Better than perfect!

How could these babies turn out so beautifully without care?

What do I regret about my life?

Image by mikebaird via Flickr
At this middle age I recall the part of life I have lived, I would say that I regret nothing but exercise!

I had a typical Chinese mindset that tends to separate physical part from mental part of our life. Many Chinese people seem to believe that a strong physical bodybuild represents lower intelligence (of course this is not stately recognized notion but I believe it was implied in many aspects of Chinese culture). Not that Chinese people don't want to be physically healthy, but lots of them just don't care much about exercises and sports. I believe I unconsciously hold this idea through my early years of life. That's why I was never into exercise, even though I desperately needed it since I was a teenager (my health was already bad during my early teen).

Now, under chronic condition, I realized that my physical being played a dominate role in my everyday life - it affects my life plans, short term goals, my relationships, my mood, and eventually my intelligence.

Had I known the importance of physical health, I would've exercised everyday! But good thing is that I am still in my middle age, my life still have many years to come. So I made my mind: when my condition gets normal, I will exercise literally -

EVERYDAY!

Cold feet is to blame for my sinus problem- hot foot bath stopped my sneezing

Image by panduh via Flickr
For long time I had sinus problem. Allergy medicine did not do good on this. It killed sneezing but it also weakened my heart function. I just can tell because whenever I took medicine like "claritin" I would get palpitation easily and also breath hard.

This summer the weather is unbelievably hot and the AC made my feet frozen (my legs and feet are especially weak of dealing with coldness). This somehow slowed blood circulation and weakened my immune system so I sneezed very easily even it is no longer the season. One day I was sneezing like crazy all day long and at night I suddenly remember years ago hot foot bath stopped my sneezing (I thought it was a coincident at the time), so I did it again. Magically my noses felt smooth almost immediately, and in another few minutes sneeze was gone!

After I finished foot bath my feet and legs felt warm and my mind was clear again. However after a while when my feet got cold again and I started sneeze again. Then I went bed, put a small electric pad underneath my feet and had a good sleep. The second day, sneeze was gone totally.

This incident convince me that, sometime we have problems on one part of our body, the cause is really from somewhere else.

*This hot foot bath I believe can only work for sneezing caused by the slow blood circulation. Other allergy problems caused by different reasons would not be relieved by this method.

Ginger warmed my stomach!

Image via Wikipedia

I had a "hunger" problem once a while: if I didn't eat enough, or sometime even I ate enough, I felt so hungry that I had to keep eating. Someone would suggest it was caused by depression. I simply don't buy that.

By Chinese medicine, "coldness" is a real killer of your health. We need to keep certain temperature inside our body. My problem was "diagnosed" (I quote some Chinese doctors from online so it is not as professional so I put quotation mark:-)) as "Stomach Coldness", which sounds a little crazy, I know. However I was not sure about that until recently, one night my hunger symptoms occurred again. I frantically sought something to eat, and accidentally put some ginger to my oatmeal. I felt suddenly so good when I ate it, and immediately realized that my body liked ginger at the moment. So I ate some more and my hunger feeling just finally disappeared.

After this incident, I purposely ate more gingers especially when I felt my stomach felt uncomfortable (after I ate regularly) , it seemed that my problem has been taken cared of (and I could finally stop gaining weight! God!).

I realized that because of the "coldness" inside me, inside my stomach, my body was keeping in need of something to get heat, so I kept feeling hungry. And because ginger is something can generate heat inside our body, it finally warmed up my stomach, and stopped my hunger.

Now I accepted this theory about "stomach coldness". It makes total sense to me.

A perfect cucumber from backyard!

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Juices are always good for health

Image via Wikipedia

I stole this from mylot.com:

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Carrot + Ginger + Apple - This Boost and cleanse our system.
Apple + Cucumber + Celery - This prevent cancer, reduce cholesterol, and eliminate stomach upset and headache.
Tomato + Carrot + Apple - This Improve skin complexion and eliminate bad breath.
Bitter gourd + Apple + Milk - This avoid bad breath and reduce internal body heat.
Orange + Ginger + Cucumber – This Improve Skin texture and moisture and reduce body heat.
Pineapple + Apple + Watermelon - This dispels excess salts, nourishes the bladder and kidney.
Apple + Cucumber + Kiwi – This improves skin complexion.
Pear & Banana - This regulates sugar content.
Carrot + Apple + Pear + Mango – This clears body heat, counteracts toxicity, decreased blood pressure and fight oxidization.
Honeydew + Grape + Watermelon + Milk – This is very rich in vitamin C + Vitamin B2; that increase cell activity and strengthen body immunity.
Papaya + Pineapple + Milk –This is rich in vitamin C, E, Iron. Improve skin complexion and metabolism.
Banana + Pineapple + Milk – This is rich in vitamin with nutritious and prevent constipation.