Herb Supplements to control blood sugar levels

a Made in Singapore product 

     Recently this year, World Health Organization made a startling assertion, based on current humans consumption of calories, the sugar intake must be 'halved' to prevent a pandemic of blood sugar diseases like diabetes and other related diseases. This is meant to cause alarm, but in the world we live today, everything has a 'cure' so why waste too much news space and get people all a tizzy in changing their food and dietary habits which have built literally trillions of dollars of revenue for the fast food, health, medicine and pharmaceutical industries. 

    I'm doing my small part in wanting to alleviate one of the world's critical diseases and one of them is diabetes.  A small one person study (by yours truly) recently had me walking and checking about 20 health food and pharmaceutical shops in Chinatown for herb based supplements to alleviate and control blood sugar.  

  This product is made in Singapore (see pictures), costs $ 50 for 2 bottles for roughly 10 - 15 days of bitter gourd and cordycepts extracts. The upside is that while it may control the blood sugar, the costs of managing taking this supplements is surely not cheap. For the proper control of blood sugar, one has to take 9 supplements (tablets) of 3 each, 3 times daily. So the patient has to take 3 in the morning, 3 after lunch and 3 in the evening. The compliance of intake is one critical aspect of keeping the disease under control. 

Secondly, based on 90 capsules per bottle, that means 10 (for 9 capsules dosage per day) to 15 (for 6 capsules per day dosage) days for $50. To effectively control the blood glucose, the patient has to spend $ 100 (for 6 per day) to $150 per month for these natural supplements. 

In my next post I have just the solution. Effective and Price Competitive.   

Goodbye Mr. Williams ; We will never know the real you

                                                           Robin Williams 1953 - 2014 

     Many of my family and friends of my generation, those born in 60s and 70s will surely recall Robin Williams from the sensitive but madcap Mork (Nano Nano) and Mindy with his co-host Pam Dawber.

     During our formative years of the early 80s, the satirical comedy Happy Days and later Mork and Mindy were really our weekly entertainment for many of us young adults. Robin's madcap and hundred miles a minute humour were sidesplittingly funny and his trademark handshake, or the one with the fingers outstretched and with the 3rd and 4th fingers apart was the 'cool' handshake of the era. We, the young adults of the early 80s had only TV, radio to entertain us. No internet, smart phones, cheap budget airlines to distract us from the humdrum of daily life.  

    I read so many tributes of his wacky zaniness in many magazines, tabloids and top news magazines like Time and Newsweek, as well as his great gift of making people laugh. He was a comic genius who was so troubled by his mortality and falling off into obscurity that he took his own life. He fell into drug and alcohol abuse and was in and out of rehab a number of times. The very lure of the entertainment world with its monetary rewards and fame ultimately leads to many a diva, entertainer, movie, TV star to lose their sense of reality when their star fades in obscurity. Fitting back into society to be a 'nobody' is very scary and traumatic when earlier, every tweet, comment, and utterance is carried along by millions of 'followers', you dine in private jets, go to exclusive parties and live like oil rich princes. Money, the lavish life, the fans, the sense of being removed from reality. Many people just 'lose it'. The list of people who have had nervous breakdowns, taken drugs, taken their own lives in the entertainment world far outstrips those of us lesser mortals working 9 to 5 day jobs and struggling with our mortgage and kids education. 

We the nameless faceless people who form 99% of the society are the lucky ones. We have no massive expectations by ourselves, our managers, our fans and our family and friends to top the last selling CD or film which raked in mega millions. Success in itself is a double edged sword, it sits uncomfortably with the ordinary.  So the 64 million dollar question is this, can we deal with failure for multiple times, until we find success ? If we attain success too quickly and too huge, can we live with it ? Dare we ?   

   The tragedy of life is that it is too serious to be taken too seriously. Robin knew that only too well that he created all his alter personas to entertain all those around him. Many who knew him said he was actually ultra-shy and needed the zaniness as an outlet of his creativity which was nothing short of genius. 

   Goodbye my Captain. Nano Nano. The world is a sadder place without you.  

Lose 5 kg for good ; by end of this year

         Setting Yoyo diets are like any short term goals, once you achieve them, you revert back to your old ways and the results you have strived for so hard and so long all go to waste. However, this year, in the middle of nowhere, in August, I have decided that enough is enough, I am writing this down for everyone to see. But my immediate goal is to lose 5 kg, for the following reasons :

a) health
b) vanity
c) family

        Many of my peers are overweight, and as the 50s decade rears its ugly head, health issues will invariably crop up. I have been active in sports for the most part of my life, but the last couple of years, the weight gain has been due to bad dietary habits like snacking, the occasional drinks with friends, and lack of exercise.

       Metabolic syndrome is the onset of the most common lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, heart problems and gout, so I want to delay or even totally avoid these debilitating diseases with the correct attitude as well as strong minded will to lose weight.

     So from today 18th August, I have started on my fitness regimen. I will track

and keep myself updated weekly. Watch this space.

   For a start, I intend to skip the lunch meal and replace it with a short but fast run in the gym of 5km or longer everyday this week. If the lunch run is not done, then a run in the afternoon is a MUST. On top of that, I will intersperse the evening with a 10 - 20 lap swim for the days when my aching body (perhaps Wednesday and Friday) says STOP. 

So every week I will track my weight, and run history. 

     18th August - 76 kg  

Rise and fall of nations and empires (football teams included)

                                                    Where did we go so wrong ??

The agony of defeat

       Brazil's world cup 2014 run till the semifinals ended in the most humiliating way. Leaderless (their captain Thiego Silva was out suspended), firing blanks (their talismatic key striker Neymar) the team succumbed 7 - 1 to a ruthless German team at Belo Horizonte stadium in front of a partisan 70,000 crowd.

      What happened to the record 5 times World Champions which boasted in the past the likes of Pele, Garrincha, Romario, Ronaldo , Ronaldinho, Socrates, Zico and Caesar ?  Many a great team like am empire has to realise that their time is well and truly past them. I am no expert soccer pundit, and this post has been written post mortem so everyone has hindsight as their database.

      This World Cup in 2014 was Brazil's to lose. They had invested US$ 11 billion into building new infrastructure like stadiums, roads at the expense of alleviating the massive social problems of the poor who protested day and night. Why spend money on an U$ 11B advertisement when you could easily feed or provide cheap housing to 1 million marginalised slum dwellers ?? Why indeed ??

     Football (like governing a country or empire) is never stagnant. Once a great ruler or team manager has reached the pinnacle of success (like Julius Caesar in BC 70), it was time to find a successor - for rightly or wrongly. That is called rejuvenation or re-invention.  Many a ruler and football manager has stayed on longer than necessary for love of power, ego or money's sake and to disastrous effect.

    Luis Felipe Scolari must make way for new blood with fresh new ideas and change tactics and strategies for the betterment of Brazil. To stay on to prove a point or rebuild is indeed pointless in my opinion. 

    Brazil is now a has-been, just like Spain's tikki taka football. Hard skillful attacking sides like Germany now rule the day. 

    My prediction for Final ?     Heart says Argentina (for Messi sake) but Head says Germany

   Germany to win by 2 - 1.

   Seize the Day.     

    

Great New Song

The Fifa Website for all the Video Highlights of the World Cup 2014

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/videos/highlights/match=300186478/

Spain 1 The Netherlands 5 World Cup 2014

What a cracker of a goal, the first one scored by Arjen Robben. His second one was equally splendid.