Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air)
with Ms Melly C Tenorio
with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 Evening Class, Monday to Friday
1. Sleep paralysis - wiggle your toes, move your fingers – don’t give up!
People who have experienced sleep paralysis
mistake it as bangongot. It is because of its very nature as a near
death experience and it is indeed very scary. I have experienced it myself in a
number of times at least in two ways. The most common is when you are dreaming,
say of running but you can’t run, box someone but you can’t raise your arm.
Imagine you are being chased by a wild animal and you are glued in your place!
There’s one thing you can do: panic and talk incoherently or
shout. You wake up
tired, panting, perspiring, trying to decipher whether the experience is true
or just a dream. It is so vivid that when you are back to your senses you can
relate perhaps the whole story.
Nightmarish dream
The other kind of sleep paralysis is more
frightening. It is one that may or may
not be preceded by a dream. On waking
up, you can’t move. You feel totally paralyzed with perhaps only your brain is
functioning. Panic seizes you, as you attempt to move but cannot. Frantically you try to move any part of your
body. In my experience the first to respond are the fingers and toes, then the
limbs, and as blood begins to circulate perked by adrenaline, you find yourself
finally “back to the living.”
Sleep paralysis is nature’s way of protecting
us during our unconscious moments.
Otherwise we become another Hercules who killed his wife and children in
his sleep. This safeguard is not
absolutely foul proof though. Take the
case of sleepwalking and some cases of violence that occur during
sleeping. Well, whatever way there is to
assuage you, sleep paralysis really scares you to death. Just don’t give
up.
2. Beware of food
coloring, the case of jubos in
tamarind sweet.
All of a sudden when answering the call of
nature, I was alarmed to see the color of my urine bright red. I cried, Blood!
I tried to compose myself to be able to reach the hospital in the earliest
possible time. But what surprised me at
the same time was that my fingers were
also stained red. I examined the
“tamarind sweet” I had just eaten. I found the culprit - jubos, the dye used in dying shoes.
Jubos is used to color the local confectionery. How many food
preparations are artificially colored for better presentation? Since that time
on I have been very careful with colored foods.
Ube cake, anyone?
These are things to remember about food dyes,
especially if you suspect of a food or drink to be colored artificially.
·
Be
familiar with the natural colors of fruits and other food products. There are
rare ones though. For example, purple rice cake (puto) comes from a variety pirurutong or purple rice. Ordinary rice
flour and ube flour produce the same color. This can be imitated with the use
of purple dye.
·
Processed
foods like smoked fish and ham are colored, usually golden yellow, to be
attractive.
·
Confectionery
products are made to appear like cocoa, coffee, orange, strawberry, grapes and
the like, when in fact the ingredients are mainly sugar artificial flavors and
food dyes.
·
Fruit
juices carry dyes to enhance their natural colors. Example, calamansi juice is
made to appear like lemon or orange. Softdrinks would look dull and
unattractive without artificial colors.
·
Cakes
and other bakery products may deceive the eye and even the palate. Cake decors are definitely made of food dyes
of many colors and different color combinations.
·
Artificial
colors are filtered by our excretory system so that they appear in the urine.
This is not the case of natural colors such as achuete or anatto (Bixa orellana), pandan (Pandanus odoratissimus), ube (Dioscorea alata), and mango (Mangifera indica).
3. Folks at home warn us never to wade in
floodwaters where rats abound.
Rat are carriers of of the disease called leptospirosis. The first time I heard
the word leptospirosis was ten years ago when Manila virtually remained
underwater for days as a result of monsoon rains intensified by a series of
typhoons. The disease is also called infectious jaundice because one of
the advance symptoms is yellow coloration of the skin. The causal organism is a
spiral bacterium, hence the name, and is endemic where public
Flash flood in Manila
sanitation and personal hygiene are neglected. One can contact the disease through infected urine of rats and mice, and also other animals including dogs and cats. According to reports most of the victims acquired the disease from polluted drinking water and by wading in floodwater. The suspected carrier is the Rattus rattus norvigicus or city rat, counterpart of the field rat, Rattus rattus mindanensis.
How do we know if a person has contacted the
disease? At first the symptoms are like
those of an ordinary flu, which may last for a few days or weeks as the
pathogen incubates in the body. If not
treated the infection may lead to hemorrhages of the skin and mucus lining and
eye inflammation. Extreme cases may lead
to irreversible damage of the liver and kidney.
As
floodwater drives the rats out of their subterranean abode - canals, culverts,
sewers and the like - they take refuge
in homes, market stalls, restaurants, even high rise buildings and malls,
4. You get Ascaris (bulate) if you eat uncooked rice (du-om Ilk).
During threshing and pounding or milling,
particularly in the village where sanitation is poor, rice may become
contaminated with this intestinal parasite.
Rice on display in rice boxes may also pick the eggs, what with the
common practice of sampling rice by putting a grain or two into the mouth.
Ascaris eggs are tough and resistant, they can remain dormant in the rice until
such time that they are ingested. In the
intestines, the eggs hatch and grow into maturity. Children are most vulnerable
but adults are not spared. The usual
signs of the disease are bulging stomach and skinny condition. Ascaris is
prevalent where conditions are unsanitary so that periodic deworming of children in such areas is recommended
5. Oxalic acid in
kamias weakens the bones.
Sinigang with kamias (Averrhoa balimbi) is a favorite dish no
Filipino kitchen is without. But too much intake of kamias is not good for the
health because of the oxalic acid it contains which doctors and nutritionists
found to be a cause of osteoporosis. The
principle is that, acids react with calcium compounds forming a neutral product
– salt. In the process, the bone gets thinner and thinner predisposing it to
break especially in old age. Thus, we should caution ourselves from taking too
much acidic food, and in particular, kamias and balimbing (A. carambola) which belong to Family Oxalidaceae.
Trivia
Avoid using skin
whiteners; they are laced with mercury.
Cases of mercury poisoning among whitener
users were reported in Hongkong. Mercury
is injurious to the kidney and liver, and may cause deformity in children as in
the case of the Minamata disease.
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