Tuesday, February 22, 2011

領導視察基層

山東省一領導到基層視察,晚飯安排在一牧民家。

領導客氣讓牧民先進門,牧民受寵說:

"還是領導前面走,俺養豬牛雞鴨的,跟在牲口後面慣了"。

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領導聽後不悅。鄉長連忙請領導坐定,並吩咐牧民趕緊上菜。

牧民端上一盤清炒蕃薯葉放在領導面前,久吃大魚大肉的領導,一吃一邊大讚地說:

"真好吃!這是什麼蔬菜?"

牧民忙說:"這是土裡隨便拔出來的蕃薯葉賤菜,平時俺都是拿去餵豬的"。

領導頓時臉色下沉。鄉長見狀連忙讓牧民一起吃飯---------少說些話。

牧民卻說:"領導先用,俺不忙,每天這個時間俺得先餵完豬後才吃飯,都習慣了"!

鄉長氣急:"你會不會說話?"

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牧民哭喪著臉:

"俺平時和畜生說話說慣了,不會和人說話..."


Monday, February 21, 2011

智慧填補不了道德的空白

為什麼歐洲許多先進國家還是很富強 ?

若你到奧地利自助旅行,坐車、坐船都是沒人驗票、檢票的!

道德是國力提升的基礎

在某個電視訪談節目中,嘉賓是一位當今頗具知名的青年企業家。節目漸近尾聲時,按慣例,主持人提出了最後一個問題。

請問:你認為事業成功的最關鍵品質是什麼?

沉思片刻之后,他並沒有直接回答,而是平靜地敘述了這樣一段故事:

十二年前,有一個小伙子剛畢業就去了法國,開始了半工半讀的留學生活。

漸漸地,他發現當地的的公共交通系統的售票處是自助的,也就是你想到哪個地方,

根據目的地自行買票,車站幾乎都是開放式的,不設檢票口,也沒有檢票員。甚至連 隨機性的抽查都非常少。

他發現了這個管理上的漏洞,或者說以他的思維方式看來是漏洞。憑著自己的聰明勁,他精確地估算了這樣一個概率:逃票而被查到的比例大約僅為萬分之三。
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他為自己的這個發現而沾沾自喜,從此之後,他便經常逃票上車。
他還找到了一個寬慰自己的理由:自己還是窮學生嘛,能省一點是一點。

四年過去了,名牌大學的金字招牌和優秀的學業成績讓他充滿自信,他開始頻頻地進入巴黎一些跨國公司的大門,躊躇滿志地推銷自己,因為他知道這些公司都在積極地開發亞太市場。

但這些公司都是先熱情有加,然而數日之後,卻又都是婉言相拒。

一次次的失敗,使他憤怒。他認為一定是這些公司有種族歧視的傾向,排斥中國人。

最後一次,他衝進了某公司人力資源部經理的辦公室,要求經理對於不予錄用他給出一個合理的理由。

然而,結局卻是他始料不及的。下面的一段對話很令人玩味。
「先生,我們並不是歧視你,相反,我們很重視你。因為我們公司一直在開發中國市場,我們需要一些優秀的本土人才來協助我們完成這個工作,所以你一來求職的時候,我們對你的教育背景和學術水平很感興趣,老實說,從工作能力上,你就是我們所要找的人。」

「那為什麼不收天下英才為貴公司所用?」

「因為我們查了你的信用記錄,發現你有三次乘公車逃票被處罰的記錄。」

「我不否認這個。但為了這點小事,你們就放棄了一個多次在學報上發表過論文的人才?」

「小事?我們並不認為這是小事。我們注意到,第一次逃票是在你來我們國家後的第一個星期,檢查人員相信了你的解釋,因為你說自己還不熟悉自助售票系統,只是給你補了票。但在這之後,你又兩次逃票。」

「那時剛好我口袋中沒有零錢。」

「不、不,先生。我不同意你這種解釋,你在懷疑我的智商。我相信在被查獲前,你可能有數百次逃票的經歷。」

「那也罪不至死吧?幹嗎那麼認真?以後改還不行嗎?」

「不、不,先生。此事證明了兩點:

一、你不尊重規則。不僅如此,你擅於發現規則中的漏洞並惡意使用。
二、你不值得信任。而我們公司的許多工作的進行是必須依靠信任進行的,因為如果你負責了某個地區的市場開發,公司將賦予你許多職權。
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為了節約成本,我們沒有辦法設置複雜的監督機構,正如我們的公共交通系統一樣。所以我們沒有辦法雇用你,可以確切地說,在這個國家甚至整個歐盟,你可能找不到雇用你的公司。」

直到此時,他才如夢方醒、懊悔難當。
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然而,真正讓他產生一語驚心之感的, 卻還是對方最後提到一句話:

道德常常能彌補智慧的缺陷,然而,智慧卻永遠填補不了道德的空白。

世界上有四件事情是無法挽回的

扔出去的....石頭
說出口的....話
錯過的........時機
逝去的........時光

1. 遇到乞討者:遇到要錢的就給他(她)點飯,遇到要飯的就給 他(她)點錢。

2. 上車遇到老弱病殘、孕婦:讓座的時候別動聲色,也別大張旗鼓。站起來用身體擋住其他人,留出空位子給需要的人,然後裝作下車走遠點。人太多實在走不遠,人家向你表示謝意的時候微笑一下。

3. 雨雪的時候、天冷的傍晚或者是雪天的傍晚,遇到賣菜的、賣水果的、賣報紙的,剩的不多,又不能回家,能全買就全買,不能全買就買一份,反正吃什麼也是吃,看什麼也是看,買下來,讓人早點回家。

4. 遇到迷路的小孩和老頭老太太,能送回家就送回家(這要考慮安全啦!),不能送回家的送上車、送到派出所也行,如果有電話, 替老人或小孩打個電話就走,反正你也不缺那兩個電話費。

5. 遇到迷路的人打聽某個地址,碰巧你又知道,就主動告訴一聲。別不好意思,沒有人笑話你。

6. 撿到錢包就找找失主。

7. 遇到學生出來打工的、勤工儉學的,特別是中學生、小姑娘。她賣什麼你就買點,如果她不是家庭困難,出來打工也需要勇氣的,鼓勵鼓勵她吧。

8. 遇到夜裡擺地攤的,能買就多買一些,別還價,東西都不貴。家境哪怕好一點,誰會大冷天夜裡擺地攤。

9. 如果錢還寬裕,別養二奶,偷偷養幾個貧困山區的學生。別讓人家知道你是誰,要不然見面了多尷尬,多不好意思。但是你心裡一定會覺得舒坦,比包二奶提心吊膽的要好得多。

10. 如果時間還寬裕,而且碰巧覺得以上有理,那就請把這幾句話多轉幾個地方,畢竟好人多了咱們心裡也舒坦。

(Courtesy of forwarded mail from Yong Yew Khoon)

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Capitalist or Socialist?

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college.

Like so many others her age group in college, she considered herself to be very liberal, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch conservative, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a typical liberal professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father.

He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?" She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over."
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Her wise father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That's a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"
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The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the capitalist side of the fence."

If anyone has a better explanation of the difference between capitalist and socialist or progressive or neocon I'm all ears. If you ever wondered what side of the fence you sit on, this is a great test!

If a capitalist doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a socialist doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a capitalist is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a socialist is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a capitalist is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a socialist is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a capitalist is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A socialist wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a capitalist doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Socialist demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a capitalist is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A socialist non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.(Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)

If a capitalist decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A socialist demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a capitalist reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A socialist will delete it because he's "offended".

Saturday, February 19, 2011

On High Blood Cholesterol, Heart Disease & Cancers (by Dr JB Lim)

The Blogger's note: This is yet another spontaneous and educational comment written by nutritionist/scientist Dr Lim Ju Boo offering a very insightful advice to people who love to eat BAK KUT TEH ("meat bone tea"), CHAR KUEY TEOW ("stir-fried ricecake strips") and HOKKIEN MEE in his reply to an email forwarded by Mr Leo Nathan. The email reads as follows:
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EXTREMELY GOOD NEWS FOR BAK KUT TEH, CHAR KUEY TEOW & HOKKIEN MEE LOVERS!
More reasons to eat Chee Yau Char (“pig's lard”) now because it contains Natural fats and not Trans fats as in processed food made by Man.

*Low Cholesterol Levels Increases Cancer Risk*- American College of Cardiology
For years, I've been telling my patients that the medical establishment's obsession with lowering cholesterol per se to prevent heart disease is causing more harm than good.
If your doctor continues to get you worried about your high cholesterol levels, here's *a bit of news* for you...

In fact, your high cholesterol may be protecting you from cancer.

Today, I'll explain the truth behind the myth of cholesterol, and show you how to achieve heart health naturally.

A new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology revealed that driving down cholesterol levels actually increases the risk of cancer.

Researchers at the Tufts University School of Medicine found that among people taking "*statin drugs - like Lipitor and Zocor* - there was a higher* *rate of cancer*. Although the link between the drugs and cancer wasn't clear, there was no doubt that *drastically low cholesterol levels *correlated to cancer risk.

The big drug makers continue to sell the notion that the best way to fight heart disease is to lower LDL levels, the so-called "bad" cholesterol.

Yet 75 percent of people who suffer heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels.
It makes sense that low cholesterol levels are linked to cancer because cholesterol is one of your body's basic building blocks. You need it to produce testosterone, to build and repair cell membranes, and to preserve your nerve cells through the formation of the protective "sheaths" that cover them.

Starving your body of this critical substance will lead to other health problems. We already know that extremely low cholesterol levels result in muscle weakness, fatigue, depression, decreased sex drive, and "brain fog." This new research shows that there may be even more deadly consequences.

What really matters is not low "bad" cholesterol, but high levels of HDL, the so-called "good" cholesterol. As long as you have a high HDL count - 75 to 80, for example - it doesn't matter whether your total cholesterol is 150 or 350. A high HDL will always keep your risk of heart disease extremely low.
So why haven't you heard this already? It may be because there's *no drug that effectively raises good cholesterol levels*. You can only effectively do it naturally.

Consume natural fats. Avoid processed or fast foods containing* "trans" fats * - these man-made substances *were never meant for consumption*, and your body doesn't know what to do with them. They wind up clogging your arteries and putting you on the fast track to heart disease. *

Instead, get your fat from free-range or grass-fed animals, eggs, nuts, and unprocessed vegetable oils*. These are some of the healthiest foods you can eat. (As with all foods, look for organic or minimally processed options whenever possible.)

The health benefit of these natural fats comes from their balance of *Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids*. Your body needs both but, as with cholesterol, they have to be in balance. *Omega-3s are great for your heart. They've been shown to prevent irregular heartbeat, reduce clogging of the arteries, lower blood pressure, and decrease inflammation in body tissues*.

If you stick to eating *natural fats*, you'll automatically get the right ratio of Omega-6 and Omega-3, which is about 2:1. As an added bonus, you'll automatically raise your "good" cholesterol levels and you'll reduce your risk of cancer.
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Reply from Dr JB Lim:
Sunday, 13 February, 2011 4:36 AM
From: lim juboo
Bcc: lautaionn
Dear Leo Nathan and all your e-mail pen-pals,

I give almost full marks to your health articles here. It may require some 30 pages to elaborate about many old-fashioned theories the nutrition and medical communities have been misleading themselves, and also pass them on to the ignorant public about high blood cholesterol, heart disease, cancers and all those stuff. The trouble is that most nutritionists, dieticians, clinicians, and health-care professionals doing routine jobs don't read research papers and journals to update themselves with newer knowledge about health and nutrition.

As a result, they still are obsessed about high blood cholesterol linking it with heart diseases, and using lipid-lowering stantin drugs to ‘solve’ this problem? Unfortunately, these are old-fashioned theories. They only think they have solved the problem. The problem is, not only some of these nutritionists, dieticians, doctors and health-care professionals are still in the dark on the latest findings. They merely do routine work on clinical nutrition, so they don’t read to update themselves. They also mislead their patients and the ill-informed public about high cholesterol and heart disease when the enormously huge longitudinal Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts, United States which initially started this craze and obsession about cholesterol and ischemic heart disease in 1948 have long since after further extension of that study issued out another official statement that no amount of cholesterol levels, whether high or low -density lipoprotein, chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL and HDL, in the blood has any link with coronary heart disease (CHD).


The risk linking heart disease, stroke, and metabolic syndrome is very complicated one, and many, many papers have since been published independently after the extremely famous Framingham Heart Study first started this obsession craze in 1948. This very famous Framingham Heart Study was, and still is, a cohort study over two subsequent generations so far. It is still an on-going project today, projected as a very long-term longitudinal study.
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Unfortunately many other separate studies embarked since the Framingham Study have contradicted each other until even very well-informed, very well-read, nutrition scientists and medical researchers today are uncertain about the directions to take. It is not just about high blood cholesterol, trans fatty acids, lipid per-oxidation, free radicals damage to the lipids, and what you eat, or what you should not eat, etc, etc, but also many other non-dietary risk factors that are contributory, such as:
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· smoking
· high blood pressure
· high blood cholesterol
· diabetes
· being overweight or obese
· physical inactivity
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You just can’t solve this lifestyle and nutrition problem using stantin drugs as doctors think. Health is far more than just dishing out medications. These stantins generations of lipid-lowering agents cause liver damage or cancers in the long run. You suppress the problem at one end, but because the root causes were not addressed, the suppressed ball pops out at another end of the tank. Heart and almost all degenerative diseases require drastic modifications in the way we eat and live. Are we willing for this very difficult change? But that’s the only way to prevent all chronic diseases and aging problems.
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Please ask all the uninformed nutritionists, dieticians, clinicians, and your e-mail friends too who are dwelling in the dark ages to read one of these many, many links about the myth on cholesterol and heart diseases:
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Also please note this official statement from one of the Directors of the famous Framingham Study.


"In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower people's serum cholesterol...we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active." Dr William Castelli 1992 (Director of the Framingham study)
There are many criticisms too by many, many other researchers debunking the connection between cholesterol and IHD (Ischemic Heart Disease) published here and there among them, prestigious journals like Lancet, JAMA, British Medical Journal (BMJ) Among many, many others too are (examples):
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So Leo Nathan, I support the views of current generations of nutrition scientists, and medical researchers and also to some extent (cautiously) your e-mail article EXTREMELY GOOD NEWS FOR BAK KUT TEH, CHAR KUEY TEOW, HOKKIEN MEE LOVERS!
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But just take care. Don’t go overboard with your Bak Kut Teh, Char Kuey Teow, and Hokkein Mee hypothesis. They are still a hazard. A lot of studies still need to be done. It has still to be evidence-based nutrition. We are still very uncertain about the outcome of consuming all these if we are not supported by enormously huge population, well-designed studies that have to be repeated independently over, and over again that showed consistent results. That is gold standard in scientific research.
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As scientists, we are talking about evidence-based Science, Nutrition, and Medicine. We are not fortune-tellers, or story-tellers passing gossips and myths around what we personally believe. Health is also not about what other people’s grandmother, mother, aunt, or brother-in-law believe, and then pass it on into the Internet for others.
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Just tread cautiously, and not as fools who rush in where angels fear to tread.
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Thanks.
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jb lim

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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Biology of Ageing (by Dr JB Lim)

The Blogger's note: The following email has been circulated among the e-buddies lately and an insightful response by Dr JB Lim is reproduced below this:
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Ageing Process - Different parts of our body that age at different times.WE all accept that getting older is inevitable, and now leading clinicians have revealed the exact age when different body parts start to decline, most alarming being the brain and lungs.

French doctors have found that the quality of men's sperm starts to deteriorate by 35, so that by the time a man is 45 a third of pregnancies end in miscarriage.

Here, with the help of leading clinicians, Angela Epstein tells the ages when different parts of the body start to lose their battle with time.

BRAIN - Starts ageing at 20.
As we get older, the number of nerve cells - or neurons - in the brain decrease.
We start with around 100 billion, but in our 20s this number starts to decline.
By 40, we could be losing up to 10,000 per day, affecting memory, co-ordination and brain function.

GUT - Starts ageing at 55.
A healthy gut has a good balance between harmful and 'friendly' bacteria. But, levels of friendly bacteria in the gut drop significantly after 55, particularly in the large intestine,says Tom MacDonald, Professor of Immunology at Barts and The London Medical School.
As a result, we suffer from poor digestion and an increased risk of gut disease.
Constipation is more likely as we age, as the flow of digestive juices from the stomach, liver, pancreas and small intestine slows down.

BREASTS - Start ageing at 35.
BY their mid-30s, women's breasts start losing tissue and fat, reducing size and fullness.
Sagging starts properly at 40 and the areola (the area surrounding the nipple) can shrink considerably.

BLADDER - Starts ageing at 65.
Loss of bladder control is more likely when you hit 65.
Women are more vulnerable to bladder problems as, after the menopause, declining estrogen levels make tissues in the urethra - the tube through which urine passes - thinner and weaker, reducing bladder support.
Bladder capacity in an older adult generally is about half that of a younger person - about two cups in a 30-year-old and one cup in a 70-year-old. ....

LUNGS - Start ageing at 20.
Lung capacity slowly starts to decrease from the age of 20.
By the age of 40, some people are already experiencing breathlessness.
This is partly because the muscles and the rib cage which control breathing stiffen up.

VOICE - Starts ageing at 65.
Our voices become quieter and hoarser with age.
The soft tissues in the voice box (larynx) weaken, affecting the pitch, loudness and quality of the voice.
A woman's voice may become huskier and lower in pitch, whereas a man's might become thinner and higher.

EYES - Start ageing at 40.
Glasses are the norm for many over-40s as failing eyesight kicks in - usually long-sightedness, affecting our ability to see objects up close.

HEART - Starts ageing at 40.
The heart pumps blood less effectively around the body as we get older. This is because blood vessels become less elastic, while arteries can harden or become blocked because of fatty deposits forming on the coronary arteries - caused by eating too much saturated fat.
The blood supply to the heart is then reduced, resulting in painful angina.
Men over 45 and women over 55 are at greater risk of a heart attack.

LIVER - Starts ageing at 70.
This is the only organ in the body which seems to defy the aging process.

KIDNEYS - Starts ageing at 50.
With kidneys, the number of filtering units (nephrons) that remove waste from the bloodstream starts to reduce in middle age.

PROSTATE - Starts ageing at 50.
The prostate often becomes enlarged with age, leading to problems such as increased need to urinate, says Professor Roger Kirby, director of the Prostate Centre in London. This is known as benign prostatic hyperplasia and affects half of men over 50, but rarely those under 40. It occurs when the prostate absorbs large amounts of the male sex hormone testosterone, which increases the growth of cells in the prostate. A normal prostate is the size of a walnut, but the condition can increase this to the size of a tangerine. Having regular sex (once a week) may help slow down the growth of cells in the prostate.

BONES - Start ageing at 35.
'Throughout our life, old bone is broken down by cells called osteoclasts and replaced by bone-building cells called osteoblasts - a process called bone turnover,' explains Robert Moots, Professor of Rheumatology at Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool.
Children's bone growth is rapid - the skeleton takes just two years to renew Itself completely.
In adults, this can take ten years.
Until our mid-20s, bone density is still increasing.
But at 35 bone loss begins as part of the natural ageing process.

TEETH - Start ageing at 40.
As we age, we produce less saliva, which washes away bacteria, so teeth and gums are more vulnerable to decay. Receding gums - when tissue is lost from gums around the teeth - is common in adults over 40.

MUSCLES - Start ageing at 30.
Muscle is constantly being built up and broken down, a process which is well balanced in young adults. However, by the time we're 30, breakdown is greater than buildup, explains Professor Robert Moots. Once adults reach 40, they start to lose between 0.5 and 02 per cent of their muscle each year.
Regular exercise can help prevent this.

HEARING - Starts ageing mid-50s.
More than half of people over 60 lose hearing because of their age, according to the Royal National Institute for the Deaf.

SKIN - Starts ageing mid-20s.
The skin starts to age naturally in your mid-20s.

TASTE AND SMELL - Start ageing at 60.
We start out in life with about 10,000 taste buds scattered on the tongue.
This number can halve later in life.
After we turn 60, taste and smell gradually decline, partly as a result of the normal ageing process.

FERTILITY - Starts ageing at 35.
Female fertility begins to decline after 35, as the number and quality of eggs in the ovaries start to fall.
The lining of the womb may become thinner, making it less likely for a fertilised egg to take, and also creating an environment hostile to sperm.

HAIR - Starts ageing at 30.
Male hair loss usually begins in the 30s. Hair is made in tiny pouches just under the skin's surface, known as follices. A hair normally grows from each follicle for about three years, is then shed, and a new hair grows.
Most people will have some grey hair by the age of 35.
When we are young, our hair is coloured by the pigments produced by cells in the hair follicle known as melanocytes.

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Thanks for your e-mail circular, and also soliciting my opinion.

I do not know how Angela Epstein (pic left) with the help of clinicians came to these conclusions on the ages of the organs?
First of all, no scientific reference in the literature was given. They were just unsubstantiated claims. The names of the clinicians and their credentials were also all not given.
Secondly, how did they conduct their studies, namely the methodology (study designs), numbers of subjects in the population under study, the cohorts, whether cross-sectional or longitudinal study, the time frame, gender, age-group, ethnicity, confronting factors, etc…, and importantly the analysis and interpretation of the data. All these vital scientific data were not quoted and given. How could I, as a professional member of the scientific community concur with these claims? It would be highly unprofessional and unethical.
Thirdly, where were their findings published? Inside these junk chain e-mails passed on from one ignorant person to the next ignorant person, inside a newspaper meant for wrapping left-over foods for the garbage-bin the next morning, or were their findings published in a peer-reviewed, international refereed scientific journal. If it was, where is the literature reference?
Fourthly, Angela and her team of doctors are just clinicians. A clinician is a medical doctor who merely practices routine, standard, bedside medicine on his patient in a hospital ward. They are not the type of doctors like their medical colleagues and counterparts who practices investigative, diagnostic and experimental medicine in a medical laboratory using sophisticated, high-tech equipments. These medical researchers are normally also armed with PhDs or other doctorate degrees, and not just a mere MBBS, or MD to assist them in their investigations.
How is it possible for these clinicians by mere routine physical (clinical) examinations give the various ages of the organs, when even medical researchers with their far more sophisticated and in depth knowledge of medical sciences, and who are the frontiers in the advancement of medicine, are not able to exactly measure the dates, age, and life-span of a single organ, let alone compare the ages of various organs? I think Angela and her clinicians are talking nuts.
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As a former senior medical researcher at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at Malaysia’s Institute for Medical Research (IMR), and a current Special Medical Adviser to an international pharmaceutical group, I am very sticky about all these claims and chain e-mails, especially on medical and scientific issues.
Let me explain briefly in a very simple and reachable way.

Scientists are not gods:

Albeit it may be true that different systems and organs in the body age at different times, and at different levels, we cannot give exact and specific ages or dictate the life-span to these organs. As medical scientists and doctors we must not pretend to be gods. We are definitely not to give the age, life span of any organ or to tell any person or patient how long more can he / she live? We have absolutely no right to do this. We are absolutely bogus ‘professionals’ if we make such claims.

The Power of Statistics:
We can only extrapolate and roughly guess age and life span based on previous or existing medical statistics. What we do normally is to look at the distribution of occurrences in a histogram. We look at the normal distribution of a set of data and examine how tightly all the various data are clustered around the median (‘average’). There will always be a few individuals who are at both ends of a normal distribution (standard deviation). We use these statistical yardsticks to predict the chances of ageing, morbidity and mortality or risk of any medical events in a set of measured data.
When the observation is tightly bunched together and the bell-shaped curve is steep, as scientists-statisticians, we say that the standard deviation is small. This is the best we can do. We are definitely not gods, semi-gods, magicians, or fortune-tellers as the lay public thinks. We base the estimates loosely on past studies or matured clinical experiences, but best of all, it should be on solid statistics complied over a very large population under study. Scientists and clinicians must rely on data to make an inference, because statistics don’t lie. This is what we call Science, not fortune-telling.

That is the best guess or estimate clinical scientists need rely on, and it should only be based on previous measurements, experiences, and published epidemiological data, and not hear-say and wild guesses. We are not gods or fortune tellers. Even on medical statistics, sometimes this is unpredictable due to varying biological responses from individual to individual. This is clearly shown by the standard deviation clustering around the medium in a histogram distribution. There will always be a small proportion in a population that deviate from the mean or ‘average’ in loose statistical jargon.
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The stupid ignorant public:

But the ignorant public thinks we are semi-gods to be able to ‘predict’ the prognosis of a disease, the age of an organ, or when we shall die. Stupid, stupid, public! Absolutely only God and Mother Nature can pass the death sentence, and no one else. Once again we must not pretend to be gods, maybe bogus gods, yes, and a big yes.

An almost impossible study:

Such a study on ageing and time of death to any organ in humans is exceedingly difficult to undertake, if not impossible to conduct. No human is going to donate their various organs for such unethical study, and no pathologist can determine age-differentiation of the cells and tissues based on histopathology alone.

Neither can physiologists match and compare physiological functions of one organ with another. They can only at best, measure or evaluate degrees of physiological functions (not age) of just one organ, say of the heart or lungs over a time scale. Physiologists can measure the efficacy of renal function (example) by looking at the filtration rate, urinary and plasma concentrations of some physiologically important substances (glucose, Na+, urea, creatinine), but these only measure the functionality of the kidneys, and not the age. How can a clinician claim he can do this by mere clinical examination? It beats me. Even a highly qualified renal physiologist cannot determine the age of the kidney? A rough guess perhaps, based on its size, morphology, and cellular structures (histology). It beats me. The same criteria for the measurements of cardiac, lungs, liver and other organ functions without going into medical and physiological details.

One of my university degrees is in physiology, some biochemistry and pharmacology thrown in as one, but despite my academic training, I do not know of any scientific procedure that can measure age or life span of any organ as claimed by Angela Epstein and his clinicians? As far as I know, no literature has been published on such a study. I think all these claims circulating around in e-mails are by bogus people.

Factors that dictates:

There are many factors that determine ageing, among them our genetic make up, our diet and nutrition, our exposure to damaging environments and agents such as free radicals, toxins, radiation, drugs, chemical injuries, metabolites, endogenous and exogenous stresses, and also the body’s compensatory repair mechanisms that enables it to repair all damages especially the DNA. It is estimated there are about 10 million molecular lesions per cell per day, and this escalates with the ageing process, because the body fails to repair the continuous damages every second in our life, and our organs as a whole.

An example:

For instance, it was stated in the e-mail claim that the “LIVER - starts ageing at 70. This is the only organ in the body which seems to defy the aging process”.

The above statement is not entirely true. While it is true that the liver is the only organ in the body that can regenerate itself when injured, and hence ‘live’ longer, the opposite is also true. If the liver, the only detoxifying organ in the body, is constantly subjected to powerful toxins and carcinogens like aflatoxins, and other mycotoxins, alcohol through alcoholism or when infected by groups of viruses such as HAV, HBV, HCV and HEV that cause various types of infective hepatitis, then the liver is the only organ that is going to go first. Its life span will drastically be cut far shorter than the brain or skin (example).

Every cell in our body has a programmable cell death called apoptosis (cellular suicide). For instance, the skin cells live 28 days and then die. Cells lining the cheeks of our mouth and intestines live 48 hours, and the red blood cells have a life span of 120 days.

But when cells become cancerous, they live forever. They lose apoptosis and override the cellular programme (cellular signaling) to self-destruct. Probably only embryonic stem cells and cancer cells do not die under normal cell-signaling mechanisms, but not the liver. The liver can be damaged by poisons, drugs, chemical agents and viruses, and they do lose its functionality, age and die from cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (cancer of the liver).

Another study shows cytokines lymphotoxin can lead to liver cancer. The liver dies from liver failure, and the whole body dies with it. The statement given in the e-mail circular is not true.

Chromosomes and DNA:

Ageing to various parts of the body also depends on the chromosomal make-up. An individual with chromosomal defect such as Down Syndrome can expect to have very low life expectancy to almost all his organs especially in the 1920s, albeit advancement in medical sciences has extended the life expectancy of Down victims. There is a chromosomal structure at the end of each chromosome that dictates how long each cell is going to age and live. This protein structure sitting at the end of each chromosome actually dictates the life span of every cell, the life span of an organ which contains these specific and specialized cells.

A Nobel Prize discovery:

This was discovered jointly by three scientists; Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak who subsequently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. They were honored for characterizing the telomeres, specialized structures at the loose ends of the DNA structure. These loose ends of our DNA are necessary to determine if the cell (of an organ) is to continue to divide or just age and die off. This has nothing to do with any specific organ, whether heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, skin, etc. It is the ability for another enzyme called telomerase that adds DNA sequence repeats ("TTAGGG" in human and all vertebrates) to the 3' end of DNA strands in the telomere regions, and that dictates it ageing and life-span. It is as simple as that.

This discovery has great and profound implication in medicine, as it is the blue print that decides everything from aging to cancer. It has nothing to do with individual organs as these clinicians think. They are talking nuts.

Nutrition:

The life span of any organ also depends on the nutritional status of an individual. For instance, a child in a state of severe protein deficiency, as shown in many cases of infants in Africa, will suffer from a nutritional disease called kwashiorkor. This is a very acute form of childhood protein-energy malnutrition clinically characterized by edema (water retention in the tissues) irritability, anorexia (refusal to eat), ulcerating dermatoses (skin ulceration), and hepatomegaly (enlarged liver) with fatty infiltrates.

The presence of edema caused by poor nutrition defines kwashiorkor. Kwashiorkor was thought to be caused by insufficient protein consumption but with sufficient calorie intake, distinguishing it from marasmus. More recently, micronutrient and antioxidant deficiencies have come to be recognized as contributory. In the event of protein and caloric deficiency (protein-energy malnutrition), the clinical characteristics are presented as marasmic-kwashiokor which features both syndromes.

In such cases, it is the protein mass (muscles) that ages and goes first, and not the hearing, bones, bladder, prostate (males), or any of the organs as mentioned in your, or Angela Epstein and her team of clinicians e-mail. The other exception is the liver that suffers from hepatic steatosis (fatty infiltration of the liver) in the event of severe protein deficiency. The liver does age and fail in the event of serve kwashiorkor. But these clinicians (medical doctors) claim that the liver only age and dies at age 70? I think they are talking nutty medicine or nutty physiology.

We should get our clinical priorities right. This is the first step, the hallmark in the practice of good, ethical medicine or the gold standard in the practice of nutrition. You cannot use the normal physiology of ageing to predict the outcome of a pathological event. It is the internal and external influencing factors that prescribe the outcome of a pathology or the pathogenesis of ageing.
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Not just what you eat, but also what you don’t:

Ageing and longevity also depends not just ‘what you eat’ as stated by you, but also on ‘what you do not eat’.

Other than obvious poisons, medications, and food contaminants ingested that damages literally almost all organs, especially the liver that suffers the greatest insult having to deal with them, followed by the kidneys that have to excrete the metabolites (end products of metabolism and detoxification by the liver, especially drugs (pharmacokinetics), all these agents damage and age every organ by varying degrees, depending on the absorption rates, T 50 (half-life), and retention time, and the kinetics of the toxins absorbed, and its distribution.
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Drug toxicity:

For instance, sedation drugs such as chlorpromazine, thioridazine, indicated for psychotic illness, can cause retinal pigmentation, corneal and lens opacities if the dose is too high, prolonged, or both. Thus the eyes will age and go first, and not the smell, taste, heart or voice. It all depends on the agents (drugs and toxins) an individual is habitually exposed to. Each agent affects different organs differently, specifically, and in varying degrees of sensitivity (‘specificity and sensitivity’ in pharmacological terminology).
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Sub-nutrition, ageing and longevity:

As far back as in 1934, three researchers, Mary Crowell and Clive McCay of Cornell University has shown that laboratory rats fed a severely reduced calorie diet while maintaining micronutrient levels resulted in life spans of up to twice as long as otherwise expected. These interesting discoveries were followed up in detail by a series of experiments with mice conducted by Roy Walford and his student Richard Weindruch.
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My Jewish Mentors:

This information was taught to us by two of our highly intelligent and exceedingly knowledgeable Jewish Professors at the Universities of London and Cambridge when we were postgraduate students there way back in the 1960s. The Jews are an astonishingly brilliant race. The Jews are the ones that win almost all the Nobel Prizes ever since the Swedish Nobel Prize Committee started these highly prestigious academic awards. The Jews head almost all the university academic departments in America, Europe and Great Britain, let alone in Israel. That race is really great and very powerful. They are truly God chosen ones. So this piece of knowledge I got was from my Jewish Professors at English universities, and it is not new to us.

A lot of Malaysians sent to England on a freely give away Malaysian scholarships by the thousands were also taught by the Jews, but I am unsure of their quality when they return to Malaysia. I was on a British Government scholarship, entirely on academic merit, and not hand-outs, albeit I am not a British citizen. It is my cherished gratitude to them.

Further findings:
In 1986, Weindruch reported that restricting the calorie intake of laboratory mice proportionally increased their life span compared to a group of mice fed a normal diet. What was interesting is the calorie-restricted mice also maintained youthful appearances and activity levels longer and showed delays in age-related diseases. The results of the many experiments by Walford and Weindruch were summarized in their book The Retardation of Aging and Disease by Dietary Restriction (1988).

You can get this publication from a publisher (ISBN 0-398-05496-7) if you are interested in the dietary modality to youthfulness and longevity. I recommend this publication. Maybe find it at MPH, Kinokuniya, or order it straight online from Amazon.

Acceptance:

The findings have since been accepted by the scientific community, and are applied to a range of other animals. Researchers in an on-going study investigating the possibility of parallel physiological links in humans, but it will take another generation of 35 years to know the findings.

An ABC analogy:
This is very simple to understand with this analogy. If you continue to pump fuel (food) into an engine (body) to force it to run continuously without rest, the engine’s life span will be greatly shorten due to wear and tear. But if you restrict the supply of fuel to the engine, the engine will remain as good as brand new and will last a long time. It is as simple to understand as that without going into the highly complexities of biochemistries.

Caloric restriction or anti-ageing hormones
In the meantime, many health conscious people are already independently adopting the practice of calorie restriction in the hope of prolonging longevity and the prevention of age-related chronic diseases. I wish them well.

Others attempt short-cuts with human growth hormone (HGH) and other anti-aging hormones (DHEA, oestrogen, melatonin, testosterone and other hormones of the pituitary as their anti-ageing therapies. Which is which? They are ‘mengxiang’ (Mandarin: dreams).

Brief conclusion:

Thus back to what I said, it is not just, you are what you eat, as many people think, but importantly you are also what you don’t wish to eat that make a difference to your risk of being a candidate to degenerative age-related diseases that prescribes your human genetic life span.

I hope this answers your question.

lim ju boo5:50 a.m.
The 4th Day of Chinese New Year
The Year of The Rabbit 2011
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The blogger is delighted and feels flattered to have received Dr Lim's feedback on this posting as follows:
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Monday, 14 February, 2011 2:08 AM

Dear Ir. Lau,
You are good. Very good with your blog presentation with so many pictures, graphics, including the histogram on distribution and its standard deviation, and with music added in also. You are really an artist besides being an engineer. Godd show lah. I must in future give you all my plain b & w stories to make it more colouful. Maybe we can co-author together.

Confucius said "a picture is better than 1000 words" and I think so myself after seeing how to added pictures and illustrations in.

I can never with so colourful and pictureque with my blog (pic left http://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/). I have never tried putting pictures in, except just plain dull text. I need to use the technique you told me, and see if it works. Maybe I have not attempted to try out the features it offers.

Anyway, I shall continue to provide you with dull stories for you to colour it.

Thanks

jb lim

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Saturday, February 12, 2011

祝新年快乐


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