I just remembered my password… yay!

You know those “cartoon yourself” ads that you randomly see on websites such as Youtube, MSN.com, Yahoo, etc? Well, I came across some really good ones. This time, I figured out how to save them! Woohoo! I’m getting more techie-suave.

Hey guys, submit your photo and you can too look like this fine fella:

And girls, don’t worry, I didn’t leave us out!:

Go ahead, give it a try! You’ll love it!

If you need to re-register for your absentee, please visit www.lavote.net. If you’re unsure of your current registration status, call 800-815-2666 and press “2″.

For those who are curious to see who are on the ballot besides the war-lover/hockey mom and the homey/old guy, here it is:

PRESIDENT & VICE PRESIDENT

Republican: John McCain (P), Sarah Palin (VP)
Green Party: Cynthia McKinney (P), Rosa Clemente (VP)
American Independent: Alan Keyes (P), Wiley S. Drake, Sr. (VP)
Peace & Freedom: Ralph Nader (P), Matt Gonzalez (VP)
Democratic: Barack Obama (P), Joe Biden (VP)
Libertarian: Bob Barr (P), Wayne A. Root (VP)

I’d type out all the California State Measures, but I’m slightly lazy but mostly sick. If you don’t vote for the presidential election, at least vote for your state’s measures.

Note: In California, you must be registered at least 15 days prior to any election in order to vote in that election.

• Am I under 18 years old?
• Am I over 50 years old?
• Am I chronically ill?
• Do I have a weak immune system? (This also includes getting the flu all the time.)
• Do I take care of someone with a weakened immune system?
• If I know someone with a weakened immune system, would I be visiting them?

If you answer “Yes” to any of the above questions, you should be vaccinated. If you answer “No”, then you’re relatively healthy and may not need a vaccination.

If you have any children between 6 months and 18 years old, it is highly recommended they are vaccinated because in a 2005 Harvard study, death rates among the elderly increased a few weeks after flu-ridden children began to visit clinics. As a result, it is suggested that if children were vaccinated, lives could be saved.

“If [children] are immunized, they don’t become the source of illness,” Edmonson said.

Source: Post-Bulletin

To attack the growing number of obese children, the state of New York decided to mandate public schools outside New York City to report a summary of the students’ weight and body mass index (BMI) to the New York State Health Department. Otherwise known as a fat report card.

For many years the State Health Department has collected data on infectious diseases to guide the state’s communicable disease prevention efforts. “By collecting vital weight status information, we can begin to treat obesity like other public health threats and better target our prevention efforts,” said Commissioner Daines.

By now, everyone should know that obesity can lead to type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, joint problems, cancer, respiratory problems and can lead to depression and the leading causes of obesity is poor nutrition and lack of physical activity.

However, I find it interesting that schools are slowly replacing recess with more academia to increase test scores. What does it mean if there’s no recess? [WHAT, no RECESS!!??] Studies have linked lack of energy and concentration and even depression to living an unhealthy lifestyle. Your body functions are partially controlled by food and certain hormones. You eat and move around to trigger these hormones. If you deprive your body of this, it will cease to function; therefore, replacing recess with academia could potentially make things worse.

News articles and studies should change their wording and label it “Unhealthy Lifestyle” instead of just focusing on the obese. There are ‘skinny’ kids/people who have heart disease or distended abdomen due to poor nutrition (found in 3rd world countries) and this group of people need to be addressed. And no, it’s not anorexia nervosa or bulimia. These people eat, but the wrong kinds of food. In my opinion, for every obese child, there is a child living an unhealthy lifestyle.

So, if you experience any of the following, it’s time to change your habits: you get exhausted just walking up a flight of stairs, can’t jog/run for more than 1 minute without gasping for air, feel it is required that you park really close to an entrance of the market because you can’t even think about walking the extra 50 steps.

State of New York, I salute you for taking the initiative to teach children better habits (because parents leave everything to schools, television and the Internet). And parents, I give you the H…I plead the fifth.

Anyone else noticing a new trend of increased poor nutrition, diseases, low self-esteem and ‘hook-up’ sex?? Children used to be nurtured and taught to survive on their own (taught goals). Now, our children have no idea what they should be doing (free-loaders).

Source: eMaxHealth.com

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 50,000 cases of the disease were reported in the United States in 2004 and 2005. That is the largest number since the 1950s.”

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is apparently on the rise. Pertussis is a highly contagious disease and is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. To distinguish between a regular cough and whooping cough, whooping cough is characterized by severe hacking coughs or recurrent spasmodic bouts of coughing that continues until the breath is exhausted and followed by a ‘whoop’ sound during inhalation.

Before 2005, your last booster shot for pertussis should have been between the ages of 4-6 and it wears off between 5-10 years. Luckily for you, vaccinations are now available for ages 11-64.

If you have a weak immune system or already have insurance, you may as well get the vaccination. In fact, let’s just get rid of whooping cough and no one would have to really take any more vaccinations! Vaccination party, anyone!?

Source: Houston Chronicle

Approximately 300,000 children in the U.S. have some form of arthritis (mainly juvenile rheumatoid arthritis) and not so surprisingly (to me), we the public are totally unaware of this. For those who don’t know, arthritis is the inflammation of joints and it is usually linked to persons over 50. So, why are our children being diagnosed with arthritis?

Specialists are not entirely certain, but they speculate that this disease is associated with the failure of their autoimmune system. In other words, the child’s immune system has a hard time differentiating between healthy normal cells and foreign invaders.

Here are some common symptoms of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis: lethargy, poor appetite, joint pain (including swelling and tenderness), red puffy hands, firm bumps on the arms, and morning stiffness that lasts at least thirty minutes.

Children with arthritis vary in degree. Fortunately, arthritis can be easily treated. Medication along with exercise can help with inflammation and swelling.

For more information about this disease, please refer to the American College of Rheumatology, the Arthritis Foundation, wikipedia.org or thearthritispainreliever.com.

Parents, leaving unused prescription drugs (from surgeries, injuries or dental work) unsecured and unmonitored, are unknowingly tempting their children or their children’s friends to try drugs they’ve heard from schools, commercials, movies and the Internet. To prevent teens from experimenting these leftover medications, experts urge parents to dispose these drugs as soon as they serve their purpose or lock them up, just like you would with alcohol.

“In total, nearly half the prescription drugs being abused by teens originate in the homes of passive pusher parents.”
- National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse, Columbia University

Warning, do not flush them down the toilet, these drugs will be sent directly to our public water supplies.

Source: LA Times

Even though scurvy, an immense deficiency in vitamin C, is not common anymore (think of the Mayflower days), but it still exists. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, approximately 14% men and 10% woman have vitamin C deficiency. Fortunately, only a few progress to scurvy. In fact, between 1979 to 2005, only 57 people died of vitaminc C deficiency.

Symptoms include dark purplish spots on the skin (especially on the legs), spongy and bleeding gums, sunken eyes, opening of healed scars, nosebleeds, non-stop diarrhea, nail loss as well as other serious conditions such as psychosis, bleeding from mucous membranes and pallor.

Scurvy is easy and inexpensive to treat and prevent, but costly to diagnose. A wide range of tests can be administered, including a complete blood test, a comprehensive metabolic panel, tests for infectious diseases, such as HIV, an electrocardiogram, an echocardiogram, liver tests, several x-rays, and other tests seen fit by your Physician. It could be weeks or months before a proper diagnosis is made.

If you don’t like fruit, vegetables, or juice, (you will probably have other underlying illnesses) buy those Vicks vitamin C tablets; they taste just like candy. Or be a hippie and buy Vitamin water.

Source: American Medical News

A multinational research led by Dr. Heather C. Medford of the University of Washington, Dr. Andrew J. Sharp of the University of Geneva, Switzerland revealed a possibly answer to autism, mental and growth retardation, and other disabilities.

A submicroscopic chromosomal glitch found on region 1q21.1 can possibly be linked to a broad range of developmental disorders in children, such as autism, mild or moderate mental retardation, learning disabilities, deformities, seizures and growth retardation. Like a game of Russian roulette, not everyone will experience these disorders: some won’t be affected, some only slightly affected and others seriously affected.

Results of this finding were published on September 11, 2008, in the New England Journal of Medicine in an article titled, “Recurrent Rearrangements of Chromosome 1q21.1 and Variable Pediatric Phenotypes” and accompanied with an editorial by David H. Ledbetter of Emory University in Atlanta, GA.
Source: Medical News

“The study [supports] the hypothesis that all three forms of TSEs in humans are also found in cattle: infectious, sporadic, and genetic. It provides additional support that the BSE epidemic may have originated from a genetic case of BSE in an individual cow. Of course, similar mutations can pop up in cattle herds throughout the world and might provide the raw genetic material for new epidemics to develop in the future, especially in countries where it is a common practice to feed slaughterhouse scraps to healthy animals that will enter the human food chain in the future.”
- GrrlScientist, ScienceBlogs.com

Source: ScienceBlogs.com