Unsought Input

Just when you thought it was safe to drink water you hear about this. This headline on yahoo.com today strikes fear into the hearts of all Americans who thought it was healthy to drink water. Yes, conspiracy theories aside, there was a five month probe to find out what was actually in our drinking water. And do you know what they found out? I think you might since I put in in the headline of this article but allow me to reiterate. They found prescription drugs and other stuff in minute concentrations in our drinking water. Minute. I.e. small amounts. Very small. But still present. And what do our utility companies say? Is our water safe? Should we be allowing our selves and our loved ones to drink this water? This aqua pharmaceutical cocktail that comes out of our taps and into our glasses, into our showers and baths and food?

First off, let’s talk about media hype. It’s built up around times when people are getting too worried about other things: war, elections, terrorism, etc, to distract everyday people like you and me from these intense subjects by worrying about something else. In magic it’s call slight of the hand. The magician makes you look the other way and does the trick while you are distracted. Then, viola! You didn’t even know what was happening and now it’s already over and you are just left to wonder how it was done without you noticing.

So, the media creates hype and fear about your drinking water while there are several other important things to be reporting to the good people of America about so that you are distracted. Yes, something in the water is very scary. You need water to live and you trust the water that comes delivered to you. So, I agree, it’s a scary idea that there is something in the water. (more…)

Toxins.  They are all around you, in the air, in your food, in your drinking water.  So how are you going to get rid of them?

One way would be to realize that “toxins” is so broad a term as to be useless and that in order to avoid exposure to specific health risks like mercury you need to do some research, analyze costs and benefits of approaches, and participate in a modern society with environmental, health, and food inspection.

But that’s too hard.  So instead, turn off your brain and watch this commercial:

So let’s check off all the reasons why this smells scammy.  Have you ever had any of the following symptoms:

• Headaches?
• Backaches?
• The dreaded…  fatigue?
• And many more?

These symptoms could mean that you are filled with toxins! or more likely, that you are a human being, since everyone has a headache once in a while.  In any event, products that claim to cure everything usually cure nothing.

The pads “work” by sticking to your feet at night and removing everything bad from your body.  Everything bad includes:

• Heavy Metals
• Metabolic Wastes
• Toxins
• Parasites
• Chemicals
• Cellulite

Yes, it turns out that cobalt, chiggers and chubbiness all follow the same metabolic processes.  This is point number two – claiming to work in several, completely unrelated ways.

Point number three is easy.  Too easy.  Isn’t it a bit suspicious that it does so much without any effort, pain, or discomfort on your part?

How was such an amazing products discovered?  Through the amazing, ancient art of oriental reflexology.  And acupuncture, or something and nature.  Did they mention homeopathy?  They should.  Misusing a lot of scientific-sounding or hippie nature-sounding terms is point four.

So what did I miss?  What other ways does this seem ridiculous to you?

Disclaimer: This article is about women and their “time of the month” so if you don’t want to read about it, please stop now. I mean, I would hope that you knew what this article was about from the title but I wanted to make sure.

So, while I was checking my email this morning Yahoo suggested some reading material as I waited for some pics to upload. This tasty tidbit of information supplied by my emailer of choice did catch my eye, seeing as how I am always interested in ways to skip out on my workout program even though I want to lose the weight. I don’t know, I guess that is just how I am. Anyway, according to Yahoo, this article was going to tell me everything I ever wanted to know about whether or not working out while on “that time of the month” for us women made us more prone to accidents. It said so right on the little link. I had so much hope for it. I really did.

Well, anyway, I did click on the link. And that brought me to the above article that is the pretty blue link right there in the previous paragraph I just wrote. And do you know what I found out?

…

Nothing. We go back and forth in a relatively long article about women’s health and sports and menstruating, but no conclusion is ever drawn. In fact, this article is so watered down and middle of the road that I didn’t even want to read the whole thing. But I did. Unfortunately. And I walked away from it knowing the same thing I knew before I read it, just robbed of 7 minutes of my life that I will never get back. Damn you, Yahoo!!!!

Here are some snippits for you, just to give you an idea why you don’t want to read Yahoo’s article, in case you felt the need.

Some, though not all, studies have found an increased risk of injury during certain parts of the menstrual cycle.

Hmm…some, though not all, eh? Wow, that is some pretty potent journalism. (more…)

Oh, and it makes them live longer.  Today’s headline article on Yahoo states that hard working scientists over there at lifescience.com are boasting that old men should be marrying and having children with younger women.  They say that it would be beneficial for the entire species!  I have a hypothesis of my own: the researchers are old men, wondering how to get beautiful young girls to sleep with them since they were not stinking rich like Hugh Hefner.  Because, let’s face it, non of those bleach blond airheads are at the playboy ranch because they find Hugh attractive.  If you disagree, you are a man above the age of 55.  Maybe one of these researchers?

Either way, the article goes on to say something about Darwin, I really don’t think that they know much about Darwin, they just mention him in passing.  And then, folks, it advocates killing women genetically after menopause.  Oh, so old guys are soooooooo much better?  Oh, yes, cause as a young woman I would totally love to be getting it from someone my grandpa’s age?  No.  That is gross.  I know I will be that old eventually.  I will wait till I get there.  I don’t want to be arm candy just so like a hundred years from now our overpopulation problem will suck even more because there will be people who live into their 100’s more often.  Anyway, if you don’t believe me that the people over at lifescience.com don’t want to kill women after menopause, let me just quote them here as saying:

women who can no longer reproduce are non-players, and since “it takes two,” men partnered with menopausal women are also irrelevant.Following that idea, natural selection should select for harmful mutations that impact women after menopause. Over time, the discriminating genes would accumulate in the population causing what evolutionary biologist William Hamilton called the “wall of death,” in which mortality of women spikes at the onset of menopause. (more…)

In the Plain Dealer today an article was posted which stated that women who were obese before they became pregnant were much more likely to have physically deformed babies than women who were of a healthy weight. The study involved over 15,000 women from 8 different states. The article states that

Obese women faced double the risk of having babies with spina bifida than women of healthy weight. With spina bifida, the spinal column fails to close properly. That often leads to leg paralysis, learning difficulties and other serious problems.

And that

Very heavy women also were 60 percent more likely to have babies born with a rare defect in which abdominal organs protrude through the belly button; 40 percent more likely to have heart defects; 36 percent more likely to have shortened arms or legs; and at least 20 percent more likely to have any of several gastrointestinal deformities. (more…)

It has recently come to my attention that there is a new diet pill on the market that is FDA approved. This is big news for pharmaceuticals, who make the most money in OTC sales via diet/weight loss supplements. What will happen in the pharmaceutical war for market coverage with this new drug?

What I am really excited about is not the fact that this expensive diet supplement will help obese people to manage their weight issues. No, it’s not that they will be able to have a healthy lifestyle again where walking down the stairs isn’t a four hour adventure. It’s that these people are going to actually have to practice self control. Will it work? Alli, yes; self control, who can say?

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I left a cliffhanger of a post in Part I of this article. This section of the article will focus more on things to help you be successful and knowledgeable in your clinical skills as a student nurse, even if you do decide to go further for your master’s or doctorate degree in nursing.

Palm Pilots

As I mentioned in the previous article, buying a palm pilot was the smartest thing that I ever did. Going on many websites, your head may swoon when thinking of all that you have to consider when buying a Palm Pilot. There are only three things that you need to worry about: price, compatibility, and memory.

Price

Most good palm pilots (PDAs) start at a range of $199 and can go as far as $499 or higher. I am not a rich person at all. The Palm Pilots (yes, plural…see below) I have bought took months for me to save up for. In my humble opinion, I would have to say that a PDA for $199-299 might be all that you need.

Before you tsk, tsk me, there are several things working for you as a student nurse. The first is that you’re a student, a poor, poor student who needs help financially. Most companies offer some kind of student discount if you order PDAs from their website like Skyscape and Epocrates. These two websites offer bundles in which you buy PDAs and medical programs together at a discounted price. There might be more sites out there, but these are the two big sites that I deal with when shopping for medical stuff for my PDA. Secondly, as I said in the last section of this article, you can always hit all of the relatives up for some palm pilot lovin’ during Christmas/Hanukkah/birthday or whatever time.

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I have stewed over this topic for several months as I am finishing up my second to last semester of my Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program. I do not consider myself an expert on this issue; however, there were several things that got me through nursing school that I could not survive without. The following stuff is mainly for an undergrad nursing student. Part II (coming soon) will be more for a nursing student in grad school.

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Recently it has come to my attention that all of the nations bees are seriously threatened. I know, it’s hard to believe that it would be a big deal, and in fact, no one has really made a big stink about it yet. But it’s important. Why, you might ask? Well, even if you didn’t ask, you should probably read on since this topic definitely affects everyone, even if you don’t like honey or bees.

Most people know that bees are responsible for honey and bee stings but what you may not know is that they are a much more important member of the agricultural community. Bees, especially honey bees, are responsible for the pollination of flowers (you might be saying duh, here but follow me on this one, please), and said pollination causes plants to actually bear fruits as the method of their reproduction. And said fruits are important for not only human nutrition, but also for that of most of the animals we raise as pets and most of the animals that we eat.

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A few months ago I was looking at blood sugar meters and cholesterol testers for family members.  I have had my blood tested for various things throughout my life and I’ve seen the standard drugstore-issue glucose monitors in action, so I had a very basic idea of what I was looking for.  But I wasn’t exactly an expert, so I went online.

Now one of the benefits of living in the Internet age is that if you need to learn about any technological device, from MP3 players to video cards to application servers, you can quickly and easily find out all about it online.  Making a major purchase?  Some skillful Googling will lead you to novice-level tutorials, product comparisons, recommendations from normal users, and jargon-laden details from experts.

Unless you want to buy a glucose meter.  I found virtually nothing except for short blurbs on retailers’ sites.  I even had a hard time finding product info from manufacturers!

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Had a weigh in for the competition recently and I’m down 30 lbs. total. 30 lbs in two months and I haven’t done anything unhealthy to lose it. I’m getting positive comments on my weight daily. Chuck and I finally got to run his neighborhood again this weekend and challenge the monster hill of doom. End result: 5 ½ miles and one conquered hill.

At the risk of going all Tony Robbins, I want to share how I’ve been able to achieve all of this in such a short time. I was completely and utterly disgusted with myself but now I’m confident that someday I’ll be able to achieve my goals. So read on, and see how you too can achieve what I have.

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When you surpass the weight of Homer Simpson, you began to develop an elephantine disgust with oneself. I had done this several months prior, yet kept engorging myself with foodstuffs through the holidays. It is a lucky bit then, I suppose, that ultimate collision of several motivating entities that drove the forging of both form and mind. With continuing fortitude, I shall hammer myself into an ultra-marathoner.

What a load of pretentious drek that was…

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…and then there was no one left to speak up for me. Pity the poor citizens of New York City. Their most basic human rights have been stripped away. The freedom to choose has been stripped from them by a big brother who says he knows what’s best. Adam Smith, George Washington, and Milton Friedman are spinning in their graves, and the Statue of Liberty sheds a single, rusty tear as she gazes across the at a once free people.

No, I’m not talking about illegal domestic wire tapping, or the denial of the First Amendment via remote “free speech zones.” We all know that those are required to combat terrorism, and triffling privileges like those are a small cost for combating terrorism. I am talking about a much more important freedom: the right to choose to eat foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, rich with trans fats.

“Dear god, say it isn’t so!” you shout. “What will they ban next?” Probably baseball and apple pie. But while I would join you in protesting and future attacks on baseball and apple pie, I am afraid I cannot join in your outrage over the trans fat ban, for three reasons:
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Looking for some interesting gift ideas? Sick of buying the traditional tie for dad and sweater for your nephew, and want to get them something they might actually have a use for? Look no further! Well, actually you should look further down the page. Below are five unique holiday gift ideas for that special someone that won’t find their way into a box in the attic.

1. Give the gift of convenience. It is the year 2006, and yet you cannot fly around town on a hoverboard, jet pack, or even a flying car. Luckily, we do have robots to do menial household labor. I highly recommend the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner. You may be wondering: does it really work? Our experience with the Roomba has been very positive, so much so that we got one for my parents last Christmas.

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