Breakthroughs Today

Sometimes we equate health with life so that any mention of death becomes incompatible with a healthy lifestyle. But is it so? The mystery surrounding religious faith can help you understand the difference, noting how Saint Pedro of Cebu lived his life. THERE is a mystery that moves around and between the health of one’s soul and that of one’s body. And that mystery has deep implications in our lives as religious Cebuanos, as well as ardent believers of a healthy lifestyle. Today, we veer away from the stark numerical world of medical research into the realm of faith in celebration of the recent canonization of the second Filipino saint, Saint Pedro of Cebu.   But even in this subject we cannot always do away with scientific thinking, and the use of statistics as far as it can be applied.   Of the two Filipino saints—Lorenzo of Manila and Pedro of Cebu—there had been interesting similarities that can help us appreciate the religious charism of Filipinos. First, both saint

New Agers and Eastern philosophy adherents may call the soil "Mother Earth." But whether we agree on it or not, recent scientific evidence indicate that the earth can help bring well-being to mankind more than we normally thought it can.   IN THE eyes of ordinary people, the soil is a mere resource from which all plants can be harvested. In the eyes of those who studied chemicals in the living environment, it is an unlimited source of electrons that can be a key to curing maladies that infect mankind.   The 1965 Nobel Prize winner in Physics Richard Phillips Feynman wrote: “When the body potential is the same as the Earth’s electric potential, it becomes an extension of the Earth’s gigantic electrical system.”   Scientists like cardiologist Stephen Sinatra, Gaetan Chevalier and James Oschman hold that the earth’s surface is negatively charged, and contact therewith allows electrons to transfer from the earth to the body. And since our immune systems function at

One wonderful thing about nature is the balance between disease-causing and disease-preventing forces that can be easily recognized. And that is true about handling your case.   YOU can protect yourself from the “disease of kings” by eating foods for the “kings” (don't mind my play of words).Much of gout can be minimized through selectively eating foods that provide no new raw material for the production of uric acids.   First, let us cover what foodstuff to avoid. By plugging the dietary sources, you can somehow exert control on uric acid output. Here are foods with very high purine content (up to 1000 mg per 100 grams): anchovy, brain, gravy, kidney, liver, sardines and sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas).   Foods with moderately high purine levels (5-100 mg) include asparagus, bacon, beef, bluefish, calf tongue, carp, cauliflower, chicken, codfish, crab, duck, goose, halibut, ham, beans, lamb, lentils, lobster, mushrooms, oatmeal, oysters, peas, pork, sheep, shellfi

This article has been reprinted on popular demand after it came out first in March 2011 at the heel of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident in Japan, following the devastation that that year's tsunami wrought in the country.   THE reactor fire in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan has sent radioactivity into air, putting at high risk lives even as far away as Tokyo.   As of March 15, 2010, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported this radiation leak amounted to 400 millisievert (mSv) per hour. Exposure to over 100 mSv a year, said the World Nuclear Association, can already lead to cancer. To help control this radioactive cloud, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) considered using boric acid. So, what’s in boric acid that can help control radioactivity from spreading? [ Read to find out.]     This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 3 October 2012.

Many times wealth brings not only abundance in food and material things. It also brings lifestyle related diseases. And one of these is gout.   HISTORICALLY, rich man's disease was attributed to kings as well. Thus, its other name being “the disease of kings,” according to Wikipedia.   Maybe a look at the lifestyle of rich men and kings in history will answer the question, “why.” This lifestyle obviously has better access risk factors for gout—excessive quantities of wine (expensive kinds albeit); excessive protein-rich food (meat, fish, nuts, legumes, and purine-rich vegetables).   Unsurprisingly, gout is a metabolic disease; an offshoot of lifestyle excesses in younger years. It appears as acute or chronic arthritis (joint inflammation) with deposits of monosodium urate crystals in joints, bones, soft tissues, and kidneys. The latter can develop stones.   If a Cebuano says, “Taas akong uric” (My uric acid level is high), that does not mean gout had set in. Gout

Sometimes the simpler way can prove more effective than the more complex ones. With AUR, there is nothing simpler and proven safer method of therapy.   WE MENTIONED last month a safe technique in treating acute urinary retention (AUR), which was investigated in the Hennenfent study in 2006. Compared to the 27.1 percent need for surgery within six months after drug therapy using alfuzosin and the need to perform surgery in a total of close to nine percent of patients, this new method allowed patients to avoid surgery for another 2.5 years.   This new procedure is called manual prostatic massage, a technique found in research literature way back in the early 20th century, particularly 1906. It is non-traumatic as it is scalpel-free.   The study published in Medscape General Medicine on Oct. 25, 2006 used an experimental dose of daily prostate massage for four days in the first week; then three times per week thereafter. The prostate is a male gland that produces semen, and

Urban noise may have a mainstay in our lives for the years to come. Even rural areas in the country are getting noisy as vehicles and population increase. With this cacophony also comes problems that we must be aware of so we can do something about them.   NOISE is so much a part of our daily lives that we come to accept it with admirable tolerance. In fact, it can become the stimulant that some people seek, and believe that the decibels of "sonar energy" can keep them mentally alive.   Sylvia Plath, author of the book The Bell Jar, wrote: “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”   But recent studies have noted that basking in the noise in our urban environment can be very unwise after all. A meta-analysis published lately in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health just unearthed many reasons why.   First... [ READ MORE ]     This article appears in Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on 12 September 2012.