@Kasey Brown

I like your posts. Debunks a lot of myths, and your level of research lends much credence to your statements. Though it *is*, a bit of a pain to read since it's so long but I suppose it can't be helped.

I'd prefer it if your blog allows anonymous posting tho

Hey maybe you can help me with something. I notice you post on The Weight Loss Thread V2 too, I've been having problems with my jogging, think you could have a look? Major thanks!

>> Though it *is*, a bit of a pain to read since it's so long but I suppose it can't be helped.

◘ Sorry... I'm not sure how I can make it shorter and still keep the information value and the ease of reading.

>> I'd prefer it if your blog allows anonymous posting tho

◘ Answered. Blog now allows anonymous postings. If this gets abused though, I'll need to change the settings back.

>> I've been having problems with my jogging, think you could have a look? Major thanks!

◘ That's not a problem, as I've coached running before. If you want to meet up, I'll be able to check your running form and find out what's wrong. Consultation is free. If you're happy with the advice and coaching, we can work something out for training sessions. PM me and let me know.

Yeah that's why I said I suppose it can't be helped since all relevant info needs to be passed on and the only available medium is words I'm a writer myself so I understand some things just can't be watered down. Will post comments later in support.

Thanks for the offer to check out my running but I don't wanna leech off your time since I'll prolly never pay for training sessions Just don't have the cash for that... So I'll feel bad to use your time knowing full well I'll give you nothing in return lol. Your articles and time here are value enough for me.

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Added on January 1, 2011, 11:26 amNot sure if you read my post on the other thread but for easier readability allow me to repost it here:

i live next to a park so i suppose i can try jogging maybe once a week. but my major problem with jogging is that, after 10 mins or so my skin gets REALLY itchy, and if I push it and keep jogging, it gets so itchy to the point of pain. yes, pain. it usually happens at my thighs where my shorts flap against my skin when i run/jog. this is frustrating cos i'm not really that tired yet but i can't go on cos of my damn itch/pain all over. if i scratch, it gets worse; i have to wait like 10-15 mins for it to subside before starting again.

is this normal for first-time joggers? anyone experience this before?

by the way i just forgot about swimming. read in http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...post&p=23711521 that swimming burns 450-700 calories an hour. is this true and any recommendations? i got swimming pool at my condo but never use

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Added on January 1, 2011, 11:27 amby the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011 TO EVERYONE!



This post has been edited by tajukagebunshin: Jan 1 2011, 11:27 AM

>> i live next to a park so i suppose i can try jogging maybe once a week. but my major problem with jogging is that, after 10 mins or so my skin gets REALLY itchy

◘ Itchy? I've never heard of this before... maybe you're getting bitten by mosquitoes?

If you've got shin PAIN, now that's normally caused by your foot hitting the ground improperly. It's something called shin-splints, and it's caused by heel-to-toe type running.

>> if i scratch, it gets worse; i have to wait like 10-15 mins for it to subside before starting again.

◘ I've really never heard it described this way! But I can tell you that 90% of all shin problems are caused by the heel-to-toe running. Land on your middle-to-front foot when your foot comes down.

>> read in http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...post&p=23711521

◘ That link takes me to the list-of-forum-topics page.

>> swimming burns 450-700 calories an hour. is this true and any recommendations?

◘ It's true but you'd have to be swimming really hard and consistent for an hour, not just lounging around in the pool.

I've started looking at the nutritional facts at the food I purchased from the supermarket. Which one should I consider? Is it the carb or the fat or other elements that I should minimize?

Thanks for the reply. Nope, it's not shin pain, it's itchiness slightly below the SKIN, where the clothes constantly flap against the skin during movements. Occurs first at the thighs, then the waist and shoulders, relative to clothes movement rate. My running form is secondary right now I guess; I don't really notice how I run but I don't seem to be in any form of pain, just itchiness. I don't think it's from any insect bite cos I don't remember seeing any bite marks - but I can't quite say for sure cos the last time I tried jogging was....... ... ... ... ....... ...3 years ago, I think.

For swimming, hah here's another problem. I'm an okay swimmer just that I have to rest every few laps (due to low stamina, naturally). Problem is, my calf cramps up really easily. I suppose that's a small problem, all I need to do is warm up before swimming and get some 100plus ready, since I read that cramps occur mainly due to lack of sodium - right?

By the way, regarding your blog. I think it's got awesome, solid content - but very hard to access, for some reason. Unless it's intentional, I think you're under-utilising your blog potential, and definitely missing out on monetising it. For one, I can't search the blog to find articles on topics I want to read about. E.g. your cancer post which I was lazy to find the link again here. It's lacking a search function. Also, why not have a real website instead of a free blog? It would certainly help appearances, and when you add on email subscriptions plus a Facebook/Twitter presence, you have a really powerful tool which you can use to bring in more clients in your real-life gym thingy. You're missing out, bro!

Consider the total calories, sugar and fat. For protein and fiber, the higher the better

>> Thanks for the reply. Nope, it's not shin pain, it's itchiness slightly below the SKIN, where the clothes constantly flap against the skin during movements.

◘ I've never heard of this problem before actually... have no idea what to tell you.

>> the last time I tried jogging was....... ... ... ... ....... ...3 years ago, I think.

◘ You might could try again and see if the problem is still there. If so... not sure what to tell you.

>> For swimming, hah here's another problem. I'm an okay swimmer just that I have to rest every few laps (due to low stamina, naturally). Problem is, my calf cramps up really easily. I suppose that's a small problem, all I need to do is warm up before swimming and get some 100plus ready, since I read that cramps occur mainly due to lack of sodium - right?

◘ Not necessarily. Cramps can be caused by half a dozen different things... the first 2 I'd look at is proper nutrition and over working. Are you getting a complete spectrum of vitamins and minerals? And secondly, are you swimming too much too soon without getting used to the work load? Check those two things first. 100 plus is not likely to help.


>> For one, I can't search the blog to find articles on topics I want to read about. E.g. your cancer post which I was lazy to find the link again here. It's lacking a search function.

◘ I'm not good when it comes to computers... in fact I had to have someone show me how to put "pages" at the top of the blog. Putting a donation link was a major accomplishment for me and took an entire day. I'll try to add a search function. Perhaps there's one in the list of blogger gadgets.

>> Also, why not have a real website instead of a free blog?

◘ I have no earthly idea how to even begin designing a website. As I understand, getting one designed costs a lot of money.

>> It would certainly help appearances, and when you add on email subscriptions

◘ email... subscriptions?... if those are in the click-and-drag blogger gadgets then I might can do it.

>> plus a Facebook/Twitter presence

◘ I dont know how to do that. I've got a FB already and I usually anounce on my wall when I've got a new post up. I'm not sure how else to use FB though.

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Added on January 2, 2011, 10:38 am^^^ Search bar now added.

This post has been edited by Kasey Brown: Jan 2 2011, 10:38 AM

I guess it's time to just suck it up and live with it. I'll try jogging again when I make the time, if it hurts too bad I'll just switch to swimming then. I suspect the cramping's simply cos of the lack of swimming, but well no point thinking so much, like Nike says - Just Do It.

Sleep time

@Kasey Brown, very informative post into scientific school of thought.

I made a typing error in the previous post, what I was seeking was actually publications to ice (cold) water being damaging to kidneys in the long run. If you can provide links to that then I'd be happy to read them thoroughly.

Well what you say is definitely true, as it does not make any frivolous claims, but rather, logically from a scientific point of view.

However, I'd like to bring to your attention that be it qi-gong, or TCM, I am pretty sure there would be a very long line of documented history, and only when one experiences it him/herself would he be convinced otherwise, take for example, acupuncture, meditation, Ghosts??

I'm not saying I have experienced any personally, though I've observed some closely. Some really defied reality, but nah I'm not convinced yet. Takes one to see and experience alot more before coming to conclusions. But we shan't start about that. Non-flawed scientific publications that can be used to debunk some of these highly debated ideas would do just great.

And by the way, what I meant by qi-gong being another common practise is it being a form of exercise, which of course, stems from a long history of documented Chinese culture/belief/medical field/religion etc ?

This post has been edited by entryman: Jan 6 2011, 01:17 PM

>> I made a typing error in the previous post, what I was seeking was actually publications to ice (cold) water being damaging to kidneys in the long run.

◘ I would if I could, but there aren't any studies on that. As such my position was that cold water does not hurt your kidneys, long run or otherwise. Again, there's no reason to even think that it would. I'm unaware of any scientific publication that would even take this notion seriously.

However, perhaps these will help.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...22192822AAa2ihS (see only "best answer", ignore all others)

http://www.chacha.com/question/is-cold-wat...or-your-kidneys

It's hard to even find relevant articles on this, as the idea is just so baseless.

>> However, I'd like to bring to your attention that be it qi-gong, or TCM, I am pretty sure there would be a very long line of documented history, and only when one experiences it him/herself would he be convinced otherwise, take for example, acupuncture, meditation, Ghosts??

◘ Alright, let me see if I can explain this in some way that might be easier to relate to than my previous examples. What I'm about to type is going to be long, but length is added for the sake of simplicity and ease of understanding. So grab some popcorn or something. Seriously get comfortable.

First, your point is that we should not dismiss something that has no scientific merit because it may be subjectively experienced only by those who truly believe in it, and therefore MIGHT be real.

My point in return for this is that subjective experience cannot be used to lend credibility to a claim, because we cannot test these things for accuracy and thus cannot use them to build fact-based knowledge or to increase our understanding of anything.

So here goes.

Lets say I wake up one morning and walk outside and see a dinosaur. A real live dinosaur walking right down my street! I stand in absolute awe of this majestic creature walking quietly right down the road. I can see him, I can hear him, I can walk over and touch him, I can smell him, I can even taste him if I want to go that far. So I run back in to grab my camera, but by the time I'm back outside, the dino is gone.

For weeks I walk around asking everyone in the area if they saw anything. None of them did. One person saw something, but when we both share descriptions it becomes clear that what he saw cant possibly be what I saw.

It's been weeks since that fateful morning. And now its decision time. I have to decide... what the f*** did I see??? The good news is, we live in a free country where I can believe whatever I want. After all... I DID see that, right? My own senses told me so. I'm sure of it! I saw it! It was there!

... or ...

It could also have been a dream.
It could also have been an illusion.
It could also have been some warped out Star Trek stuff where a temporal time vortex thingy just allowed me to see what WAS there 65 million years ago.
It could have been a hologram being tested out by the military.
It could have been a robot that deconstructed itself down to the size of a box by the time I ran back outside with my camera.

This is why "I saw something" or "that really did happen" or "hundreds of people saw it!" does not count as evidence. In the scientific community, we say "if you can't show it, you dont know it". Seeing is believing. But seeing IS NOT knowing. You can never "know" anything because you are always limited by your 5 senses, and your senses aren't worth crap when it comes to understanding the inherent nature of reality.

Ever tasted something, then thought... "hmm... is this spoiled?" - then asked someone else to taste it just to confirm? You're admitting right there that your sense of taste is not objectively verifiable evidence, and that it might be wrong. All of your senses are like that. Someone asks you "how do you like your fish" and you say "I dont have any wish". You heard them wrong. I can go on the internet and show you dozens of illusions that will fool your eyes. Sorry but NONE of your senses work when it comes to understanding reality and that's one reason why eye witness testimony is considered the weakest form of evidence in court or in science.

There is no "documented history" of gi-gong. There is a documented history of people's OPINIONS on gi-gong, all of which were influenced by the growing up in a particular culture that told them repeatedly the gi-gong was unquestionably real. What a coincidence that they would then see the events of their lives as being influenced by that very thing. In the same way, any person of any culture 2,000 years ago would have grown up seeing the events of his particular life as being influenced by the gods and ghosts and magic and hocus pocus that his own particular culture taught him to believe, when in reality there may have been a very naturalistic explanation for everything that had occurred.

I was reading a book recently that a friend gave me (hi to Premilia if you're reading this - it was a good book by the way, thanks), wherein a kung fu practitioner who recently converted to Christianity, wrote a letter to two Polish men who did not speak fluent English. He wrote the letter in the simplest English he could, trying to convince them of his faith, and sent it to them. Later, he met the two men, and they thanked him for writing the letter in such good Polish. He attributed this to a miracle by God... of course, because of his recent conversion. Is it not possible that someone else simply translated the letter for them into Polish then handed it to them? This very simple explanation is over looked in favor of something utterly fantastic, because that's what the person wants to believe. All manner of "miracles" can be explained this way - including any feats attributed to the gi-gong or chi to ki or Tao or Shinto or any other word you may have for it. I've also found that people are incline to believe in such things because they simply enjoy the fantastic explanations more than the simple down to earth ones.

So again, there's a documented history of people believing this, but that's all. When a sick child practices Tai Chi gets better, the simple explanation of "he just got better on his own" is overlooked in favor of the fantastic tale of how supernatural energy from the Tai Chi healed him. Of course if this were true, then we would be using it in hospitals all the time.

So how do we get passed this stumbling block of everything-I-know-could-always-be-wrong? It's simple: evidence. You show evidence for your claim, and then your claim will be taken seriously.

"Evidence" is when all factual circumstances which are accounted for, and indicative of one particular explanation over any other. Evidence comes from / or can be used in, experiments that are testable, demonstrable, and repeatable.

Lets say "germs cause disease". This is testable. If I assign two group of 50 people into group A and group B, and expose group A to the germs and group B to something they only think are germs, I should see a very large increase in the number of people getting sick in group A than in group B. This is demonstrable. I can do this in front of a audience of people and let them watch the experiment conducted in step by step fashion, and allow them to scrutinize my work and check it for errors. This is repeatable. No matter how many times we do this, the results will be the same. This last one is very important.

The notion that vitamin C fights colds has very little supporting evidence because the results are not repeatable. When tested, in roughly half of the experiments conducted, the subjects given vitamin C get over their cold's much faster than the opposing group which was not given vitamin C. However, in the other half of experiments conducted, there were no results at all - the vitamin C group did not get better any faster. These results are not consistently repeatable, and therefore vitamin C's efficacy on treating colds has been called into question.

Do you see why this is so much stronger than "My grandma took vitamin C and she got better so I know it works"? Or "I really really really did see a ghost I'm sure of it that's how I know they're real"?

A lot of people on here have commented how nutrition is all about "what you want to believe" or "you believe it or you don't". This isn't the case. We know what we know because no matter how many times we test it, we can show you the exact same mechanisms happening in the exact same way with consistent results. If you cant test it / show it / repeat it, then you dont know it. Sure, it MIGHT be true, but it might also NOT be true, and "not true" is the default position to take on any matter because the burden of proof lays upon the person making the affirmation. This is why I continually maintain that McDonalds food is healthy and can be included as part of a balanced diet. To everyone who says it isn't healthy - you're making an affirmation. You're saying definitively "it is not healthy". Thus, the burden of proof now lays on you. You must either show the evidence supporting your claim, or you must keep quiet and retract your claims. If you've got the evidence, lets see it. If it checks out, I'll have to change my position accordingly. That's how science works. Facts and evidence are tested and repeated to weed out the bad ideas and continually improve the working models we have of understanding the natural world.

>> Takes one to see and experience alot more before coming to conclusions.

◘ Even if you did come to such conclusions, the conclusions could always be wrong until they are independently verifiable.

>> But we shan't start about that. Non-flawed scientific publications that can be used to debunk some of these highly debated ideas would do just great.

◘ You may be making a mistake... you cannot prove a negative. It is impossible to prove that gi-gong is NOT real. Just like it's impossible to prove Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy is NOT real. You cant do it. No matter how thorough your tests or how much or how often you test, you will never conclusively prove that Santa DOES NOT exist.

If I said I had an invisible dragon in my house, and you brought over some X ray machines, I could always say he's also invisible to X rays.

So you spread dust all over the floor and wait a week because surely you'd see his foot prints. I could always say he floats and doesn't walk.

So you set bottles and glasses and such everywhere and wait a week because surely he'd knock one of them over. I could always say he's intangible (passes through matter) and thus wouldn't knock any of them down.

So you set out food and water and monitor the amount because surely he'd have to eat. I could always say he lives off sunlight.

No matter what you do, you cannot prove a negative. This is why you don't have to prove shit. If I said I have an invisible dragon in my house, I'M THE ONE who now has the burden of proof. It's up to me to prove he's actually there, NOT up to you to prove he ISN'T there. This is why you wont find any studies proving cold water DOESN'T hurt your kidneys. If you said it does hurt your kidneys, you're the one making the affirmation. You now have to provide evidence supporting the claim that it does... it's not up to anyone else to provide evidence showing it doesn't.

Once you do provide evidence, then we'll begin testing that evidence over and over to see if we can make it fail. If we can, then your evidence is dismissed. If we can't, then we accept your claims and will continue to test them so we can build knowledge from them.

>> And by the way, what I meant by qi-gong being another common practise is it being a form of exercise, which of course, stems from a long history of documented Chinese culture/belief/medical field/religion etc ?

◘ Culture, belief, and religion are not objectively verifiable and are usually wrong. If you mean using gi-gong as a series of exercises involving hand and leg movements that make you stronger, this is fine... we know that exercise makes a person stronger and there's nothing mystical about that. It's common though, that you might find a gi-gong exercise practitioner who credits his physical fitness to magical energies and not the simple fact that muscles adapt when the right conditions are met.

Now I hope that was simple enough and made the process easier to understand.

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Added on January 6, 2011, 4:01 pmP.S. if I ended up repeating some points, sorry for that. I'm not just typing this for entryman, but for everyone else who wants to know what is what and why things are either myth or fact.

This post has been edited by Kasey Brown: Jan 6 2011, 04:01 PM

need answer, please.

>> and the only way to cure is taking some sort of chinese traditional medication.

◘ ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *falls out of chair and stairs at ceiling* (.-.)

...
...
...

No. Just... it...

(.-.)

First, there could be any number of problems making you do that. You're telling only one symptom. We cant know what the problem is from just that because it could be a number of things.

Second... no. You know what? Forget it. Take chinese traditional medicine. Really, maybe the tai chi will help. Go ahead. Enjoy. (.-.)

maybe try to take a cosway product that reduce that. can't recall the product name. works for me

lol mlm products can work ke?

hey, any medicine to sapu for bisul? it keep keluar the yellow thingy.

true! they said too much of a good thing can be hazardous to health~ for example, if take excessive vitamin c, eventhough its good~ but too much intake will caused diarrhea

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Added on February 14, 2011, 7:43 amonly cosway product is the best mlm product

This post has been edited by NabilB: Feb 14 2011, 07:43 AM

not to say its the best, just that it works for me

if someone has flabby stomach , is it hard to get rid of it ? or opposite?
some said it easy , but some of them said hard .

so what the actual answer?

i hope this is the correct place to ask this.

My left hand is feeling a bit cramp on my biceps for two days already, i guess i might have lifted too heavy dumbbells, so now i should wait for the cramp to go away before i start to lift again?