Good For You

Nothing beats walking in my opinion. I think it’s the best form of exercise there is because it gets you outside, challenges all your senses, and doesn’t do a lot of damage to your knees or other working parts like other sports. But here in Singapore, walking can be a phenomenal challenge when it rains so much of the time.

I hate walking on the treadmill in the gym. It is as boring as boring can get, despite the 101 things running around in my head as I watch the monitor to see how far I have walked, how fast, and how much longer I have to do it for. It’s just not right.

Weight training is good, but honestly, I’ve got my rope-a-dope and dumb bells at home and if I need something more to get me going, I just pop in the ‘ol DVD and turn on Power 90 boot camp which burns the fat and sculpts the body in half an hour stints. Maximum burning and toning, who could ask for more?

Ok, ok, targetting is harder. The equipment in the gym is great (except for when people leave their sweat on it or you have to wait forever to use it). But there are other ways to help the sagging gluteus maximus, such as doing a Brazilian Butt Lift in the comfort of your own home. Btw, this exercise lifts your gluteus medius and minimus as well. Bet you didn’t know there were three muscle groups to deal with.

So yeah, no more excuses. (I’m talking to myself.) The time it takes to go the gym can be time spent doing other more productive things. You save on gas, you save the earth, and you get a kickboxing and athletic drilling Turbo Fire Workout in the process. It doesn’t get better than this.

In the Philippines, camote (Sweet Potato) tops are boiled in water to extract the juice. The boiling lasts for about five minutes. A little salt is used to give flavor to it. The patient is made to drink slowly and gradually. The body’s immunity system is thus revived, making dengue helpless against the body’s natural defenses. Camote enables the body to heal itself.

WARNING: Dengue infection can affect many organs so it can be misdiagnosed as liver dysfunction, renal impairment, meningo-encephalitis or gastroenteritis when in fact these are just symptoms.

Usual Symptoms: Fever, headaches, eye pain, severe dizziness and loss of appetite, weak rapid pulse, narrow pulse pressure (less than 20 mm Hg) cold, clammy skin and restlessness.

Clinically: an infection will show a very low platelet and white blood cell count.

At any rate, whether there is a clinical diagnosis or not, taking the sweet potato broth can boost the immune system and fight off the infection.

CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) ranked the sweet potato number one in nutrition of all vegetables. With a score of 184, the sweet potato outscored the next highest vegetable by more than 100 points. Points were given for content of dietary fiber, naturally occurring sugars and complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium. Points were deducted for fat content (especially saturated fat), sodium, cholesterol, added refined sugars and caffeine. The higher the score, the more nutritious the food.

Sweet potato baked 184
Potato, baked 83
Spinach 76
Kale 55
Mixed Vegetables 52
Broccoli 52
Winter Squash, Baked 44
Brussels Sprouts 37
Cabbage, Raw 34
Green Peas 33
Carrot 30
Okra 30
Corn on the Cob 27
Tomato 27
Green Pepper 26
Cauliflower 25
Artichoke 24
Romaine Lettuce 24
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington D.C. copyright 1992

Dengue fever is caused by Dengue virus (DENV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus. DENV is an ssRNA positive-strand virus of the family Flaviviridae; genus Flavivirus. There are four serotypes of DENV. The virus has a genome of about 11000 bases that codes for three structural proteins, C, prM, E; seven nonstructural proteins, NS1, NS2a, NS2b, NS3, NS4a, NS4b, NS5; and short non-coding regions on both the 5′ and 3′ ends.

THE USUAL REPORTS:
(1) According to the Framingham Heart Study (started in 1948 and continues until today)established that high blood cholesterol is a risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD). Results of the Framingham study (1961) showed that the higher the cholesterol level, the greater the CHD risk. On the other end of the spectrum, CHD is uncommon at total cholesterol levels below 150 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL).

(2) Additionally, a direct link between high blood cholesterol and CHD has been confirmed by the Lipid Research Clinics-Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (1984) which showed that lowering total and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels significantly reduces CHD.

THE TRUTH:
(1) ‘There’s no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood. And we’ve known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn’t matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit.’ Ancel Keys PhD, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota 1997.

(2) In a 10-year follow-up to the original five-year trial in Finland, it was found that those men who continued to follow a low saturated fat diet were twice as likely to die of heart disease as those who didn’t. ‘As multiple interventions against risk factors for coronary heart disease in middle aged men at only moderate risk seem to have failed to reduce both morbidity and mortality such interventions become increasingly difficult to justify. This runs counter to the recommendations of many national and international advisory bodies which must now take the recent findings from Finland into consideration. Not to do so may be ethically unacceptable.’ Professor Michael Oliver, British Medical Journal 1991

If you want more substantial evidence from medical doctors, no less, check out: The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

Bottom Line: Taking the cholesterol lowering drugs is more harmful than helpful to your health. Stop taking them now.