We don’t notice how important breathing is until it’s blocked making it hard for us to breath. We won’t die from a blocked nose, but not being able to breath through our nose feels uncomfortable, irritating, and miserable. We can try to blow our nose until our ears explode but sometimes the mucus just doesn’t want to come out.

Nasal Sprays

Drug companies saw a huge market and swoop in to help relieve our suffering. For our temporary relief, they created nasal sprays, but according to the article Millions Suffer From Addiction to OTC Nasal Sprays, chemical nasal sprays have side-effects.

Side-effects of chemical nasal sprays:

• Contains active ingredients like Phenylephrine, Xylometazoline, or Oxymetazoline which are bad for the body
• Cause addictions
• Worsen the symptoms over time

They also made saline nasal spray, but according to Dr. Grossan’s article Nasal Saline Sprays – The Additives May Be the Problem it contain additives and preservatives that cause burning and worsen the symptoms in some of his patients. Nice try drug companies, but sometimes a good old reliable method that doesn’t cost us any money is still the best. What is this method? It is a nose wash.

Nose Wash

It is a natural and safe way to relief stuffiness. It removes mucus in our nasal cavity that is causing the congestion so we can breath freely. It allows our body the opportunity to fix the problem rather than suppressing the functions and its symptoms with medications. Over time the body may be able to fix the problems rather than being dependent on the medication.

This is a good tool to learn because it will bring great relieve during allergies, or cold and flu season, and allow our body to cure to the problem. Here’s what you need and the instructions.

Materials

Materials for nose wash

What you need: 500ml water container (I use one with a large cap so it’s easier to wash.) 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon salt Make the salt solution: Fill half the bottle with filtered water, about 250ml. Put 1/4 tsp salt into the water bottle, screw on the cap, and shake until the salt dissolves.

Instructions

Nose Wash

Nose Wash: Lean forward over the sink Tilt your head so that one nostril is above the other. Slowly pour the salt solution in the top nostril. The salt water should flow out the lower nostril. Continue for 10 seconds, then stop pouring the salt solution. Straighten your head and allow the salt water to drain from the nose, and gently blow the nose to remove the remaining water and mucus. Repeat step 1-5 for the other nostril. Continue switching between the two nostril until the nose feels clean or until you finish the salt solution.

Tips:

• It will feel strange and uncomfortable pouring water into your nose so try it when your nose is clear. There shouldn’t be any pain, but when water gets to certain areas, you will feel the same pain as breathing in water during swimming.
• Learn to do the nose wash when your nose is unblocked.
• Feel the sensation of the water flowing into the nasal cavity and down toward the throat.
• Try gently inhaling and exhaling to direct the water flowing into and out of the nose.
• Try a swallowing motion to control the water flowing down toward the throat; bring the water down toward the throat without letting it drain into the throat.
• Lean your head at different angle to feel the water draining toward the nasal cavity or the throat.
• When your nose is blocked,
• Blow your nose to remove some of the mucus first.
• Dislodging:
• Inhale to help the salt water flow into the nostril, then blow to remove the water and loosen the mucus.
• Switch to the other nostril and inhale and blow.
• Repeat until the salt water can flow into the nostril easily and drain out the other nostril. You may need switch 4 to 5 times.
• Use different lean and tilt of the head to direct the water to different areas.
• Blow your nose to remove the remaining water and mucus after the nose wash.
• When you feel a sore throat, but it feels like it’s on the top of the throat just behind the hard palate, it’s most likely in the area where the nose drains down the throat. You can use the nose wash to get the salt water down to that area to relief the soreness.
• You can buy water containers call Neti Pot designed to pour easier into the nostril. There are also formulated salt solutions for rinsing. Mouse over the pictures below for details, and click to get the product description.

References:

• http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/27323.php Millions Suffer From Addiction to OTC Nasal Sprays
• Dr. Murray Grossan, http://www.ent-consult.com/salineadditives.html Nasal Sailine Sprays – The Additives May Be the Problem, 2003

I never doubted that manufacturers would try their best to give us good safe products at a reasonable price. They spend so much time and energy to make the products and to make their brands stand out, so I didn’t think twice about using the products.

Several years ago, I was a voracious enthusiast of alternative therapy, which just means that I wanted to understand what I needed to do to keep my body healthy without resorting to pills and medicines. Knowing this, my sister-in-law gave me a little book called Cancer-Causing Chemicals in Cosmetics & Daily Use Products (1). It showed a list of cancer causing ingredients that manufacturers put into our daily used products like soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, lotions, deodorants, etc. I checked the list against some of products that I used each day and sure enough, they are full of cancer-causing and possibly cancer-causing ingredients. My delusion was broken. Most manufacturers wants to give us reasonably priced and effective products, but could care less about the ingredients being slowly absorbed through our skin into our bodies and eventually causing painful diseases. Thanks a lot!

I have reformatted the list from the book so it’s easier to read and find the ingredients. I print the table and keep it in my wallet to check against the products I plan to buy. It’s amazing to see how many products contain these ingredients. It’s best to avoid products that have too many of these ingredients; it’s a potentially high risk disease-causing problem that can be prevented if we choose wisely. Print it out and compare for yourself the next time you go shopping.

Reference:
1. Consumer’s Association of Penang, Cancer-Causing Chemicals in Cosmetics & Daily Use Products, Penang: Consumers’ Association of Penang, 2000

I have been busy working on a new look for the website. I spent a lot of time programming to get things working correctly. With a week and a half of long hours, I can feel the my eyesight getting weaker and blurrier. I fell back into one bad habit that I wanted to break. I worked long and hard to get the task done, and I compromised my eyesight to do it. It would have been better if I had looked away every few minutes and focused on something far away. In my haste to get it done, I forgot to take care of my eyes. It’s so easy to fall back into our old routines. I have been exercising my eyes for over a year, but somehow, I didn’t follow the few simple new habits that I was practicing.

Good habits I want when I’m working:

• every ten minutes, I scan the room and trace some patterns
• every half hour, I would close my eyes and massage around the eyes
• every hour, I would take a break and relax my eyes, maybe look out the window

It’s such a simple thing to do, but I didn’t do it. Maybe, I haven’t worked hard enough to form this habit. I’ll try harder to break this bad habit replacing it with this new habit.

There are many lessons we should learn throughout our lives to enhance our life experience. Unfortunately, reading about a life lesson doesn’t not mean that you can understand it. Many events have to happen in the right order to allow us understand the lesson. Let’s take a very simple example to see the events that lead up to an understanding of a lesson. Suppose you are playing tennis and have been struggling to hit your backhand. You have a habit of stabbing at the ball. You don’t understand why you can’t hit a backhand properly. You want to hit the backhand better. So, you look to see what you are doing when you hit your backhand. Your friend hits the ball to your backhand and you continue to stab at the ball. He tells you, “hit the ball don’t stab at it!” You don’t understand what he’s talking about. Then he hits to your forehand and you swing a perfect return. Suddenly, you realize that you are not swinging at the ball when you hit your backhand. The stabbing motion doesn’t give you a consistent hitting motion. So, you try swinging the backhand the same way as your forehand. You hit the ball into the net, over the fence, and off the court, but you notice that it feels good to swing at the ball. Your timing with the swing is off but you feel the power and consistency of swinging it. You continue to swing your backhand and after a few days, you can consistently hit the ball into the court.

Let’s look at the events necessary to learn this backhand lesson:

• you see that your backhand is inconsistent and want to improve
• you watch to see what you are doing with the backhand
• Your forehand hit shows you the proper way to hit the ball
• you realize the problem, that’s the Aha! moment
• you test and try to change the backhand swing
• you persist even though you were hitting the ball all over the place
• you finally achieve it

If certain key events didn’t happen, you most likely wouldn’t have learned the lesson. For example, if you didn’t care or didn’t know that your backhand is inconsistent, if you didn’t realize that you aren’t swinging your backhand, or if you didn’t continue to practice hitting your backhand, there’s a good chance that you may not go through the process needed to learn the lesson.

This is why life lessons can be difficult to grasp or understand. Anything can interrupt a key step in the process. When it gets interrupted, we don’t learn the lesson. We miss the opportunity to realize something new and possibly life changing. Of course, the opportunity could reveal itself many time throughout our lives, but we may unknowingly let it slip by each time. Now that we know there is a process, we can be keep it in mind as we come across any life lesson. Doesn’t it seem troublesome to go through all this trouble just to learn some lesson? We can go through life doing the same routine, but wouldn’t it be much better to have insights that help us understand ourselves and our world better?

Margaret owns a small optical shop where my mother-in-law (MIL) went to have her eyes checked and change the prescription on her glasses. As the optometrist examine my MIL’s eyes, Margaret sat down and chatted with my wife and I. She was glad that we brought my MIL for an eye check, because people tend to dismiss their elderly parent’s complaints of eye soreness, headaches, or unable to see clearly. Her mom had complained about her eyesight many times, and Margaret had her optometrist check her mom’s eyes and the optometrist assured her that everything was fine. Margaret dismissed the complaints as an old age problem that everyone goes through. About three year later, her mom became blind from glaucoma. The pressure in her eyes damaged the optic nerves. Blindness devastated her mother, and she now sits at home with her spirit for living sucked out of her. Holding back her tears, Margaret blamed herself. She was in the eye care business and she neglectfully allowed her mother to go blind. Her lesson to us, “Take care of your eyes; if something doesn’t feel right have it check out and get a second opinion; you don’t know how precious it is until it’s gone.”

The optometrist had problems examining my MIL’s eyes due to the thickening cataracts and referred us to an eye-specialist near by. After an extensive amount of tests, they concluded that she has cataracts and glaucoma. She will need to have her cataracts removed through laser surgery and treat the glaucoma with eye drops. There were some nerve damage from the glaucoma but the drops are suppose to help to reduce the pressure in her eyes. It’s good that the doctor can help her to prevent farther damage, and hopefully improve her eyesight. However, treating the problem is expensive with many hidden and recurring costs.

We tend to notice a disease when it hits home. I didn’t know much about the two diseases, so I did some research to understand them. I believe in taking steps now to prevent major problems and suffering later. Is it possible to prevent cataracts and glaucoma or are we all doomed to pay homage to the laser eye surgery tycoons?

Cataracts Accumulates Debris

Cataracts is the build-up of dead cell debris accumulated in the eyes preventing light from reaching the retina. There are many possible causes such as ultraviolet radiation, diabetes, or poor nutrition. However, Dr. Merrill J. Allen, Dr. Steven M. Beresford, and Dr. Francis A. Young of The American Vision Institute gives a new theory in the article Cataract and Eye Exercises. They theorized that fluid and nutrients enter the eyes, and wastes are removed from the eyes through diffusion. This fluid movement occurs when our eyes move, adjust to light and focus. When we age, the eye muscles weakens and the lens stiffens causing decrease circulation. This decrease in circulation allow the debris to accumulate to form cataracts. They have helped some of their patients dissolve their cataracts through eye exercises. The eye exercises increase circulation needed to remove wastes and over time dissolves the cataracts. These are some of the exercises in the Eye Exercise post.

Glaucoma Can Lead To Blindness

Glaucoma is damage to the optic nerve which could result in blindness. The eyes maintain regular pressure by circulating fluids in and out of the eyes. The fluids flow through an area at the base of the iris close to the bridge of the nose called the trabecular meshwork. If the meshwork is block for any reason, it cause increase pressure in the eye. The pressure prevents blood flow to the optic nerves and cause permanent damage if not treated. According to Dr. Merrill J. Allen, Dr. Steven M. Beresford, and Dr. Francis A. Young in the article Glaucoma and Eye Exercises, there are two types of glaucoma one is open angle glaucoma and other is close angle glaucoma. In open angle glaucoma the trabecular meshwork has some blockage which increase the pressure in the eyes. In close angle glaucoma the pupil over-dilates causing the blockage that increase the pressure in the eyes. Both types can cause permanent nerve damage to the eyes.

The doctors suggest an eye exercises they called flashing to stimulate the iris to expand and contract to help flush out any blockage. To do the exercise, sit in front of a bright light with your eyes closed, and switch the light on when you breath in and off when you breath out. They suggest doing this for thirty minutes a day. I suggest covering your eyes with your palms rather than wearing out your light switch.

Circulation Problem

Both cataracts and glaucoma seem to share the same problem, an inability to circulate fluids, nutrients, or wastes into and out of the eyes. This circulation happens through the natural movement and adjustment that our eyes make throughout the day. It needs to move, focus and adjust (to light) in order to maintain eye health. Our modern lifestyle has changed the way we use our eyes. Today we spend most of our time reading, watching TV, and working on the computer which has limited the eyes’ natural movement. If we exercise them everyday we can bring back some of the nature movements the eyes need to maintain health. It’s no guarantee, but learning and doing the eye exercises should improve our vision and prevent problems like cataracts and glaucoma.

The Real Lesson

Many of us do not know and don’t want to learn how to take care of our eyes until it gives us problems. We tend to brush off symptoms as age-related when they do appear. Thanks to Margaret tragic story we quickly had my MIL’s eyes checked rather than postponing the appointment to a more convenient time and possibly forgetting to get her eyes checked. The specialist did find the problem and possibly prevented farther damage to my MIL’s eyes. I’m grateful for the lesson Margaret taught us that day and hopefully others will learn from the lesson so that her mother’s suffering does not go in vain.

I was watching “The Late Show with David Letterman” the other night, and Charles Moore was one of the guest. His discussion about the floating garbage shocked me. The amount of garbage floating in the pacific ocean is double the size of Texas. It is harming and killing all the sea creature in the area. I have heard something about it a few years back but didn’t get a chance to watch any video or read any article about it until last night.

We have made great advances in science and technology. It has made our lives much better, but everything that share this earth with us is paying the price for our convenience and cleverness.

Recycling is good but it’s just a bandage to the problem. The root of the problem is plastics, is it possible to stop using it? Everything we buy comes in plastic packaging, and we carry them home in plastic bags. We use it for everything, and it’s everywhere. This video gives an overview of the situation.

Some things I’m doing and we can all do:

• recycle everything – all plastic containers, newspaper, paper, cans, batteries, phones, etc.
• reuse – bring my own canvas bag for groceries, use both side of the paper before recycling, reuse containers to store things, etc.
• go glass, wood or metal – try to buy and use glass, wood or metal rather than plastic
• use less – water, energy, and fuel; and packaged processed food and products;

Problem areas:

• groceries – everything is wrapped in plastic, sometimes multiple layers.
• grocery bags – I live in a condominium, so I use plastic bags to put wet and smelly food stuff before throwing in the garbage bin. I don’t have a good alternative yet.
• things we use daily are made of plastics or has plastics. (comb, toothbrush, toothpaste tube, chairs, tables, computer, car, pen, etc.)

We can help to reduce, but ultimately companies have to change at the source. It’s a big problem because every company in the world would need to find alternative materials, and would cost lots of money.