You might be having a peptic ulcer if:

• you feel burning pain from your navel to your breastbone
• the pain you feel is getting worse when your stomach is empty
• you vomit blood which can be red or even black
• you’ve got dark blood in your stools
• you are nauseating
• you feel pain in your chest

Your doctor might prescribe antibiotics and acid blockers or antacids besides some cytoprotective agents to help protect the tissues that line your stomach and small intestine.

Yet, none of those medicines work if you keep smoking, consuming alcohol or spicy and fatty foods.

Yesterday I got a message from my friend, Amanda, asking me, “Riana, how do you stop hiccups?!!! Please…urgent!”

Amanda is a mother of a one year old baby boy. She asked me lots of questions but the one she asked me yesterday kind of made me surprised. She didn’t know how to stop hiccups?

Then I decided to call her to find out what really happened, who got the hiccups…

It was her baby boy. She got panic since he didn’t stop hiccupping for more than 3 minutes. Normally, she could call her Mom who lived next door. But, at that time her Mom seemed to be away.

I asked her if she:

1. had told her son to hold his breath (instead of answering my question she asked me back, “How can I tell a one year old to hold breath?!!!”). Oops…
2. gave him water to drink (she did, about two glasses!)
3. tried to frighten him (she said, “What!!!” and I said, “It’s one of the remedies I know that might work.” she said again, “Well, isn’t it making it worse if he gets frightened and cries and I have to deal with his hiccups and cry?!!!” then I sighed)
4. told her son to pull his tongue (her reaction was almost similar to #1)
5. gave smelling salt for him to inhale (she said she didn’t have any smelling salt, me? I sighed again)
6. put corn syrup (for adult, it’s dry sugar) on the back of his tongue (she seemed to be excited with this one and I had no more idea what to do if this one failed, too)

Then, the next 10 minutes, she sent me another message…saying, “Hi, thanks so much. The corn syrup worked well!”

Thank God!

‘Cause if it didn’t work and the baby kept hiccupping for the next 3 hours, I should have brought the panic mother and the hiccupping baby to the hospital!

PS: This hiccupping thing reminds me of an episode of Alf, a TV show back in the 80’s. Alf, the furry little alien, got bad bad bad hiccups. And, according to an encyclopedia of his planet, the remedies are either drinking cat juice or eat spinach. But hey, those are only for aliens!

…yet I was invited to dine in a restaurant.

• I ate fruits before leaving home. So, I never went to a restaurant feeling hungry.
• I walked to the restaurant. If it happened to be far away, I took a bus or a cab half the way, then continued the trip by foot. And, if my dining partner(s) (or my date–ok I admit it) didn’t mind, we went home walking.
• I ordered water. Simply water. No alcoholic beverages since they could contribute more calories and stimulate my appetite.
• I got my appetizer doubled. Doubled salad, most of the time.
• I shared the food with my dining partner(s). Sharing foods means sharing calories, right?
• I chatted a lot while eating. It could make me eat more slowly so it gave more time for my brain to send the ‘full’ signal to my stomach. This was important to make me stop eating even before I consume too much food!

Try! And, if the tips help you, too, let me know!

Balanced diet helps prevent osteoporosis, researchers say

“Low protein intake is common in the elderly and in addition to its effect on the skeleton it can lead to reduced muscle mass and strength which further increases your risk of fractures and falls.”

Good Nutrition Essential for Bone Health

“By rejecting the misconception that “skinny is beautiful” and not following harmful and excessive weight loss diets, people can build strong bones and help to reduce the risk of breaking bones due to osteoporosis later in life.”

A dear friend of mine from college had a bad bad chapped and dry lips. She didn’t feel comfortable with that not only because her lips were in pain, but they also didn’t look nice.

I felt so sorry for her, especially during cold or dry weather. She couldn’t even put on her lipstick because it made the lips look even worse.

Here are what she did to treat her chapped lips:

• Avoid licking the lips. Sometimes, you think that licking will sooth the lips. It might be for a while. But then they get even drier because When the moisture from licking your lips evaporates, so does some of the moisture from your lips.
• Drink a lot of water. Sometimes the cause of your chapped lips is simply dehydration. So, drinking at least eight glasses of water a day can help your chapped lips heal, and will lower your chances of having chapped lips in the future.
• Apply lip balm frequently. Apply lip balm every hour or two. Use a petroleum or beeswax based product or plain petroleum jelly.
• Keep clean. Make sure to wash your face regularly, especially before you reapply the balm.

Most of the time the treatments she did helped her a lot. So, I think, you can try them up.

I know, it’s not easy. Yet, you can try these tips of mine that I tried on my son:

• Replace ice cream with non-fat yoghurt, sorbet or sherbet
• Instead of having canned food, get some water, fruit juices or water with lemon slices
• Leave donuts and cakes, get yourself a slice of bread made of oats with home-made fruit jam
• Don’t buy the sugar coated cereal, grab oat cereal instead
• Say no to french fries, say yes to mashed or stewed potato
• Don’t make instant cream soup, instead, make your own spinach soup

Last night I met my friend for a dinner. She said she needed to talk. When she called me, yesterday afternoon, she seemed to be in a sad mood, I could tell from her voice.

And, I was right.

She had a problem with her husband. It’s been 2 months, he had this unsustainable pain in his stomach. She thought it was gastritis. But then, he insisted that it was something different. She asked him to check with the doctor. But he refused.

He kept refusing until two days ago.

“Why on earth he refused?” I asked her.
And, she gave me the silliest reason: he was afraid to hear a bad news. He was afraid that the doctor might have told him that he had an uncurable disease or something.

OMG! That was so childish.

And, you know what he ended up with? Something worse than what it should have been. He got a tumor that if he had come earlier wouldn’t have been that worse.

So, there she was, my friend, his beloved wife, crying on my shoulder, wishing she had insisted him more persistently, blaming herself for that.

Oh dear, it wasn’t your fault. He was a grown up and he chose to act like a child. That was what I wanted to tell her but I was afraid he would have cried even more.

So, I said, it wasn’t your fault. It was meant to be that way. Just make sure you both learn from it and always pay attention to any slight pain whatsoever.

And, I, certainly, will pray for his health.

Have you asked yourself that question? Even if you have, I doubt you answer it honestly.

But, to know whether you are depressed or potentially being depressed, please answer these questions:

• Do you feel desperate more than you used to, and think that things are never getting better?
• Do you lose your appetite? Or, you feel like eating too much?
• Are you having insomnia?
• Do you get panic easily with no specific reason?
• Do you lose interest in anything you normally like?
• Do you get angry easily to people around you?
• Do you feel like lacking of libido?
• Are you lack of motivation and feeling tired easily?
• Do you feel like a looser?
• Is it hard for you to concentrate?

If you answer “YES” to at least 6 of the 10 questions above, you’d better get help.

At first, you try to smoke. Then, you get to drugs. And, you end up getting addicted.

By understanding why smoking can lead you to drugs and addiction, you can eliminate your risk to such things.
Why Smoking Leads to Drugs and Addiction
By Christopher Ruane

Well its no surprise that many people know about the harmful effects of smoking even if some of them refuse to quit because of self denial. However, what is less commonly known is the fact that if you are not quitting smoking, there is a risk of other forms of addictive behavior occuring, including use of illicit drugs and addiction to these substances also.

So how do you get addicted to anything in the first place ?

Ok, let us state just exactly what is meant by addiction.

Psychologists define addiction as something that refers to the state of being dependent on something. It could either be psychological or physical, but whatever it is, addiction is a persistent urge to repeat everything that caused the person’s craving of euphoria or high.

(more…)