Optimal heart rate when you exercise

Too low, your exercise is not intensive enough to stimulate your heart or tone up other parts of your body. Too high, that's not good to your heart either. According to the study published in a July 2010 issue of Circulation, on average, women's peak heart rate in exercise is 206 - (0.88 x age). Dr. Weil's recount of the study is more readable to non-medical-professionals. He also noted that the formula "that works for men is 220 minus age".

Herb Classification

In memorizing herb names and their functionalities, I find it easier to first classify or group, sometimes kind of arbitrarily, each herb into one single category. So I know the single major use of one herb before I memorize its other uses later when I have time. The following two links have fairly good classification of them.

單味藥 (single herb medicine): www.cmuh.org.tw/HTML/dept/1p10/china_pharm_first.htm
成方藥 (mixed herb medicine): www.cmuh.org.tw/HTML/dept/1p10/china_pharm_second.htm

As of this writing, their web pages still have problems displaying two symbols that mean something to them; both are shown as a question mark. According to their email to me, one is 飲片 and the other 濃縮藥.

Which sports have the highest exercise values?

The following is an English translation of my old note made almost 30 years ago of an article in Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (China Youth Newspaper), March 22, 1981, issue#3689. The article is titled "Which sports have the highest exercise values?". It has no information on what methods they used to create this table and what medical science research was behind the numbers. But for what it's worth, it looks interesting, and seems to be consistent with our common sense.

	jogging	bicycle	swim- ming	skating	hand- ball	basket- ball	tennis	gymnas -tics	walking	softball
heart/lung endurance	21	19	21	18	19	19	16	10	13	6
muscle endurance	20	18	20	17	18	17	16	13	14	8
muscle strength	17	16	14	15	15	15	14	16	11	7
flexibility	9	9	16	13	16	13	14	19	7	9
balance	17	18	12	20	17	16	16	15	8	7
weight control	21	20	15	17	19	19	16	12	13	7
muscle building	14	15	14	17	11	13	13	18	11	5
digestion	13	12	13	11	13	10	12	11	11	8
sleep	16	15	16	15	12	12	11	12	14	7
sum	148	142	140	140	140	134	128	126	102	64

The word "gymnastics" is actually "柔软体操" in Chinese, or "flexibility gymnastics" literally, and "walking" is "散步" or "slow walking", not vigorous walking as in modern day health advice. Needless to say, the sports in the table are to be treated as sports, not leisurely activities. For instance, swimming does not mean you immerse your body in the pool for a whole afternoon and swing your arms once every few minutes, and biking is not slowly cycling around a beautiful lake in a family outing. Have you heard of people say they gained weight by "swimming"? Now you know why.

My first herb concoction

5 钱 (about 25 grams) of the following each:

丁香 (Syzygium aromaticum)
红花 (Safflower)
玉桂 (Cinnamon)
细辛 (Manchurian Wildginger)
川芎 (Rhizoma Chuanxiong)

bought from a local herb store. It only cost about $3 in total. I don't know the best way to use it. But I figure the easiest is as follows: take each a little and put them in a bowl; add a little water; heat it in microwave for a minute. Use a small piece of paper towel to dab at the liquid and apply it to wherever I feel joint pain, such as my wrist. Wrap around the wrist, and place the wrist in the bowl without touching the very hot water. Cover the wrist and bowl so as to keep the steam inside.

The above are from a prescription on a newspaper that (if I remember right) is supposed to treat women's mentrual cramps. But looking up the herbs in my "中药大辞典" I know they all serve to 舒筋活血 (help blood circulation). I don't remember the amount of each I should use and don't care how to best use it. So I take each just a little and only for 外用 (external use). Since 细辛 is toxic, this is even more important.

Scimitar syndrome patients birth month and surface water pesticide usage

Scimitar syndrome is a rare congenital heart disease. Recently I read of the following research and thought of some possible connection between this disease and surface water pesticide usage in the US.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330130235.htm
Month Of Conception Linked To Birth Defects In United States

"the researchers found a strong association between the increased number of birth defects in children of women whose last menstrual period occurred in April, May, June or July and elevated levels of nitrates, atrazine and other pesticides in surface water during the same months."

For those that need more academic details, read
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2667895/

So I thought it would be very interesting to see what month a Scimitar syndrome patient was born in. To that end, I set up a poll at Yahoo Scimitar syndrome group (health.groups.yahoo.com/group/scimitarsupport/surveys?id=2263924).

As of today there're 13 data points. (One person told me the child was prematurely born so the actual number of valid points is 12.) The data are as follows

Month - Count of Patients - Percentage
January - 1 - 7%
February - 3 - 23%
March - 1 - 7%
April - 1 - 7%
May - 2 - 15%
June - 0 - 0%
July - 1 - 7%
August - 2 - 15%
September - 0 - 0%
October - 0 - 0%
November - 2 - 15%
December - 0 - 0

I wish I had more data points. But it looks like there's a trend: more scimitar syndrome patients are born early in a year. Let's say it's February. That means the mother's conception time is May. That fits well with the US surface water high pollution period in a year.