Saturday, January 21, 2017

The Benefits of Owning A Pet

Did you know that more of us are adopting pets these days than ever before? In fact, pet ownership is rising fastest among single people, those who have never been married, ow who are separated, widowed or divorced. On top of that, with people living further away from family and interacting mostly electronically with friends, our pets may end up being the closest relationships we have and that may not be a bad thing, according to vetenarian Dr. Patty Cooley - who says pets make great partners. 

First, she says our pets love us the way we are. Even if we're overweight, wear sweats all day, and never do the dishes. Also, our dogs and cats do not care if we have been laid off or just got dumped. In fact if you wallow ont he couch in misery for days, they will be thrilled to get more one on one time with you. 

Another reason pets are great partners is they are the best listeners in the world. Whether you are dealing with a bad day at work, a jealous friend, or a fender bender, just talking to them will help lower our heart rate and stress hormones. Pets do not even mind if you talk with your mouth full. In fact they are especially good listeners if we happen to be eating something. 

Pets are also great for us because if you need exercise, dogs are eager to come along, and they will never critique your form or tell you to run faster. The final reason pets are terrific partners is they will never leave an empty milk carton in the fridge, lock us out of the bathroom, borrow the car without asking or commandeer the TV remote. 

Friday, January 20, 2017

Is Hand Sanitizer Actually Bad For You?

Hand sanitizers are very useful when running water and soap are out of reach but are they worth using more often or should you try to avoid them altogether. Hand santizers contain ingredients such as alcohol of 70% that are used to kill microbes. When left on the skin for more than 30 seconds, it can kill up to 99.99% of bacteria present and even certain types of viruses like Influenza A. The hand sanitizer opens up the cell membranes of the bacteria but they can't kill very tiny cells such as Botulism and Norovirus. 

There are also non-alcohol based hand sanitizers which contain the ingredients such as Triclosan, Benzalkonium, and Chlorhexidine may be just bacteriostatic which means they only prevent formation of bacteria. 

There was a study shown in 2009 with different groups of people that contaminated their hands with the virus Influenza A and the group that was found with the least bacteria was from the group that used soap and water to clean their hands for 40 seconds following with a paper towel for drying afterwards. Therefore it comes out as a method of superior infection control. It is known that hot water can kill bacteria but actually it only happens when the water is at the temperature of 99.98 degrees celcius which would actually burn your skin. In that case, you should just use cold water instead. 

There are also some antibacterial soap that contain Triclosan. There are many studies that have shown that they turn out to be no better than regular soaps. Furthermore, the triclosan is washed down and flows into the rivers or lakes which is one of the top 10 contaminents that is found in the rivers of America. 

At the end of the day, your best bet is using regular soap and washing with cold water saving hand sanitizer for sink situations and avoiding actibacterial soaps for the sake of your health, environment and future generations.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

NEWS: Burns victim injured in horrific explosion has FISH SKIN wrapped over her wounds in pioneering new treatment

Today I read an article about Brazilian doctors that are using the skin of a tropical fish to treat burn victims in a pioneering new therapy that is significantly reducing the trauma suffered by survivors.

It’s the first time in medical history that researchers have used the skin of an aquatic animal as a band aid to treat lesions.

When a gas cooker canister exploded in an accident at Maria Ines Candido da Silva’s workplace causing second degree burns to her arms, neck and some of her face, doctors offered an alternative therapy to the conventional ointment-based one – to dress her wounds with the skin of a Tilapia fish.

Maria Ines, 36, who worked as a waitress in the Casa Velha restaurant in Russas, north east Brazil, said:

“The explosion left me with horrific injuries. I was in absolute agony and desperate for anything to ease my suffering. When doctors suggested putting fish skin on my wounds I found the idea really strange. But I jumped at the chance because they said it would be far less painful than the normal treatment and easier to manage.”

She said living day-to-day with fish skin on her body was “a really bizarre experience”.

The innovative biological dressing has been developed by a team of researchers led by Dr Odrico Moraes, Prof Elisabete Moraes and Dr Ana Paula Negreiros over more than two years at the Nucleus of Research and Development of Medicines (NPDM) of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC).

Plastic surgeons Dr Edmar Maciel at the Dr. José Frota Institute Burns Unit (IJF) in Fortaleza and Dr Marcelo Borges, at the São Marcos Hospital SOS Burns and Wounds Unit in Recife, north east Brazil are coordinators of the project.

The radical procedure completed the first pilot project trials on some 50 patients this month.

The Tilapia skin was left on Maria Ines’s left arm, neck and face for 11 days before being removed.
Doctors kept the fish skin on her left hand for longer as these wounds were deeper.

Over the course of 20 days the fish strips on her hand were replaced several times to allow more time to restore the damaged tissue.

The former-waitress visited outpatients every two days during this time to check her bandages were intact.

Doctor’s removed the fish skin using petroleum jelly to lift, slide and ease the dressing away from the healed area.

The fish strips form a mould over the wound and almost appear as if they are part of the body.

Monday, January 16, 2017

The Holocaust


Recently I read this book called "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas". It was very interesting and it was about the holocaust. I was very interested in it therefore I dug into the history of it.  Basically, the holocaust was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about six million Jews. The victims included 1.5 million children and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe. Some definitions of the Holocaust include the additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders, bringing the total to about 11 million. Killings took place throughout Nazi Germany, German-occupied territories and territories held by allies of Nazi Germany.

From 1941 to 1945, Jews were systematically murdered in the deadliest genocide in history, which was part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazi regime. Under the coordination of the SS, following directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics and the carrying out of the genocide. Other victims of Nazi crimes included ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens and Soviet POWs, Romanis, communists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled. A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories was used to concentrate victims for slave labor, mass murder, and other human rights abuses. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators.

The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages, culminating in what Nazis termed the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (die Endlösung der Judenfrage), an agenda to exterminate Jews in Europe. Initially the German government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, most prominently the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Nazis established a network of concentration camps starting in 1933 and ghettos following the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In 1941, as Germany conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen murdered around two million Jews, partisans, and others often in mass shootings. By the end of 1942, victims were being regularly transported by freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. This continued until the end of World War II in Europe in April–May 1945.

Jewish armed resistance was limited. The most notable exception was the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, when thousands of poorly-armed Jewish fighters held the Waffen-SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20,000–30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought against the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe. French Jews took part in the French Resistance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities. Over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings took place.