A new U.N. report lists New Delhi and Kolkata (Calcutta) in India and Beijing in China as the worst polluted cities in Asia, out of 22 major cities studies. Air pollution is so bad in these cities, they are considered as having life-threatening environments. The report, Urban Air Pollution in Asia Cities, was released on December 13, 2006.
Led by the Stockholm Environment Institute’s centre at the University of York (UK) and the Clean Air Initiative for Asia Cities (CAI-Asia), the report says while other cities also have pollution problems, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore among others have excellent capacity to manage air quality.
The World Health Organization estimates that 537,000 people in Southeast Asia and the Pacific die prematurely each year due to air pollution. The study found that there has been a general improvement in the ability of Asia cities to manage urban air quality since the 1990s.
But air quality in the majority of the cities examined still exceeds international guidelines for the protection of human health for certain pollutants. Concentrations of sulphur dioxide, the gas responsible for acid rain, have stabilized at a relative low level and rarely exceed health guidelines. However, the use of high sulphur fuel content in some countries may result in an increase in emissions.
Emissions of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter, mainly from the transport sector, are of concern in all cities currently experiencing rapid motorization. In addition, tropospheric ozone, a main constituent of photochemical smog, will increase if motor vehicle use continues to rise.
December 26th, 2006
To some, flying dry can mean not drinking alcoholic beverages while in the air. That is a good thing when traveling abroad for medical treatment.
The flying dry we talk about here is not drinking enough water while in the air. That is a bad thing.
It’s so important that you stay hydrated all the time that you’re traveling. It is much more difficult for the anesthesiologist to manage a dehydrated patient’s blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs than a patient who is well hydrated.
The best way to combat the dehydration that takes place in the low humidity and high atmospheric barometric pressure of an aircraft cabin as you fly to your destination is to drink water in the days and weeks before you fly. The usual recommendation is six to eight 8-ounce glasses a day.
If you don’t like drinking plain water stir in some fruit juice like cranberry juice. Or squirt lemon juice in the water and use a sweetener like Stevia, an all natural, noncaloric herbal sweetener that you can buy in a health food store. Gatorade and similar products may hydrate you, but they are high in calories and carbs, and drinking too much can increase your risk for kidney stones.
For many Asians, the best alternative to combatting dehydration is to drink a glass of water with a splash of lime juice and a dash of salt. In India, this popular drink is called nimbu pani. In Thailand, it’s called namenau. It’s the dash of salt – not sugar – that is the key, turning an ordinary glass of water with lime juice into a balanced electrolyte solution. Namenau soda is not as good, as any carbonated water (including Coca-Cola etc.) decrease your phosphorus, sodium and calcium levels.
Caffeine is also a no-no. It’s a diuretic that causes you to lose fluid. Alcohol? Same thing. Try to stay off alcohol for at least two weeks prior to surgery.
Most people simply don’t drink enough water, ever. Thirst is a not-so-subtle sign of dehydration. You should never be thirsty (unless it’s related to a medication you are taking or as a sign of some disease process like diabetes.) Thirst means you’ve already been dehydrated for too long.
Some ways you can check for subtle signs of dehydration are: pinch the skin on the back of your hand to a small peak. If the raised, peaked skin stays there, to any extent - you are dehydrated! If your urine isn’t what nurses call beer clear you are dehydrated. Beer clear describes urine that is very lightly yellow colored water…very light - meaning an almost undetectable yellow color and without any debris. Beer clear urine is what you want.
December 25th, 2006
When you send us photos for a surgeon’s evaluation, please don’t try to hide the bumps, lumps and wrinkles with “artful” shooting. We need to see them all.
And please don’t hold the camera upside down. Don’t laugh. Apparently, you can take better pictures of people’s faces by turning your digital camera upside down. It’s all about the flash. Since it’s set above the lens it creates slight shadows on your subject’s face when the light from the flash bounces off the lines, creases, and wrinkles in the face. It makes the bumps and lines look more noticeable than they should be. Turning your camera upside down, the resulting flash comes from slightly underneath, creating a slightly different image. Try it. The effect is subtle and difficult to see, but it’s there.
Personally, I don’t like using flash. I’m all about shooting in available light. So I’ll just keep using the tricks I’ve learned over the years to minimize the appearance of age when I photograph people: soft lighting, telescopic lens, and so on.
I remember taking a portrait of my ex-in-laws once. They were both in their early 70s. Wonderful couple (her second marriage). I did my usual thing, shooting the photos on a cloudy day with soft natural light coming in from the side. They loved the resulting portraits. Unfortunately, I had set the two of them against a grey background. She had grey hair and a grey sweater. When I looked at the photos, all I could see were portraits of two pasty-looking old people, prepared for their passing and ready to be affixed to their grave stones. Yet they both were very much alive and vibrant folks. To this day, I can’t get those portraits out of my mind.
December 23rd, 2006
I finally read the new book by Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplays for When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle.
I Feel Bad About My Neck : And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman is Nora’s take on life after 60 – hair color, bath oil, Botox, droopy breasts, and porcelain veneers. The neck says it all, says Nora. You can nip and tuck all you want but if you don’t fix the neck too, nothing else matters.
That may be. But even after you take care of the saggy skin of the neck, there’s one last (at least for now) telltale sign of aging. And that’s your hands.
Age spots, thinning skin, and loss of fat in aging hands and fingers tell the story that your face and the rest of your body don’t have to tell.
Thank goodness for fat transfer, not only to lips or cheeks but also into hands. I saw a television interview recently with 82-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt. She has the most beautiful hands and fingers of any woman over 50 that I’ve ever seen. No age spots, no thin crepy skin, no protruding veins, and full fleshy definition of hands and fingers. Very remarkable. Very elegant. Very beautiful.
December 23rd, 2006
U.S. television first reported that the coup severely pushed back Thailand’s democratic movement in which a popularly elected prime minister was ousted from power by a military coup that terminated the Thai constitution, curtailed civil liberties, dissolved parliament and imposed martial law. Yet, as bad as this seems from the western perspective and understanding, the coup was greeted with palpable relief by the people of Bangkok.
Since his election six years ago, ousted prime minister Thaksin was criticized for flaunting his power by appointing only people loyal to him at various levels of government in order to ensure his authority. In the face of growing complaints by the parliamentary opposition and business leaders about abuse and corruption in government, inept attempts to wage an effective war on drugs, and poor handling of the political unrest in southern Thailand, Thaksin continued to trumpet his authority.
The straw that finally broke the camel’s back came at the beginning of 2006 when Thaksin sold off his majority stake in Shin Corporation, a national telecommunications company, to Singapore interests. Using Bahamas-based offshore companies to muddy the fact that he was the main beneficiary, he finagled a deal that enriched his family by billions of dollars (U.S.), yes billions. This manoeuvre meant he could get away with paying no taxes on his profits to the Thailand government.
Not only was this viewed as an obscene abuse of his power but also as selling away a national symbol of Thailand to a foreign government, much like the proposed “sale” of U.S. ports to the United Arab Emirates some months back. Unlike the “sale” of U.S. ports that was blocked, the sale of Shin Corp was muscled through using Thaksin’s loyal supporters in various Thai ministries.
October 25th, 2006
The coup appears to have near unanimous support of the Thai people. According to the Bangkok Post, the leading English-language paper in Thailand, in the days immediately following the coup, 86% of Thais in rural areas and 82% of Thais in urban areas were in favor of the coup.
An anti-coup demonstration organized three days after the coup on a Friday evening at one of busiest business, shopping, and tourist centers of Bangkok brought out a mere 20 people and lasted all of one hour. The only “security” forces visible were the local private security officers from the nearby shopping mall. Political observers generally view the coup as Thailand taking one small step backward in order to move two giant steps forward on its march to full democracy.
The military is not taking over the reigns of government. Within a few hours, the chief of the armed forces announced that an interim prime minister, highly respected and politically neutral, would take over the reins of authority within two weeks and that a general election, supervised by an unbiased electoral commission, would be held within one year.
October 23rd, 2006
For visitors to Thailand who are concerned about the country’s instability or their own safety while they are here need not worry. Neither about their safety nor about an apparent setback to the country’s democratic movement.
Thailand’s coup d’état was presented to the world by the international media as an armed military insurrection, complete with tanks in the streets, curfews, and a bewildered government leader cast adrift while on the world’s stage at the United Nations in New York.
In fact, the situation is peaceful, in Bangkok, in the north in Chiang Mai, and in the south on the beaches of Phuket. In the capital, all transportation, business and government functions continued to operate normally. All tourist attractions remained open as usual, all shopping venues were open as usual and all restaurant and entertainment facilities were operating with regular hours.
Going out on the streets of Bangkok in the first moments of the coup, one American tourist noted life as usual. Taxis were still picking up fares, the mass transit was running on time, people were eating their evening meals at the street food stalls.
October 20th, 2006
Medical tourists “shopping” for care in foreign countries must know that all countries are not equal in providing excellent and safe medical treatments.
… Those who are pushing Americans to shop for health care should be thrilled the market has expanded into a global one. Talk about competition … Where would a smart shopper go?
When you go abroad for medical care, not any country will do, as the Des Moines Register seems to suggest in its recent editorial (above).
Let’s compare India with Thailand for example. India has one internationally-accredited hospital in a country with a population of more than one billion people, a medical establishment that is frustrated in its attempt to develop standards for hospitals and clinics, a government that is scrambling to organize some kind of national medical regulatory and licensing system, and a nation whose major cities still lack the modern infrastructure to provide reliable sanitation, power, healthcare. Doctors marching in the streets in New Delhi and drugs being tossed into the gutters in Chennai is the reality, and this should concern “smart shoppers.”
Thailand has three internationally-accredited hospitals for a population of 65 million people, a medical system that is a century old, modeled on American medical standards and values. The royal family traditionally sent some of Thailand’s most promising young people to study at Harvard, M.I.T. and international medical centers of excellence around the world. They returned and created today’s excellent medical system.
The Medical Association of Thailand was founded in 1921. Thailand has its own excellent medical education program, similar to that of the U.S. Today Thailand has a universal health program, its private hospitals invest heavily in specialized technology including the ultra-modern da Vinci robotic surgery system found only in a handful of hospitals in the U.S. and multi-million-dollar 64-slice CT scanners that most American hospitals still don’t have.
The international expatriate community has made Thailand the medical hub of Asia. Canadians living in Malaysia, Americans in Japan, Brits in India, Australians in Indonesia have been relying on Bangkok for their medical care for decades. Today, no other developing country, with the exception possibly of Singapore, matches the standards and quality of Thai doctors, hospitals and medical care.
Oh, and where do India’s top hospitals send their most serious cases? … To Bangkok, Thailand.
July 27th, 2006
A woman from Wisconsin visited 3 dental specialists over 8 months (having to wait several months between appointments, of course). At each visit, the dentist examined her then said, This is not my specialty. I’d like to refer you to Dr. X (and Y, and Z).
Finally, when the last one said, This is not my specialty. I think you should go to the dental school at the University of Michigan, she said, Enough! and turned to the internet.
She found Cosmetic Surgery Travel, we talked by phone, she hopped on Northwest out of Detroit. Two weeks later, she was completing a set of very successful treatments and was planning a few days upcountry vacation while she waited for a bridge to be made. A week after that, she was on her way home, happy that she’d received the best dental care she’d ever had.
She told me, “I’ve never had a better fit of my dentures.” She’s very pleased, with the workmanship, the quality, care, and experience of our dentists. She got everything done with no waiting and the cost was considerably less than what she’d have paid at home. And the dentists were all friendly, welcoming, and excellent in their specialties.
July 20th, 2006
Dear More magazine,
Please stop your editorial teasing. Your July cover promotes an “anti-aging” story, The makeup face-lift. Yet it’s nothing but another warmed over piece touting foundations and makeup. Nothing to do with facelifts.
For heaven’s sake, More magazine, it’s difficult enough sorting out all the variations of lifestyle facelifts, weekend facelifts, quickie facelifts without your contributing to this mass confusion created by marketers in the cosmetics, dermatology, and plastic surgery industries.
One of your most misleading stories was a few months back, a little first-person article about a woman who claims to have had a facelift at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok. She praised the doctor’s skill. The article was written by “anonymous”.
I went to the hospital to check out the doctor - I’d never heard of him. Turned out he was a specialist of sorts - he was fully scheduled alright - breast and eyelid surgeries in among meetings, travel, and so on. One facelift scheduled in a three-month period.
Please, More, make a stronger commitment to journalistic integrity and responsibility. Do better at fact-checking.
July 15th, 2006
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