Feature:Some Small But Helpful/Healthful Tips

July 22.2010

Feature:Some Small But helpful/Healthful Tips
By Quirico M. Gorpido,Jr.

There are some small but helpful and healthful tips that some people tend to ignore but is actually need to be applied and practiced in our everyday lives. Here are some of them:
1) Avoid putting plastic cup for rice measure and plastic ladle to scoop the rice inside hot cooked rice after its usage. Putting plastic utensils of any kind in hot surroundings like hot rice would trigger a quick release of its chemical content and will mix in the hot rice that could be eaten by members of the family or customers who would be buying the hot rice.
The hot cooked rice contaminated by the chemical or chemicals (which we do not know whether it’s safe or not for human ingestion), if consumed in regular basis would make person/persons sick later in life. It’s better to use wooden cup, wooden ladle or stainless utensils to measure or scoop hot rice or hot foods/viands.
2) Avoid placing plastic containers containing potable water near a hot functioning machine or hot generator, or in a place where it could be hit by the sun’s rays. It has a similar effect with plastic utensils put in hot rice or hot food-that it will easily released chemical/chemicals contain in plastic container used as water depository. Drinking this kind of “exposed water” in regular basis will also make the drinkers sick later in life. The most common disease that ingested chemicals in plastic will cause is, according to medical findings, cancer.
If some chemicals in making plastic wares/utensils were harmful or toxic why not exclude these elements in the manufacturing of plastic products? This is but logical decision to any prudent and compassionate manufacturers/makers whose main concern is not only profit and services but also the welfare and healthful sustenance of their customers/buyers.
3) Avoid using plastic ladle in steering or churning hot food or cooked viand put under fire. Submerged in hot water or hot soup, the plastic utensil will easily released its chemical content, which we do not know for sure if it’s safe or not, as we ingest it when we eat our meals. Continuity in doing this bad unhealthy style always or even occasionally is bad for our health and that of others like customers, if we are selling foods. Forego in transferring soft drinks you buy at the store into plastic wrappers. Better to drink it direct from its original containers. Putting soft drinks inside plastic wrappers will create a chemical reaction between acidic beverage and the plastic you use, which is also bad and harmful to your health.
Why use plastic utensils that contain no guidelines on how to use it properly to make it safe for us, users and consumers? Again, if only you want to use plastic ladle or anything made of plastic in all its form for food preparation and for servings, use it only when everything edible it touches or in contact are already in its cool state. Other safe means to use are stainless steel utensils or wooden utensils like wooden ladle, wooden cup, wooden glass, wooden food tray and the like.
4)On the other hand, it was reported in the popular Manila broadsheet that BFAD’s findings after examining the imported Turkey’s flour, revealed that it contains a chemical called aflatoxin,which based on medical statement can cause cancer to humans. Since the chemical element is harmful to man, it should not be allowed to be circulated for public consumption.
We hope that the Department of Health will make a directive instructing all bakery owners and bakers in the whole country to avoid mixing it with safe flours and be more concern on the health and welfare of their customers and the buying public rather than profit. They should have nothing to worry if they cannot get this lower cost flour. Sacrificing profit in the name of compassion, empathy, goodwill, mercy and altruistic concern are more valuable and meaningful in life than material gain, which can be earned by businessmen thru lawful and legal means.
5) Since a singer’s voice is his/her capital outlay or investment, that make him/her click in the entertainment world, It’s his /her responsibility to protect his/he voice from early damage. After each vocalization practice singers must avoid drinking cold water or hot tea right away. If a singer has the urge to drink because of thirst, rest first your vocal chords from 20 to 25 minutes. But drink only naturally cool water or mildly hot tea hot.
Singers should include drinking one glass of mildly hot fresh ginger tea 3 times a week. It will help enhance the flexibility of a singer’s voice pitch. Prefer chewing small piece of fresh ginger instead of menthol candy. It will also quickly relieve an itchy throat. Drinking or eating juicy fruits should be preferred than soft drinks. Whatever is the surrounding condition or circumstances, singers must shun drinking any ice-cold potable water or liquid. Protect your voice even if you have already reached the retirement age.
Changes of voices among singers are natural process just like the process of growing old. But avoiding what is bad or destructive for one’s voice will make a big difference. As you aged the changes would be gradual, not abrupt. It will also be a good and wise approach to make collections of all albums and video tapes that any singer has recorded. One can re-collect his/her popularity in retrospection by playing them from time to time on schedule all his/her records and concert tours. That would be healthful recollections of one singer’s reminiscence as a younger and active entertainer/musician in the past.
6) Prefer to use dark brown sugar as your sweetener with some other ingredients in making bread, cakes, biscuits, pastries and in all kinds of bakery products. It contains vitamins and minerals needed for the body. Refined sugar or white sugar, candidly speaking, has no more vitamins and minerals. What is left is only sweet. What is wrong and what is bad if your cake, bread, biscuits or pastries look brownish?
If we can eat chocolate cake that looks black or pitch black, with gusto, why can’t we eat also cake that looks brownish in color? Any kind of natural color is safe, not only white, provided the preparation is conducted in hygienic ways. If you can find the traditional natural dark brown sugar (moscado in Negros Provinces) in your place, called in the local folks in Southern Leyte as binagol (dark brown sugar poured inside a half-cut coconut shell while still hot in its sticky liquid form) prefer to buy this kind of sugar.
This locally-made sugar famous in Southern Leyte whose main juice is from the planted sugar canes in the field were cooked inside a huge vat in the middle of the farm or at the intusan.However, this kind of naturally prepared brown sugar devoid of any man-made chemical are no longer seen in Maasin City for several years now.
Sometime in the 1980s and 90s this kind of sugar was available in some market stores and small stores here. During tabo,held on Saturdays at the old market and now at the new reclamation area, where the bus terminal and the new market were located, hundreds of binagol sugar were wrapped in unas(dry old banana leaves)placed inside several crates and displayed it aligned with other farm products. Most of the consumers and marketgoers would prefer to buy it. Its availability on display during the aforesaid market time (tabo) was on regular basis. At the store one can buy it by retail and its good for café,milk,soman,fruitbread and for other edible food that needs some sweetener as well as for moderate eating. Some cook housewives would use it in making of biko and latik as the right pair for the newly- peeled breadfruit during its season. This kind of dark brown sugar is also good for persons sick with jaundice.
We hope that the sugar planters in St.Bernard and San Juan, the two municipalities where this kind of sugar was made will revive the binagol by planting again the sugar canes in their farms so that we can buy it again at the public markets in different municipalities of Southern Leyte. As another source of income, the revival of planting the sugar canes in some farms in the province is worth the farmers’ efforts. Agriculturists and agriculture technicians in the province must provide technical and material supports to the local farmers and help persuade and encourage them to revive the planting of sugar canes in various farms of the province’s municipalities.
7) For persons with hemorrhoids they should avoid getting constipated. Frequent or occasional constipation both would worsen the persons’ conditions that are affected with such disease. See to it that your rice during meals, if dry, must be softened with fish soup, vegetable soup or any other soup you like. Before eating your meals, always drink 2 glasses of water. This is to avoid, whenever possible, the initial hardening of the stool that would make your pushing efforts laborious when defecating.
If any kind of soup,( avoid fatty/oily soup, except fish oil),is not available, eat a ripe regular size mango or a regular sliced ripe papaya simultaneously with your dry rice to make it wetly together with your viand. Chew thoroughly your food for easy digestion.
Every afternoon at four or five drink 2 or 3 glasses of naturally cool water. This is if you feel that your stomach is okay after eating ripe mango or papaya during lunch. But if your stomach sounded some discomfort, then refrain from drinking water. Instead eat an apple or 2 sans water. At supper time, when you feel that your churning stomach is calming down, drink one and a half or 2 glasses of water before you start eating. Whenever the situation or condition permits, always do this kind of preventive and helpful measure regularly to free you from unwarranted constipation.
However, the best solution for the individuals who are afflicted with hemorrhoids (almoranas in local term), according to a medical practitioner, is surgery. Morover, despite of the removal of the disease, it’s still advisable for all people to avoid constipation by practicing all the things that I have stated here.Constipation,according to a physician surgeon, is responsible in the development of a person’s hemorrhoid. The injurious irritations cause by every movement of hard stool during bowel removal passing the intestinal canal near the anus would gradually, as years pass by, develop into hemorrhoid.
8) Using aluminum bowl or plate to put kinilaw (sliced fresh flesh of raw fish with vinegar and spices)is not recommendable. Try pouring small amount of vinegar in an aluminum bowl or plate and allow it to stay for at least 20 to 25 minutes. Then stir it for several seconds. Taste it and you will notice that it’s now has a bitter taste.Obviuosly, there’s a chemical reaction between the vinegar and the aluminum utensil and it’s bad for your health if you ingest it.
Thus avoid using such kind of ware.Rather, use either ceramic or glass bowl/plate to put and soak your kinilaw with vinegar and spices for at least 40 minutes before eating it with cooked camote (sweet potato) or your bahaw nga kan-on (cooked rice that already lasted from 5 to 6 hours).Also refrain from ingesting vinegar from your kinilaw leftovers. But you can eat the spices if you like. Why? Because it’s likewise bad for your health. Proof? A female friend here in Maasin City who habitually drank vinegar with some salt use as sawsawan (home made sauce) for her half-ripe papaya eventually got sick with leukemia. Medications and blood transfusions had become ineffective to arrest her self-inflicted disease. She departed so prematurely to the other world.
I also know a man who was fond of eating kinilaw and had the habit of drinking vinegar with spices. After a few years of his fetish to drink the acidic substance, he unwittingly wrought damage to his stomach and intestines. When he felt some bad pains on his abdomen and was examined by an internist, it was diagnosed as cancer.
9) If a teenager has noticed that he/she has a good voice, better develop and improve your voice earlier by practicing vocalization exercises regularly. If you have the means, enroll in a voice lesson in your place. Prefer to practice singing meaningful and melodious songs that you like and suits the quality of your voice.
To develop or to improve one’s voice takes years to achieve. Be patient and don’t lost faith. In every undertaking or endeavor we always need patience, hard work and determination. Join and complete in singing contest in your place and in the neighboring towns to expose yourself to the public. Have a goal as an aspiring singer.
In case you become sad or in sorrow select songs to sing that can help relieve and ease your emotional distress. Singing can also help reduce stress. Singing regularly, whether you’re sad or in a happy mood, according to experts, can help slow down the process of aging. This is aside from eating regularly fresh fruits and vegetables that are in seasons.
Personally, I have observed that amateur or professional singers, most particularly those who also compose/write songs have looked younger than their real ages. Being generous, kind and compassionate towards fellowmen and frequently laughing and smiling to people, especially to loved ones, relatives and friends, it was revealed, also contribute to looking younger than ones age.
10) Always shun entering right away inside an air-conditioned room/office if you are exposed to the heat of the sun for even only 30 minutes time and even if you are in a hurry. Always allow yourself to cool down for at least 30 to 60 minutes, depending upon the degree of heat that you are exposed.
Immediate or sudden change of temperature (from heat to cold) has a very bad effect to ones’ body system. It will make you sick first with initial cold and accompanying fever. This condition will commonly graduate later into hard cough that will last for several days or weeks. And that’s another expenses of medicines which you can readily avoid if you have used your prudence and common sense.
If you are a utilityman/messenger in an office/company and has to report immediately to your boss, try testing a co-worker friend and request him to let him bring something on your behalf to your head or somebody higher in rank than yours who instructed you to do an errand.
Convey in polite manner thru your friend some explanation address to yours boss why you’re still outside the office. Better still to call your boss thru your cellphone and convey your explanation of your inhibition why you let a co-worker do what you yourself have to do. Although this is somewhat unethical for a messenger/utilityman to do, but the urgency of the situation and the circumstance is inevitably unavoidable that telling the real reason why you act that way , is the only way that your boss or employer would be able to sympathize with your concern on health. Understanding and thoughtful boss/employer will likewise understand your special concern, particularly if he/she has experienced it himself/herself the adverse effect of entering right away inside an air-con office after long exposure from sunlight and got sick.(Quirico M.Gorpido,Jr.)