My Online World

Hope to be able to finish and get things done over this week.

• organize photos, haven’t started yet doing Gabby’s moving up photobook
• filing and submission of Gabby and Nicco’s birth certificate to Philhealth
• Update my resume- this has been long overdue
• apply and submit resume online
• Buy sewing kit~ need to fix some of kids clothes- again this has been long overdue.
• Upload photos, finish pending online tasks
• burn photos to Cd for back up copies

its Gabby’s 5th birthday today. No, there’s no grand celebration for the little girl this time, not until she turns 7 in the next two more years. We just went to my nephews birthday celebration yesterday at Pasay (will post pics. when I’m done editing and resizing it) they had a blast as they went on swimming again on an inflatable pool together with cousins Joshua, Princess Renabel and Dwayne. We just wish that they could experience next summer going into beach or real size pool next summer. Or it could be realized next month for Nicco’s 3rd birthday, who knows?! Oh well, that is if we have the budget. *croosing fingers*

Jewelry had long evolved as a symbol of wealth and was considered by some as a protection from harm during the ancient times. As time goes by, the value of it increases and different forms and types are developed, from the piece of an animal part to stones and precious gems to silver and gold.

During this time of ours, it is now considered as a fashion jewelry, many women nowadays resort to its use for everyday and and most importantly during some occasions where they can flaunt their collections of jewelries, it is indeed still considered as a symbol of wealth. The main essence of it still is to accessorize women. It gives a special effect and sense of elegance to those who wear it.

Here’s what you should know about it:

• Parkinson’s disease. “There is fairly convincing evidence that people who drink coffee regularly have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease,” says researcher Alberto Ascherio of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Parkinson’s is caused by the loss of brain cells that produce a chemical messenger called dopamine. In animals, caffeine protects those nerve cells. It also seems to protect human brain cells. In a meta-analysis that pooled 13 studies, drinkers of regular coffee — but not decaf — had a 30-percent lower risk of Parkinson’s than non-drinkers.

And it doesn’t take much caffeine — just 100 to 200 mg. a day. “Even a modest amount — the equivalent of between one and two cups of coffee per day — is associated with a lower risk,” notes Ascherio.

• Gallstones. In the Nurses’ Health Study, that treated nearly 81,000 women for 20 years, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which tracked 46,000 men for 10 years, those who drank two to three cups of regular coffee a day had about 20-percent lower risk of gallstones than non-drinkers.

“Tea, decaf coffee, and caffeinated soft drinks weren’t protective, probably because they don’t contain enough of what’s making the difference — caffeine,” says Michael Leitzmann of the US National Cancer Institute. One theory: Caffeine may stimulate the gallbladder to contract, which helps empty it of stone-forming cholesterol and bile pigments.

• Mental performance. “Coffee improves alertness and reaction time in people, whether they’re habitual consumers of coffee or not,” says Harris Lieberman, a psychologist and caffeine investigator at the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine.

But “the effect is clearly limited to the ability to maintain attention,” he adds. “Things like memory or complex reasoning won’t improve.”

In the sleep-deprived, however, caffeine has a more striking impact. “It improves almost everything you can measure,” says Lieberman. “It makes you more alert, it seems like you can perform complex tasks better, and your memory is better.” Why?

“People who are falling asleep on the job can’t do much of anything,” says Lieberman. “If you give them something that wakes them up and makes them focus, they’re going to do better.”

Mood. It’s no coincidence that people offer guests a cup of coffee. After consuming anywhere from 20 to 200 mg. of caffeine, “people report increased well-being, happiness, energy, alertness, and sociability,” says caffeine expert Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

That may be why a study that tracked more than 86,000 women for 10 years found that those who drank at least two cups of regular coffee a day were about 60 percent less likely to commit suicide than those who drank none. However, taking more than 200 mg. of caffeine produces “increased anxiety, nervousness, jitteriness, and upset stomachs in some people,” says Griffiths.

• Physical performance. Caffeine helps the body burn fat instead of carbohydrate, and it blunts the perception of pain. Both can boost endurance. For example, endurance runners who ran to exhaustion on a treadmill lasted an average of 32 minutes without caffeine, but made it to 42 minutes after drinking coffee with around 250 mg. of caffeine.

And you don’t have to be a trained athlete to benefit. “There’s no question that caffeine will improve aerobic physical endurance in non-athletes as well,” says Lieberman, adding that people who run, jog, swim, or cycle can last longer if they’ve had 200 to 600 mg. of caffeine beforehand. “And new research suggests that caffeine can also improve anaerobic performance,” he adds. That includes lifting heavy weights and sprinting short distances.

• Headaches. When you get a headache, the blood vessels in your brain dilate, or become wider. Caffeine causes blood vessels to constrict, which may explain why it can help relieve headache pain.

“It’s also a mild analgesic, or painkiller, and it has the ability to increase the availability of other analgesics that it’s combined with,” says Robert Shapiro, a headache expert at the University of Vermont. That’s why caffeine is included in prescription headache medications in the US and over-the-counter ones like Anacin and Excedrin.

However, while caffeine can help relieve headache pain, “daily exposure appears to lower the threshold for provoking migraines in people who are genetically susceptible to them,” warns Shapiro. He advises his patients with a history of occasional migraines to consume no more than two cups a week.

• Sleep. “Consuming coffee within three to five hours of bedtime will disturb the sleep of most people,” says Tim Roehrs, director of research at the Sleep Disorder Center of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

The caffeine interferes with adenosine, which many scientists believe is the brain’s natural sleep regulator. They may have trouble falling asleep. And once they do, “they’ll experience frequent, brief awakenings during the night that they won’t be aware of but will diminish the restorative effect of their sleep,” says Roehrs. And that can start a cycle. “The next day, they’ll feel tired, so they’ll consume more coffee to stay alert. And that may disrupt their sleep the next night.”

• Fertility. A 1988 US National Institutes of Health study reported that as little as one cup of coffee a day could slash in half the odds of becoming pregnant. But subsequent studies have found that if caffeine affects fertility, it takes at least 300 mg. a day. “Low to moderate caffeine consumption doesn’t seem to reduce a woman’s chance of becoming pregnant,” says the Organization of Teratology Information Specialists.

• Miscarriage. A new study suggests that too much caffeine may increase the risk of miscarriage. Among 1,063 pregnant women interviewed by the researchers, 24 percent of those who consumed at least 200 mg. of caffeine a day suffered miscarriages, compared with 10 percent of those who consumed less than 200 mg.

In response to the study, the March of Dimes recommends that “women who are trying to conceive or who are pregnant limit their caffeine intake from all sources to 200 mg. or less every day.”

• Birth defects. Doses of caffeine more than 15 times greater than the amounts people normally consume can cause birth defects in animals. What about in humans? According to two new reviews, there is no evidence that consuming the equivalent of three or more cups of coffee a day increases the risk of heart malformations and cleft palates.

However, the data aren’t strong enough to say that there is absolutely no increase in risk. For one thing, the studies relied on the memories of women who had given births to infants with birth defects. They might subconsciously have inflated estimates of their past coffee consumption if they believed that coffee increased risk.

The US Food and Drug Administration’s advice: “Pregnant women should avoid caffeine-containing foods and drugs, if possible, or consume them only sparingly.”