Small Waist, Big Bum
Some of these studies are just too much. This study claims the results show that the curvier a woman is, the smarter she, and her children, are. From today’s BBC Health News.
Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.
Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests – as did their children.
The bigger the difference between a woman’s waist and hips the better.
Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips.
In this area, the fat is likely to be the much touted Omega-3, which could improve the woman’s own mental abilities as well as those of her child during pregnancy.
You can read the entire article HERE.
The Magic of Miso
(Image courtesy mediafocus.com)
Growing up on the west coast of the USA is like growing up in an international zone. When I was very little, in Alaska, we had lots of Scandinavian foods, along with – no, I am not kidding – mooseburgers, deer, fresh shrimp and king crab, lots of clams, and of course, salmon and halibut. Our Dads would go out in hunting season, and alternated garages for the cleaning and cutting up of the deer. We would get the eyes or tail to take to school for show-and-tell. Yeh, it sounds gross now, but we were kids, and it was a part of our life.
We waited to be 10 years old, when we could go to Rifle Club and learn to shoot. You can’t imagine how delighted I am to see a Women’s team in Kuwait, top-notch riflewomen!
In Seattle, there have always been huge communities of immigrants. One community, Ballard, is – or was – primarily Scandinavian, mostly Norwegian. (I had to look up the spelling on that one!) There is an area called Chinatown – the more politically correct call it the international district, and now, it is truly international, with Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Gambian, Nigerian, Cambodian, etc.
I don’t know exactly when I came to associate miso soup with good health, but last night, I had a small dinner planned, and Adventure Man said “Why don’t you let me bring you some miso soup?” He knows miso soup is one of my comfort foods when I am sick.
I was so sick, nothing sounded good to me. Better, though, that he bring me something than that I have to get up and cook!
He brought the miso soup. I didn’t even want to eat it, but I did. Then, before he had even finished his dinner, I excused myself, went back to bed and slept for three hours, really slept. Until then, I had been sleeping fitfully, waking often, never feeling rested.
At 10:30 I woke up and felt . . . better! I chatted with Adventure Man, took care of a few things, then went back to bed and slept peacefully through the night.
Today – I am not totally well, but I am mostly well. Thanks be to God, and . . . Miso soup!
Paying the Price
I had two wonderful days, Thursday and Friday, out and about all day in this wonderful Kuwait weather. Saturday was out again for a short time with Adventure Man and felt a tickle in my throat. No big deal, I figure it is just allergies, or the change in seasons; I drank some ginger tea and figured that would be the end of it.
Wrong!
Yesterday, it was hanging on, getting stronger. Here come the sneezes, the swollen sinuses, the watery bleary eyes, the sneezing and the coughing. Having a cold totally grosses me out. I’m not a person who gets dramatically and romantically ill, lying beautifully in bed while people bring me hot drinks and speak to me in soft voices. I look terrible! I want this cold gone now! I’ve upped the arsenel to Strepticils, Zinc tablets, Cranberry juice and antihistimines. It doesn’t matter; I am a wreck.
I’m better during the day, it’s night time that gets me – I wake up choking and coughing, my sinuses hurt, my nose is running. . . and I sleep fitfully, with weird dreams, so sometimes I can’t tell if I am dreaming or awake.
The Qatteri Cat faithfully follows me everywhere I go. I am sleeping in the guest bedroom so Adventure Man doesn’t have to suffer through this with me, but QC just makes comforting noises and snuggles up to me.
I have a lot to do this week. Please keep me in prayer for a speedy recovery!
Obesity Fuels Cancer in Women
This is not good news – From BBC Health News:
About 6,000 middle-aged or older women in the UK develop cancer each year because they are obese or overweight, a Cancer Research UK-funded study says.
The study, which looked at 45,000 cases of cancer in 1m women over seven years, says this is about 5% of such cases.
It is published online by the British Medical Journal and blames excess fat for 50% of cases of womb cancer and a type of oesophageal cancer.
Last week an international study warned of the link between cancer and weight.
Cancers Linked to Obesity:
Womb
Oesophagus
Bowel
Kidney
Leukaemia
Breast
Multiple myeloma (bone marrow)
Pancreatic
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Ovarian
You can read the entire article HERE.
Bedbug Renaissance Inn
We had just come back to Germany from our son’s graduation from law school, and woke up the next morning with welts – we didn’t know what they were. All we knew is suddenly, we had red itchy welts, and I was allergic to whatever they were.
We were lucky – we got in to see a doctor right away, and he told us what they were and what to do, and we did it and we never had another problem. He also told us that he was seeing this problem more and more – that many hotels have extra guests they never tell you about, even the very best hotels. (Our poor kitty – we had blamed her, we thought maybe she had brought in fleas, and it wasn’t her at all, it was hitch-hikers from Florida.)
What we learned from this truly awful experience is that bedbug infestations are happening everywhere. It’s something no one talks about out of shame, but with DDT off the market, and increasingly warm climates, they are on the increase.
To this day, I wash my sheets in hot hot water, and dry them on hot. And I think twice when I say to children, as is common in the USA “sleep tight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite!”
From AOL News:
(Nov. 7) – First come the bites, amazingly itchy, raised red welts that appear, literally, overnight. Then, you might notice scarlet spots on your sheets from smashed bugs or perhaps clusters of little black dots that you assume are dirt but are in fact constellations of fecal matter.
And one day, you might wake up in the wee hours of the morning, flip on the lights and find red bugs, slightly bigger than ticks, crawling on your sheets, pillows and legs.
Welcome to the most retro pest of the 21st century, the bedbug. The bugs, which were thought to be wiped out by powerful pesticides such as DDT 30 years ago, are back and infesting major urban areas, suburbia and the heartland.
You can read the entire horrifying story at AOL Health News.
USA Today’s List of How to Cope with a Bedbug Infestation:
Coping With Bedbugs: Advice From Experts
The best rule of thumb for dealing with bedbugs? Try not to get them in the first place.
Otherwise, read on:
Be careful where you put your suitcase when you travel. “These guys are fantastic hitchhikers,” says the University of Maryland’s Michael Raupp. “If you have a luggage rack with metal racks, put your suitcase on that.”
Check behind a hotel headboard. That’s one of their favorite spots, Raupp says. Pull back the comforter and sheets and look for the fecal stains on the mattress seams and ticking. Shine a penlight behind the headboard and look for dark fecal stains.
If you do wake up with red welts, assume the worst. “At that point, when you go home, all laundry goes into a trash bag outside, and then right into a washing machine on a hot cycle, and then a clothes dryer,” says the University of Kentucky’s Michael F. Potter. “As little as five or 10 minutes kills everything on high heat. Cold will not kill the eggs and not all the adults.”
Don’t pull mattresses and dressers off the street. Steer clear of yard sales or flea markets. And don’t ever buy used bedding.
If you do get them, don’t use a bomb or spray, which will only scatter them through your home. “Find a good pest-control company. This is not one where you buy bug spray and battle it yourself,” Potter says.
In many cases, pros suggest getting rid of your box spring and mattress, or if you can’t, using a bug-proof zippered mattress cover that traps the buggers inside for at least a year.
Source: USA Today
Cretan Olive Oil
This response is to a post I wrote October 25th on The Olive Oil scandal, that even when you buy a brand you have thought is reliable, you may not be getting what you paid for. For me, it was particularly horrifying to discover they were adulterating the olive oil with hazlenut oil – I don’t have a severe allergy to hazlenuts, but they make the insides of my ears itch. I avoid hazlenuts!
I keep getting such good responses to the post – and I have a partiality (disclaimer!) to small producers of anything, from olive oil to soap to pecans . . . I love buying from the entrepreneur.
Which is why I have taken this response from the comments page and made it an entry. Thank you, Mr. Sassone, for your thoughtful addition to this subject:
It is indeed a shame that the majority of the olive oil on the American and world market has been adulterated by unscrupulous sellers looking for enormous profits.
That is why I started growing olives on the island of Crete, making extra virgin olive oil-EVOO, and importing it to the US. I personally observe all steps in the process from the time the olive flowers bud on the tree until the EVOO goes in the can. I know it is the cleanest, freshest, highest quality, and most healthful EVOO you can buy at any price.
I also offer all customers copies of test reports from independent laboratories that show the exact quality. Acidity is 0.17%. Total polyphenols are 165ppm. Peroxide value is 6. Nothing can compare at any price.
When people buy EVOOs that are labeled as a mix of oil from several countries, they must take this into account: How clean was process to gather the olives? How clean was the factory that processed the oil? How clean were the trucks that transported the oil to the ship? How clean was the ship that transported the oil? You can see where this is going. At any one or more of dozens of steps in the process, contamination can occur. Some of the olive producing countries do not have food the safety standards like the European Union or US Food and Drug Administration.
My curiosity got the best of me. Recently, I sent samples of 13 EVOOs sold in the US for lab testing to find out just how good or bad they are. I dont have a web site just yet, but will publish the results as a comparison to my oil. So long as I keep complete control of the entire process, I can improve the quality of my oil each year.
My EVOO is now available in the US. It is the finest quality and most healthful EVOO you can buy at any price. Send me and email if interested. kretareserve@cox.net Thanks. Tony
She Did Everything Right
When I was a little girl growing up in Alaska, we had neighbors who lived just across the creek. Our neighbors had a daughter 6 years older than me; she was my first babysitter. Growing up, those six years made all the difference – we didn’t know one another as friends, the gap was too great. Our families were very close, however, and when my parents would go to parties at her parents house, they would take us and put us to bed in her bed.
I saw her now and then through the years, but our lives were in different places. When I was just getting married, she had big boys, by the time my son was a teenager, hers were getting married and going to college. We reconnected in Florida, of all places, where we both ended up at the same time due to our husband’s jobs.
Having our Alaska childhood in common, having grown up together and knowing each other’s family through all the years created a strong bond. We saw each other often; she was like a big sister to me.
She always had it all together. She had a group that bicycled together every morning, and then had outings later in the day. She was a fitness buff, and ran in the mornings before she bicycled. She kept herself thin, and she loved to cook, but she could eat what she wanted because she exercised it all off.
She was a reader, and would pass along the really good books to me. She and her husband were also news buffs, so when we would get together with our husbands, there was never a dull moment at the dinner table.
She and her husband were sent to Egypt, and to Rumallah, and to China, and they made the most of every minute. They loved traveling, they loved their sailing boat, they loved their family. They would come to visit us in our places of the world, and we would have great reunions. They were so alive.
She could be annoying. She would chide me about not exercising enough. She would comment on how much food people ate. She always knew the latest in medical research to back herself up. She kept her mind active, and she kept her weight down. She exercised, she travelled, she took care of her parents, she did good works for others. She did everything right.
A couple years ago, we joined her and her husband for dinner. She hadn’t combed her hair. She weighed about 20 lbs more, and didn’t seem to notice. She couldn’t remember the last book she had read, and she couldn’t remember her recent trip to Mexico, or an earlier one to Spain.
It’s been downhill since then. Her loving husband is strong and able to care for her, this once-beautiful, sprite-like, spirited woman. I think she still knew me, when I saw her last summer, but she can no longer really express what she is thinking. She is restless, up and down from the table, and not able to participate in the conversation.
I am haunted. I am so much like her; I tried to live up to all that she has taught me. A part of me wants to scream at God “This isn’t fair! She did everything right!”
Perhaps doing everything right gave her a few extra years, and I am just not seeing things from the right perspective. Meanwhile, I get no answers, and my heart breaks when I think of her.
Eat Your Onions!
(And carry breath mints!)
From today’s BBC Health News comes proof that those helpings of vegetables and fruits cut the risk of early heart disease.
Onions ‘cut heart disease risk’
Eating a meal rich in compounds called flavonoids reduces some early signs of heart disease, research shows.
An Institute of Food Research team focused on one of the compounds, quercetin, which is found in tea, onions, apples and red wine.
The Atherosclerosis study examined the effect of the compounds produced after quercetin is broken down by the body.
They were shown to help prevent the chronic inflammation which can lead to thickening of the arteries.
You can read the rest of the article HERE.
Be Thin, Cut Cancer Risk
Be thin to cut cancer, study says
This is from today’s BBC Health News
Even those who are not overweight should slim down if they want to cut their risk of cancer, a major international study has claimed.
The World Cancer Research Fund carried out the largest ever inquiry into lifestyle and cancer, and issued several stark recommendations.
They include not gaining weight as an adult, avoiding sugary drinks and alcohol, and not eating bacon or ham.
Everyone must also aim to be as thin as possible without becoming underweight.
People with a Body Mass Index (BMI), a calculation which takes into account height and weight, of between 18.5 and 25, are deemed to be within a “healthy” weight range.
But the study says their risk increases as they head towards the 25 mark, and that everyone should try to be as close to the lower end as possible.
Recommendations include:
Limit red meat
Limit alcohol
Avoid bacon, ham, and other processed meats
No sugary drinks
No weight gain after 21
Exercise every day
Breastfeed children
Do not take dietary supplements to cut cancer
Comment: This is not a new study, but a compilation based on the committee looking at hundreds of studies done on correlations of weight, diet and cancer risk. The troublesome issue to me is that these are things we have been told, things that we KNOW, and things we aren’t doing anything about.
Hey! The weather is great! Let’s go for a walk!
(You can read the rest of the BBC article here.
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Comment on Obesity Post
I normally won’t post a comment as a new post unless it meets two criteria – the author has a blog that is legitimate and the post is so well written that I don’t want it buried in the comments. This response to the Obesity Fuels Cancer in Women Post only meets the well written rule, but the reference blog was non-existent. Too bad – the comment is so full of good information that this commenter should be writing her own blog, and I hope she is.
Guess the link between obesity and breast cancer is significantly higher in comparison to other cancers because fat has an oestrogenic effect, which stimulates the lining epithelium of the mammary glands. The more stimulated the gland the greater are the chances of spontaneous mutations happening which could result in cancer.
By that metric, women with rather large breasts could also be at risk. Suddenly, breast augmentation doesn’t sound like a brilliant idea anymore.
My prof. would insist you could cut your breast cancer risk in half simply by taking a brisk walk daily for 45 mins and cutting back on red meat, smoking, alcohol and spicy food.
This after undergoing molecular testing for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation analysis if a first degree relative suffers early onset breast or ovarian cancer ( before age 45) so that you can begin annual screening by mammography alternating with an ultra-sound, a full 10 years ahead of the rest of the population starting at 30.
What’s useful to know is that you should not change your radiologist or the mammography machine as there can be wide variation in result interpretation with different machines and/or operators.
A final word of caution – ladies, don’t let’s apply deodorants under our armpits. Studies claim a higher incidence of cancers in the left upper quadrant of the breast due to such an application in mostly, right handed women. It is a truism – every little helps; baby steps can go a long way.
Monthly self-examination of both the breasts with flat of the palm; taking care to avoid the time of monthly periods can enable the detection of small pea sized cancerous lumps.
It is a step in the right direction that Q8 is slowly but surely awakening to the need of mass public education on breast cancer through TV and print ads, as well as through sharing space with commercial ads in cinemas and the distribution of flyers and brochures with the testing of perfumes and cosmetics in malls and shopping arcades across Kuwait.
It is unfortunate that similar campaigns are not being directed at men for lung and prostate cancer as well as to raise the awareness of the rare breast cancer happening in men with a far worse prognosis.
November 10, 2007 Posted by intlxpatr | Blogging, ExPat Life, Health Issues, Living Conditions, Women's Issues | blog comments, cancer, Obesity | 11 Comments