When we speak of alcohol consumption we typically talk about it with regard to how it can affect a person’s health negatively or even destroy a person’s life when it is abused. However, some studies do show that there is a correlation with moderate drinking of alcohol and better health.

Studies that involved cardiac specific diseases show that individuals who consume moderate amounts of alcohol regularly show less arterial closure and those who do not drink at all. This means that a moderate, regular drinker could decrease the possibility of heart disease by up to 50%.

The encouraging news with regard to alcohol is blunted by the fact that it is very hard to walk the line between moderates, regular alcohol consumption and either infrequent or excessive alcohol drinking. For example, occasional drinkers lose alcohol benefits because their consumption is inconsistent. On the other hand, people that consume three or more drinks every day quickly lose the health benefits that were examined in the study.

Considering the dangers that are imposed by consuming alcohol, it is hard to endorse alcohol drinking as a benefit to one’s health. People with a personal or family history of alcoholism or other similar diseases that are heightened by alcohol use such as liver disease etc. should continue to avoid the consumption of alcohol.

Overall, well moderate and regular consumption of small doses of alcohol may be beneficial with respect to cardiac health, the risks outweigh the benefits.

One method of helping young children to develop their speed capabilities is an activity that adults should often participate in their children. This educational tool is called self-talk. By self-talk we mean that parents should talk allowed in short and simple sentences from their child so they can overhear them verbalizing events around them.

Even if a child is only to a stage in life where he or she is making just a few sounds such as grunts or other vowel like sounds they can benefit from observing their parents talk to themselves even while they work around the house. Simple example sentences can include:

“Where is the toy? There it is. Let’s play with the toy. Here is the toy. Fun toy. You like toy? I like toys. Let’s clean up!”

The simple sentences can reach the child’s current ability of speaking. As you can observe, the adults commentary followed what he or she was currently doing in front of their child. Sometimes, it may seem like a parent is talking to themselves and verbalizing their thoughts. The simple sentences will soon have your child verbalizing their thoughts also on a simple scale.

It is essential that parents learn to talk this way during the early stages of speech forming and their young children. There’s a big difference between not speaking and using language to communicate. Child cannot bridge that gap very easily unless he is immersed in many examples around him. As the child begins to talk, they can gradually increase the complexity of its speech as they watch their parents did the same thing. Parents should include more words in each of the simple sentences until eventually they are speaking for sentences at a time. The child will follow suit soon after.

If your child is over four years old and is typically in a healthy condition, and they start to have flulike symptoms including a fever, cough, or body aches, consult your doctor as needed to make sure that they do not have the influence of virus. Regardless of the verdict, make sure your child gets plenty of rest and drink enough fluids.

If your child is younger than five years old, or has chronic medical problems, it is important that you take your child to the doctor immediately if they start to demonstrate flulike symptoms. Younger children or those with chronic medical conditions are at a higher risk of serious complications from the flu infection. It is important to talk to your doctor early in such cases.

The swine flu and even the seasonal flu can often be hard to detect. It is important you take your child to the doctor right away if your child has any of the following symptoms:

– Fast Breeding or Trouble Breathing

– Bluish or Gray Skin Color

– Not Drinking Enough Fluids

– Severe or Persistent Vomiting

– Being Lethargic, Not Waking up, Not Interacting with Others

– Showing Signs of Increased Irritability

– Typical Flulike Symptoms That Improve the Then Return with a Higher Fever or an Increased Cough

Especially with the swine flu and seasonal flu picking up steam during the school year, it is important that you keep your child home to rest whenever they experience flulike symptoms. This will both help your child to recover more quickly as well as to help stop the spread of flu to other children.

You should wait at least 24 hours after any fever has subsided. During his 24-hour period, the fever must be eliminated and not rising without the use of fever reducing medicine. A good rule of thumb is to consider anything over 100°F as a fever.

A yearly seasonal flu vaccine is the most important step, and the first step you should take, and protecting yourself and your family against the seasonal flu virus. The vaccine is recommended for children six months old and above. It is encouraged that adults who care for children also take the flu vaccine.

In 2009, a vaccine against the swine flu has also been developed. This vaccine is recommended for all children and young adults age 6 months through 24 years of age. Other people that should receive this vaccine as a high priority should be those adults who care for children, or other adults that have certain chronic medical conditions. More information about the 2009 swine flu vaccine as well is the seasonal flu vaccine is available on the CDC website.

Besides the flu vaccine, other antiviral drugs can be used to treat both the seasonal and the swine flu. The priority for these drugs is to treat people who are seriously ill, or hospitalize, from the flu and have a medical condition that puts them at a high risk of flu complications. These antiviral drugs can make people feel better and they can also help them recover sooner. They may also help to prevent serious flu complications. These drugs need to be prescribed by a doctor and they work best when they are started during the first one to two days of the illness. These drugs can usually be given to children. It is important you consult your doctor in any case before attempting to administer these drugs.

The best way to protect yourself and your children from the H1N1 flu virus is to get a the proper flu vaccine.  Your first priority would be to seek the vaccine for your children since they tend to be more susceptible.

Besides getting the flu vaccine, there are number of other steps that can be taken to help prevent the spread of germs that can cause the swine flu. Some of these steps include:

* Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue or with the inside of your elbow. Throw in the tissues in the trash after you use them and wash your hands afterward.
* Stay away from people who are sick.
* Wash your hands often throughout the day with both soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use hand sanitizer as an alternative.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth. This is the most common way for germs to spread.
* If someone in your household’s sake, try to keep that person in a separate room or otherwise quarantined if at all possible.
* Keep surfaces such as bedside tables, areas of the bathroom, kitchen counters, and even toys clean by wiping them down with disinfectant.
* Throw away all tissues and other disposable items that were used by sick people in your house.

One easy rule of thumb that you can teach her children to use when washing their hands is to thoroughly wash their hands with soap and running water for as long as it takes to seeing the happy birthday song to times. It is important that kids keep their hands in the soap and water for the period of time that it takes to sing that song twice.

The flu (influenza virus) is an infection specifically of the nose, lungs, and throat. Flu viruses are a major cause of illness, hospital visits, and even deaths every year in the United States. Although we use the term “flu” interchangeably, there are actually many different flu viruses that people suffer from. Sometimes a new flu virus will start spreading among people causing more cases of the flu making people sick.

One of these new flu viruses is the 2009 H1N1 flu. This is often called the swine flu or the novel flu.  This new flu virus is very different from the other common flu viruses around the world. It is believed that the 2009 H1N1 flu virus will cause more people to get sick than the regular flu viruses that we are used to. They also expect more hospital stays and deaths to occur.

Most people that are infected with the swine flu have had mild illness and have not needed medical attention. The same is also true with the typical seasonal flu. However, the swine flu can turn into something very serious especially with young children or other individuals who have had certain chronic medical conditions. Some of these conditions include asthma, lung problems, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, kidney disease, heart problems, another neurotic cold and narrow muscular disorders. Children and adults with these conditions may experience more severe illness symptoms for many flu, but especially from the swine flu virus.

Both the swine flu and the seasonal flu are thought to be spread from person to person through regular coughs and sneezes from those that are infected. It may also be transmitted by touching something with a virus on it and then touching your mouth, nose, or eyes.

Symptoms of the flu can include fever, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, coughing, aching bodies, headaches, chills or sweats, fatigue, vomiting, or diarrhea. People infected with the flu may or may not have a fever.

People that are infected by the flu may infect others from one day before getting sick themselves 25 or seven days afterward. Some people, however, can harbor the virus for longer periods of time.

Cancer is bad enough when it affects adults. It becomes a tragedy, however, when the disease enters the body of children. There are some very interesting and often surprising statistics about cancer with children.

10,730 — the number of new cases that are estimated to occur among children aged 0 to 14 years during 2009.

1 — the percentage of all new cancer diagnoses that involve children.

1380 — the estimated number of deaths that are expected to take place among children under the age of 15 during 2009.

33 — the percentage of cancer related child deaths that are from leukemia.

2 — Cancer is the second leading cause of death among children in the United States. It is only exceeded I accidents.

50 — the percentage that cancer deaths among children have declined since 1975. The American Cancer Society attributes this huge decline by the substantial progress to new treatments and clinical trials.

20 — the percentage of cancers in children that occur in the brain or other parts of the nervous system.

80 — the percentage of survival rate for all childhood cancers during the past five years.

Before we get into the interesting facts about cancer, we need to first understand what is cancer exactly. Cancer is not just a single disease. It is actually a group of diseases that can be characterized by uncontrolled growth of non-normal cells that start to spread throughout the body. If it is not diagnosed and controlled it will often lead to death. Cancer can because by external factors as well as internal factors. Your environment may lead to certain types of cancers. Your genetics and immune system can also be a trigger for cancerous responses.

Cancers caused by external circumstances where pollutants can be prevented simply by avoiding those contagions. Cigarette smoke, tobacco, and even alcohol are some of those triggers.
Is will

169,000 – The number of cancer deaths expected to be caused by tobacco use in 2009.

562,340 – Cancer deaths expected to occur in 2009 due to conditions of obesity, physical inactivity, and nutrition issues.

1,000,000 – number of skin cancers diagnosed in 2009 that could have been prevented by protection from the rays of the sun or other ultra violiet light (such as indoor tanning beds).

77 – The percent of all cancers that are diagnosed in people that are 55 years old and older.

1, 2, 3 – Men have about a 1 in 2 chance of developing some form of cancer.  Women have a 1 in 3 chance.

23 – The number of times a male smoker is likely to get cancer over a non-smoking male.

5 – The percentage of all cancers that are strongly hereditary.    Please note, most cancers do not result genetic inheritance, rather from genes that are inherited and have a tendency to be damaged from other internal factors were at external ones.

11,100,000 – the number of Americans that have had or have cancer and were alive in 2005.

1,479,350 – the number of new cancer cases that will be diagnosed in 2009.

562,340 — the number of Americans are expected to die of cancer (this calculates to be more than 1500 people every day).

2 — the ranks a cancer-causing diseases have in the deaths of people in the US. Cancer is second only to heart disease.

25 – the percentage of all deaths in the United States that were caused by cancer.

66 — the percentage five year survival rate for all cancers diagnosed between the years of 1996 and 2004. Please note, this is up from 50% in the mid-1970s.

228,100,000,000 — the overall cost in US dollars of cancer in the year 2008. $93,200,000,000 of that are direct medical costs incurred by individuals with cancer. $18,800,000,000 are the indirect costs due to lost productivity caused by the illness. $116,100,000,000 is the US dollar amount of lost productivity due to premature death.

These statistics were taken from the American Cancer Society.

China is one of the countries most affected by natural disasters. It had 6 of the world’s top 10 deadliest natural disasters; the top 3 occurred in China: the 1931 China floods, death toll 2 million to 4 million, the 1887 Yellow River flood, death toll 0.9 million to 2 million, and the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, death toll 0.83 million.

“Natural disasters occur frequently in China, affecting more than 200 million people every year. They have become an important restricting factor for economic and social development.”

In the course of recorded history, many types of natural disasters — except volcano eruptions — have occurred in China, which include floods, droughts, meteorological, seismic, geological, maritime and ecological disasters as well as forestry and grassland fires.

These natural disasters pose serious threats to life and property safety to China and its people and severely affect the comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development of that country’s economy and society. In addition, they threaten China’s national security and social stability and stand in the way of economic development in some regions and poverty alleviation of certain rural population.

None of these are verified: feel free to shoot them down, or use them in your defence as you wish.

1. The entire World population could be squeezed onto the Isle of Wight.
2. Bill Oddie’s religion forbids him from eating glass.
3. Some people think there really is a place called, “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwerndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch”
4. You need a 13 mm spanner to undo an M8 bolt.
5. The circumference of the rim of a standard pint glass is just less than twice its height.
6. There are more water molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water on earth
7. An elephant’s penis weighs half a hundredweight.
8. Pacific Standard Time began last Sunday
9. 50 kilograms = 110.2311 pounds
10. 8 stone = 1 hundredweight
11. 1 hundredweight = 112 pounds
12. 20 hundredweight = 1 ton
13. The genus Dryandra should really be classified under Banksia according to some recent genetic research.
14. I have two shoulders. This is about average.
15. Diesel engines have not yet been tried in toothbrushes.
16. Fat neighbours are known as `weighbours’.
17. Water is actually very slightly blue.
18. Insurance companies cover damage to pipes from freezing and any subsequent water damage under two seperate insured perils. Frozen Pipes and Escape of Water. But they don’t cover frost damage because it’s a gradually operating cause.
19. If snow gats blown inside the roof cavity of your house then melts and causes the ceilings to collapse , your insurance company won’t cough up unless you are covered for flood damage.
20. There is no VAT on cakes.
21. Banana plants bears only one stem of fruit. To produce a new stem, only two shoots – known as the daughter and the granddaughter – are allowed to grow and be cultivated from the main plant.
22. 3% of all mammals are monogamous.
23. Technically speaking, the whale is not actually a fish.
24. If a sardine is more than four inches long then technically it’s a pilchard.
25. Women lose more calories faking an orgasm than actually having an orgasm.
26. In the US there is a bit of legislation officially listing lobsters as insects, to allow restaurants to cook them alive. This despite lobsters being genetically closer to humans then they are to insects.
27. Although 95% of the human genome is also shared with chimpanzees, we have 50% in common with a banana.
28. Except, according to recent research, for Manchester United supporters where the figure is near 65%
29. In the 6th century, the Three Chapters were an an attempt to reconcile the Monophysites with the Dyphysites following the failure of the Henotikon. The Three Chapters anathematised Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus, as well as condemning the letter of Ibas to Maris.
30. The Great Wall of China is not visible from space.
31. Lemmings do not hurl themselves to their deaths in their thousands – nor even singly.
32. Velcro, Teflon, Carbon Fibre, and whole long list of things were not space spin-offs.
33. Every 4 years, monthly-paid staff have to work an extra day – for NOTHING!
34. A guyed tubular steel mast, which at 1,265 feet (385 m) is the tallest structure in the UK (and in the European Union) is in Lincolnshire.
35. Tallest freestanding structure in the EU, at 368.5 m (1209 ft) is in Riga.
36. The municipal borough of Richmond, Surrey, was the first local authority in England and Wales to commence a programme of municipal housing provision under the 1890 Housing Act.
37. Astronaut William Pogue thought he had seen the Great Wall of China from Skylab but discovered he was actually looking at the Grand Canal of China near Beijing. He spotted the Great Wall with binoculars, but said that “it wasn’t visible to the unaided eye.” US Senator Jake Garn claimed to be able to see the Great Wall with the naked eye from a space shuttle orbit in the early 1980s, but his claim has been disputed by several US astronauts. Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei said he could not see it at all.
38. Extremely low frequency (ELF) is the band of radio frequencies from 3 to 3000 Hz. ELF was used by the U.S. Navy and Soviet/Russian Navy to communicate with submerged submarines. This is because water over 20 metres deep is opaque to radio waves with higher frequencies.
39. If you didn’t have knees, you wouldn’t be able to sit down.
40. The barcode number for this bottle of vodka is 4 603400 000203
41. An aerial outdoors is known as an outdoor aerial.
42. Quantum Jump’s ‘The Lone Ranger’ was released in 1979.
43. More people in the UK own two cars than own two novels.
44. Bananas are very difficult to grow in Canada, which has nothing to do with nibbling beavers.
45. The hairs that grow on your bum are 50% wider than the ones that grow on your arm.
46. There is a part of your body that only exists if you are doing something.
47. Sir Francis Drake was NOT the admiral of the fleet that chased off the Spanish. That was in fact Charles Howard of Effingham.
48. Banana trees are not trees.
49. Peanuts are not nuts.
50. Tomatoes are not vegetables.
51. A cucumber is also a fruit.
52. I own my own pen.
53. Using hexadecimal(base 16) numbers you can represent the top and bottom 4 bits of an 8 bit number using 2 hexadecimal digits
54. Porridge exists.
55. The serial number of my left hand flange bracket is 345211-B
56. There are many colours in the world and I am just some of them.
57. There is not a Man in the Moon.
58. Gently cradling a strangers testicles is not an acceptable greeting anywhere in the European Union.
59. Female praying mantises can’t fly.
60. Fly paper is hard write on.
61. The spadefoot toad is the only amphibian that has a penis.
62. Homo sapiens is the only primate that does not have a bone in its penis.
63. Nature abhors a vacuum.
64. Cats abhor vacuums.
65. Field Marshal Montgomery’s grandfather wrote Eric, Or Little By Little
66. Michael Heseltine has become doddery.
67. The oldest known fossil penguin species is Waimanu manneringi which lived in New Zealand during the early Paleocene, about 62 million years ago.
68. Mrs Waimanu Manneringi says that rumours of her fossilization, are greatly exaggerated.
69. Despite all the westerns in which he appeared, Henry Fonda hated horses.
70. The Lybian flag is green. That’s it. Just green.
71. The state flag of Ohio is a swallow-tailed pennant.

Source: http://robbiebow.co.uk