Breakthroughs Today

The Department of Health (DOH) announced on 25 November 2010 that new HIV infections reached 1,305 cases from January to October this year. Sex between men, according to an Agence France-Presse report, accounted for nearly 80 percent of all cases mentioned. More than half of those infected aged between 20 and 29. Eleven percent got transmitted through needle-sharing among drug users. One percent came through mother-to-child transmission in pregnancy. Among all countries in Asia, country coordinator of UNAIDS Teresita Marie Bagasao was quoted saying, only the Philippines and Bangladesh had cases increasing as others stayed stable or decreasing. [ Report ]

THE definition of “food” nowadays can pose some difficulty when almost anything can be put into the mouth and ingested. Our age has already defined food beyond the staples, the fruits, the vegetables, or the meats of old. Even the term “food supplement” adds to the confusion since fruits and vegetables provide the vita-minerals they contain. Supplements, too, are presented as “processed” foods. So the demarcation has faded. A piece of mango can be presented as “food supplement” as the capsule popped into your mouth. What is food then? We have to go back to basics. Food must be anything you can eat or drink, and must provide nutritional support to your body without any therapeutic effects. Even this definition has problems. It is a fact of medical science that... [ Read more. ] This article is available in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 24 November 2010.

CLAIMS of healing become suspect when the cure cannot stand the scrutiny on its ability to heal. That makes any therapeutic claim in the labels of food supplements (not drugs) questionable, unless otherwise proven scientifically. In the end, taking a food supplement on faith, and not on hard evidence, can only show the outcome of faith and not because the cure was effective. Even with the famous antioxidant vitamins—such as beta-carotene, vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and vitamin E—few studies involving food supplements have been found with relevant information, as opposed to studies on food sources and their effect on serious conditions such as cancer. What research literature extensively provided was extensive experimental evidence that antioxidants reduce oxidative stress but not that they directly lower the risk for uterine cancer (cancer of the uterus). [ Read more. ] This article appear in SunStar Cebu on 17 November 2010.

ITS literal translation is “supreme ultimate fist,” but despite its aggressive-sounding translation, tai chi chuan (TCC) is a mind and body martial arts system that the Chinese practice for both its self-defense techniques and its health benefits. Tai chi or taiji is the fusion, or rather the balance of the hard (yang) and the soft (yin), making TCC a hard and soft martial art style. Yang is fast, solid and fiery. Yin is slow, yielding and tranquil. In the East, TCC has been around for centuries as a system for health and fitness. Today, it has gained increasing popularity in the West. As a fitness exercise, TCC has been known to improve... [ Read more. ] This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 10 November 2010 as "Tai chi chuan in meg-review." (Photo by Northern Shaolin Academy)

“BACK in the days when men were hunters and chest beaters, and women spent their whole lives worrying about pregnancy or dying in childbirth,” sexually-frank novelist Erica Jong (Fear of Flying, 1973) observed, “they often had to be taken against their will. Men complained that women were cold, unresponsive, frigid. They wanted their women wanton. They wanted their women wild. Now women were finally learning to be wanton and wild—and what happened? The men wilted.” It might be this assumption on women’s “coldness” that made our current research literature thin on female sexual dysfunctions (FSD). And recent interest in FSD may signal a change in that area. With the few studies available, statistics tells us that 40 percent of women in America have FSD. And as women age... [ Read more. ] This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 3 November 2010 as "Growing interest in sexual satisfaction."