Kari's World

Honey, taken four to six teaspoons a day with your food will help a person sleep better at night. At least that’s what I read. It may also be taken along with apple cider vinegar or at the same meal. I’m going to see if it helps me sleep better also.

I haven’t been sleeping so well. I don’t know why exactly. I’ve been dreaming about losing weight which should be exciting, right? But it also seems I have to keep getting up to, well, you know, use the bathroom! And then I can’t seem to get back to sleep. I’m going to try this and see if it helps.

Also, as the weather turns colder I have a harder time relaxing to go to sleep (which doesn’t help when I have to get up and go tot he bathroom over and over again.) I’ve always been very cold natured. I read in the same book about the honey that people who are cold-natured and have cold hands and feet should eat corn and rye foods rather than other grains. Hmm – not sure how this health tip fits exactly – but I guess I’ll try it too! Anyone know about this? I’m not sure I agree with this one, but I’m definitly going to try the honey thing.

There are those who say that tattoos and body piercings involve a health risk – duh!? Obviously infections can set in any time you cut or pierce your skin. Is there really anyone who didn’t get that?

What I didn’t think of too much though is that there are other risks to your health. You can catch diseases like HIV, hepatitis, or bacterial infections from dirty needles. You can also get skin cancer, psoriasis, toxic shock syndrome or even, supposedly, behavioural changes. (I’m not sure at all about that last one!) and the toxic shock one really surprised me.

I guess I hadn’t ever thought much about it, but state and local authorities are responsible for overseeing the practice of tattooing, the ink itself, and the ink colorings or pigments used in tattoos and so they are subject to FDA regulation along with cosmetics.

Some people are allergic to the ingredients in the ink. (I had never thought of that – but wow! what a pain that could prove to be!) To combat this many tattoo artists are using organic ingredients which have lowered the allergic responses.

Check this out: Some poeple develop swelling or burning at the tattoo site when undergoing MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) because the iron oxide in tattoo pigments cause this.

Some of the pigment migrates from the tattoo site to the body’s lymph nodes.

Get this – the FDA, which should be regulating, has no systematic studies in place concerning tattoo inks. Some tattoos fade over time, some fade when exposed to sunlight, and laser light is supposed to remove it. But what happens to the ink?

The FDA has not officially approved ANY (read that again if you missed it), they have not approved ANY  tattoo inks for injection into the skin. Many ink pigments that are used are industrial strength colors suitable for printers’ ink or automobile paint!

Whew! That’s a lot more than I think I wanted to know!

I didn’t know they had done this. Just ran across it recently. This is a cool concept, though a little big brother if you know what I mean. It strives to give people a centralized place to store their health records online so they can share them with health providers.

I have no idea how much of a response they got from this – but the concept is way cool technology wise, but way scary in other respects, like privacy.

The link is www.google.com/health

You create a user account and can put in things like existing medical conditions, allergies, medicines being taken and the like. This part doesn’t sound too scary.

You can also IMPORT medical records from pharmacies. This is where I start to squint my eyes a bit. Or you can import from medical facilities who have agreed to be partners (who wouldn’t?)

Here are a few who have: Longs Drug Stores, Walgreens Pharmacy, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and others.

Supposedly measures are being taken to secure these servers better than their other servers and users are able to decide who can see their info… We’ll see. Sounds like a prime candidate for a hacker challenge to me.

And it’s important to note that Google isn’t the only search engine taking steps this direction. Microsoft has been working on its Health Vault initiative, WebMD and Revolution Health Group has been founded by AOl cofounder Steve Case.

Hmmm… Any thoughts?