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Do old wives’ remedies REALLY work? | News.com.au
IS there any truth in grandma’s cure-all remedies? Let’s find out.
* Holding a spoon to the back of your neck stops a nosebleed
False: “This is one of the most common beliefs, yet it doesn’t work at all,” says Dr Ronald McCoy, an adjunct lecturer at the University of Sydney and spokesman for the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. Others hold their head back or pinch the bridge of the nose to stop a bleed, neither of which work.
What to do: “Nosebleeds can have a lot of causes, most usually from a cold or hay fever,” McCoy says. “If your nose has started bleeding, sit forward, otherwise the blood will go down the back of the throat. Squeeze the nostrils together gently. Do this for 10 minutes, as it takes this long for the blood to clot.”
Don’t forget to breathe gently through your mouth to calm you down. “Don’t sniff or blow your nose for 15 minutes afterwards,” McCoy says. If it persists, go to a GP or an emergency room.
* Coughing during a needle injection lessens the pain
Truth: “This one works,” McCoy says. “Anaesthetists have known this trick for a long time, as it helps distract the patient from the injection and any associated anxiety.” In a study reported in the British Medical Journal, it was found that by coughing you cause a rise in blood pressure, which may help to minimise the pain you feel.
What to do: “Cough just before the needle is injected, without moving the injection site,” he says. “For children, distraction is key. Give them an activity like blowing bubbles or touch them on a part of the body which isn’t being injected.”
via Do old wives’ remedies REALLY work? | News.com.au.
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Inside the Minds of the Perfectionists – WSJ.com
Christine Tsien Silvers says perfectionism runs in her family. Her mother, a detail-oriented computer scientist, emigrated from China to Minnesota and was “always taking classes to get a better job.”
She earned a Ph.D. from MIT and an M.D. from Harvard. “But I also wanted to be the best mother possible,” says Dr. Silvers, so she worked part-time, not full-time, emergency-room shifts to maximize her time with her children, ages 3, 5 and 8.
Dr. Silvers, 42, now works from home in Marshfield, Mass., as the chief medical officer of a start-up company using her MIT dissertation to create mobile health monitors. She often gets up in the middle of the night “to do the work part of the work-life balance,” she says. Still, she frets about everything she hasn’t done, including organizing her house. “The list goes on and on, but I don’t want to do a sloppy job on any of them.”
Meanwhile, she is already seeing signs of perfectionism in her 5-year old son. “He loves to draw but he’ll cry and cry if he thinks he’s put a line in the wrong place,” Dr. Silvers says.
Where does such perfectionism come from? Experts have long blamed parents who overemphasized achievement or made their love conditional on meeting certain goals. But recent research suggests that the genes that parents pass along may play an ever bigger role.
via Inside the Minds of the Perfectionists – WSJ.com.
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Pills pop up on Aussie drug hit parade | News.com.au
ECSTASY costs just $25 per pill and is the most popular drug among Australia’s regular users, one in three of them listing it as their substance of choice.
New research into illicit drugs finds ecstasy use is on the rise and dealers are now pushing synthetic drugs that mimic it and cannabis in order to get around the law.
The University of NSW National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre interviews 600 regular drug users each year to monitor new trends and act as an early warning system for rising deaths and other dangers.
Cannabis is the drug most commonly used by Australians, but the study shows regular drug users are more likely to prefer ecstasy.
One in three regular users now takes ecstasy, up from 27 per cent in 2011, and only 19 per cent use cannabis, down from 20 per cent in 2011.
The price per pill ranges from as high as $30 to as low as $20 across the nation.
The use of ecstasy is highest in NSW, where 38 per cent of regular users take it, while in Victoria 35 per cent of regular users take it, in Tasmania it is used by 32 per cent, only 28 per cent use it in SA and the figure is only 21 per cent in Queensland.
Alcohol, used by 15 per cent of users, is the third most popular drug while cocaine, used by 13 per cent, is fourth most used.
via Pills pop up on Aussie drug hit parade | News.com.au.
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10 ‘super foods’ that even your nutritionist won’t eat | News.com.au
SUPER foods – if they were so super, wouldn’t everyone be eating them?
Despite all the hype that these nutrient-laden goodies have attracted, even leading nutritionists agree that some of the strange-tasting consumables are pretty hard to swallow.
From acai berry to aloe vera and kale to krill oil, the endless health benefits of super foods aren’t much use when you can’t get them down.
Here are just some of the health foods that even your nutritionist finds hard to stomach.
How many have you tried?
Tempeh: Made from fermented soybeans, this is one of the many meat alternatives available to vegetarians and vegans.
Nutritionist’s verdict: A good source of protein it may be, but take away the marinade, and the rubbery texture and lack of flavour is hard to swallow.
Carob: An extract of the carob bean most commonly used as a healthy alternative to chocolate. It’s caffeine-free and is high in calcium.
Nutritionist’s verdict: “The calories are still the same [as regular chocolate]”, Emily Burgess (Accredited Practising Dietician) tells news.com.au, and it doesn’t hit the spot quite like the real thing.
Kale: A form of cabbage that serves the same purpose as spinach, boasting high levels of antioxidants and fibre.
Nutritionist’s verdict: It might be food fit for Popeye, but the bitter taste will leave you reeling.
Chlorophyll/Wheatgrass shots: Your daily dose of wheatgrass became all the rage when Boost Juice started advertising the “super-charged shot”.
Nutritionist’s verdict: It has huge alkalising properties and is full of phytonutrients (plant nutrients), but Kathleen Alleaume (nutritionist and author of What’s Eating You?) agrees that it’s definitely a “hold your nose and bear it” task for the strong-willed.
via 10 ‘super foods’ that even your nutritionist won’t eat | News.com.au.
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Mediterranean diet: What is the Mediterranean diet? – latimes.com
Americans tend to like their fats saturated, their grains processed, their protein grown on legs and their sugar added anywhere their sweet tooth decides it would like some. As for fiber, they’re all for it — in, say, their French fries or the pickles on their burger.
In a related development, nutrition experts tend to be bummed out by the typical American diet. In fact, many wish we’d trade it in for a diet that’s pretty much the opposite, namely, the Mediterranean diet, which favors monounsaturated fat, whole (unprocessed) grains, protein with roots in the ground, sugar in its natural habitat only and fiber, well, fiber just about everywhere.
One of its champions, Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos of Harvard University, calls the Mediterranean way of eating “possibly the best ever.”
Trichopoulos can point to hundreds of scientific studies — as well as a long-running natural experiment among Mediterranean people themselves — linking the diet to a decrease in mortality rates (meaning deaths per thousand per year) and, more specifically, to reduced rates of heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes and other serious health problems.
Probably no diet in the world has been studied more thoroughly or associated with more positive outcomes. But questions remain. Scientists still can’t say for sure how the diet does everything it seems to do — or if some parts of it do more than others. (For example, is the red meat you don’t eat more important than the olive oil you do?) And if you’re looking for precise rules on exactly how much to eat of exactly what foods, you won’t find them here — because they don’t exist.
Not to worry, though. What follows are the basic principles underlying the Mediterranean diet, and evidence suggests that following these basic principles can do you a world of good.
via Mediterranean diet: What is the Mediterranean diet? – latimes.com.
Strange Random Food Quote:
It’s amazing how pervasive food is. Every second commercial is for food. Every second TV episode takes place around a meal. In the city, you can’t go ten feet without seeing or smelling a restaurant. There are 20 foot high hamburgers up on billboards. I am acutely aware of food, and its omnipresence is astounding. – Adam Scott, The Monkey Chow Diaries, June 2006
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- Can sleep apnoea be eased by a Mediterranean diet? (time4sleep.co.uk)
- Purity Products Releases Their Brand New Mediterranean Diet Resveratrol Formula (prweb.com)
- Its official! Mediterranean diet can help improve heart health (news.bioscholar.com)
- Mediterranean Diet Tied to Better Fertility (nlm.nih.gov)
- The Mediterranean Diet Meal Plan and You (foodonthetable.com)
- Got Milk? Calcium and the Mediterranean Diet (oldwaystable.org)
- News of a Mediterranean Diet Study for Athletes and a Q&A (oldwaystable.org)
- 4 Reasons Why Everyone Likes the Mediterranean Diet (infoepeec.wordpress.com)
- Even Without Weight Loss, Mediterranean Diet Helps Heart (nlm.nih.gov)
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