Pro-Sports

It was starting to look like I wasn’t going to have time to work out again today, but I did manage to squeeze in a half hour Yoga session using the 10 Minute Yoga DVD.  I did the basic (10 minutes), the thighs and buns (10 minutes), and the flexibility and relaxation (10 minutes) routines.  I might add that it was a lot harder than I remembered and it definitely felt a lot tougher than the Yoga Zone DVDs I’d been using in the earlier part of this week. 

Although I was ready to collapse by the time I was done with the thighs and buns routine, it feels like my yoga technique has improved pretty quickly over the course of the week.  For one, my flexibility has improved - I didn’t feel nearly as stiff running through the yoga routine today.  Although I can feel an ache from lactic acid build up in my arms, there is something very satisfying about the sensation.  Maybe I’m a bit of a sadist, but I always did get a high from the after ache of a solid workout.  It’s like a good friend I haven’t seen in a while…

For a first week back into the fitness program, I think I’ve done pretty well.  Here’s a summary of the results of my week for Go Workout Mom’s Goal Call Monday:

Monday - 40 Minutes Yoga Zone Fat Burner
Tuesday - 40 Minutes Yoga Zone Total Body Conditioning
Thursday - 20 Minutes Yoga Zone Sunrise & Sunset
Friday - 20 Minutes Yoga Zone Sunrise & Sunset
Sunday - 30 Minutes 10 Minute Yoga

Whether I’ll be able to maintain this pace next week, we’ll have to see.  I think it also depends on whether my son will be patient enough to allow me to workout.

Even though it’s only been a week, I’m feeling pretty good.  A natural side-effect of the exercise is that I am more conscious of the food I’m putting into my mouth.  The instinct is to eat healthier and to cut back on the copious quantities of junk food that has found its way back into my daily staple.  Since it normally takes about a month of exercise for any marked physical changes to occur, I’ll be examining the psychological effects of exercise at the end of week two.

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I know this is primarily a sports blog but occasionally, when I come across conversations about weight loss and listen to the unrealistic expectations many people have, I feel compelled to put forward my ten cents worth and here it is…

Whenever I talk to friends about losing weight, I find there is a common expectation – a desire to lose a lot of weight in the shortest time possible. This expectation has been moulded by our society of rapid results and instant gratification – we want everything and we want it yesterday.

Unfortunately, if you want to lose weight and successfully keep it off, this is exactly the wrong way to go. Excessive and rapid weight loss is accompanied by rebound weight gain that sometimes surpasses the original weight that one began with. In such a case, the old adage of “slow and steady wins the race” is rather apt.

In a recent conversation with a friend, it was revealed to me that this friend had lost four kilos in one week. While she had been proud of the achievement at the time, she lamented in the following week that two of those four kilos had been “gained” back despite maintaining her current level of activity and diet.

Let us examine this example. My friend, while on the larger side, is not to say particularly overweight. To lose four kilos in one week is therefore an unrealistic expectation. A more realistic and healthy approach is to work at losing 0.5-1kg every one to two weeks - the slower, the better because your body requires time to adjust. Also, instead of weighing in everyday and tracking her weight on a daily basis, she should ideally weigh in once a week at the same time of the day. Weight fluctuations of 1-2kg within the day and from day to day (most often due to water loss) should be expected and cannot be counted towards actual weight lost.

While I applaud her for not relying on weight loss gimmicks and diet pills to hasten weight loss, I feel she needs to review her expectations and her dietary and exercise regime. Her methods for losing weight are exercise and calorie restriction through dieting.

Why Exercise?

The primary reason for exercising while dieting is to help maintain the basal metabolic rate (the amount of energy our body burns in order to maintain our normal body functions at rest). Our body is designed to react to calorie restrictions by turning on famine mode (although our lives have been modernised to the extent that access to food is so readily available that fear of starvation is a thing of the past, our bodies still maintain the need to preserve body stores in the event that food has become scarce). This in turn lowers our resting metabolic rate, so if we wish to continue losing weight, we then have to reduce our caloric intake even further.

The purpose of exercise is to increase muscle mass and raise our resting metabolic rate (to counter the metabolic rate reduction due to dieting). This is because muscle at rest utilises more energy than fat. This is also a reason why measuring weight loss with a weighing scale can sometimes be deceiving. When you exercise and diet at the same time, you may find that your weight remains stagnant because muscle is dense and weighs more than fat. As you progress through your weight loss regime, your body gains muscle and lose fat, resulting in a leaner body which may or may not lose weight. Therefore a better way of measuring weight loss is to measure body proportions with a tape measure, such as waist circumference.

There are two reasons why people on diets gain weight after they “complete” their diet (especially those who do not exercise as part of their weight loss regime). The first is because they return to their original eating habit which is exactly the reason why they were maintaining their original weight in the first place. The second is because they have lost muscle mass and their resting metabolic rate has dropped. That means they are now utilising even less energy at rest and increases their likelihood of gaining the weight back and then some.

Exercising to Lose Weight

You can also exercise to help you lose weight, but you need to observe the kind of activities you take on. For instance, you want activities that help you burn fats, such as walking or swimming – anything that is aerobic in nature. Activities like running do not help you lose weight because they utilise the glucose stores in your body rather than the fats because running requires a rapid source of energy that can only be provided by burning up the glucose stores in the body – it simply takes too long for the fats in your to be converted to energy.

Anyone who knows me will know that I generally recommend activities that you enjoy when considering what sort of physical activities to take up when attempting to lose weight. Losing weight and keeping it off is a permanent lifestyle change – not a temporary measure you maintain until you lose the amount of weight you desire. The more you enjoy the sport or physical activity, the better because you’re more likely to maintain the activity on a long term basis.

Dieting Appropriately

Likewise, I also don’t believe in relying on diets for losing weight. My philosophy has always been: if you cannot imagine yourself eating the foods you eat while on your diet for the rest of your life then don’t even bother getting started on the diet. A successful diet is one that results in a change in your eating habit that you will maintain for the rest of your life.

In a nutshell, when exercising and dieting, you need to look for activities and foods that you can incorporate into your life for the long haul. What you don’t want is something you’ll drop like a hot potato the moment you have achieved your weight loss. This is exactly the reason why fad diets are a complete waste of time (in addition to being extremely unhealthy).

Dietary Calorie Restrictions

Let me take a moment to digress a little with the experience from a friend of my brother’s. When I first met him, he appeared nine months pregnant and had been trying every weight loss trick, gimmick, plan, device – you name it – under the sun. He had used those weight loss devices that were designed to help your muscles “exercise” while you watched TV and he had even used the drug Xenical to curb his fat intake with embarrassingly, disastrous results that I will not elaborate on here. When I finally met him again some years later, I saw a much leaner person and had to ask what his secret to success was. His reply was, “It’s all about starvation…”

To a certain extent – yes, losing weight is a little about “starvation”, but we’re not talking excessive starvation. If you cannot manage your hunger pangs, then your caloric is too excessive. There are two ways to determine exactly how much you need to reduce your diet by.

Calculating Your Caloric Intake

The first method uses the average calorie intake required by a person of a specific mass in order to maintain their body weight. You can find charts to determine this figure based on your average level of activity.  If you are an active person, you will need to add the estimated calories expended during those activities.  To determine how many calories you are allowed to consume in a day in order to lose weight, you should then reduce your calorie intake by 510 calories or 2100kJ.

The second method for calculating how many calories you need to consume a day to lose weight appropriately is to calculate how many calories you eat in a week and divide it by seven to find out how many calories you eat in a day. Assuming your weight is stable, this is how many calories you require to maintain your current weight. To lose weight, you then subtract 510 calories or 2100kJ from your current level of intake.

You can calculate your calorie intake using calorie counters which provide you with the estimated number of calories a specific quantity of a certain type of food provides you with. Calorie counters are available on the internet or in books.

Conclusion

To lose weight effectively and healthily, you need to pick up an activity (or activities) you enjoy and incorporate them into your weekly schedule. If you haven’t been exercising on a regular basis, then be sure to start off easy. Try half an hour, two to three times a week to begin with and slowly work your way up.

Find out how many calories you need to maintain your current weight and reduce your daily intake by 510 calories. Continue with this plan until your weight plateaus and then reassess how many more kilos you wish to lose before recalculating you new calorie requirements.

Ideally, once you achieve a weight loss of about 5-10kgs, you should take a break from dieting (i.e. stop reducing your calorie intake) and focus on maintenance plan to stabilise your new weight. Once your new weight is stable, you can begin a new dietary regime and work at losing another 5-10kgs.

Excessive weight loss is also not recommended. If your BMI (body mass index) drops below 18, it is too low. You can calculate your BMI by dividing your weight in kilos by your height in meters squared (BMI = mass (kg) / height2 (m) or you can use a BMI calculator).

N.B. This is the blog author’s recommendation only. The author is not liable for any manner in which you have interpreted or utilised this information. You are advised to consult your doctor before embarking on any weight loss program to check if it is suitable for you.

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As part of my efforts to encourage my son to increase his repertoire of healthy foods, I have started buying more easy-to-consume, healthy foods like bananas, avocados, and yoghurt.  Unfortunately, Gavin balked at the bananas (who would have figured I would have a kid that would dislike one of the most kid-friendly foods around?) and avocados.  The yoghurt has been sort of successful when I tell him it’s “ice cream”.

Since they say that flavours of the foods nursing Mums eat tend to come out in their milk, I have been running a little experiment on Gavin.  Over the last week or so, I have been consuming more of these foods myself.  I’ve been blending avocado “milkshakes”, banana smoothies and yoghurt oatmeal puree for breakfast.

My MIL observed me doing this one morning and said to my SIL2 that she should do the same thing to help her lose weight.  Although my original intention was to increase the flavours of healthy foods in breastmilk in the hopes that Gavin would familiarise with them and start eating them on his own, I’ve discovered that the beneficial side effect was that I have lost weight!  At least I think the cause of the weightloss is related to the fact that I started having these smoothies for breakfast because everything else has remained the same - level of activity during the day and consumption of food during lunch and dinner.  Admitedly, this is hardly an exact science since I am not in the habit of monitoring my activity levels or food consumption.

However, if you are looking for a relatively easy way to lose weight, you can give this a go.  I must warn you, though, this doesn’t appeal to everyone’s tastebuds.  Personally, I really like stuff like this so I love it.  My SIL2, on the other hand, took one look at what I was making and decided that she really wasn’t that desperate to lose weight.

I’ve got to add that I’m a person that doesn’t really believe in diets.  I believe that if you want to lose weight by altering your food consumption, then it has to be a sustainable change.  That is, if you can’t imagine yourself eating the sort of food you plan to diet on for the rest of your life, then don’t even bother trying that diet.  It is not for you.  Look for another diet plan instead.

Although I can’t guarantee that you’ll lose weight following this plan, at the very worst, you’ll be a little bit healthier because the smoothies make for a pretty healthy breakfast. 

So this is what you have to do:

Instead of eating your usual breakfast, make yourself a smoothie.  These are the recipes for the smoothies I’ve been drinking/eating (sometimes the consistency is quite thick so it’s almost like eating oatmeal).

Banana Smoothie

• 1 Banana (I’ve been using the large bananas, not the small, local, finger bananas)
• 5 Tbsp Ski Divine Yoghurt (yeah, this is the good stuff, not the diet d’lite stuff)
• Add enough milk to bring it up to about 350ml

Blend everything together and pour it out into your cup for breakfast.

Oatmeal Smoothie

For a thicker shake, you can add 4 heaped tablespoons of rolled oats.  When I ran out of bananas, I started adding the oats plus another 4 heaped tablespoons of Nestum original flavour cereal.  This makes a pretty thick consistency, so if you don’t like it too thick, then add more milk to thin it out so it’s drinkable.

I generally find that after this thickshake, I’m usually too full to eat anything else.  It also keeps me pretty content up to lunch time and sometimes even up to a late lunch.

For the rest of the day, just eat what you would normally eat.

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I’ve been re-reading my copy of “Unlimited Power” by Anthony Robbins and I finally came to the chapter on improving your physiology through what you put into your body.  It seems I’ve completely forgotten all the reasons why I remained a Vegetarian for so long after my bet that I couldn’t remain a vegetarian was over.  Now that I review all the reasons why I returned to eating meat, it is starting to appear as though all of my reasons were completely unfounded.

I’ve become as unhealthy as I ever could be.  I did such a great job of converting myself to a vegetarian and a state of healthy eating that my stomach would feel queasy at the thought of eating KFC.  I would be so contented with my main meals that I never felt the need for dessert (and this is coming from a chocoholic and dessert-loving person).  Now, I have reverted back to my former state of craving desserts, chocolate and ice cream after meals.

There was a period when I was actively a vegetarian when I remembered talking to a friend about chocolate.  I remembered that I used to love it with such a passion and I could talk as if I knew every chocolate as intimately as I knew it back in the good old days, but when I said the words, they felt hollow and false because that was no longer how I felt about it.

It was only when I became pregnant that I started eating meat, chocolate and ice cream again.  It took me some time to get used to the idea of eating all this stuff.  Initially, I would eat them just because I was pregnant and pregnant women are supposed to crave this stuff.  By the end of the pregnancy, I was eating them with gusto.  I think the only thing I really had a true craving for was the meat.

So I guess you can condition yourself not to like something or to like something and I didn’t do it the way Anthony Robbins suggested in his book either.  It was just something that grew on me.

Now that I’m back to being an avid meat-eater, I’ve also discovered something else.  I don’t love my veggies as much as I used to when I was a vegetarian.  Somehow or other, they don’t taste as great as I remembered them to when I was a vegetarian.  It’s almost as if the meat has affected my tastebuds. 

After reviewing Anthony’s dietary recommendations, I would do well to spend more time back in my parents’ house where they buy fruits by the box-load and switch back to my vegetarian diet.  I don’t think I could strictly follow the Robbin’s diet, but I’m sure I could come close to it.

If you’re interested, here’s the gist of the Robbin’s Diet:

1. Start your day with fruits and only eat fruits for as long as you can - preferably up to 12noon if you can.  I can do this.

2. Never eat fruits with anything else because fruits are digested in the small intestine and consuming foods with other foods will cause the fruits to be trapped in the stomach where they will ferment and create gas that disturbs your intestines.  The easiest form of fruits to absorb is fresh fruit juice and it takes about half an hour for the juice to clear your stomach before you can eat other foods.  I can also do this.

3. Don’t mix your proteins and your carbohydrates because one requires acids for digestion and the other requires an alkaline environment.  When you mix the both, you’re mixing an acid with an alkaline which neutralises each other and impedes digestion.  If you have to, eat protein for lunch and carbohydrates for dinner. Unfortunately, if you’re Chinese, since rice is the staple at almost every meal.

4. Ensure that 70% of your diet consists of water-rich foods.  Water rich foods are fruits and vegetables of the green leafy variety (potatoes and the like belong to the carbohydrate category).  Well, I could have done this if I was still a vegetarian and I lived with my parents who practically own a fruit store in their house.

5. Limit your protein consumption to one portion a day.  You really don’t need as much protein as you think.  The only people who need a high protein diet are children and guess what?  Breastmilk contains about 2-3% protein (I can’t remember the exact percentage) and it drops to about 1% by six months.  Excess protein can’t be stored by the body and has to be excreted by the kidneys, so the more you eat the more you are taxing your kidneys. I can do this.

6. Eliminate dairy from your diet altogether.  The only animals that should be taking dairy are the animals for whom it was originally produced.  Cow’s milk is intended to grow a calf from 90 pounds to 1000 pounds in two years.  Babies aren’t intended to grow that quickly or gain that much weight.  In fact, cow’s milk contains a large amount of casein which cannot be digested by humans.  As for the bit about calcium, you can get that from your dark green leafy vegetables.  Ironically, it was also found that people who drank 3-5 glasses of milk a day had less calcium than those who didn’t.  Oh, tough one!  I love milk.

If you want to add to the diet, Anthony also recommends a breathing pattern you should do for at leaset 10 breaths, three times a day (exercising is also great - yoga, which focusses on your breathing, swimming and trampolining).  The breathing pattern involves an inhalation for 1 count, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 2 counts.  If you can, increase the counts in the same proportions, for instance, inhale for 4 counts, hold for 16 counts, exhale for 8 counts.  Keep increasing the counts as you get better but make sure you aren’t straining yourself to achieve each breath.

Why in these proportions?  Well, inhalation is self-explanatory.  Holding helps a more effective transfer of oxygen to your body’s cells.  Exhalation helps the clearing of toxins in the lymphatic system (which is pretty much the body’s sewerage system).

Try this for 30 days and see how you feel at the end of it.  Anthony Robbins lost 30 pounds following just this.

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My FIL has a life-threatening penicillin allergy so he has to wear a silver bracelet that notifies any healthcare personnel just in case he needs treatment but is unconscious.  Usually before medical treatment of any kind, it is important to take a patient’s medical history to determine if the patient has any conditions that contraindicated certain treatment regimes.  For instance, my FIL can’t be given penicillin to treat any bacterial infection that he has because it has the potential to trigger a life-threatening allergic reaction in him.  If you’ve got an allergy to penicillin or any other medication, it is worthwhile getting yourself some Medical Jewellery to notify healthcare workers just in case you need treatment but are unconscious and can’t provide a medical history.  If you want to order one online, you can check out these bracelets or necklaces.

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A little while back I wrote about a skin condition I had called Keratosis Pilaris and how my symptoms seem to have gotten worse again.  I had thought perhaps the worsening of my symptoms might be related to either the switch in my diet or the changes in hormones I’d recently experienced during the pregnancy and after the delivery.

Since it has been quite a while since the dermatologist made the diagnosis on my skin, I thought I’d scour the web to see if there were any new treatment developments for this skin problem.  It seems most sites still maintain that there isn’t really any treatment available to sufferers of Keratosis Pilaris, however there are recommendations on what an individual with the condition can do.

The least aggressive suggested would be to apply an emollient onto the affected areas and avoid the use of agents that could cause irritation, such as soaps.  Although the term emollient is used interchangeably with moisturisers, there is a difference.  An emollient softens the skin while a moisturiser adds moisture.

An emollient has three properties:

1. Occlusion - provides a layer of oil on the surface of the skin to reduce water loss
2. Humectant - which increases the water-holding capacity of the top layer of the skin called the stratum corneum
3. Lubrication - adds a slip or glide across the skin

Now it dawns upon me why my skin has worsened over the last few months and I don’t think it was related to the hormones or the change in diet.  Prior to the pregnancy, I used to have only one shower a day using moisturising shower gels and I would also moisturise after every shower.  As the pregnancy progressed, I got lazy and stopped moisturising after my shower.  With the pregnancy, I was also sweating all the time, so I started having two showers a day and sometimes three.  It would seem that all the washing and lack of moisturising has had rather deleterious effects on my skin. 

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I confess I don’t usually read the papers and what little of it I do read belong to the business section and what’s on the table under my plate. I got intrigued by an articles a few weeks back in The Star on a Swedish study based on the controversial “Supersize Me” film. The study was conducted to investigate the effects of a month long junk food diet on a small group of individuals.

If I recall correctly, it was a study conducted on 10 male and 6 female medical students and they had to consume 6600 kcals of junk food a day for 30 days. They were also requested to keep their physical activity at a minimum.

The results of the study were surprising. It seems that genetics may play a bigger role on the effect of diets on individuals than we think. They found that one of the subjects in the study remained in relatively good health and even put on muscle mass! How cool would that be to gain muscle just by eating junk food? Unfortunately, you have to be one of the lucky to be born with that particular trait and from my past observations, I don’t think I fit into that category.

I guess this is one of those controversial studies that debunks the fundamental belief that if you eat crap and don’t exercise, you’ll get fat. It’s still early days to be making any solid conclusions but it certainly opens the doors on alternative possibilities. Since very little has been done to observe what happens to healthy individuals who take on an “unhealthy diet”, it could be that all the past studies are misrepresented because they observe the group of individuals most susceptible to calories.

For more details on this study check out these links:

The Guardian
Metro
New Scientist

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Ever since I was a kid, I have had a skin problem that was diagnosed by the dermatologist to be Keratosis Pilaris (see picture). According to the dermatologist, it is a benign condition that appears on the dorsal surfaces of the body, particularly the arms, legs and cheeks. It is apparently an inherited condition and it seems my mother has a mild case of it. The dermatologist also said that it was more prevalent in people affected by hay fever.

Although the condition doesn’t need to be treated, some people opt for treatment because it’s aesthetically unappealing to walk around like a freshly plucked chicken. The dermatologist offered some creams for me to try but said that nothing has really been proven to get rid of it.

Since I was quite young at the time, I wasn’t really bothered by it. I wasn’t into aesthetics so I elected not to do anything about it. Additionally, the dermatologist said it would improve as I got older. What he neglected to tell me was that in 20% of patients, it gets worse. Now that I’m three decades old, I’ve come to accept the fact that I’m part of the 20%.

When I became a Vegetarian, I noticed some improvement of my skin. Although it didn’t completely go away, it no longer got inflamed. When I became pregnant, I started eating meat again and my skin got worse. I can only conclude that it is partly affected by my diet although there is no scientific evidence to support this. Alternatively, it could also be affected by hormones - although there is nothing to support this either.

It seems to have gotten worse, especially on my legs, so I have been tempted to get a second opinion from another dermatologist. Hmmm… am I getting vain in my old age?

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A recent article in the Sunday Times discussed a new treatment for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea called the Pillar Procedure.Obstructive Sleep Apnoea is a condition where an individual stops breathing for a period of time during their sleep. This cycle repeats many times during the night interrupting a person’s sleep. The obstruction may be complete or partial but is usually sufficient to waken the sleeper for just a few seconds so that they resume breathing again. This interruption prevents a person from achieving the restful states of sleep, such as REM (rapid eye movement - the dream phase) sleep.

Although the exact causes is unclear, the site of obstruction is usually involves the soft tissues at the back of the mouth and nasal cavity. During the day, the muscles in this area help keeps the airway intact. At night, the muscles relax to a point where the airway collapses and breathing is obstructed.

Risk factors for developing Obstructive Sleep Apnoea are weight gain (especially in the neck area), individual’s anatomy (e.g. receding chin), enlarged tonsils and adenoids, family history (although it is not genetically linked), use of alcohol and sedating drugs, smoking (causes swelling and narrowing of the upper airway), certain medical conditions (such as hypothyroidism, acromegaly, amyloidosis, neuromuscular disorders, Marfan’s syndrome, Down’s syndrome) or nasal congestion.

Common symptoms are excessive sleepiness during the day, personality changes, depression, decreased memory, erectile dysfunction, morning headaches, frequent need to urinate. People who suffer from Obstructive Sleep Apnoea are rarely aware that they wake up frequently during the night. The physical signs that suggest a person may have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea are obeisity, loud snoring, and a witnessed episode of apnoea by a sleep partner (e.g. the spouse). People with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea also often suffer from high blood pressure and tachycardia (rapid heart beat).

Five simple questions may be used to identify a person with sleep apnoea:

1. Do you fall asleep easily during the day (e.g. while driving) despite having an adequate amount of sleep?
2. Do you wake up with dry mouth?
3. Do you wake up frequently during the night to urinate?
4. Do you have high blood pressure?
5. Do you get tachycardia (rapid heart beat)?

If a person says “yes” to three or more of the above questions, they are most likely to have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. It has also been found that some 80-90% of cardiac patients suffer from Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. A sleep study may be required to properly diagnose the condition. Untreated Obstructive Sleep Apnoea increases the risk of developing heart disease and stroke.

The Pillar Procedure is a relatively simple surgical procedure for treating Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. It involves implanted three pins into the soft palate to maintain the airway during sleep. The procedure was first introduced in 2003, and has been hailed as somewhat of a breakthrough in the management of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea.

The studies so far are somewhat limited and the longevity of this procedure has only been tested up to 15 months. Success rate is about 50-60% in a study of about 20 odd. Although risk of infection from this procedure is low, irritation to the tissues and protruding implants are two post-operative issues cited.

After speaking to a cardiologist who has had quite a bit of experience in this area, he recommends treatment via a CPAP machine rather than undergoing surgery. Some of the reasons why he disagrees with surgery and the Pillar Procedure:

1. Airway obstruction occurs only at night when the muscles are relaxed and not during the day therefore surgery is overly aggressive.
2. What are the long term effects of surgery? Long term is defined as 10 years.
3. What are the effects of implants in the palate on eating and speech? The oral environment is a very dynamic environment, constantly undergoing change.
4. The Pillar Procedure only addresses the soft palate. Obstructive Sleep Apnoea involves other soft tissues as well.

So what is a CPAP machine and how does it work? CPAP is the abbreviation of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. A person with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea wears a mask which is hooked up to a machine that monitors the person’s breathing throughout the night. When the machine detects that breathing has stopped, it will send a pulse of air to open the airway so breathing may resume.

Here’s what the mask looks like worn:

Side profile:

The tubing will rotate easily as the sleeper turns in bed:

The machine is small and compact and can be easily carried on trips. For more information, check Resmed. Details for the local office:ResMed Malaysia Sdn Bhd
Suite E-10-20 Plaza Mon’t Kiara
No. 2, Jalan 1/70C, Mon’t Kiara
50480 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: +60 (3) 6201 7177
Fax: +60 (3) 6201 2177
reception@resmed.com.my
www.resmed.com.my

It is advisable to get a thorough check up with your ENT specialist before using a CPAP machine to ensure that blockage of the airway are not due to other physical obstructions, e.g. nasopharyngeal carcinoma (cancerous growth blocking the airway), enlarged adenoids/tongue, etc.

CPAP machine are also contraindicated for people who have suffered a pneumothorax previously. Encasing your lungs is a sack containing fluid. A pneumothorax is a condition where there is a communication between the lungs and that sack and air becomes trapped inside that sack.

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It’s over a week since the marathon and I am still experiencing salt cravings. Should I be worried?

While It not unusual to develop post-exercise salt cravings especially when the exercise in question was a long race and under the sun, for it to last more than a week after the event begs the question of whether there is more to it than meets the eye…

Probably the most eyebrow-raising part of all this is that my salt cravings have displaced my usual ice cream obsession. To have said “no” to a serve of ice cream and to have felt I would prefer to consume something savory certainly brought the thermometers out aplenty.

Despite the persistence of these cravings, I have noted that their intensity is not as great as it was the days immediately following the race, so perhaps it is a little premature to start sounding the alarm bells.

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