respublica

The adult coloring fad

For the past few years many adults have taken to coloring to relieve stress or just enjoy some free time. These coloring pages are everywhere and the images to color are so small and intricate that is makes my eyes grow dim. Rather than relieve stress, I'm afraid I'd loses my mind trying to complete one. So here is how I would go about coloring these things.

I call baloney on this study

There's always some new health study and no matter how weak the conclusion is there is always a news outlet which will report it. Today KSDK in St. Louis headlines a report which concludes that drinking one bottle of wine a week poses the same cancer risk as smoking ten cigarettes for women.

This is just ridiculous and sends a needlessly frightening message to women who might have a glass of wine during the week. I know I do and one bottle of wine is almost nothing for a week. A standard bottle is 750 ML which would add up to about 5 glasses of wine. And the study concluded only a 1 percent increase in the cancer risk for drinking one bottle of wine per week. This is not even close to any margin of error in studies.

But there are also studies which show the health risks in the water we drink (and the container we drink it from), the food we eat, the air we breathe, the cars we drive and on and on. Each study contradicts other studies.

The real danger in drinking one bottle of wine a week is if you drink that one bottle in one sitting especially if you have to drive home.

But they just had to report this website clicks. Every other wine study shows strong health benefits to moderate wine drinking. Let's face it, nothing is good for us anymore so just live your life and don't click these links.

Unappetizing drink

Celery juice has become the latest health drink and frankly, this does not seem appealing at all.

There are over 35,000 posts on Instagram about celery juice with supposed benefits running the gamut from curing mental health issues to infertility and eczema. However real medical research is minimal and the most realistic benefit is eating celery raw for its fiber and additional water.

More lettuce recalls

The beginning of a new month, the continuation of food recalls. It seems that lettuce, more specifically Romaine lettuce, is one of the biggest offenders. The past few months have seen recalls of this lettuce in many grocery stores.

"Federal authorities have issued a public health alert about more than two dozen beef, pork and poultry salad and wrap products as a precaution due to possible parasite contamination.

The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service says the products, distributed by Indianapolis-based Caito Foods may be contaminated with cyclospora. The parasite causes intestinal illness.

The USDA says Caito Foods was notified from their lettuce supplier, Fresh Express, that the chopped romaine used in some of the salads was being recalled."

Ok, thus the recall information. But here is what surprised me: The products were sold by grocery stores including Trader Joe's, Walgreens and Kroger.

Since when is Walgreens a grocery store? In what part of the country can you buy a salad or wrap in Walgreens? I do know you can get crackers and cereal, ice cream and even wine, but I've never seen anything with lettuce.

 

A dog's day at the vet

Ferdie needed to see his doctor for the annual check-up plus a look at this back leg which has been giving out on him. He also struggles to get up off the floor most of the time. He is getting up in age which goes pretty fast in dogs so he had some other issues looked at and a full blood screening was taken. This screening would show all kinds of things like diabetes, and other issues I've forgotten. But one thing we had to do was get a urine sample and that seemed impossible. They gave us a small bowl type thing and a container with a lid. The plan was to get him to pee and then quickly get that bowl under him to catch some of the urine. 

Most dogs, and I figured Ferdie would be the same, would immediately stop peeing as soon as someone reached under them with anything. I mean who wouldn't. So with some pessimism I took him into the front yard early this morning when I knew he really needed to go. I had the plastic bowl in my hand and sort of followed behind him. When he squatted to pee, I zipped behind and to the side of him, slid the bowl under and by golly I was able to get his sample. I then poured it into the lidded container and am ready to take it to the vet's office.

This day made me glad Ferdie is a squatter when he pees not a leg lifter. 

As to his bad right back leg, our vet did some painful looking movements of his leg. She took his leg with two hands and stretched it way out and up and then proceeded to twist it side to side and up and down. Both Dale and I cringed at what he must have been feeling. She then did the other back leg similarly. But he never cried out in pain, just endured it like it was an everyday occurance. So we aren't sure what is going on except the most reasonable guess is arthritis which will hopefully be helped with Rimadyl. 

Head shaving for Childhood cancer research

This afternoon Concordia Seminary held its annual St. Baldrick's fund raiser to combat childhood cancer. Several dozen students and staff had their heads shaved after seeking donations toward this effort. Dale did this for the seventh time and was given the Knight of the Bald Table medal. Our grandson number 2, Connor, did this for the second time and raised 1,015 dollars. We're proud of him and his heartfelt interest in helping kids with cancer.

A before picture

One more thing I don't want to worry about

A story posted by KMOV last night:

How to protect your family from the 'Rat Lungworm' parasite spreading around the US.

It's carried by rats and snails and could infect your brain.  I refused to read any further.

Depressed fish

I had a little trouble taking this study seriously, but hey, I've been wrong before. The story headline reads, "Do Fish Suffer From Depression too? Experts Say Yes."

The first sentence asks, "Have you ever seen a sad looking fish?" Frankly, no. We have fish in our waterfall lower pond and if any are sad they haven't made it obvious. They swim around, pick at the pond plants, go crazy when we come up with food, and go back to swimming around.

But, researchers decided to compare human depression with fish depression and found "The neurochemistry is so similar that it’s scary." According to Troy University's Dr. Julian Pittman, fish are the perfect choice to experiment with because their symptoms of depression are much more obvious than humans. the level of depression a fish was experiencing could be measured by how much time they were spending near the bottom of their tank. So the conclusion was, Depressed people are withdrawn. The same is true of fish.

Depression in fish stems from lack of stimulation and they're bored in a barren landscape.

How this will be a breakthrough for treating humans isn't mentioned.

Why men are much worse at being sick

It seems it's really true, men are much worse at being sick than women. If you are a woman living with a man who gets a cold or flu you probably recognize this. And here we just believed men were good actors when sick.

The study found in the simplest form: "It isn’t always the presence of the microbe or the presence of the virus that makes us sick. It’s the immune response, and the research shows that males have a heightened response that summons cells to the site of infection, which contributes to the overall feeling of sickness.”

So I guess we women have to be more sincerely sympathetic.

Rest easy cat owners

A totally unexpected mental health news story and one which should be filed under the category of, "what will they study next?"

Cat ownership not linked to mental health problems, study says.

So many studies so little time.