Category: News You Can Use

If you can’t do this exercise, you’ll die!

~ odd man out ~ 2 Comments

blonde exercising

You gotta love online news features, especially when they come from TV. This is from Fox 8 News in Cleveland:

It’s being called the exercise test that can predict your death. A physician in Brazil used something called the sit/rise test to show his aging patients the risk of losing strength and flexibility. The study found strength and balance are pretty good indicators of longevity.
Dr. Marc Gillinov, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist, said the sit/rise test is a simple way to measure your overall health. “This is what we call an observation study, which means it’s not of highest level of medical evidence, but I believe it to be true…”

A scoring system for the sit/rise exercise indicates how fit you are. If you do the exercise and score 8-10 points, you’re in great shape. If you score 0-3, “you’re 6.5 times more likely to die than those who scored high.”

I asked Swamp Rabbit what the latter statistic means. He said, “It means what it says, I guess. If you score high, you ain’t likely to die.”

“That’s a relief,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to be immortal.”

Eggs going up

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

egg

Eek!

A new regulation is set to take effect in California at the beginning of next year that will force hen houses to allocate significantly more room to each egg-laying chicken.

Birds, long afforded a minimum of only 67 square inches a piece, will now need roughly 116 square inches—a more than 70 percent increase—if eggs are to be sold in the state. That extra space won’t come free of charge, a cost that will almost certainly fall on consumers.

Egg prices could jump by as much as 20 percent in California as a result of the the new rules, Dermot J. Hayes, an agribusiness professor at Iowa State University in Ames, told Bloomberg.

The mere anticipation of the change has already driven prices up by more than $0.25 over the past month in California. And that increase comes on the heels of what has already been a pretty unkind year for omelette prices across the country: wholesale egg prices are averaging nearly $2.30 per dozen, up almost 35 percent since the start of the 2014.

FYI

~ susie

I assume this also applies to bottled water:

People who regularly drink from cans and plastic bottles may want to reconsider: A new study shows that a common chemical in the containers can seep into beverages and raise blood pressure within a few hours.

The research raises new concerns about the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, which is widely found in plastic bottles, plastic packaging and the linings of food and beverage cans. Chronic exposure to BPA, as it is commonly known, has been associated with heart disease, cancer and other health problems. But the new study is among the first to show that a single exposure to the chemical can have a direct and fairly immediate impact on cardiovascular health.

The study found that when people drank soy milk from a can, the levels of BPA in their urine rose dramatically within two hours – and so did their blood pressure. But on days when they drank the same beverage from glass bottles, which don’t use BPA linings, there was no significant change in their BPA levels or blood pressure.

A single instance of increased blood pressure may not be particularly harmful. But the findings suggest that for people who drink from multiple cans or plastic bottles every day, the repeated exposure over time could contribute to hypertension, said Dr. Karin B. Michels, an expert on BPA who was not involved in the new research.

By the way

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

yard sale 2

If you’re looking to buy anything used on Craigslist, the next two weeks are the best time of the year because Memorial Day is the busiest moving weekend of the year. People are selling stuff they can’t take with them, and the prices will start to drop. Just sayin’!