Take Good Care of Your Teeth

Many of us do not bother much to go for yearly dental check up. But I do hope you do take good care of your teeth. Some of us might not give much attention to how our teeth look like, if it has started to get black with caries or some even start to decay.

We should all start looking into the mirror and get a closer look at your teeth inside and out and in between. It is important to take good care of your teeth because not only it makes your smile more impressive but also it helps to prevent heart diseases.

Any teeth with caries or those which are decaying are good site for infection to sets in. And as we all know, if there is infection present, that means there are bad micro organism around. So these micro organism can travel inside your teeth and gets into the blood and at the end the blood will be carried into your heart. When the micro organism gets into your blood it can cause some dangerous heart diseases and damages your heart. It will slowly and silently causes you problems and you might not even be aware of it until your heart and your body cannot decompensate(correct) whatever that have been going on with your heart.

So start brushing and flossing and gargling. Do not brush too hard till u bleed, because that is wrong. Just brush lightly and make sure you don't miss out any areas especially at the back and in between the roots and hopefully we all can be proud of our teeth and smile from ear to ear everyday! :)

Touching the Void

Until now I have never understood why people would even enjoy climbing humongous cold icy and rocky mountains for days and as I and most of us see it, we would swear never to set foot in that kind of place because it is hauntingly dangerous. Today I watched a very real documentary film about 2 friends, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates. They were 2 very ambitious mountaineers whose aim was to conquer an unclimbed West face of a notorious 21,000 feet peak called 'Siula Grande' in Peru in 1985. And something went really really really wrong.

The movie started off by showing the beautiful scenery God created of the mountains. When I saw the scene where there was nothing else but whites of the snow and the thick clouds, and the blue sky together with strong sound of wind blowing every now and then, it was gorgeous. I was telling myself I would love to experience that, just to stand in front of it and enjoy the view.

The movie went on with the 2 of them climbing to the top of the mountain. Simon was the leading guy and Joe follows about 100 feet behind him. They were connected with a rope and the rule is, if one of them fall,the other will have the same fate. They took 3 days to just get on top of the mountain. Everything seemed to be going on well. Until they were on their way down.

Joe happened to be the unlucky one in this expedition because he broke his right leg on the way down and he fell off a deep hole inside the mountain that made Simon thought he was dead. So Simon continued his journey back and left Joe in the mountain.

Joe's determination and courage was tested on how he would survive to get out of the inside of a mountain with a broken leg. At this point I was thinking to myself. What is it that I would do given the same situation as Joe had. But I think it is too easy to plan now that I'm watching it in a movie. Something is now swirling in my thought. What would I do now to survive in my own world. The world I'm living in. The daily life I have now and tomorrow's. Joe never gave up in spite of having a broken leg, probably shattered into pieces, alone, cold, with no food or water and most of all, he was getting nowhere. With his condition and his state of mind, he formulated a strategy. Pure survivor instinct. He made his aims little by little, and he gave some time to accomplish his aim. He pushed himself to gain what he aimed for, what he craved for, his safety. He crawled, he hoped with his good leg and fell every time he hopped but even with his excruciating pain he still went on, and on, and on. Until he reached his goal he refused to stop. He gained his strength, for what ever was left, to keep going. It touched me deeply. For one person to be able to help himself to win his own challenges and never stops until he gains more and more, to me that feeling is overwhelming. I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to challenge myself to see how far I can go.

Being alone doesn't mean you are weaker. It means you are stronger. Because being alone means you are independent and that you are ready to commit to life's great challenges without other's help or sympathy. Being hurt doesn't mean you are a loser. It means you are a winner. Because you achieve when others think you would falter. When Joe was alone, he thought of 2 things, either he would die from pathetically waiting for someone to come and get him when nobody knew where he was or he could die on his way out trying to survive. And he decided he would rather die trying. But as he was on his way to get out of the mountain, he realized he was stronger and smarter than he thought he was. So now I feel good about being alone. It makes me feel impressed with myself that for all this time I have won my life because I am independent.

I am looking forward to be able to experience new things in life and I am excited to get to know what is waiting for me in the future. And I hope in every challenges I am to face, I can make it through and come out stronger every time. To be able to do that, and perhaps if I became successful one day, I would be more than pleased to tell my life's story might have been sparked after watching this beautiful true story based movie called 'Touching the Void'

Diabetes

It rained the whole day today. Feeling quite cold but rather cozy because i get to enjoy hot soup and hot tea. I hope it rains tonight too so i can sleep like a baby kitten (as I always do) :P

Today in the hospital I met a patient who is in her 60 who have been a diabetic and hypertensive for over 25 years. She came because of palpitation (her own awareness of the feeling that the heart is beating fast and hard) and breathlessness.

I won't blog about heart condition today, instead I'll talk about Diabetes. Diabetes is defined as high blood glucose (sugar) level in the blood.

Diabetes affects over 1.5 million people in Malaysia alone. It is one of the most dangerous disease because it creates multiple complications(bad outcome) to those who are suffering from diabetes. There are 2 types of diabetes. The type 1 affect children or younger age people because there is a defect in producing a substance called insulin to take up glucose while type 2 affects the adult due to their bad eating habits.

Some people might say "so what if I have diabetes? It's just high sugar in my blood. It won't harm my health at all."

Diabetes is frightening in spite of just high blood glucose level. Because of this high glucose level in the blood it creates many complications that can affect your entire body from your brain and down to your feet. Due to high glucose level in the blood, your body tissues are more prone to infections. The bacterias love to be around tissues and environment rich with glucose. And once infection sets in it is very difficult to treat unless if the person can control their blood glucose level. That is why some of you might have seen your elderly who have been having diabetes for a long time who had infection of their feet which did not improved and at the end had to go for an operation to amputate(operate and remove) some part of their leg.

Diabetics are also at risk in developing kidney failure. These patients undergo a complication called nephropathy which means that the kidneys are dying. Hence they need a treatment to replace their kidneys either by kidney transplant or hemodialysis. A transplant sounds easy but how many people do you know now who are willing to donate their organs for others? Hemodialysis is a good substitute because it works as an artificial kidney but it is expensive. One cycle of treatment of 3 times a week can cost up to RM300 and these people need to go for hemodialysis for the rest of their lives.

Other complications can be blindness, loss of sensation and hence you wont even feel that your feet are badly cut and that becomes a good source of infection. Uncontrolled diabetics can also develop heart failure, coma and stroke.

So don't give excuses not to care about your blood glucose level. You can get your blood glucose level checked in a clinic or if your diabetic parents have got a device called 'glucometer' like the picture up there you can test your glucose level yourself at home.

STOP SMOKING

Hello everyone. It has been a very long time since I last blogged (I think I've said that too many times too). But it was for a good reason (I think). I've been busy with studies and also elective programme where I was working with my dad.

I have quite a lot of things I want to share with you but today I've decided to talk a bit on smoking.

I know some of you smokers might roll up your eyes and ignore this but I'm still going to pin out to you the effects of smoking you are creating not only to yourself but also people around you, especially your loved ones.

Lets see how much of harm have you caused to your lungs since your lungs act as your air filters. Most of the smokers will have occasional cough which may be severe and may prolong and worsen as time past by. Still they refuse to quit smoking because they have an excuse by saying that others who don't smoke gets cough too. That is true but people who doesn't smoke gets cough due to infection that spread from one person to another by air. In case of chronic smokers, they develop cough because of their lungs have undergone desruction and abnormality hence you are more succeptible to infection and other diseases.

Few of the most diseases that affect chronic smokers are : Chronic Obstructive Airway Disease (where the patient frequently gets attacks of breathlessness), Lung cancer, Bronchiectasis. These conditions are most grieved because they are the difficult illnesses to be treated and chances to return to normal is very minimal.

The smokers might even deny that they smoke a lot of cigarettes a day and claim that they only smoke occasionally so they think that they are safe from dangerous illnesses but hear me out, once you have smoked, it takes 6 years to clear your lungs from the harmful toxins you have inhaled and only afterwards your lungs can be healthy again.

The harm done isn't contained only in your lungs, your bad habit also affects your heart and your blood vessels. Your poor over worked heart muscle gets weaken and since you have also caused damage to your heart's artery bringing the blood supply, your heart gets weaker and weaker and it might undergone a disease called 'coronary artery stenosis'. Stenosis means the artery (a vessel bringing blood supply) gets smaller. Coronary artery is the name of the artery bringing blood supply to your heart muscle. When this happen your heart muscle can die and you get something called as Myocardial Infarction or Myocardial Ischemia. These 2 are Malaysian 2nd cause of death compared to other morbid illnesses that kill our population.

So lets do our parts to either stop smoking (to those who smoke) and to those who don't smoke you should play your role by advising people to stop smoking.

There are ways on how you can stop smoking. You can seek medical help where you may be prescibed with nicotine patch, or counseling session but most importantly you should believe in our own ability to make yourself stop smoking. Do not hesitate to seek help or other's supports. And as far as possible, try to stop in just one day and don't try to reduce is because usually you fail to totally quit smoking if you think you should first reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke daily.