Category: Health

Getting the temperature of a baby can be tough, as Lia despised having a thermometer in her armpit for 2 mins. We thought about getting a temporal thermometer but heard they can be highly inaccurate. Measuring her orally would be next to impossible as she would close her lips shut. It also may be tough to do a rectal measurement because how much Lia would squirm, plus it’s very disgusting. So we’ve settled on using a ear thermometer, and after a little research, came to Braun Thermometer 4520, which is the same as what they use in hospitals, except less heavy-duty and does not include other non-essential features such as anti-theft.

It seems that 4020 is even better than 4520, but they’re difficult to find. On the other than, 4520 is readily available at Target and other places. We bought one and gave it a try, and for the most part it’s done a pretty good job. Repeat measurements usually fall within 0.2 degrees, as long as we position it correctly. The best part is being able to take her temperature when she’s sleeping, and even when she’s awake, because it only takes 2 seconds, Lia actually leans her ear over for us.

A very worthwhile investment.

Do Flu Vaccine’s work? I read an article on mercola that mentions that not only does it not help prevent hospital visit, the preservative made from combining mercury with aluminum and formaldehyde can potentially give you autism or Alzheimers.

Perhaps the next time the doctor wants to inject this stuff into you or your child’s bum, consider the ramifications of pumping junk into your system!

When I had my yearly check up a few weeks ago, I was informed that my Vitamin D level is too low. My doctor, who is also my friend, mentioned not to worry and that 4 in 5 person in Seattle (or Washington?) were deficient because of the lack of Sun. The remedy is to take a supplement of 2000 IU of Vitamin D a day.

If you know me, you’d know that I have a level skepticism when it comes to medicine. I absolutely abhor taking any sort of medicine, be it subscription or over-the-counter supplement. The only medication, if you call it that, that I take regularly is Lactose, to prevent the transformation of my home into a gas chamber.

Hence, I decided to ask my doctor for my specific level of Vitamin D, which was 21 ng/ml, with 32 being the min for normal according to the hospital. I took the number and did some research, and the first web site  I encountered gave me this table:

25 (OH) D Level	ng/ml (used in USA)	nMol/L (international)
Deficient	less than 8	less than 20
Insufficient	8-20	20-50
Optimal	20-60	50-150
High	60-90	150-225
Toxic	greater than 90	greater than 225

The author of the web site accounted for the difference between these levels and the common used numbers my doctor gave me with this:

There is disagreement about whether the lower limit of the optimal vitamin D levels should be 20 or 30 ng/ml, but none of the experts in the field still think that levels lower than 20 ng/ml are desirable. This is really different from ten years ago, when levels above 15 ng/dl were considered sufficient.

In addition, the upper range of optimal as given by the hospitals seem to be unattainable by natural means, according to the same article:

…many laboratories currently have listed their normal range as 32-150 ng/ml, even though the only way to acheive a value above 60 is to take a drug!

Using the chart from this web site, I’m on the low end, but still within the optimal range.

This brings up the question, should I take vitamin D supplement? My answer to that is No. The reason is that I took this test at the tail end of winter, and I expect to get a dosage of sun once the blazing rays of summer showers upon the northwest. The other reason has more to do with the distrust of medicine. What do you really get in a vitamin? Apparently there are other risks associated with vitamins, such as lead, according to this article in MSNBC:

Two of three men’s multivitamins failed to pass testing. One contained too much folic acid, which may increase the risk of prostate cancer, while another was contaminated with lead.

Not sure if those vitamins are from China. The way I see it, God did not design us to take vitamins as soon as we’re born, and He knows what He’s doing.  I will try to go the natural route until my levels dips below 20, and then I’ll consider artificial remedies. In the mean time, I’ll just be sure I get a prescription of plenty of milk and Alki Beach!

About three months ago, as part of Lia’s ever-increasing demand for nutritional edible goods, we added Yo Baby to Lia’s diet for breakfast. 

It seemed sensible at the time, as Yo Baby is an organic yogurt that, according to its manufacturers, helps promote brain development with its whole milk, helps body growth with calcium and protein, is all natural and certified organic, helps digestion with its active cultures, and contains reduced sugar, which is about as much as a jar of baby food fruit. Lia enjoyed this little cold, sweet treat, and for three months, she had a container’s worth of yogurt every morning. Little did we know that months later, we would discover that this very yogurt, touted to be healthy, would come in a toxic container known to be carcinogenic.

In retrospect, we should have paid more attention when we read the July 2008 issue of the ShopSmart magazine, where an article titled “How Safe Is That Plastic Container” revealed a few recycle numbers (resin identification code) to avoid, including that which contains Yo Baby. After doing a little research, I’ve deciphered the incomprehensible recycle digits and valuable information on each:

Number	Abbr	Description
	PET/PETE	Polyethylene terephthalate. Used in water bottles, juice, and sports drinks. PET breaks down over time and the toxin DEHA leaches into beverages when bottles are reused. DEHA can cause liver and reproductive problems and can cause cancer. Avoid recycling reusing because they’re porous and can absorb flavors and bacteria that can’t be cleaned.
	HDPE	Commonly used for milk jugs, liquid detergent bottles, shampoo bottles.
	PVC	Polyvinyl chloride. Commonly used for meat wrap, cooking oil bottles, and plumbing pipes.  Can cause cancer, birth defects, damage to kidneys, lungs, and reproductive organs.
	LDPE	Low density polyethylene. Commonly used in cling wrap, grocery bags, and sandwich bags.
	PP	Polypropylen. Commonly used in cloudy plastic water bottles, yogurt cups/tubs.
	PS	Polystyrene. Commonly used for disposable coffee cups, clam-shell take-out containers. Polystyrene-foam cups and clear plastic take-out containers can leach styrene, a possible human carcinogen, into food.
	PC	Polycarbonate. Commonly used for some food storage, sports bottles, and baby bottles. Contains Bisphenol A (BPA), which can cause breast and prostate cancer, diabetes, birth defects, and child hyperactivity. Can leach into food if exposed to heat or are scratched, cracked, or worm from repeated use and dishwashing.
	PLA	PLA is made from corn, potato, or sugar cane, and is safe and can be composted. Unfortunately this is also classified as “#7: Other”, along with BPA and newer non-BPA plastics.

Now you may wonder if some of these plastics are so harmful, why are they still in use? The reason is that the FDA decided that the levels of harmful chemicals leaching into food is within safety limits. Some new studies, however, seem to show that there are potential risks from even low levels of exposure, including a new draft report from the National Institutes of Health.

With that, we now move on to some practical steps for protecting you and your love ones from the toxic plastics:

• Use #2 HDPE, #4 LDPE, and #5 PP
• Use #1 PET, but don’t recycle the water/soda bottles
• Use PLA
• Avoid #3 PVC, #6 PS, and #7 PC.
• Don’t store fatty food with plastic containers or plastic wraps.
• Microwave-safe only means it won’t melt, crack, or fall apart, but toxic chemical can still leach into food. Use glass or ceramic.

And if you’re really paranoid concerned, you can even:

• When buying meat packaged with cling wrap, slice off a thin portion that came into contact with the wrap and store in glass or ceramic container or use non-PVC wrap.

Research has a tendency to keep reversing itself, and someone will probably find some toxicity in one of those recycle numbers that we trust to be safe. The only thing we can do is do our best based on what we know today.

High Fructose Corn Syrup should be avoided because it fools your body into eating that extra 3 slices of cake when you just had 10 slices of pizza and 3 sticks of hot dogs. Well, turns out that it does more than making you eat the extra serving of pastry, but also make you dumber. A new study shows that U.S. Corn Syrup is tainted with mercury.

So the next time you pop open that honey packet to put on your biscuit at KFC, think about how much your intelligence is worth. Actually, the better question is why you’re in KFC munching on that fatty, fried leg in the first place…

Eating healthy is not so simple any more.

Karen and I have always painstakingly made Lia’s food out of fresh vegetables, meat and fruits, but one day Karen questioned the practice, pointing out that the ingredients of organic baby food consisted of nothing but the organic fruit and water. So what’s the difference between what we’re made and what’s in a jar? What’s the big deal with buying baby food and taking it easy in the kitchen?

It depends on if you desire slapping tasteless, innutritious pile of goo in your baby’s mouth, according to my buddy Google, uh.. I mean, Live Search®.  Processed food typically needs to be cooked in high temperatures to kill all bacteria to preserve it, and that process kills more than just bacterias, but nutrients and taste as well. In fact, even different cooking process in the kitchen, such as the use of a microwave, steaming, boiling, and baking can change the nutritional value of food, but the process is shorter at home.

Now natural meat has a whole other set of considerations. For seafood there’s pesticide in farmed animals, and mercury for wild fish and shellfish, which affects brain development. For chicken and beef there’s hormones and pesticides, and even if it’s labeled “all natural” it, we might be eating clones in the future. The safer route is buying organic food, which is held to a higher standard, but even that has its own caveats.

I do admit we have a few baby food jars for the… umm… occasional emergency use and the jar reuse, but one thing’s for sure, Lia will be getting nothing but the fresh, good stuff!

Babies typically like to touch everything and then stick their hands in their mouths.  As a super-protective father, I need to live up to my reputation by eliminating nasty chemicals such as bleach from my house. Hence, I started my quest of banishing products with chemical agents.

First, I needed a cleaner for typical everyday cleaning, and GreenWorks Natural All-Purpose Cleaner seems to fit the bill. The packaging claims 99.93% natural, biodegradable ingredients, which seems much better than my old cleaner which was probably 99.93% chlorine bleach.  So far I haven’t put it to any heavy-duty use, such as cleaning the back of the fridge where alien life-forms take refuge, but it sure feels better to have Lia touch a surface cleaned by this product than the 409.

The next product we looked to make the switch was dishwashing liquid.  Karen brought home some organic detergent in the past, but the apple-scented fume from that product overloaded my senses and so nauseated me that I refused to do dishes.  Okay, okay, I admit that part of it wasn’t motivated by the nausea and it was a perfect excuse, but the fragrance was undeniably overpowering.  Recently we made the switch to GreenWorks Natural Dishwashing Detergent, which is 99% biodegradable, and emitted a more soothing aroma.

Now some of you may have been cajoled by the older generation into believing that the dishwasher is a dish storage device, but for the enlightened ones who realized that the dishwasher was invented for a reason other than racking dishes, dishwasher detergent is an essential part of the household. For a while I used Cascade, but the chlorine bleach in that product made me urgently look for an alternative, and that was when I came across Trader Joe’s Next To Godliness Automatic Dishwashing Detergent, the powder version. It contains no chlorine or phosphate and seems to work just as well as the Cascade.  Note that while I haven’t tried the liquid version, I heard it has an undesirable air de-freshener side-effect and doesn’t work as well.

Another surface that we grace our skin on daily is the Throne.  Not sure if you enjoy sitting in a puddle of bleach, but for myself, I prefer sitting in biodegradable material.  Well, I suppose there are biodegradable materials in the bathroom that I’d rather not sit on, but at least it won’t burn a hole in my pants or kill a million fish with one drop in the gutter.  Anyway, GreenWorks seems to have the GreenWorks natural toilet bowl cleaner which contains none of the toxic stuff.  Woot!

So I’m becoming greener everyday, and it’s all in the name of being a protective parent.  This is only the beginning.  As I encounter more ways of reducing toxic materials from the household, I will let you know!

With Odelia in her first two months of life, her immune system is still weak.  Not long ago, many of our small group got struck by a stomach virus, so there’s reason to be cautious about where I bring Odelia and what she gets exposed to, at least until she reaches her second month, when she’ll be getting at least 4 immunization shots.  I avoid bringing Odelia to social function where lots of people carrying germs are roaming about.  I wash my hands almost all the time.  I avoid public bathroom handles, where people who don’t wash their hands after doing their thing deposit their germs.

I thought I was cautious, but today I read this article on MSNBC about places that you don’t think of where you can get germs.  In summary:

1. Vacuum Cleaners – 50 percent of the vacuum brushes they tested contained fecal bacteria, including 13 percent with E. coli, and all were packing mold. 

Hmm, time to give my iRobot a cleaning!

2. Your weight-lifting gloves – A 2004 Japanese study found that staph bacteria bind strongly to polyester, which is used in many gloves.

Haven’t lifted weights other than Odelia for a while, so I’m ok here.

3. The grocery cart – The handles of almost two-thirds of shopping carts tested in a 2007 University of Arizona study were contaminated with fecal bacteria. The carts had even more of these bacteria than the average public bathroom has.

I definitely didn’t think about this one, as we just took Odelia to Fred Meyer, with me holding Odelia in one hand and the shopping cart in the other.

4. Gym equipment – A 2006 study in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine found rhinoviruses (instigators of the common cold) on 63 percent of the gym equipment at the fitness centers they tested.

I get all my workout through holding and calming Odelia, so I’m ok here.

5. The restaurant menu –  recent study in the Journal of Medical Virology reports that cold and flu viruses can survive for 18 hours on hard surfaces.

Haven’t been to a restaurant for a while either, so we’re okay for now.  Definitely something to watch out for when Karen and I have a life again.

6. The flight attendant – Flight attendants are exposed to dozens of sniffling and coughing passengers and the surfaces they touch.

Don’t think Karen and I will be flying for a while.

7. Your bed – More than 84 percent of beds in U.S. homes host dust mites. These microscopic critters live in your sheets and feed on your dead skin, and their fecal matter and corpses contribute to asthma and allergies.

This explains why I never make the bed–because of fear of allergies…  Yeah… That’s it.  Time to make that case with Karen.

8. The lemon wedge in your drink – In a 2007 study from the Journal of Environmental Health, nearly 70 percent of the lemon wedges smashed onto restaurant glasses contained disease-causing microbes, including E. coli and other fecal bacteria.

No trips to restaurants, no worries.

9. Your contact-lens case – In a 2007 Chinese study, 34 percent of contact-lens cases tested were found to be crawling with germs like Serratia and Staphylococcus aureus. These microorganisms can cause keratitis, an inflammatory eye disease that can damage the cornea and lead to blindness. 

Time to chuck that lens case I’ve been using since 1995…

10. Your shower curtain – The soap scum hanging out on your curtain is more than just unsightly. A study in Applied and Environmental Microbiology found that vinyl shower curtains are microbe meccas, breeding potential pathogens, such as infection-causing Sphingomonas and Methylobacterium. Plus, the force of the shower spray will make germs take flight. 

And I thought that making the shower glass window look fogged just changes style of the window.  TIme to bust out Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser.

Looks like I will need to make a few adjustments in my life…  just so that little Lia can stay safe and sound!

A few years ago, Karen and I had been eating to our hearts content with whatever pleased our palette.  McDonald’s, Jeem Chinese Restaurant, Salads, Dim Sum, etc. We had avoided trans fat, but not much else.  When I got my cholesterol levels checked for the first time, my readings were decent:

• LDL 119    (Desired below 130)
• HDL 53   (Desired above 40)
• Total: 196  (Desired below 200)

Then Karen and I got challenged to eat healthier to get those numbers even better.  We ate less saturated fat, more grilled chicken type of food, Italian, and vegetable meals.  When I checked my cholesterol level, I expected equal or better numbers but was surprised to find:

• LDL 138    (Desired below 130)
• HDL 60   (Desired above 40)
• Total: 213  (Desired below 200)

I initially responded by abstaining from skin, fried foods, steak, fatty food, and basically any ingredient that would give food its taste.  However, I realized if I kept withholding all eating pleasures, I might as well as become a Hare Krishna, so I abandoned the futile quest and returned to our typical meals.

Shortly afterwards, I came across an article about saturated fat which changed my diet once again.  The article claimed that the “myth” was based on the fact that Americans ate more fat and had more heart problems, and Japanese people ate less fat and had less heart problems, and that cholesterol levels were related to heart problems, therefore, saturated fat must raised cholesterol levels.  However, nomads who ate only meat had lower cholesterol than Americans.  Also, if eating less saturated fat affected cholesterol, then all the people on Atkin’s diet should have much lower cholesterol levels, but the opposite seemed to be true.  The article also sighted possible skewed research results because we all assume saturated fat should cause higher cholesterol levels, so whenever a research indicated otherwise, it would be questioned as flawed.  It made sense to me, so when I mentioned it to Karen, she said “Yoohoo” and started preparing nothing but Fatty Beef Ribs for the next week, and we haven’t turned back since.

So when it came time to do another cholesterol check, I wasn’t very optimistic.  To my surprise I got:

• LDL 96    (Desired below 130)
• HDL 39   (Desired above 40)
• Total: 151  (Desired below 200)

My cholesterol levels have dropped.  Now despite my attempt to eat oatmeal, my HDL levels have dropped too.  It seems to indicate that the best strategy for lowering cholesterol is actually counter-intuitive: Pig out at Tony Roma’s instead of having my salad, eat that chicken thigh instead of the breast, and eat the Lard and skins.  Only then will the cholesterol begin to drop!

We’ve heard that you can’t have too much of Vitamin C. Then we heard that too much of it causes cancer. We heard that eggs are bad because of the high cholesterol. Then we hear that perhaps it’s not as bad as we thought.

Now we have articles about how saturated fat may not be as bad as we thought.
I’ve always wondered about that because Chinese people eat all sorts of fat, yet we don’t see them having more heart issues.

Of course, studies change all the time, and you can’t go wrong with “everything in moderation”. But in the mean time, time to enjoy the hardy pig feet and beef ribs without the guilt!