Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T

Triggers to dyspepsia

WHEN you repeat or hear repeatedly a difficult word often enough you get to know it by heart. That’s the case with the word dyspepsia. The Greek root dys means “painful” (remember, "painful menstruation" in dysmenorrhea); while pepsia or pepsis means “to digest.” Together, and literally, dyspepsia means “painful digestion.” We know its simple equivalent better: indigestion (in Cebuano, we say “wa kahilisi”).

Clinically, dyspepsia is that vague feeling of discomfort (of heat, burning or pain; or of fullness that is bothersome) in the upper belly or abdomen during or right after eating.

Knots of pain

I GUESS the most painful experience a person can have upon waking up is to have muscle cramps.

The condition consists of a sudden but involuntary contraction of a muscle or part of it that is painful as well as self-extinguishing (or self-limiting), with a palpable knotting of the muscle accompanying it.

Underrated ‘D’

TO PARAPHRASE a Yiddish proverb: “Even a dog without teeth attacks a bone.” It seems nature has something against the bone eventually, hasn’t it?

The United States Institute of Medicine set the daily recommended intake of calcium for people aging 19 to 50 years at 1,000 milligrams (one gram). Studies in the past agreed that at the age of 30 bones in the body start depleting itself, and in order for the person to make up for these loss enough dose of dietary calcium must be taken in. The question is: Do we take calcium alone? Or, should we take it with vitamin D?

Passion in the flower

SCIENTISTS named it Passiflora, a genus of flower vines that contains 400 species; mostly vines, some shrubs and a few herbs. And some of these species have known medicinal properties.

The history in the naming of Passiflora is part of the Christian missionary history.

The way of the flesh

ONLY recently did I learn that my mother had been wondering why each time she saw me eating sweet oranges, I ate the whole segment—juice and all—instead of extracting just the juice alone and throwing away the pulp with the peel.

Attempts to forever

ONE of the few important sideshows in the final days of the Lord before His Passion was the death of Judas Iscariot. He was a man who had chosen life when he followed the Master and later chose a tragic way of escaping the demands of his conscience.

Breakfast or no breakfast

LEWIS Carroll (1832-1898) reflected in his poem Through the Looking Glass the common presumption on how obesity develops in a person over eating. The concept is as simple as basic mathematics: the more you eat, the more you get fat.

Thus, meal skipping becomes a logical way to go. Since those in active work cannot afford a full day skip, workers often skip breakfast more commonly than lunch or supper.

A gift of celestial melody

BIBLICAL wisdom contends that any gift unused will cease to be. Clinical experience, however, observed that frequently used gifts, while they may not disappear, can be so strained that these will eventually become unusable. In fact, these can be plagued with disease of overuse, so that further use of it can be dangerous to the person’s health.

This observation has particular relevance among those who use their voice as their work instruments: singers, fitness club instructors, salespeople, telemarketing operators, receptionists, actors, teachers and more.

Coated caution

“T'S easy for Americans,” says former US Sen. Christopher Dodd, “to forget that the food they eat doesn’t magically appear on a supermarket shelf.” That may also be true for Filipinos.

While the use of shellac in pharmaceutical products may have ebbed in the last few decades, its use in food, particularly as a protective coating for fruits and vegetables, has not. Its use has the specific advantage of extending shelf life, which is critical in ensuring that they are sold before they start to get overripe.

Glaze of the ‘lac’ bug

AMERICAN poet William Carlos Williams wrote: “Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze.”

Many Filipinos may not know how a snow glaze looks like; but one common glaze that Filipinos are familiar with can be seen in furniture. And we call that glaze “shellac.”