HEARD IT AND READ IT

Prepared by Bassam Mechammil

July 2009

                                                                       For comments; please email Mechammil@aol.com 
 
 
Health:
 
Mouth Guards often harbor bacteria, yeasts, and molds that can cause serious health problems, including oral sores, difficulty breathing, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Rinsing or scrubbing mouth guards does not kill these microorganisms, says Dr. Thomas Glass. Use a disposable mouth guard and toss it after one week of use.
Minor leg injuries increase blood clot risk. Injuries that are not serious enough to be treated by a doctor, such as ankle sprains and pulled muscles, are responsible for about 8% of all thromboses-serious clots that form inside the veins of the legs. The risk for developing a clot from a minor injury is low but be aware of the potential danger. If you have a minor leg injury and pain and swelling increase over time, seek medical attention.
Pomegranate juice provides the most health benefits of all natural juices. In a recent test of juices, pomegranate had more antioxidants than blueberry, black cherry, concorde grape, acai, cranberry, orange, and apple juices, says dr. Keith Martin. Antioxidants can reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease and prostate cancer. Buy 100% natural juice. Because juice is very high in calories, limit yourself to eight ounces a day- even two ounces a day has health benefits.
Deep brain stimulation may relieve cluster headaches. These headaches cause sudden, intense pains and can last up to three hours. New treatment- patients received surgically implanted electrodes that directed electric current to the brain’s hypothalamus. Of six patients who received the implants, three had fewer headaches and less pain in the first six months.
People with implanted defibrillators or pacemakers should not wear jewelry or accessories that contain magnets. Magnets cause these devices to go out of sync or shut off completely.
Spinach is not a good source of iron. Spinach contains about as much iron as any green vegetable, but it contains oxalic acid, which prevents about 90% of the iron from being absorbed. Spinach is high in vitamins A and E, as well as many antioxidants, such as beta-carotene. Good sources of iron are clams, liver, and fortified cereals. Also, consuming vitamin C at the same time as iron-rich foods can help increase iron absorption.
Inhaling a small amount of water while swimming or bathing can sometimes lead to “dry drowning” in which water in the lungs reduces oxygen flow to the brain, causing loss of consciousness or even death. Dry drowning can occur up to 24 hours after being in the water. Children and adults who are not good swimmers are at risk, as well as people with underlining lung problems, such as asthma. Warning signs include persistent coughing, shortness of breath, pain in the chest, extreme tiredness and/or behavioral changes shortly after being in the water. If you or a loved one has these signs, see a doctor immediately. Victims of dry drowning must have a breathing tube inserted so that oxygen can be supplied to the lungs.
Sitting at the desk all day can cause sleep apnea. When you sit for long periods, blood and water pool in your legs. If you sit long enough and collect a great deal of fluid in your legs, when you lie down to go to sleep, gravity causes this fluid to flow to your neck. In some people, so much fluid moves to their necks that it puts pressure on the throat, causing it to collapse from the pressure, leading to obstructive sleep apnea and making it difficult to breathe and get a good nights sleep. Take a walk every hour while youre at work to prevent fluid retention in your legs.
New warnings for Over the Counter painkillers- in late April, the food and drug administration ordered drug makers to include new warnings on labels of over-the-counter pain meds. The risks include internal bleeding and liver damage. The warnings apply to acetaminophen (Tylenol and generic) and steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen (advil and generic) and naproxen (aleve and generic), as well as products such as cold medicines that combine those drugs with other ingredients.
 

 
Useful Information:

Clear up your VCR snow: if you see snow on your television screen whenever you play a videotape in your VCR, try putting a piece of aluminum foil between your VCR and your television. It may cut down your interference and clear up your picture.
Make an emergency funnel: don’t worry if youre caught without a funnel, make one out of aluminum foil. Its easy and disposable- great for those real messes.
Improve your view- A solution of three parts water to one ammonia works wonders on windows and anything else a commercial spray cleaner is used for. Its cheaper too.
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Memory Tips from Dominic O'Brien

Courtesy of Dominic O'Brien
By Liz Neporent

Quick, read this list: Butter, telephone, bed sheet, aspirin, staples, goat, pencil, seltzer, basket, photograph. Now close your eyes and count to ten. Turn away and recall as many of the items on the list as you can without checking back. No peeking, please.

How did you do? If you’re good, you recalled perhaps three items, a perfect demonstration of the limits of the average person’s short term memory. It’s this limitation you have to thank for the lack of ability to remember the name of the person you just met and why you can never, ever seem to find your keys, cell phone or birth certificate.

Now imagine memorizing the order of 54 decks of inter-shuffled cards with only a single glance at each. It seems impossible, yet that’s what World Memory Champ Dominic O’Brien was able to do. On May 1st, 2002, the Englishman committed a random sequence of 2808 playing cards (54 packs) to memory after looking at each card only once. He was able to correctly recite their order, making only eight errors, four of which he immediately corrected when told he was wrong. It’s a Guinness Book of World Records feat that still stands today.

In fact, O’Brien now makes his living traveling the world, remembering things. He gives lectures, speaks at corporate events and through his company, Peak Performance Training, he instructs mere mortals like you and me on how to improve our powers of recall for facts, figures, names dates and faces. He’s also written 10 best selling memory improvement books. We recently caught up with the memory maven and picked his brain to find out how he does what he does.

AOL Health: You’ve won the World Memory Championships an unprecedented eight times, retiring from the competition in 2003. Describe how the championships work.

There are 10 disciplines which take three days to complete. There are marathon events such as being given one hour to memorize around 2000 decimal numbers (6803394581… and so on) and one hour to recall the order of around 25 decks of shuffled playing cards. There are also shorter "sprint" events such as recalling 100 names and faces in fifteen minutes, 120 fictional dates, and a 300 digit number heard at the rate of one digit per second. The object of all of these is to remember as much as you can in the amount of time you are given while making the fewest recall mistakes.

AOL Health: What drives you and other "memoirists" to compete?

Memory is a mental sport and just like any sport you have a desire to push yourself to see how far you can take your skills. It can be addictive.

AOL Health: Did you always have a good memory?

I always had a good imagination and was able to memorize music having heard it on a cassette or record. However, it wasn’t until I was age 30 that I started to train my memory. I was originally inspired by watching a man on TV memorize a deck of cards in three minutes. Now of course, I hold the World Record for the memorization of 54 decks of inter-shuffled cards with a single-sighting of each.

[Editorial side note: At the 2007 World Memory Championships, another Brit, Ben Pridmore, memorized a single shuffled deck of playing cards in 26.28 seconds beating the previous World Record of 31.16 seconds. This is widely considered the memory equivalent of breaking the four-minute mile in track & field.]

AOL Health: What is one of your most essential memorization techniques?

One technique used by many competitors dates back to ancient times when it was a learning tool used by orators and students. It is known by various names but most commonly as the “method of loci” or the “journey technique”. It involves mentally picturing a familiar journey, and placing pictures associated to the information you are trying to memorize along that route. Then when remembering the information, you simply go on your mental journey and "pick up" all of the things you placed there. For example, I translate numbers into images that resemble their shape; one becomes a candle or streetlamp and eight a snowman or egg-timer. To help remember a [bank] pin of 1580, I imagine walking into the bank carrying a candle, standing in a queue behind a snake, and seeing a snowman bouncing a football behind the counter.

AOL Health: Do you think good memory is a gift or a skill?

The vast majority of us are quite capable of training and developing extremely powerful memory functions. All that's required is the drive and the desire to train in the first place. Use it or lose it is a good adage.

AOL Health: Why do you think memory is so important?

Without memory our lives would be in chaos. Memory is what defines us. We are the sum total of our remembered experiences and this is what makes you, you, and me, me.

Once you learn to flex your memory muscles, it helps you in the real world. By running around a track daily you not only become proficient at running around a track -- you also develop a healthy physical condition which is advantageous for a multitude of physical (and mental) activities. Memorizing a 1000 digit binary number for example, requires activating all functions of the brain -- imagination, creativity, logic, imagery, sequential, spatial, overview, concentration, stamina and much more. Every time you memorize or hard wire data into your brain, new neural connections are made. These ever expanding pathways can be used to transport or act as conduits for a multitude of problem solving tasks. The evidence is out there -- training your memory increases fluid intelligence.

AOL Health: Do you ever find yourself needing to forget something?

Yes. I need to forget previously memorized sequences of numbers or cards. In order to remember the sequences, I use familiar routes such as a journey around my house to store lists of information. Obviously, I don’t want to confuse existing sequences with new lists on the same route. The easiest way to forget these lists is simply not to review or think about them for at least two weeks.

AOL Health: What is your earliest memory?

Standing in my cot as a baby and shaking the wooden bars. I remember my mother saying that I would become a boxer one day.

AOL Health: What advice do you have for someone looking to sharpen their memory skills?
 
 
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Russia bans all gambling and shuts casinos
Wed Jul 1, 2009 12:29pm BST
By Mikhail Antonov and Vladimir Bomko
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia closed down its casinos overnight as gambling was banned nationwide, a move the industry says could throw a third of a million people out of work.
The July 1 ban shut gaming halls, from gaudy casinos crowned by extravagant neon structures to dingy dwellings containing a handful of slot machines.
"I feel terrible. We just let 1,000 people go," said Yuri Boyev, general director at Metelitsa, an upmarket casino where billionaires rolled the dice and Russia's gas giant Gazprom held a lavish Christmas party.
Vladimir Putin, now prime minister, came up with the idea in 2006 when he was president after the Interior Ministry linked several gaming operations in Moscow to Georgian organised crime.
The Kremlin plans to restrict gambling to Las Vegas-style gaming zones in four rarely visited regions deemed to need investment, including one near the North Korea border, but nothing has been built and critics say the zones will fail.
Though gaming establishments knew the shutdown date for at least a year, few thought the government would go through with it, but officials moved in overnight to close them down.
The industry says the ban will axe at least 300,000 jobs but officials in Moscow put the national figure at only 11,500.
Rows of slot machines, usually blinking around the clock in smoky, crowded halls, lay dormant and wrapped in cellophane.
Moscow deputy mayor Sergei Baidakov, watching men dismantle poker tables and lay roulette wheels on the floor, said the state was ready to thwart any big to move gambling underground.
"We are confident we will control the situation," he said.
He said the ban was to protect the health of society. Many critics in the gambling industry say it has more to do with Russia's poor ties with Georgia. Georgians are thought to run many Russian gaming halls.
City police stood on guard in case of protests by disgruntled former workers in the popular gaming halls that have sprouted since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and now pepper Russia's cities.
A hotline was set up on Wednesday to report on those suspected of operating illegal gambling, Itar-Tass reported.
Moscow had around 550 gambling places, including 30 casinos in prime spots, symbolising the capital's love of excess.
Midnight on Novy Arbat street, the heart of the gambling scene, was muted as its flashing lights and loud music were turned off for the first time in over a decade.
"I'm upset but I guess I'll have a little rest and re-visit my job situation in August," said Elena, a slot machine operator who has worked in the gaming business for five years.
Each year gaming brought in up to $7 billion (4.3 billion pounds) and paid $1 billion in tax, a gap the industry says will cause the state a budget headache.
The development replacement zones -- in southern Krasnodar, the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, east Siberia's Altai region and the Far East -- require investment of up to $40 billion and have not been built.
"The zones have no roads, water or electricity. We fulfilled the law by shutting, the government did not fulfil it as the zones are not ready yet," said casino director Boyev.
The industry has raised eyebrows at government guarantees of work in restaurants and shopping centres that are to replace casinos when unemployment in Russia has hit an eight-year high.
But some addicted gamblers thought the ban might help them.
"Maybe this is all a good thing. I'm a family man and I come here every day and lose all my money. I'll be happy to see them go," said a 40-year-old Muscovite near the flashy Shangri-La casino in the city centre.

أفعى سامة تلدغ فتاة سورية أربع مرات خلال أسبوع

الملح دواء طبيعي للاكتئاب

إحمرار الوجه خلال تناول الكحوليات إشارة للسرطان

باحثون ألمان يكتشفون فعالية الوخز بالإبر في تخفيف الآلام المزمنة دون معرفة السبب

علماء: الجنس يطيل العمر ويقي من السرطان ونزلات البرد