Are Plastic Containers Unhealthy?

Dr. Weil's Q&A at
http://www.drweil.com/drw/ecs/forums/thread.html?docid=THR52089&page=1
advised that "polycarbonate plastic containers may not be safe for storage and transport of food and beverages. Better choices are polypropylene (#5 pp), high-density polyethylene (#2 hdpe), and low-density polyethylene (#4 LDPE)." The answer particularly highlights the risk of insulin resistance i.e. risk of type-2 diabetes associated with using the unsafe plastic bottles. It prompted me to check a government site for more info. And here it is:
http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/environmental_health/eoha/pdf/plastics_primer0714.pdf
Indeed, only the bottles labeled with #2, #4, or #5 recycling number seem to be relatively safe, if you have to use plastic instead of glass or ceramic containers.

More Chocolate, Less Stress

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/WBL02167/Pollution-and-Migraine.html#1

"The researchers reported that eating the chocolate appeared to reduce levels of stress hormones in these volunteers. "

Original article at
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr900607v
Journal of Proteome Research, October 7, 2009
"The study provides strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 g of dark chocolate during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of free living and healthy human subjects, as per variation of both host and gut microbial metabolism."

阿胶 to Cure Arrhythmia and Bradycardia

Not all arrhythmia is created equal. But my 80-year-old father had it cured, at least for a month now, by 阿胶 (E1 jiao1), Donkey-Hide Gelatin. He had arrhythmia and bradycardia (very low heart beat, 40 per minute in his case) about a year ago after he practiced Taichi sword for too long with other old men and women in the morning, as they would do every day. Since then, the doctor told him to exercise for a shorter time each day, in addition to advising him to stay in hospital with a possible price tag of a few thousand RMB. There just happened to be another old man living in the same community that had exactly the same symptoms, and was successfully treated with 阿胶, taken with 西洋参 (Xi1 Yang2 Shen1) American Ginseng. So my mother did exactly the same for my father. It's been a month now. The result is amazing!

阿胶 is to bu3 xue3 (replenish blood, literally), and 西洋参 to bu3 qi4 (replenish qi). But the concept of xue3 in TCM is not to be confused with just blood; it includes all kinds of fluid plus nutrient. 阿胶 is also often used with 当归, (Dang1 Gui1, Chinese Angelica Root), another strong agent to bu3 xue3, particularly for women. But keep in mind that 阿胶 is warm in nature. My mother also took the "concoction" she made and got ichy, so she had to stop.

西洋参 is a strong bu3 qi4 medicine, like 人参 (Ren2 Shen1, Chinese ginseng), except that 西洋参 is cool in nature whereas 人参 is warm.

Standard Boring Disclaimer: In case you're not used to reading about alternative medicine, let me warn that always consult your doctor before you try anything.

Vocabulary of Medicine

A doctor posted a blog Reflections on the Vocabulary of Medicine. I've always wondered how much time a medical science student has to spend memorizing all those long and eccentric words while studying medical science per se at the same time. Could it be 20% or 1/3 or more of his study time he has to dedicate to this tangentially relevant skill or knowledge? I bet no other division of science has so many words you must learn by heart to be proficient in doing your job. I have a Ph.D in Chemistry. Although tens of thousands of chemical compound names sound mind-boggling, they're way much easier than you would think, because names of chemicals have strict rules in nomenclature. It's true that lots of medical terms are methodically structured. But too many are not. This is even a bigger problem for non-English speakers because they have to learn English as a regular language. Speaking of this, I wonder why medical terms in English started with these weird origins, Greek, Latin, etc. Why can't they use the same words as plumber Joe's words, heart, not cardia, infection, not -itis, etc. Afraid of ambiguity? Combine a few common words in a strict order and then give a clear definition. Instead of, say, "pulmonary hypertension", why not "lung high blood pressure"? There's no loss of precision in semantics. In fact, that's exactly how the medical terms in Chinese are like, and Chinese doctors are not complaining about ambiguity of technical terms because they use plumber Joe's words as building blocks.

Nanotechnology and cancer risk

My neighbor is a pharmacist, and likes to research various topics of medical science and latest findings. When it comes to cosmetics, she told me that nanotechnology works because the superfine particles can easily get into the skin and remove dark spots, among other things. On the other hand, there may be risk in cancer for the same reason that the particles are too small to be fought against by the body. I searched on Google for "nanotechnology cancer" (without quotes). 99% of the links are about how the technology is used as a tool to diagnose or treat cancer. But one article is an exception:

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/21/science/sci-nano21
Nanotechnology cancer risk found

It was written in May 2008 for ordinary readers with no pointers to professional publications.

A reader in a newsgroup posting asked: "Should this be verified, will we take a lesson from asbestos and start regulating/limiting production and use of these types of tubes?" There's no response.

I'll keep an eye on this topic. There must be scientific research on it. I just didn't find it online.