The Greatest (Snacks) of All Time

Here’s one for the truth is stranger than fiction category: Muhammad Ali, boxing champ and Parkinson’s victim, is starting a line of healthy snacks for kids.

Know as GOAT (for “greatest of all time”) snacks, they will be on the market next year. None of the snacks will have more than 150 calories, and they are all filled with vitamins and nutrients.

The idea is to use Ali’s superstar status to combat childhood obesity by encouraging kids to snack on boxing glove and punch bag shaped treats in flavors such as buffalo wings, cole slaw and corn. Fruit snacks will also be part of the line.

While it’s wonderful that a famous face will be linked to a healthier snack choice for kids, I can’t imagine how they are going to market this stuff with Ali, given that he has great difficulty expressing himself because of his Parkinson’s. Hopefully the marketers will work hard to educate people about childhood obesity and helping kids be healthier can be another part of Ali’s larger-than-life legacy.

(Source: New York Times)

Woman In Jail For Transmitting AIDS

Sarah Jane Porter age 43 from London is HIV positive. So what did she do? Go to help centers, get medication, go to group therapy? No. She decided to have sex with men unprotected. Now it goes both ways, the men should have been protected, but turns out that although they wanted to wear protection she talked and seduced them out of that idea, knowing that she was infected with HIV.

She purposely had sex with men, but police can’t say if it was to intentionally pass on the disease. As far as I’m concerned she is old enough to know what happens when you have sex with someone and you are ill. She also refused to help police track down her many lovers after one went to the police after finding out what she had doen. That man is HIV positive now and the virus was the same strain as hers. She gave it to him.

The other men and their partners are all still waiting for their tests to come back. What really upsets me about this is that this woman only recieved two years and she probably won’t even serve half of it. If she had shot these men but not killed them, or went after them with some type of weapon, it would be attempted murder and she would probably be in there a lot longer. To me this was a weapon that she intentionally used to harm people that did nothing to her. They were people that did not know her before she was infected. It was a weapon that will ruin the rest of these people’s lives, however long or short they might be.

Encyclopedia of Natural Remedies

I’ve had trouble sleeping for more than 14 years and have been looking for natural ways to solve this without addictive sleeping pills. I came across a website that is an encyclopedia of natural remedies and thought I would share.

There is a long list of ailments and remedies that you can try to solve your problems. They begin with the principles of health and work their way up and down the body and finally land at poisons.

Be aware that you are trying these at your own risk. Consult a physician before you do.

Encyclopedia of Natural Remedies

Best of Niner Niner June ‘06

Sreejith thinks that Snap is the future of Google.

Meanwhile over at Blogging Naked leafworks introduces us to sex magic Part I.

In Bookadoodle, Meg Stivison tells us about The Year of Pleasure, and the story of Shem Creek which left her giggling and sighing.

Boomer 2.0: Baby boomers want to dress just like us and get into the latest technology. If you can, then so can they.

Sony gives out free music and hey, Why was the NPS website shut down?

In Credit Cardenza, learn to protect your credit card, and don’t forget to give the tips to your one year old after he gets his own card.

Did you remember to get mommy this gorgeous polished rolo bracelet? Did you settle for something in the flowers and candy department? Or did you get her this Kodak EasyShare?

In Feed Money there was talk about the Google Traffic Diet while Tom Baurley gave us a guide to affiliate programs.

Sarah White posted a must-read to generation debt and hopefully that will keep you from falling into the pit of debt.

If you love playing games for money head on over to the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida but leave the gambling children at home.

Technology is coming to high heel near you so when your bored hopefully your flexible enough to watch the tv in your high heels and if criminals take notice show them your other shoes that come with high heel weaponry included.

 

Do you know if you medical records are being disclosed and do you understand your medical privacy?

Kathleen Milazzo asks the question: Could you be the next victim of diabetes? While also discussing seniors and their new drug plan.

You might own a coffee shop but don’t forget to offer tea because people love variety.

In Mortgage Updates you can learn how to toss out the middle man and offer a mortgage all by yourself.

If you’ve got the skills, you can learn how to build your own hydropower or get some ideas on building your own Mona Lisa.

If your in the mood to learn business, Sarah White takes a moment to let us in on her not so secret side biz.

There is a lot to learn if you want a healthy living and you can start with the dangers of diabetes before moving on to the healthy alternative of corn and don’t forget some great tasting healthy and low calorie recipes.

In On Movies, Meg Stivison refused to let the problem of finding english language movies stop her from giving a great review for the movie “The Prince and Me 2″.

Always keep an eye out for Ebay email fraud but keep the other eye out on ways you can sell stuff on Ebay for other people.

Rss Micro is the new kid in town when it comes to RSS search engines, while there pull up a search about getting listed with Yahoo.

The Diet Logs: If violent diarrhea isn’t something you’d like to have, remember to avoid white kidney beans, or at least learn how to cook them correctly.

If you live the Single Life try to find your relationship chemistry but do avoid the 7 types of jealousy.

Meg Stivison is pretty excited about the changes made to Wow, meanwhile Tom Baurley reminds us that we Don’t Know Jack and there is the Desperate Housewives video game. I still don’t know why they made it.

In Vegas Revealed, we see a couple that are endangered plus a grandmother won the biggest slots jackpot ever.

Meg Stivison is still not over the staring thing, I mean the grocery store? People keep an eye on your shopping carts. And if your going to wander the Earth don’t forget to take a pit stop at Aquariam of the America’s. Should be a sight to behold.

Salad Recipes For the Vegetarian In You

Many regular salads that are made in average household can be very boring. Here are six delicious chef salads that can be eaten as a side dish or as a full meal if your dieting or you are a vegetarian.

Greek Salad
Mixed Green Salad
Spinach Salad
Warm Potato Salad
Creamy Cucumber Salad
Beet & Carrot Salad

FDA Approves HPV Vaccine

I don’t think I could possibly fit more acronyms in that headline! The news has got me so excited I can’t even use real words. As expected, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a vaccine for the Human Papilloma Virus, an incredibly common virus that also happens to be linked to about 70 percent of all cases of cervical cancer.

Cervical cancer is diagnosed in about 14,000 women in the United States annually and nearly 500,000 worldwide. Almost 4,000 American women die from this cancer each year, compared to 273,500 around the world. In the developing world, cervical cancer is the most deadly cancer.
HPV, or really the HPV family of viruses, is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States, with more than five million new cases reported annually. The drug, called Gardasil, has been recommended for women ages 9 to 26. It is important for girls to be vaccinated because the virus is so common, virtually everyone who has had more than one sex partner, or who has had sex with anyone who has had more than one sex partner, is assumed to have the virus.

The main symptom of HPV infection is warts on the hands, feet and genitals. According to the National Cervical Cancer Coalition’s website, most cases have no symptoms and go away on their own. But for many women with a predisposition to cervical cancer, the virus makes it even more likely that they will get that form of cancer.

Now it’s up to the states to decide if they want to add the HPV vaccination to the shots given to children before they go to school. I don’t know how likely that is to happen, since many on the right think giving such a vaccination to children will just make them want to have sex. Instead we should be thinking about how great it is that the vast majority of our daughters won’t have to suffer, or even worry about, getting cervical cancer. (Yes, there are other ways to get it, but this wipes out a huge population of cancer victims.) This shouldn’t be about who is having sex and who isn’t and when they start. It should be about saving lives. End of sermon.

Sources: Discovery Channel

National Cervical Cancer Coalition 

Yoga for Asthma Reduction?

A new study finds that people with asthma use their inhalers less when they do light exercise that involves steady breathing. Upper body exercises were also found to be helpful.

Asthma is a disorder marked by difficulty breathing, so it makes sense that exercise that focuses on the breath would be helpful in regulating flare-ups. In fact, teaching patients how to breathe is a common treatment in conjunction with inhalers.

Could yoga be just the thing to reduce dependence on inhalers? According to Reuters:

The breathing exercise focused on hypoventilation, breath holding after exhalation, and breathing through the nose. The upper body exercise involved shoulder rotations and arm lifts performed in sync with breathing cycles.

So while the study did not specifically look at yoga as a treatment, the slow, deep, rhythmic breathing of yoga could be beneficial. Yoga practitioners commonly breathe through the nose, inhaling for a count of five, holding for a count of three, exhale to a count of five and hold for five before starting the cycle again. This sort of breathing, which engages the whole upper body, is great for stress reduction as well, which may help people with asthma as well.

Source: Reuters

A Healthy Living You Can Enjoy

This one is for the men and I can only guess that one of that sex wrote this article that had me raising an eyebrow higher than it has ever gone before. If men can live longer and healthier lives this way, how can women get in on that?

AIDS Anniversary

It seems a grim occasion to mark, but today is considered the anniversary of when AIDS was first reported, 25 years ago exactly. In that time an amazing number of strides were made in prevention and treatment, but, as much of the news coverage points out, we’re not as far along as some had hoped.

There was a lot of talk that an AIDS vaccine, or even a cure, was on the horizon as long ago as 10 years ago, but neither has happened yet. Education has slowed the spread of the disease, in the western world, anyway, but still one million Americans are infected and 40,000 more are diagnosed each year. Because of better treatments only about 15,000 die each year from AIDS in the United States, but the treatment hasn’t really changed since the breakthrough drug cocktail was put into practice about a decade ago, though the cocktail itself has shrunk from 20 or more pills a day to two or three, and the FDA is looking at a one-pill solution that combines several drugs.

Despite good, or at least better, news in the states, the outlook is grim worldwide, where AIDS is the fourth-leading cause of death. More than 25 million have died worldwide; 2.8 million will die this year. More than 38 million people are infected, and more than 4 million are added to those rolls each year.

(If you wondered, heart disease, stroke and respiratory infections are the top three killers around the world.)

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first reports of a strange disease affecting gay men; a very rare pneumonia until that time only seen in people with leukemia. It wasn’t called AIDS then, all people knew was that it was new, strange, and fatal. If you want to learn more about the beginning of AIDS, I highly recommend you read the book or watch the movie And the Band Played On. It’s a very true and heart-rending account of the early days of the disease and the search for its cause.

AIDS is a difficult disease to control because of the rapid rate of mutation. People who have lived with AIDS for a long time become resistant to the available drugs, as some 15 percent of Americans living with AIDS have already done. There are 25 different drugs approved for controlling AIDS, and new drugs can help those whose disease has progressed beyond the available drugs. But it’s not known how long people can go through this cycle of constantly taking very harsh drugs.

Still, there are new drugs being studied and prevention methods being tested, so there is a lot of hope even when there is not a lot of good news.

Sources:
LA Times
New York Times