happylife

Tempur's pillow

I've been using this strange shaped pillow for years. As you might know, it is a famous Tempur's pillow. NASA originally developed the material for shock absorbing use in the early 1970's, and Swedish company named Tempur perfected it for medical use. The most characteristic point of this pillow is its touch of feeling; when you touch it, it clings to you. If you press it with your hand, the mark of your palm remains for a minute after you let go of it. With this pillow I feel like my head is floating on water. It dramatically relieves my neck pain and back pain. I love it so much that I carry it with me when I go sailing. The only one problem is its price. More than one hundred backs for just a pillow might seem incredible, but it seems quite reasonable when we think it as the cost for thousands of comfortable sleeps. If you have neck pain or you can't sleep, this pillow would be a good resolution.

VapoRub

The first day of 2007 has begun with a smell of menthol. I caught a cold from my friend a few days ago. It has been getting worse day by day. I barely catch a cold, but once I catch it, it takes long before the full recovery. As my nose was terribly stopped up and the throat was so sore that I finally went to a drug store in the midnight of New Year's Eve to buy some medicine. This medicine is the first medicine I was prescribed when I was a little child. Other medicine could have been prescribed before that, but I don't remember at all. I think the strange sound of the name might have impressed on my infant brain. I think this VapoRub is simply great because it has been produced and used for decades all over the world. It's a real standard item for me. Thanks to rubs of this ointment on my chest and throat, I feel better now. I've decided to live on my bed all day long today. My body wants enough rest and nutrition, and I have no objection to it.

Night hiccups

It was 3:30 in the middle of the night. I was in a dream which was rather happy one though I've forgotten what it was like. Suddenly I was waked up from the dream world to the real because of a funny but serious reason. I got hiccups in a sleep for the first time in my life. I was so sleepy that I tried to keep lying in my bed at first but I couldn't do it. The hiccups got more strenuous and frequent. I got up at last and had to struggle to stop them almost for an hour. I remembered a news topic regarding hiccups in the last few days. It said that a doctor who put his finger on a cure for hiccups got the IgNobel Prize. It might sound funny but hiccups can be sometimes critical in case of an operation under general anesthesia for instance.

Cancer as a terrorist

I heard an interesting story about cancer from my friend who is a doctor. According to him, cancer is an error of cell division and each cancer cell is anarchy just like a terrorist. It has been existed since human beings were born, however, the longer our life span, the more possibility of cell division error, and the more people die of cancer. If this theory is true, cancer seems to be a kind of warning timer telling us "you have lived too long." Of course, losing our family or friends is a great grief, but should we or could we change our destiny by conquering cancer? As for me, I don't like to live for a long time over the limitation. All I want is that all my body including my brain, eyes, ears, hands, legs and so on, are fully working until the moment of my death.

How to ingest spinach

I read an article about eye health on the Internet the other day. It said that taking a bunch of spinach every day is very good for our eyes because spinach contains lecithin which is a compound of phosphorus. Lecithin is said to work like a kind of cleaner for our blood and cells, but it's difficult to be absorbed effectively into our body because it's insoluble substance. According to the article, soy beans help us to absorb lecithin effectively, therefore, we only have to eat a bunch of spinach with a piece of tofu at one time. We can think of many kinds of recipes using spinach and soy beans, but I think this is the easiest one: "smoothie of spinach and soy beverage". I tried this way this morning; put a bunch of spinach into a blender with an apple and a mango, and pour half cups of soy beverage, and then blend! The result was perfect and I'm thinking about adding blueberries next time. It would be an ultimate recipe for eyes.

Blueberry power

As I had a terrible experience about my eyes in the last night-flight, I prepared a secret weapon this time. I got it at Save on Foods in Ladner, the nearest village from the airport. It is a bottle of blueberry smoothie which contains a lot of effective component called anthocyanin. This dark blue material is said to activate human eyes and I felt it personally. I drank the beverage a few minutes before the flight, and I felt it worked very well; I could see the memo on my knee-pad in the dark airplane without difficulty. If you have difficulty in your night vision, I recommend that you have blueberries before night flying, driving and whatever activity in darkness. It would take effect at once.

A speedy dentist in Vancouver

A phone call from a dentist waked me up late this morning. She told me that I could see her from now because her patient made a cancellation. As soon as I arrived at her, the treatment started after taking X-ray. I had two options about my treatment; one is to restore my dropped crown with some cement temporarily, and the other is to recreate a new crown after caring the decayed tooth. I chose the complete care because she said she could finish it within one hour. As I was closing my eyes all the time, I'm not sure what she was doing exactly. After getting a local anesthetic, all I could feel was rubber on my lips, vibration of dental device, and the pain around my jaw which was kept open all the time. Just as she had told me, her treatment finished after one hour and I retrieved my back tooth. I didn't have any pain or strange feeling around my new tooth. It is perfect for now.

This treatment looked even miracle for me because I was used to the Japanese dentist's slow treatment in which we have to see him or her every week for months; he takes pictures and examine on the first day, he cleans the decayed tooth and covers it with gum on the next week, he makes the cast of the new tooth and orders to a dental technician, he puts the new tooth on the patient a few weeks later, he adjusts the new tooth on the next week, and he does the final check on the last day. I hear that dentist's skills are excellent in Vancouver because they have to take skill check to keep up with brand-new technique. I think it's a good system and it should be adopted to Japanese dentists and doctors.

A lost crown

When I was having dinner, a cup of steamed rice with Japanese seasoning, I felt something like a pebble in my mouth. I think this is one of the worst feeling we sometimes experience in our daily lives, because it suggests the following unhappy days. Of course it was that the crown of my back tooth came off, and it means that I have to see a dentist in a few days. Fortunately, or I should say unfortunately, it is Saturday and every dentist in Vancouver must be closed. I have more than one day before seeing doctor. I know that is meaningless, but I need time to prepare for starting the painful task. Except for the pain, I have another anxiety; my insurance doesn't cover any dental cares, and I'm now in Vancouver where the medical cost is super high. I wonder how much it costs without insurance.

A red eye

I'm sorry to show you a zoomed photo of my grotesque red eye. I found half of my left eye was bleeding when I looked into the mirror this morning. As I had just the same symptom in my eye a few years ago, and as it doesn't hurt at all, I wasn't shocked so much, but it is true that my eye looks very strange and scary. The last time I had this red eye in Japan, of course I saw an eye doctor in Tokyo, but he told me there was no problem in my eye. My eye recovered in a week with the color from red to yellow, and yellow to white; in the way as he told me, therefore this time, I'm not worrying about it. As I know this red eye is turning into yellow, I thought about a funny thing; that is to say, if my right half part of my left eye bled in a week, and I wore a blue-colored contact lens, my left eye would look like a traffic signal with three colors!

A tip to wear contact lenses

I've been wearing contact lenses for more than a decade. My life would have been more inconvenient and unpleasant without them. I don't like glasses because they are annoying and everything looks smaller through them. Sure I'm interested in laser vision correction but it is still scary for me to take any kind of operation on my eyes. I think that contact lenses are the best choice for now for me. I'd like to share my tip of contact lenses, which is simple but very effective for every one using contact lenses. That is to say, wash your hands with soap before putting on contact lenses. By washing the oil on your finger away, the contact lenses are set on your eyes at the best condition. Your eyes are so sensitive that just a little oil can stimulate them and you would feel unpleasant.