the modern version of the hCG diet, a person is given injections of this hormone and is put on a diet restricted to 500 calories a day. It is thought that a person can lose 1 to 2 pounds a day on this regime. If you were to skip the injections and just limit yourself to the 500 calorie diet you would undoubtedly lose weight.

The hCG diet is just an old fad diet where they try to sell you an expensive and possibly dangerous hormone treatment. hCG is not approved by the FDA for use in weight loss. You will need to get a doctor’s prescription to purchase this drug. The hCG supposedly resets the hypothalamus to allow the body to lose weight.

There is much interest in this diet recently because of Kevin Trudeau’s book “Weight Loss Cures They Don’t Want You to Know About.” This is an old diet that has not been proven to work scientifically. That is why it is not approved by the FDA. If you are looking for a diet, find something that is safe and effective.

To lose weight you will have to limit your intake of calories. This means all calories, even those from soda and other drinks. For best results with any diet you will also need to increase your activity. This means exercise. You should be sure to get adequate protein, so your body does not consume muscles for protein when you lose weight. You do not need injections of pregnant woman urine extract to lose weight. Anyone who tells you that you need some magic formula to lose weight is after your money.

Polycarbonate water bottles made with bisphenol A will be removed from stores in the next few months.  Nalge Nunc International, the makers of the bottles, says it will substitute another plastic for the controversial polycarbonate in its products.  The company, which manufactures plastic lab water bottles, began selling consumer water bottles in the 1970s.

In other news on BPA, Canada has banned the sale and importation of polycarbonate baby bottles containing bisphenol A.  The departments of  health and environment have found the chemical to be toxic and harmful.  The ban goes into effect  June 19, however, most Canadian retailers are voluntarily removing BPA-containing food and drink containers from their shelves.

Today is diet day.  The DASH diet stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.  It is a diet that is designed to control high blood pressure.  There is a PDF document available from the government here that describes this diet plan and what it entails.

The basic premise of this diet is that sodium intake should be severely limited.  The plan states that you should maintain a healthy weight, get more physical activity, limit intake of sodium and alcohol, and take your blood pressure medication.  You should also limit your intake of saturated fats and cholesterol.

The dash diet plan gives guidelines for the different foods you should be eating, and prescribes amounts of foods for diets of various caloric intakes.  They list recipes and food preparation guidelines and give detailed information on how to work your meals.

If you are trying to lower your sodium intake it is very important to prepare your own meals from fresh ingredients.  Prepared foods such as canned soup, sauces, even canned tomatoes and pickles are often very high in sodium.  You will need to read the labels on different foods to see which have salt added to them.  Sometimes even things like meats and baked goods have high amounts of sodium because salt is added in the packaging.

If you are looking for a way to lose weight and maintain a healthy cardiovascular system it might be a good idea to check out this diet plan.  The foods you eat definitely affect your health.  With proper care and some effort you can do a lot towards maintaining a healthy body.

There seems to be a craze developing for Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet.  It seems these cookies contain a protein blend that supresses hunger.  The doctor developed these cookies by experimenting on friends and family almost 30 years ago.

Here’s how the cookie diet works.  You eat six cookies during the course of the day.  You do not eat breakfast or lunch.  Then you eat a dinner of six ounces of lean chicken or fish and a cup of boiled vegetables.  It is claimed you will typically lose 15 pounds a month on this regimen.

What’s special about the cookies is that they are supposed to control your appetite.  I have never tried these particular cookies, so I cannot say if they are any good or not.  If they are like any other cookies they would have about 80 or 90 calories each.  Six of them would contain about 500 calories.  With about 600 calories of meat and 100 calories for vegetables, this amounts to a daily caloric intake of about 1200 calories.  Of course, if you follow a diet like this, you will lose weight.

These would have to be some pretty tasty cookies if I were going to eat nothing but cookies all day and a boring dinner.  Can you imagine eating nothing but cookies for months on end?  This is not a varied diet.  Sure, you will lose weight.  You will lose more weight if you don’t eat the cookies and drink water to fight back your hunger pangs.  Losing weight is not about eating some magic cookie that makes you un-hungry.

Limiting intake of calories and increasing activity will get you to your goal.  You will have to keep track of how much you eat during the day.  Keeping a food diary is a good way to keep track of your meals if your memory is bad.  It will also add an extra chore to eating if you have to write everything down.  If you want to be really specific in your journal, get a food scale and weigh out all your portions.  This is the only way, aside from reading labels on packaged food, to really know how much you eat.  This is how the cookie diet works.  You get pre-portioned servings of known caloric content.

If you want to try the cookie diet, get some whey protein powder and add this to your favorite cookie recipe.  Try replacing the shortening with vegetable oil and leave out the chocolate chips.  This way, you can have a variety of cookie types from which to choose.  You can also avoid paying for somebody to send you pre-made cookies in the mail.  It would probably work for you if you stuck to the plan.  You might just want to find a sensible diet online and try that.

Modern plastic products come embossed with a recycling number.  This is a number between 1 and 7 which indicates the type of plastic used to manufacture the item.  It has generally been reported that numbers 3, 6, and 7 plastics have the potential to release toxic chemicals into any food product contained within them.

When you buy a container of some product it is a simple matter to turn the product upside down and read the number inside the triangle of arrows.  Numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5 are considered safe, as there has not been any chemical leaching detected from these materials.

Number 3 is polyvinyl chloride, or PVC.  PVC releases dioxins and can leach vinyl chloride and plasticizers in use.  These chemicals are potent carcinogens.  Number 6 is polystyrene, which can leach styrene, which has been shown to be a carcinogen and disrupts hormone levels.  Polycarbonate, which is number 7, is supposed to be the worst of these three.  It has been shown to leach bisphenol A, or BPA into hot liquids.  Most baby bottles are made out of number 7, and this could be a source of concern.  While bisphenol A has a low acute toxicity, there is concern about it because it mimics estrogen in the human body.  Studies of bisphenol A exposure in animals have shown links to breast and prostate cancer at levels very much below what the government considers safe.

To minimize any harmful effects from plastic containers, do not heat foods or liquids in plastic containers.  Look for the more inert plastics when you purchase items.  It might be advisable to purchase foods in glass, metal, or paper containers.  With most of the food sold today coming in plastic packaging it might be hard to find an alternative.  Still, with a bit of safe handling and remembering not to heat foods in these containers, any risk can be minimized.

Chi is a life force that is supposed to permeate and animate the universe.  It is a concept of Chinese philosophy.  In the times before western science became the predominant explanation for the phenomena of the observed universe, the concept of chi provided a theoretical construct which served to explain observed nature.

One of the fundamental questions asked by man is what separates living creatures and makes them different from inanimate objects.  The qualities of metabolism and motion are seen in many natural objects.   Living creatures must take in food and water and must breathe air in order to survive.  It is a simple assumption to suppose that there is some substance in the food and air that serves to animate living creatures.  This life force is named chi and has had important consequences in man’s interpretation of the physical world.

Chi was seen in the motions of the planets, in the movements of clouds and water, and in the animations of creatures.  The concept is very similar to the modern concept of energy.  Chi was seen as a subtle fluid which flowed throughout nature and which was tapped by anything in motion.  It was postulated that chi flowed in the meridians of the human body, and that disruptions in this flow caused disease.  Much of Chinese medicine was based on restoring the natural flow of chi with herbs or acupuncture needles.

In the modern world the theories of chi are usually discounted because chi or subtle energy can not be directly observed or measured.  If chi is thought of as being the energy of a system, then this difficulty disappears.  The entire modern world runs on energy, and as a system it can be seen as a living entity.  Certainly society is composed of a myriad of seperate living beings who all co-exist on planet earth.

While the concept of chi might be seen as an outmoded model for the ways the universe works, the exercises and therapies developed using the theory of chi still provide a valid source of health and vitality in the modern world.  Simple, easy, repeated motions might not draw chi from the universe, but they do provide therapeutic motions for the health of a body.  Exercises such as tai chi and chi gung are still practiced by many people.

Because a theory has been superceded by modern understanding does not mean that the observed results of applying this theory are invalid.  There may be better, more scientific understandings of disease and health and motion in the modern world, but the theory of chi still holds as a practical understanding for how things operate in the universe.

Apparently Demi Moore was on the Letterman show last night talking about how she had some kind of bloodletting with leeches from her navel as a supposed cleansing therapy.  Did she know that leeches carry a bacteria in their gut that can cause infection?  Do people in this day and age still think there is any benefit from bloodletting if you do not have a condition like a limb that is being re-attached?

Here’s an interesting site that explains all about leeches and even sells leeches.   I found out more than I want to know about the use of these bloodsucking worms.  Still, it’s very interesting to learn about all the uses for a creature that is very helpful if you need them, but can be dangerous if you don’t.  I can just see people lining up to get fed on by leeches because they heard of some movie star who did the same.

Apparently there are many compounds produced by the lowly leech that may be of use in medicine.  The leech produces an anesthetic, a blood thinner, and possible an antibiotic.  Scientists have even genetically engineered plants to produce leech compounds.  Many people who have suffered dismemberment have been saved by the use of leeches, but as for the benefits of bloodletting in supposedly detoxifying the body, I am skeptical.

Nutritional supplements are big business.  There are lots of companies that manufacture and sell vitamins, mineral, and various other things people use to supplement their diets.  With good foods available year round, why do so many people still take these products?

Vitamins are trace compounds necessary for life.  A deficit in any vitamin will cause a deficiency syndrome.  Current health guidelines specify a daily amount of vitamins based on what is necessary to prevent deficiency.  There is little research in the effects of taking more than the minimum amount of vitamins.  In general, some people think that if a little is good, more is better.  There has been much literature published on the supposed health benefits of large doses of vitamin C in averting viral infections.  There are also studies that link high amounts of vitamin E to increased risk of lung cancer.  Information on the effects of large doses of different vitamins is hard to find.  To make sure you are getting at least a minimum amount of necessary vitamins, it is prudent to take a daily multi-vitamin.

Many people who are trying to put on muscle mass take supplemental protein.  It is hard to get large amounts of protein from a normal diet without adding large amounts of fat and cholesterol from animal foods like meat or eggs.  The best protein supplement is whey protein.  Whey is a complete protein with a good balance of essential amino acids, which are the chemical building blocks of protein.  A single scoop of whey protein powder typically contains 23 grams of protein.  A can of tuna has about 30 grams of protein, as well as a certain amount of fat from fish oil.  It is convenient to mix protein powder with milk or other liquid and take it as a shake.  Supplemental protein can help balance your diet without adding excess calories.

There are many amino acid supplements on the market.  The most important of these for bodybuilding are probably L-glutamine and L-arginine.  Glutamine helps prevent muscle loss.  Arginine supports blood flow to muscles.  These amino acids will also be present in protein supplements as constituents of the protein.  The decision to supplement with amino acids depends on your budget and the information you read.  There are many supposed benefits of the various amino acids, but they are all available from your diet with adequate intake of complete proteins.

There are many herbal supplements around.  The various herbs have different effects on the human body.  For thousands of years the main medicines used by man have been herbs.  Herbs can have profound effects on the human body.  There is a lot of information online about the different herbal products which is easily found.  Ginseng is perhaps the most famous of the tonic herbs.  It is a Chinese plant that is supposed to increase metabolism and promote health.  If you plan to supplement with herbs it is important to start with a very small dose so you can be sure you are not allergic to the herb.  Allergies to plants are very common.  Most herbs are very subtle in their action, and you may not notice any observable effect.  Some herbs, such as senna, are violent in their effects, in this case causing purging of the bowels.  Exercise caution in the use of any herb.

The decision to supplement the diet with various substances is something you will have to use your own judgment in.  Read all the information on any product you are considering using.  Read stories of other people’s experience with these products.  In general, it is best to avoid brand-name patent concoctions sold to treat some condition such as obesity.  These products cost a lot of money because the manufacturer advertises them.  Find the most economical pure supplements and buy from a reliable source.  Most products that are being hyped are usually completely useless.

Nutritional supplements can boost your energy and improve your health if consumed properly.  Use the Internet and books to find the products that are right for you.  One good source of information on nutritional supplements and exercise is Bodybuilding.com.   Read up on whatever product you are thinking of using and make informed decisions on what you put in your body.