Prescription Drugs in Drinking Water! Should I Get a Water Purification Device?

Worried about prescription drugs in drinking water? There's really no need for anyone to worry about drugs in the drinking water. We can remove that threat and many others with the right home purification device.

If the treatment facilities were not so old and outdated, if they cared less about cost and more about safety, there wouldn't be any prescription drugs in drinking water. But, because they don't take the necessary steps, we have lead, pesticides, herbicides and thousands of chemical contaminants that they don't even test for.

One of the common drugs in the drinking water is called perchlorate. It is used to treat hypothyroidism. Independent tests showed that it was present in 400 different supplies around the United States. These tests were conducted more recently than the tests that the AP reported about in February.

It was done to support California's effort to have the compound added to the Environmental Protection Agency's list of contaminants that must be tested for at every public facility. In healthy people, the drug causes dysfunction of the thyroid gland, which impairs neurological development in children.

In adults, thyroid dysfunction negatively affects natural metabolism, leading to weight gain, fatigue and other health problems. The reason perchlorate is one of the most common prescription drugs in drinking water has little to do with its use as a medication.

Besides being a drug, it is a volatile organic compound (VOC). In other words, it exists in nature and it is explosive. It is commonly used in rocket fuel, airbags and fireworks. It was a common ingredient in fertilizer, before its use for this purpose was restricted.

It is such a common environmental pollutant that it has been found in samples of human breast milk, cow's milk and lettuce. It's presence in public water supplies is unregulated in most states. Only Massachusetts and California regularly test for it.

While most of the traces of drugs in the drinking water samples were relatively low, levels of perchlorate are relatively high and since we can be exposed in many other ways, it becomes particularly important to remove it.

Researchers are as yet unsure about what the traces of prescription drugs in drinking water can do to human health. But, researchers have been studying the affects or perchlorate for years. At levels commonly found in just one glass of milk or water, it disrupts the function of the thyroid gland.

Perhaps this is one of the underlying reasons for the obesity problem in America. Don't think that buying bottled is safer. Even springs contain VOCs. The only safe solution is a point-of-use filtration device that removes VOCs and those drugs in the drinking water. But, be sure to compare performance data.

Many "purifiers" that you see in department stores and on TV, are nothing more than chlorine filters. While chlorine is a problem, it is certainly not the only one. If you buy the right device, you will never have to worry about prescription drugs in drinking water or any other type of contaminant.

Safe Workouts Begin with a Good Warm-Up

It is starting to become warmer, and many people will be returning to their fitness routines. Most sports injuries that happen when a person works out are caused due to a lack of proper warm up and stretching of the muscles before a workout.

It has been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is definitely the case when you start to workout or do your fitness routine. Sore muscles, sprains, and even broken bones can result from not warming up your body prior to conditioning.

The best medicine for saving yourself the agony of 'the morning after syndrome' is to properly stretch out before your workout and then to warm up by doing some light jogging. You can use an ipod and listen to music, or take a friend with you for company.

Start by doing a simple stretching exercise. First, stand with your feet shoulder length apart. Reach down as far as you can with both hands and try to touch the floor. Don't jerk, but simply extend your arms to the floor slowly and hold that position until you feel slight pressure on your leg and back muscles. Repeat this 5 times.

Next, sit on a mat or semi-soft surface. Put both of your feet directly in front of you and together. Extend your hands slowly and touch the tips of your shoes if you can. If you can't quite reach that far don't worry, this is the reason you are doing the stretching exercises in the first place. Your body needs to expand the ligaments and muscles to allow for the pressure of the upcoming workout. Repeat this stretching exercise up to 10 times.

These two stretching exercises will get you ready for moving around and working out as well as start the process of blood flow in your body.

If you plan to run for your workout it is suggested that you stretch your legs and hamstrings ( back of the upper leg ). To do this you extend one foot in front of the other far enough so most of your weight is on the front foot. Then slowly shift the rest of your weight forward while placing both hands on your knee. Hold this position for about 5 seconds after you feel a tightening pressure on your back and legs. Do this 10 times slowly for each leg.

It is wise to take your time when stretching out. The better job you do of loosening up when you stretch, the less likelihood of any sports injury occurring.

Another easy way to stretch your whole body is to do about 30 'jumping jacks'. This is merely jumping and spreading your feet apart at the same time you raise your hands just like you were going to clap your hands above your head. This is an enjoyable exercise, and one that lends itself easily to music. This is a standard exercise that is good in itself as it increases your blood flow and heartbeat. You may find that you want to do more that 30 jumping jacks at a time. Just remember to start slow if you are a beginner.

Now that you have stretched out your legs and loosened up a bit, take a slow jog for about 3 or 4 minutes. Then you will be ready to do a nice workout without fear of pulling any muscles.

Stretching and warming up will prevent sore muscles the day after your workout when you do it regularly. And it will reduce the incidence of sports injuries such as torn muscles. Just remember a great workout always begins with a solid warm up routine every time.

Childbirth - When Hippocrates Meets McDonald's

Atul Gawande, assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School said, in an article in The New Yorker Magazine (The Score: How childbirth went industrial.10/9/2006): "And yet there's something disquieting about the fact that childbirth is becoming so readily surgical. Some hospitals are already doing Caesarean sections in more than half of child deliveries...We are losing our connection to yet another natural process of life. And we are seeing the waning of the art of childbirth...In the medical mainstream, it will soon be lost." There was a revolution in medicine during the first third of the 20th Century that presaged all this. Whereas most urban women had been delivering babies at home with the help of a midwife, by about 1933 most urban babies were delivered by doctors in hospitals. Yet, hospital care brought no advantages to the mothers or newborn. In fact, newborn deaths from birth injuries had increased over the preceding two decades! The author cites "incompetence" as the most consistent factor.

As he observed, practitioners of medicine needed to do something to standardize the process of childbirth (make it easy as A-B-C!), and improve their numbers or they'd lose their credibility. Even without the advanced tools and techniques of the physicians, midwives were showing more consistently good results! Cesarean section's place in this, at the time, was as a last-ditch emergency surgical procedure. Historically, it almost always killed the mother through blood loss and infection. In the space of a quarter century, however, all that would really shift. The turning point came in 1953 in the form of a standardized evaluation scale of the newborn called the Apgar score. At about the same time, surgical techniques and antisepsis were coming into their own. The score became a beacon upon which statistical studies could rely. The immediate health and longer-term prognosis of an infant became measurable, thus reflecting back to institutions and their practitioners the efficacy of their approaches and procedures. But, if two procedures are equal in efficacy (when the personnel are adequately trained), how do you determine which to endorse, and at whose convenience?

Cesarean section is a procedure. The use of forceps in a delivery is a skill. Gawande refers to it as an art. Here lies a great example of where the path of least resistance is taking precedence over a push to raise the skill level of practitioners. Because of that, mothers may be suffering unnecessarily.

In the wake of statistics that endorse C-section as a viable option, studies of the longer-term impact on the women who are affected by it have been few and of little consequence to the direction that obstetrics is heading. Gawande cites forceps as having completely revolutionized childbirth. Their use drastically reduced infant mortality. The problem with forceps is that it is believed too many doctors are unable to master the instruments and technique well enough to make it effective. Physicians who are well trained in the techniques, however, have success rates equal to Cesarean section in difficult births.

Working with an instrument to guide an infant safely through an un-altered birth canal is considerably different and more challenging than cutting through tissue, stopping the bleeding, scooping the child out and then sewing the traumatized tissue back up. One is facilitation of a natural, not always predictable, process. The other is a paint-by-the-numbers excision.

You would think that C-sections would be used only in dire emergencies. They are not. They are now being offered more and more often as a featured special on the menu of childbirth!

The Apgar score is newborn-oriented, which means that the goal is to produce live and healthy births. It is also designed to catch the endangered infant and medically intervene before it's too late. What it's not designed to do is to place equal emphasis on the health and future well being of the mother AFTER she leaves the delivery room.

Cesarean section is just the most indicative of the procedures that have been integrated into the typical delivery. Today, it is more routine than not to include IVs, fetal heart-monitoring, Pitocin (to "drive" contractions), and spinal block anesthesia in the procedure of childbirth. Many of these in the course of a delivery, are chosen to beat the odds and smooth out the rough edges; almost like saying, "We'll make this convenient for both of us today...and let's not talk about tomorrow." Of course, it's the mother and family that pays for this all, but in how many currencies?

What once was the miracle of childbirth has become a technical procedure. It is dependent upon its distribution by an industrialized, assembly line, male-dominated hospital system that has yet to really understand, let alone acknowledge, the intricacies of a woman's experience. Has the woman's role become to deliver a healthy Apgar score? Gawande says: "Against the score for a newborn child, the mother's pain and blood loss and length of recovery seem to count for little." Was he able to cite a study that shows the statistics for the women's experience? No, it is something that "seems" to count for little. Cesareans are far more brutal to the mother than the use of forceps. Recovery is prolonged. Healthy tissue is damaged. The sense of dissociation from a natural birth process where you are delivering a newborn (as opposed to undergoing a procedure to remove a growth!) may very well produce traumatic beginnings in the bonding of mother and child. Of course, that's only extrapolation on my part drawn from conversations with women who have undergone it. But what do I know; I have no statistics to back me up.

Maybe someone should ask.

3 Cheesy Crockpot Recipes

Crockpot meals are always easy, and very tasty as well. If you love a good cheesy meal or snack, these recipes are just right for you!

Recipe #1 - All Day Macaroni & Cheese

8 ounces elbow macaroni, cooked and drained

4 cups(16 ounces) shredded sharp Chedder Cheese

1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk

1 1/2 cups milk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Place the cooked macaroni in crockpot that has been sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. Add the remaining ingredents, all except 1 cup of the cheese, mix well.

Sprinkle with the remaining 1 cup of cheese and then cover and cook on low setting for 5 to 6 hours or until the mixture is firm and golden around the edges. Do not remove the cover or stir until it has finished cooking.

Recipe #2 - Artichoke & Cheese Dip

1 lb. shredded Mozzarella

1 c. grated Parmesan

1 c. (8 oz. jar) mayonnaise

1 c. (8 1/2 oz.) artichoke hearts, drained and chopped

Minced onions

Mix ingredients together. Bake in casserole at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or in lightly buttered 3 1/2 quart slow cooker/Crock Pot on (high) for about 1 hour. Serve with broken up French bread or wheat crackers.

Recipe #3 - Broccoli & Cheese Soup

2 c. cooked noodles

1 (10 oz.) pkg. frozen chopped broccoli,thawed

3 tbsp. chopped onions

2 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. flour

2 cups shredded American cheese

Salt to taste

5 1/2 c. milk

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Stir well. Cook on low for 4 hours. 8 servings.

Enjoy!

Have You Mastered These 10 Public Speaking Skills?

How skillful are you at pubic speaking? Have you mastered the public speaking skills?

If you want to master public speaking, then you need master the public speaking skills. There are dozens of skills required in a talk. These skills are an essential part of the art of public speaking and are especially important in persuasive speaking. How do you measure up in just 10 of the skills?

In the following you will find the skills and a brief explanation of what the skill is or requires.

Informative to the Audience

To be informative to the audience it needs the all important 'what's in it for me' factor. It also needs to go beyond just facts and figures. The information needs to be massaged in a way the audience can use it.

Know the Make Up of Your Audience

Seemingly obvious, this is often overlooked. For instance, you would think that you will speak to doctors differently than people without a health care background. However with all the information overload doctors deal with, most want the common version, the one they will share with their patients. Know how the audience will best receive the material you deliver.

Introductions that Capture Attention

The introduction is the key that unlocks the door of the mind so that what you say might be listened to. It is essential that the words used and the way they are used are effective in capturing the attention of the listener. Although this may seem one of the more basic speaker skills, it is in reality one of the most important.

Accurate Pronunciation

Imagine listening to a great speaker who constantly mispronounces words. Will you wonder if it is because he did not know. If he did not know, then how credible is everything else he has to say.

Words Clearly Spoken

Like pronunciation, clarity is essential. Whach-y-all-do-in (what's you all doing) may be acceptable when we are with friends, but when speaking into a microphone, it can be annoying to the audience. A lack of clarity can result in sound that you would not want to use in public. Even worse, slurred words are the sign and symptom of a stroke. Someone may call 911 not only to rescue the audience, but mistakenly (as far as the stroke is concerned) to rescue you.

This is one of the public speaking skills we may take for granted but also may get us in trouble.

Fluency

Fluency refers to the flow of your thoughts. The speech that is fluent sounds like a harmonious whole rather than several small and fragmented pieces of thought tightly tucked together.

Avoiding Word Whiskers

In addition to the common word whiskers, and uh, and uh and uh would be the venerable, 'and now.' Or sometimes just plain 'now.' Speaking in Spanish a common word whisker is 'therefor.' There are many other word whiskers, 'you know.' Using them once can in some instances be acceptable. Using them over and over is distracting and annoying to the listener, uh, and now you know.

Pausing

Pausing can be for emphasis or for effect. It is a speaker skill that is often underused. Pause mid sentence to emphasize a particular word or part of the thought. Pause before making a bold statement or to emphasize the statement. Pause no less than one second and not much longer than three. This is one of the more difficult of the speaker skills to master and be natural.

Sense stress

Putting the right stress on the right words or right part of the section of a talk is an art that needs practice. Inexperienced speakers will be found giving sense stress to more than one part of a sentence or in more than one part of a thought being shared.

Enthusiastic Presentation

Did you know there are two kinds of smiles. One is a put on or Pan Am Smile and the other is a real smile. Enthusiasm can be just like the smile. It can sound put on or it can sound real. Learning how to master the real is essential for great speaking. Mastering this along with other speaker skills will make a talk come alive.

These are only overviews of 10 of the many speaker skills. To master public speaking means to master the public speaker skills. The ultimate practice will come in front of an audience. Learn them, practice them and once proficient, you will have attained speech mastery.

Computer Training - Books vs Hands On

There has been an ever growing battle among teaching professionals, businesses and even students as to what is more important, being book learned in a subject or having some practical hands on experience. We're not going to try to answer that question in this article, only present both sides and allow you, the reader to come to your own conclusions.

With computers, unlike many other subjects, such as accounting, where without theory you simply can't make the correct journal entries, there is a growing number of people without formal training who have very productive careers in the field of computers. In spite of this, there are those who argue that these workers will ultimately not be able to keep up with the ever-changing technology because they have not had formal training and don't know how to read and understand a technical training manual.

Those who believe that understanding the theories of computers, whatever the discipline, is more important than actual hands on use this as their argument. A student who simply gets a hold of a computer and begins working on it is working in the dark and only by trial and error and chance stumbles onto the correct procedure for whatever it is they are trying to do.

In some disciplines, like data entry, this may not be too difficult. After all, most data entry programs have menus to guide the user along, and specific text boxes for each form of input that is required. A person with basic reading skills could probably walk his way through a data entry screen and manage to perform simple data entry tasks.

But what happens when the student tries to tackle a more complex task like installing a hard drive in a computer. Without understanding the basic theories of electricity and grounding, it is quite likely that the student will end up shorting out the drive and possibly every component in the computer itself.

Those who argue the other side of this tricky coin, say that if a student were to try hands on without the aid of formal book knowledge, he would certainly have someone there to show them just how to install that hard drive. The overseer would explain to him along the way the main points that he would need to know in order to do the job correctly, without all the technical stuff that is usually 90% useless in most situations.

However, their more compelling argument for hands on over book knowledge is this. That same student, with all the book knowledge in the world, has still never physically handled a hard drive. In theory, he knows what's going on electronically and understands about grounding but until he actually gets his hands on a drive and tries to place it into that computer, he has no idea if he'll actually be able to handle the task. Maybe his hands will shake. Maybe he has poor eyesight and can't see well enough to make the right connections. Maybe he has trouble hooking up wires. Some people just aren't mechanically inclined.

Even in the field of programming a computer, a person may have complete knowledge of the language he is programming in, but without actually writing a program in a real business environment he has no idea of the complexities of a real life business application. That is why so many computer based products have patches upon patches of bug fixes, because many programmers working their first job simply aren't ready for what's involved.

No doubt the argument of book learning versus hands on will continue until time itself stops, and while no actual answers are given here, it is hoped that this article will give the reader something to think about when taking one side or the other.