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Your How To Source: Issues of Value, Ethics, Human Needs and Deeds Edited by Heinz Dinter, PhD December 2005 |
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■ A CHUCKLE: A most desirable hotel guest A man wrote a letter to a small hotel … A simple friend … A real friend … Do you have a chuckle or two, as well as a thought or more, you wish to share for possible inclusion in my books? ■ Will a bigger Europe be a better Europe? Back in April, the European Union grew to 25 members from 15. ■ Beware of these nutritional opponents Beware of these low carb diet opponents that can sabotage the best campaign to eating well and losing weight. Lance Armstrong accomplished a record sixth straight win in cycling’s most grueling race. Many people are wearing yellow bracelets lately. I love spicy food! ■ Tea drinkers reap blood pressure benefits Drinking a half-cup of tea per day cuts hypertension risk in half. Is it less, fewer, or …? ■ Don’t judge a book by its cover Have you ever picked up a book and became hooked? Feline folly. Multiplied! Consumer Reports has a great reputation for providing unbiased reports. ■ Word fun I love crossword puzzles. Sundays are perfect for sitting down. My daughter’s email message was to the point.
Do you have a chuckle or two, as well as a thought or more, you wish to share for possible inclusion in future editions of my books? I will gratefully acknowledge your contribution in the books unless you wish to remain anonymous. Please send your contribution to contribution@GrandLifestyle.com.
Will a bigger Europe be a better Europe? Back in April, the European Union grew to 25 members from 15, including 8 new countries from formerly Communist Eastern Europe: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. (The other two new members are Malta and the southern part of Cyprus.) This will have a profound effect on an organization whose institutions were designed for six members in the 1950s and have been only tinkered with since. And the differences between West and East are striking. The established members are worried that workers from the new members will flood westward, driving wages down and unemployment up, and straining welfare systems. Almost all of the 15 will restrict the rights of workers from the new 10 for several years; only Britain and Ireland will let them work freely from the start. The new members have adopted thousands of pages of laws shared throughout the union. They have had to reform their economies and clean up their environments. And they must endeavor to support the “common foreign and security policy,” despite their significant ideological differences with “old Europe,” most notably on relations with the United States. But there’s a significant upside for those joining as well. Since the union gives large subsidies to its poorer members and support to its farmers, they will soon see a significant influx of money. In the past, this cash injection has helped poorer members like Spain and Ireland go from the bottom of the economic tables to the first tier. Ireland is now, by some measures, richer than Britain. Small wonder that, despite their differences with established members, the new countries are eager to join.
Beware of these nutritional opponents Beware of these low carb diet opponents that can sabotage the best campaign to eating well and losing weight. High fructose corn syrup Corn syrup rapidly raises both insulin and glucose levels in the body, not to mention it is the cheapest sweetener. It raises cholesterol, breaks down collagen and can increase osteoporosis. Trans fats These bad fats can break your heart by increasing inflammation and cholesterol. Code words for them are “partially hydrogenated oil.” Super-sizing Portion control has never been more difficult due to super-sizing. Stuffed products A regular slice of pizza has 190 calories, but a stuffed crust version packs almost 360 calories into a slice. Just scrape the toppings off the crust and you’ll have a tasty low carb meal. Fatigue Sleep deprivation breaks down your willpower and makes you more likely to reach for a high carb treat when hungry. Ourselves Don’t be your own worst enemy. Refuse to purchase products that contain hidden carbs, too much fat and lots of preservatives. The industry WILL listen. Many businesses are being forced to develop better food products because consumers voted with their pocketbooks. Bite by bite we can win the war on obesity.
How does he do it? For one thing, Lance Armstrong has the heart of a champion — and the lungs, too. Lance’s heart is one-third larger than average, and his resting heart rate is 32 beats per minute, compared to an average of 70 for a healthy man. Just as important, the amount of oxygen his body can consume at maximum effort — hat exercise physiologists call his “V02 max” — is more than twice that of the average healthy man his age. VO2 max matters because your body’s cells need oxygen to convert sugar into ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the molecule that fuels cellular work. The harder your cells work, the more oxygen they need. At your VO2 max, your body just can’t deliver any more oxygen to those needy cells. Push yourself beyond this point, and you’ll soon collapse. Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong will still be going strong. How your lungs work In their endless quest to keep your cells flush with oxygen, your lungs suck down around 2,600 gallons (10,000 liters) of air a day. But their real trick is putting all that air to use. Breathe, I say, breathe! Sensors in your body constantly monitor how much oxygen is available in your bloodstream and send messages to your brain like “we’re in good shape here” or “send more oxygen, will ya?” What message they send depends mostly on your current level of activity. If you’re sleeping, even slow, shallow breathing pulls in enough oxygen. But if you’re sprinting to catch the bus, panting may be in order. When your body’s sensors scream “more oxygen, stat!” the breathing centers in your brain fire up a cardiovascular response. Your diaphragm gets a “breathe in” message and flattens out. At the same time, the muscles between your ribs draw your ribcage upward and outward, giving your lungs room to expand. As your lungs expand, they draw air in through your nose and mouth and down into your windpipe. The air quickly comes to a fork in the road, where your windpipe splits into two tubes: the left and right bronchi, each of which leads to a lung. (Your right lung, incidentally, is larger than your left, which shares space with your heart.) In with the good, out with the bad. Inside your lungs, the bronchi branch into smaller tubes, which branch into still smaller tubes, which branch again, and so on. Eventually, all that branching leads to thousands of tiny tubes called “bronchioles,” which lead to clumps of tiny air sacs called “alveoli.” Your lungs contain around 300 million alveoli. Spread out flat, they could cover a tennis court. The alveoli are basically paper-thin pouches through which oxygen and carbon dioxide can pass. Capillaries (tiny blood vessels) wind their way around and between all 300 million of them, bringing blood and air close enough to touch — or at least trade gases. Oxygen from the air passes through the alveoli into the capillaries, where proteins (called hemoglobin) in the red blood cells pick it up to carry throughout the body. At the same time, the capillaries dump the carbon dioxide they’re carrying, to be blown away ASAP. Oxygen-rich blood travels from your lungs to the left side of your heart, which pumps it out to the rest of your body through your arteries. Once the blood has delivered its gaseous goods, it returns to the right side of your heart through your veins, carrying carbon dioxide with it. Your heart then pumps the “dirty” blood back to your lungs, to dump its carbon dioxide and pick up a new load of oxygen. Please visit www.LanceArmstrong.com to learn more about this champion of so many challenges.
Many people are wearing yellow bracelets lately, especially at the gym. It turns out they’re LIVESTRONG bracelets. LIVESTRONG is a mantra used by Lance Armstrong. The bracelets are being sold to raise $5 million for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The foundation provides tools and information for people fighting cancer. Each bracelet costs $1. Learn more at by visiting http://www.nike.com/wearyellow/index_f.html
I love spicy food! Habañeros, jalapeños, and other hot peppers and spices not only taste good, they’re good for you! Spices and hot peppers lower triglycerides, improve digestion and may reduce high blood pressure. Spicy Cooking has a number of ethnic recipes — Thai, Indian, Caribbean, Moroccan, Mexican, Cajun and even U.S. Learn to make lamb curry or hot buffalo wings! Mmmm. All this talk of food is making me hungry! I invite you to visit this site: http://www.spicy-cooking.com/
Tea drinkers reap blood pressure benefits Drinking a half-cup of tea per day cuts hypertension risk in half. Drinking as little as a half-cup of green or oolong tea per day may lower the risk of high blood pressure by nearly 50%, according to a new study of Chinese tea drinkers. Researchers found that men and women who drank tea on a daily basis for at least a year were much less likely to develop hypertension than those who didn’t, and the more tea they drank, the bigger the benefits. Tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world. Water is first. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is the most common form of heart disease and affects about 20% of the adult population in many countries. The condition is associated with stroke, heart failure, and kidney dysfunction and is a major risk factor for heart-related death. “A link between tea drinking and blood pressure reduction has been postulated for decades in general health care in Chinese populations,” write researcher Yi-Ching Yan, MD, MPH, of the medical college of National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, and colleagues. In recent years, researchers say there has been growing interest in exploring the role of antioxidant compounds called flavonoids found in tea that may protect against heart disease. But researchers say few studies have examined the long-term effects of tea drinking on the risk of hypertension, and the results so far have been conflicting. They say this study is the first on the issue to use a large number of people and detailed information about tea consumption and other lifestyle and dietary factors associated with hypertension risk. Drinking Tea Lowers Blood Pressure In the study, which appears in the July 26 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers looked at the effect of tea drinking over the past decades on the risk of developing high blood pressure in 1,507 Chinese men and women living in Taiwan who had no previous history of high blood pressure. Because the size of the teacup used varies widely in Chinese culture, the participants were asked to provide details about what kind of cup was used, how the tea was prepared, the amount drank, and the frequency per week in order to calculate the average tea consumption per day. Researchers also collected information about the kind of tea (green, black, or oolong) drank and how long the participants had been tea drinkers. Green, oolong, and black teas are derived from the same plant. It is the processing of the leaves from the Camellia sinensis that determines the type of tea and the flavonoid content. The study showed that about 40% of the participants were habitual tea drinkers and had been drinking at least a half-cup of tea per day for one or more years. More than 96% of tea drinkers drank green or oolong tea. The tea drinkers tended to be younger, mostly men, and had higher educational and socioeconomic status than non-tea drinkers. But they also were more obese, smoked more, drank more alcohol, ate fewer vegetables, and had a higher sodium intake than those who didn’t drink tea regularly. After taking these and other factors associated with heart disease and high blood pressure risk into account, researchers found tea drinkers were much less likely to develop high blood pressure than non-tea drinkers. Those who drank at least a half-cup of moderate strength green or oolong tea per day for a year had a 46% lower risk of developing hypertension than those who didn’t drink tea. Among those who drank more than two and a half cups of tea per day, the risk of high blood pressure was reduced by 65%. “Nonhabitual tea drinkers were at higher risk of developing hypertension than habitual tea drinkers, and there was a progressive reduction in risk associated with higher levels of tea consumption in daily intake,” write the researchers. “However, tea consumption for more than one year was not associated with a further reduction of hypertension risk.” Based on the results of their study, researchers say the minimum tea consumption needed to provide blood pressure-reducing benefits appears to be a half-cup per day of green or oolong tea for at least one year. They say further long-term studies are needed to confirm these results and better understand the mechanisms behind tea’s blood pressure-lowering effects.
This site will come to the rescue: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/errors.html
Don’t judge a book by its cover Have you ever picked up a book and became hooked as soon as you read the opening lines? Today’s site is a collection of really good opening lines. Each entry has one or more lines of a book, the book’s name and author. You can vote on each one. You can search for specific books by author and genre. Perhaps your favorite writers are listed. If not, you can submit them yourself. Some of the writing is extremely clever. A couple of the entries had me logging into my local library to see if I could get a copy. I invite you to visit http://www.openinghooks.us
Feline folly. Multiplied! This site has countless images of cats looking at other cats looking at other … you get the idea. Browse the kitties or send in a digital photo of your own purrfect pet gazing at the latest picture posted to the site. 300 other cat lovers can’t possibly be wrong. Please put your paw on http://www.infinitecat.com.
Consumer Reports has a great reputation for providing unbiased reports on new and used cars. It also provides reports on a host of other things — kitchen appliances, electronics, lawn and garden equipment, home improvement, health and fitness, personal finance, food, travel and just about everything else under the sun. To access many of the reports, you have to pay $26 a year or $5 a month. But there are many articles available free. On the home page, look under “Free Highlights.” You find Consumer Reports at http://www.consumerreports.org.
I love crossword puzzles. Sundays are perfect for sitting down with a cup of coffee, a crossword puzzle and a lot of time. USA Today posts a crossword puzzle each day. You can choose either regular or master skill level. Regular level players can get hints for words. Incorrect letters are marked in a different color. Do it at http://puzzles.usatoday.com.
By Heinz Dinter, PhD, Editor
The email message pertaining to the Universal National Service Act of 2003 (H.R. 163) came my way today and — as a proud grandfather — I am also concerned about this bill before Congress “to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.” You can read the text of the proposed legislation, follow the bill’s status, and read commentaries by visiting www.Google.com and entering "HR 163" as the keyword. Is the draft the answer? What are the alternatives, if any? What are your thoughts? Please share them with me and Grand Lifestyle’s readers at HDinter@GrandLifestyle.com.
SOURCES AARP www.aarp.org • ABC News www.ABCnews.com • About.com www.about.com • The Baltimore Sun www.baltimoresun.com • Dresdner Bank Luxembourg S. A. www.dresdner-bank.lu; www.dresdner-florida.de • Folks on Line www.folksonline.com • Gateway www.gateway.com • Generations on Line www.generationsonline.com • Get Inspired Now www.theinterviewwithgod.com/presentation.html • Grove Isle Club & Resort www.groveisle.com • Kim Komando Show www.komando.com • Knowledge News www.knowledgenews.net • Lincoln Road Magazine www.lincolnroadmagazine.com • Los Angeles Times www.latimes.com • The Miami Herald www.herald.com • Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety www.stresscenter.com • The New York Times www.nytimes.com • SeniorNet www.seniornet.org • Social Security Administration www.seniors.gov • The United States Administration on Aging www.aoa.dhhs.gov • USA Today www.usatoday.com • The Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com • The Week www.theweekmagazine.com • Yahoo www.Yahoo.com
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