Grab Bag Breast Buddy Advice:

The Breast Cancer Fund has a specific mission: to help expose and eliminate environmental sources that contribute to breast cancer. For those who are cancer survivors, their Tips for Prevention are of paramount importance, as they should be for all women.

You will find dedicated sections there, explaining the hazards that may be found in:

 • Air and Water

 • Food

 • Plastics

 • Health Care

 • Household Products

 • Cosmetics

In focusing on the last category, of note is their list of harmful chemicals to avoid in cosmetics, which are often found in:

• – Hair dyes, especially dark permanent dyes.
• – Liquid hand soaps with triclosan/triclocarban.
• – Nail polish and removers with formaldehyde, DBP or toluene (which can be contaminated with benzene).
• – Skin lighteners with hydroquinone.
• – Heavily scented products.
• – Moisturizers, ointments and skin creams with petrolatum (which can be contaminated with PAHs).
• – Fungicides, shaving creams, hair gels and hair coloring containing nonylphenol.
• – Hair spray, gel, mousse or shaving cream that contains isobutane, that can be contaminated with 1,3-butadiene.
• – Sunscreens with UV filters that mimic estrogen.

And very worthy of your careful consideration is this advice:

• – Avoid fragrance, which can include hundreds of toxic ingredients.
• – Use truly natural products and avoid empty claims of “natural” or “organic.”
• – Read labels completely, avoiding words you do not recognize and can not pronounce.
• – Follow your nose when choosing a nail or hair salon, ensure they are using proper ventilation.

Please familiarize yourself with all the Tips for Prevention from the Breast Cancer Fund. I want to be clear that I do not believe that eliminating toxins from your environment will give anyone immunity from breast cancer. But these steps certainly cannot harm you, and are very worth taking if you wish to maximize your health and minimize your risk of cancer. So… why WOULDN’T you?

Grab Bag View to Your Heart:

Your eyes may have a lot to say when it comes to your cardiac health picture. If you notice yellowish lumps on the lids above or below the eye, an increased risk of dangerous high cholesterol may be indicated, and certainly needs to be checked. But with these eyelid lumps, even if your numbers are normal, a long-term Danish study showed increased risk of heart attack. Maximizing your lifestyle choices for optimal heart health would surely be your best defense to begin with. The earlier the bumps appear, the higher the heart risk. Keep an eye out for these 😉

In addition, look deep into your eyes … 😯 if you see a white ring forming around the outer border of the iris, this “arcus” may be an indication of potential heart disease as well.

Grab Bag Hands-Only CPR:

Last year I mentioned that CPR recommendations were changing, although mouth-to-mouth was still being taught in many classes. Now these new guidelines are available online, as well as a downloadable app for your mobile device.

Hopefully this will be less intimidating for people to consider if confronted with a life-or-death situation. The old standard of 30 compressions and 2 breaths is not necessarily wrong, but the new recommendations recognize that the fast and nearly uninterrupted chest compressions of roughly 100 per minute are the most important.

Traditional CPR with mouth-to-mouth breathing should be applied in the following scenarios:

• All infants (see below)

• Children (up to age 8)

• Adults found already unconscious and not breathing normally

• Victims of drowning, drug over-dose or collapse due to breathing problems

If an infant needs CPR (best determined by estimating if a baby’s head + torso fits on your forearm ) follow this simple video:

Links to the videos above can be found under the Health/Medical section on the right side of every page here.

Grab Bag Stuck Like Glue:

Ever try to glue something and have multiple failed attempts? A lot of people keep Super Glue handy and pull it out for nearly everything… and it often fails. Why? Here’s a good explanation from a Lifehacker forum participant about the limits of the little bottle of sticky stuff:

Super glue made mostly of Cyanoacrylate ( [en.wikipedia.org] ), a quick bonding acrylic resin (read: brittle) chemical that start to form when come in contact with water or just moisture. There are many brands of super glue, each with different compound to make the glue stay liquid and gel-like or to strengthen it, but they doesn’t last well in the long run. This stuff is easily affected by head and moisture, when the outside areas expose to air for a long time, they start to become brittle and weak, eventually they form cracks and destroy the whole glue patch. Also, sometime when the glue blob is to thick, the glue just couldn’t harden inside of the blob, since the area around it has become a solid trap, separate the inside glue with moisture outside. That’s why super glue works better in filling small area, since there are not much area to form cracks. But on flat, smooth surface, it is likely to begin breaking as soon as it is dried.

There are a few ways to fix this issue. One is using a fine powder to fill the surface, such as sawdust or baking soda. Baking soda can also work as an accelerator, so the glue will harden quicker than normal. Two is to apply the super glue into both sides of a paper towel or plastic net (as I often do), then place it between the surfaces you want to fix. The second method also works very well to make a strong protective cover/wrapping.

DO NOT USE SUPER GLUE WITH ANY COTTON OR WOOL MATERIALS. THEY WILL GIVE OF A LOT OF HEAT AND COULD BURN.

Speaking from experience: You can remove super glue by using Acetone (Nail polish remover), but be careful since Acetone is very strong, it could destroy any plastic, acrylic materials. Instead, use Nitromethane, which can be found in gasolie can also be used and easier to obtain.

[Here’s another tip: If you ever need to fill gaps in plastics, metals, wood, or stone that will be painted later, apply Super Glue, then sprinkle a liberal amount of baking soda on, let dry for a few seconds, remove excess baking soda (do NOT get this mixture on your skin) and sand smooth.]

To help get it right the first time, check out this chart of which glue to use for what application. Click on the chart to link to a full explanation of what each adhesive is good at and why, as well as how long each glue takes to dry, and to cure. For future reference, this link can be found in the Fix It section in the right column of every page here.

* These glues are not ideal for adhering the material but can be sufficient if the project is small and lightweight, and non-functional (craft only). When using hot glue for styrofoam projects, choose a low-temperature glue gun only. High-temperature hot glue will most likely refuse to bond and melt the plastic, which gives off harmful fumes. Also note that only waterproof glues should be used on ceramics such as mugs, dishware and vases. Lastly, if your paper projects involve fine artwork (or anything you’d like to keep for a very long time) you should use archival adhesives instead of the standard glues above.

Grab Bag Passport:

Ever seen the Sistine Chapel? Want to see it again? The last and only time I was inside, scaffolding was covering about ⅓ of the interior. So I really enjoyed this amazing, rotational, zoomable view, which is SO much better than being there because:

1. You can zoom in far closer than your eyes can take you in real life.

2. There are no other people blocking your views, talking, bumping into you and smelling weird.

3. You didn’t have to wait 20 minutes in line, in 87°  temperature for this.

4. You didn’t have to fly a dozen hours to get there… just click on the picture below.

Ciao…. drop us a line when you get there.

Grab Bag Brain Game:

Here are some memory challenges in four different categories from National Geographic. Select a category (animals, landscapes, numbers and letters), view the position of 9 images in a 3 x 3 grid for 10 seconds, and when they are removed from the grid, drag them back into the correct position as quickly as possible. Each category tests a slightly different set of memory skills… go for it 🙂

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MEMORY GAME

  

Grab Bag Funny Stuff:

THE GYNECOLOGIST WHO BECAME A MECHANIC

 

 A gynecologist had become fed up with malpractice insurance and HMO paperwork, and was burned out.

Hoping to try another career where skillful hands would be beneficial, he decided to become a  mechanic. He went to the local technical college, signed up for evening classes, attended diligently, and learned all he could.

When the time of the practical exam approached, the gynecologist prepared carefully for weeks, and completed the exam with tremendous skill. When the results came back, he was surprised to find that he had obtained a score of 150%.

Fearing an error, he called the instructor, saying, “I don’t want to appear ungrateful for such an outstanding result, but I wonder if there is an error in the grade?”

The instructor said, “During the exam, you took the engine apart perfectly, which was worth 50% of the total mark. You put the engine back together again perfectly, which is also worth 50% of the mark.”

After a pause, the instructor added, “I gave you an extra 50% because you did it all through the muffler, which I’ve never seen done in my entire career”.

Thanks to my very dignified mom for sending this

very dignified story awhile ago.