Standing in the way of control!

The government believes it has identified nine types of heavy drinker as it launches a new alcohol campaign.

Research by the Department of Health in England with focus groups found heavy drinkers often fell into one of a number of categories.

These ranged from de-stress and depressed drinkers to people who boozed because of boredom or to bond.

Experts said helping people to understand the reasons for their drinking habits was “very useful”.

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• Revealed: the nine types of heavy drinker

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This little machine costs +/- US$ 1650:

And I had to purchase it cash since my medical aid doesn’t cover it and it is not for sale or rent in Namibia. Upside I am one of only two people to own this device in Namibia. Downside: It can only be used for 6 months!

Here’s more on this little gadget which hopefully will finally heal my arm…

Exogen 4000+ and Exogen Express

Treatment of fractures with the EXOGEN Bone Healing System (low-intensity pulsed ultrasound) may speed healing, lower the need for further surgery, and get patients back to their normal activities faster.

The EXOGEN Bone Healing System utilizes low-intensity ultrasound to accelerate the healing of indicated fresh fractures up to 38% faster than normal healing. There are economic benefits generally for individuals and organisations with people returning to work after injury more quickly. Faster recovery is in the interests of all patients, clinicians and health care providers.

The EXOGEN Bone Healing System is also highly effective for use on non-healing fractures. These fractures are a significant problem and a major cost to healthcare systems around the world. Clearly patients who suffer fractures which will not heal suffer great frustration and anxiety, and treatment from EXOGEN provides an improved chance to recover, invaluable for

patients who may have previously been largely confined to hospital or their homes.

The ultrasound device is a portable, lightweight unit that delivers the prescribed treatment in a convenient 20 minute daily regimen. The ease of use offered means that patients can treat themselves at home, thus freeing hospital resources from this task. The unit’s digital display guides patients step by step through proper operation and the main unit monitors treatment providing the clinician with an accurate record for reference.

The treatment is safe and has no contra-indications. It has been clinically proven in many thousands of patients worldwide.

* The only difference between the express and the 4000 is the amount of treatment time available per unit.

* 4000+ - once daily for 20 minutes for 1 year.
* Express - once daily for 20 minutes for 6 months.

[Source]

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Hungry? Why wait? Especially since the food being offered at the Olympic venues apparently sucked so bad that Snickers became the number two chocolate bar in China this quarter, either for lack of better options, the fact that Chinese officials kept visitors away from the Olympic Green, or following a deal chocolate maker Mars signed to make the deliciously nutty snack the official chocolate of the Beijing Games.

Snickers, known over there as “Shilijia,” has been around in China for the last fifteen years, but it took the giant marketing tie-in of the games for the Chinese to come around on the junk-food. Or rather, it took the build up to the giant marketing tie-in to get the Chinese on the road toward the ambitious goal of obesity.

The game plan for introducing the East to a snack that costs about half of what the average Chinese teen spends a day? Only a little gimmick that definitely wouldn’t fly in the U.S.

Earlier this year, Mars hosted a Snickers Street Olympics tournament in Beijing of “hybrid sports” events like Basoccer, a mix of basketball and soccer with trash cans for goals, and Streetminton, a combination of badminton and break dancing.

Also offered was Snickers Jump Satisfaction, an event in which participants jumped over as many Snickers bars as possible to win them. Mars offered tickets to the real Olympic Games as prizes.

Cute! Clever! Genius! But it sure as hell would never work here!

Americans love corporate sponsored contests as much as the next guy, and there is that Red Bull flying machine contest every year to get kids out of their houses, but America’s youth are more interested in getting their corporate exercise by playing Rock Band and finding viral video endorsements on YouTube. Going outside to participate in made-up sports? They barely go outside to participate in real sports.

But at least our fatness has plateaued. So there’s that.

[JOSSIP]

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A woman who has never shown symptoms of infection with the AIDS virus may hold the secret to defeating the virus, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Infected at least 10 years ago by her husband, the woman is able somehow to naturally control the deadly and incurable virus — even though her husband must take cocktails of strong HIV drugs to control his.

She is a so-called “elite suppressor,” and studies of her immune cells have begun to offer clues to how her body does it, the team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said.

“This is the best evidence to date that elite suppressors can have fully pathogenic virus,” said Dr. Joel Blankson, who led the study.

“The feeling was initially that they had defective virus,” Blankson added in a telephone interview.

But the couple has been monogamous for at least 17 years, Blankson said, and tests show they are infected with the same strain of virus. What is different is the immune system of the wife, who cannot be named for privacy reasons.

“That’s a good sign in terms of developing a therapeutic vaccine,” Blankson said. Such a vaccine would not prevent infection but might be used to treat patients.

The AIDS virus infects at least 33 million people globally and more than a million in the United States. It has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the early 1980s.

New figures show 56,000 people are infected every year in the United states, mostly gay and bisexual men but also injecting drug users and their sexual partners, both male and female, as well as newborns and recipients of contaminated blood transfusions.

STALLING REPLICATION

Both the man and the woman, who are from Baltimore, were diagnosed 10 years ago, Blankson said. The husband is a former injecting drug user.

Tests showed that immune cells known as CD8 T-cells from the wife stalled HIV replication by as much as 90 percent, while the husband’s T-cells stopped it by only 30 percent, Blankson’s team reported in the Journal of Virology.

Her virus has also mutated in apparent response to this immune attack, becoming weaker, while her husband’s virus has remained strong.

“Elite suppression offers clues to vaccine researchers on many fronts: how CD8 killer T-cells can attack HIV and how a stronger immune response can force HIV into a permanent defensive state,” Blankson said.

“We are trying to figure out exactly how the T-cells work in her to inhibit viral replication,” he added. “We are just trying to see what kind of cytokines they make.”

Cytokines are immune system signaling proteins. One thing the researchers have noticed is that while the husband’s T-cells make just one, called gamma interferon, hers made both that one and another called TNF, or tumor necrosis factor.

That cannot be the whole story, though, because AIDS researchers have tried using such immune system proteins in patients and they did not work well.

And her immune cells seem to make the response only when they encounter the virus.

Another clue: the woman may have unusual activity in her human leukocyte antigen system, or HLA, Blankson said. This important component of the immune system helps recognize antigens — protein identifiers — of enemies such as bacteria and viruses.

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ONE OF the biggest secrets of the fitness world has nothing to do with supplements, steroids or spandex. It is the almost implausible combination of exercise and smoking.There are people, it seems, who do both. We’re not talking about mall walkers who light up once a week. These are men and women who compete in marathons and triathlons and go hiking and train at the gym — who also have a pretty steady cigarette habit.

In a recent online poll sponsored by Runner’s World magazine, 2% of the 2,500 people who responded said they smoked, unbeknownst to their running friends. About 4% said they smoked but that their running buddies were in the know.

Bart Yasso has seen his share of smokers in the more than 1,000 races he’s completed. The chief running officer of Runner’s World magazine and author of “My Life on the Run” says some runners light up before and after races. He even has a few friends who run and smoke.

“They’re very secretive about it,” he says. “They don’t want anyone to know, and I know they’re not proud of it. These are people you never would have guessed were smokers. I encourage them to quit. It’s that addictive element — I understand where they’re coming from.” Yasso was once a smoker himself, but quit years ago when he started running.

Smoking has something of a place in the world of endurance sports. The Pikes Peak Marathon in Colorado began as a challenge in 1956 from a nonsmoking doctor, Arne Suominen, to any smokers who thought they could beat him to the top of the peak and back down. A nonsmoker won, and the three smokers who ran never finished the race.

A smoker did beat Suominen to the top, but decided to smoke a cigarette instead of heading back.

The smokers profiled here are divided on how they ultimately see their habit, with some defiant and others wrestling with how and when they should try to quit. But for now, smoking and exercise continue to run in sync.

[LAT]

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Even the most fabulous, high-flying lives hit pockets of dead air, periods when the sails go slack. Movie stars get marooned in D.M.V. lines. Prime ministers sit with frozen smiles through interminable state events. Living-large rappers endure empty August afternoons, pacing the mansion, checking the refrigerator, staring idly out the window, baseball droning on the radio.

Wondering: When does the mail come, exactly?

Scientists know plenty about boredom, too, though more as a result of poring through thickets of meaningless data than from studying the mental state itself. Much of the research on the topic has focused on the bad company it tends to keep, from depression and overeating to smoking and drug use.

Yet boredom is more than a mere flagging of interest or a precursor to mischief. Some experts say that people tune things out for good reasons, and that over time boredom becomes a tool for sorting information — an increasingly sensitive spam filter. In various fields including neuroscience and education, research suggests that falling into a numbed trance allows the brain to recast the outside world in ways that can be productive and creative at least as often as they are disruptive.

In a recent paper in The Cambridge Journal of Education, Teresa Belton and Esther Priyadharshini of East Anglia University in England reviewed decades of research and theory on boredom, and concluded that it’s time that boredom “be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity.”

Psychologists have most often studied boredom using a 28-item questionnaire that asks people to rate how closely a list of sentences applies to them: “Time always seems to be passing too slowly,” for instance.

High scores in these tests tend to correlate with high scores on measures of depression and impulsivity. But it is not clear which comes first — proneness to boredom, or the mood and behavior problems. “It’s the difference between the sort of person who can look at a pool of mud and find something interesting, and someone who has a hard time getting absorbed in anything,” said Stephen J. Vodanovich, a psychologist at University of West Florida in Pensacola.

Boredom as a temporary state is another matter, and in part reflects the obvious: that the brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, a person, an event, a paragraph. But it is far from a passive neural shrug. Using brain-imaging technology, neuroscientists have found that the brain is highly active when disengaged, consuming only about 5 percent less energy in its resting “default state” than when involved in routine tasks, according to Dr. Mark Mintun, a professor of radiology at Washington University in St. Louis.

That slight reduction can make a big difference in terms of time perception. The seconds usually seem to pass more slowly when the brain is idling than when it is absorbed. And those stretched seconds are not the live-in-the-moment, meditative variety, either. They are frustrated, restless moments. That combination, psychologists argue, makes boredom a state that demands relief — if not from a catnap or a conversation, then from some mental game.Read on….

[NYT]

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Bottled water is a joke, one of the biggest consumer and taxpayer ripoffs ever. I applaud California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown who said recently that he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California by Nestle.

Next, Attorneys General everywhere should require recycling of all plastic bottles and containers by requiring deposits to be paid to encourage returns, as is the case with aluminum cans. Not only do society and the environment pay an unfair price for this consumer hoax, but consumers are being hoodwinked. They are paying from 300 to 3,000 times more than the cost of tap water without any benefit.
Here’s an estimate by a University of Toronto geology professor Andrew Miall who took a picture of a grocery store skid of bottled water and calculated the extent of the ripoff.

“>

The scam
The water is usually not superior to “city” water or tap water, and is merely a big branding hoax by soda makers. In some cases, this “designer” water is drawn from tap water and labeled for suckers to buy as though it is a superior product.

Dasani in Britain was caught doing this. There are not regulations or proper labeling requirements governing bottled water as there is involving tap water. Some water may be contaminated.

Bottles of water are not fluoridated which has been created tooth decay problems among youngsters and adults who avoid tap water.

There are indications that the plastic may contain harmful carcinogens.

Bottles of water are mini gas guzzlers
One expert estimated that the amount of petroleum — used to make the bottles, transport, refrigerate, collect and bury them — would fill one-third of each bottle.

These plastic bottles are creating landfill problems worldwide, and are washing up on beautiful beaches around the planet.

What’s wrong with using filters, if people are concerned about local water supplies, and refillable bottles?

Another stupidity
A real estate developer explained the idiocy of ordering bottled water in restaurants. He said bylaws require special water filtration systems be installed so that their “tap water” is safer than any.

Of course, there’s always those who want fancy sparkling or soda water, but that’s another issue.
About the only justification for bottled water is in developing countries where water supplies are decidedly unsafe or untrustworthy.

The Huffington Post

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It’s no secret that prescription drugs are expensive, but it is a bit of one that they don’t have to be. Dr. Edward Jardini’s book, How To Save On Prescription Drugs, has 20 methods that anyone can use to drastically cut the costs of long-term medications, without sacrificing quality. Here’s 14 of them:ELIMINATE NONESSENTIAL PRESCRIPTIONS
1. Eliminate medicines that are no longer needed
2. Eliminate medicines that no longer work
3. Eliminate medicines that have never worked
4. Eliminate medicines that were never needed

THINK OUTSIDE THE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BOTTLE
5. Treat with lifestyle changes
6. Use nondrug treatments
7. Prevent disease naturally

STEER CLEAR OF OVERPRICED REDUNDANT DRUGS
8. Don’t “Ask Your Doctor” (for Advertised Drugs)
9. Insist on generic drugs
10. Insist on cheaper medicines with the same class
11. Insist on a cheaper class from the same treatment goal

PLAY IT SMART!
12. Cut costs by splitting tablets
13. Don’t treat side effects of one drug with another
14. Comparison-shop

Be sure to talk to your doctor before changing anything about your medication. In fact, that’s the very first thing Jardini wants you to do, schedule a “treatment review” visit where you discuss the efficacy and cost and ask the right questions about the treatment you’re getting. “It is not just tough luck if your doctor chooses costly medicines for you,” writes Jardini, “The system is designed this way….a health care revolution…needs to take place in the United States…but it will only start when patients enlist physician support and refuse to be denied affordable care…prohibitive cost is an intolerable side effect too.”

(Consumerist)

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WASHINGTON – The Internet is where we spend more and more of our time. But for a growing number of people, it’s an out-of-control habit instead of a necessary part of life.

Internet addiction — an online-related compulsive behavior that interferes with normal living and causes severe stress on family, friends, loved ones and work — is a psychological and behavioral problem that is spreading around the world, experts say.

Kimberly Young, clinical director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery and author of the book “Caught in the Net,” said that about 5 percent to 10 percent of Americans –15 to 30 million people — may suffer from Internet addiction. And the problem may be even greater elsewhere. Young said 18 to 30 percent of the populations of China, Korea and Taiwan, where the Internet is even more popular than in the U.S., may be addicted.

“I’ve seen a lot of growth in the field of Internet addiction,” said Young. “More research and studies (are) trying to understand it better. … It’s a global problem.”

The main types of Internet addiction are cybersex, online affairs, online gambling, online gaming, compulsive surfing and even eBay addiction, Young added.

An article by Dr. Jerald J. Block in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry stated that “Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder.”

Centers specializing in Internet addiction have been created to offer treatment.

Coleen Moore, coordinator of resource development at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, said she has clients from college age to early adulthood who spend 14 to 18 hours a day online.

But Young noted that it’s not just how long people spend using a computer, it’s what they’re doing online.

“A lot of people can use the Internet, like alcohol, and not be addicted, but when they lose the control, [then] it becomes an issue,” she said. “You’re not looking at how much time do you spend online but at the quality of how that is affecting your life.”

To help people with their diagnosis, Young developed a test that uses a 20-question survey to measure levels of Internet addiction.

“There are no real drugs for this yet,” she said. “It’s not about medication, it’s more about therapy.”

The estimated recovery time varies.

At the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, some patients need 30 to 90 days in-patient treatment, followed by a continuing care program.

But Internet addiction recovery, as any other addiction, requires lifelong treatment, experts said.

“This [problem] can reactive itself any time if the person does not keep working on the recovery,” said Moore. “We see recovery as a lifelong endeavor.”

In addition to private treatment centers, nonprofit organizations like Gamblers Anonymous, Kickporn.com, Online Gamers Anonymous and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous were created to help addicts.

Online gaming is the form of Internet addiction that is rapidly growing among young people.

“Initially we primarily had people addicted to surfing the Web, chat rooms, virtual communities and things like that. Now we are looking more to gaming,” Moore said.

Brian Robbins, of the entertainment agency Fuel Industries Inc. and a member of the International Game Developers Association, said there’s been a big increase in the number of people playing video games online.

“The vast majority of the Web-based games, … probably 90 to 95 percent, are free to play,” said Robbins.

San Francisco-based Zynga.com offers a huge variety of free games online through Facebook, one of the most popular social networking Web sites. Poker and blackjack are the most popular games, with more than 12 million and 4 million registered players, respectively, according to its Web site.

“Gaming is certainly one of the things that could get people addicted to the Internet because it’s such a compelling content…,” said Robbins. “But I don’t think games are any more susceptible to Internet addiction than any of the other forms of entertainment.”

Source: Medill Reports

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In an effort to appease PETA and other angry vegetarians, KFC recently began selling a vegan, “Unchicken” sandwich in its Canadian locations. Guess what? It’s not vegetarian.A reader at “green gossip” website Ecorazzi reported that the local KFC says it fries its vegan patties in the same fryers and oil that it uses to cook its chicken. It’s doubtful that they’re the only location that does this, but even if they were, there are several other reasons why this sandwich isn’t vegan, and might not even be vegetarian. The obvious one is the use of mayonnaise as a condiment, which contains egg products unsuitable for vegans. We couldn’t find any nutritional information on this sandwich at KFC or KFC Canada’s website, so we can’t speculate on what secret animal products (like enzymes or “natural flavors”) are in the bun. Having worked at a few fast food restaurants in high school, we know that gloves and utensils aren’t changed between preparing meaty and vegetarian items, so you’re probably getting some chicken fat in your KFC Vegetarian Sandwich one way or another.

It’s nice that KFC made the attempt to offer a non-meat menu item, but vegans and vegetarians shouldn’t be eating at fast food restaurants. Even the highly touted Burger King Morningstar Burger is imperfect: the patty itself contains milk and egg, the mayo contains eggs, and the cheese contains milk (and probably animal rennet). Burger King’s nutrition info brochure contains the following disclaimer: “Burger King Corporation makes no claim that the BK VEGGIE® Burger or any other of its products meets the requirements of a vegan or vegetarian diet.”

If you’d like to learn more about how cheese is made with veal stomach, sugar is bleached with animal bones, and other depressing reasons not to ever eat anything ever again, check out the Vegetarian Resource Group’s Frequently Asked Questions About Food Ingredients

From: Consumerist

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Interesting article on the smoking ban in pubs…Basically it argues that with smoking banned from pubs, a foul odor still remains….that of stinky people.

Now that the cigarette smoke has cleared, thanks to the ban that went into effect in January, bar goers are sniffing some bad odors.

“When it’s emptier, [a bar] smells like stale beer, spilled alcohol, frat house,” said Brittany Allan, 21, a student living in Gold Coast.

While taking a break from work downtown, Rahim Slaise, 32, recalled smelling scents of “overbearing cologne, a musk and body odor” at clubs recently.

Using odor-gauging equipment called a Nasal Ranger field olfactometer, smell expert Dr. Alan Hirsch identified 46 different odors at a Gold Coast bar in May for a study sponsored by Axe, maker of body sprays. The top odor contributors were a musty/earthy/moldy smell that tends to come from wood, a urine-like scent, a sour/acid/vinegar odor that could come from residual alcohol, and of course the odors of sweat and beer.

“The bar is a three times more intense smell than the McCormick Place men’s room, or 15 times more or 16 times more intense odor than a coffee shop, and was almost twice as smelly as an animal shelter,” said Hirsch, founder of Chicago’s Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, citing odor intensity levels.

While secondhand smoke is hazardous to our health, the smoke hid some of the stink.

“You could think of the smoke being background noise and the music playing and you turn it off and all of the sudden other noises in the bar would pop up,” said Dr. Robert Kern, professor and chairman of the department of otolaryngology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Indeed, smoking bans are having some unintended consequences, said Avery Gilbert, author of “What the Nose Knows.”

Smoke masked other scents in bars and restaurants. Without that smoke, you’re left with odors of “fry vat if it’s a tavern place, hamburgers if there’s a grill.

And you’re getting exposed to all these other things: body odor, perspirants, and deodorants and body sprays like Axe and smelly clothes,” said Gilbert, who was not involved with the Axe study. “If you’re in a club dancing and sweating up a storm, and if you’re there long enough, your clothes will smell a bit.”

To get rid of bad odors, bars should maximize ventilation or even inject a scent into the air, said Hirsch, the smell expert. “You could place an aroma at a bar that people like. They will perceive the environment to be more friendly, be happy at the bar and meet more people at the bar,” he said.

At least one local bar is doing just that.

The Crimson Lounge at the Hotel Sax downtown developed a signature scent even before the smoking ban called suha, a fusion of pomegranate, cinnamon, nutmeg, patchouli, sandalwood, cypress, cedar and vanilla.

Dispensed through a programmed and timed device, the scent was created to evoke the dark yet cozy lounge feel, said Adam Kaplan, hotel marketing director. “We wanted to create an experience that we’re an upscale, musically driven lounge,” he said. Still, many bar hoppers in Chicago say they’d take bad odors over smoke.

“When you go home, you don’t smell like all those things at the club,” said Slaise, a business analyst who lives in South Shore. “They don’t retain on the clothing like smoke does.”

(Source)

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