health – Page 2 – miyagi.sg

1 Million kg Challenge: Not A Good Start

So I went to the 1 Million kg Challenge launch at Ngee Ann City’s Civic Plaza on Saturday, signed myself up for the challenge by pledging to lose 3kg in three weeks.
It was a massive event, with exercise stations and sustenance stations where you could presumably learn about what kind of exercise was suitable for you, and what kind of food you could eat to become, and remain healthy.
The bad news is, in the days after the launch, I haven’t exactly been on the straight and narrow path to success. Being in the middle of a theatre production does that to you. It can be difficult to get enough rest, and I think I must have tallied an average of 5 hours a night this past fortnight.
Monday must have been a demonstration of what not to do if you wanted to lose weight: I woke up, dallied before skipping breakfast, then having a high carb lunch with little protein before feeling faint and trembly from hunger at about 4pm. Loaded up on another high carb pre-dinner, before having dinner and dessert. Fail.
I’ll get better. Promise.
Meantime, if you’re struggling with trying to get healthy and don’t know where to start – try signing up for the 1 Million kg Challenge and make a reasonably achievable pledge. There’ll be days (like mine) where your plans go awry, but keep at it, and keep me company. Let me know how your journey goes!
Remember to sign up: http://bit.ly/1iw4Uko

1 Million kg Challenge

We’re into the third month of the new year, and while I’m glad I didn’t make any health-related resolutions to break, I haven’t done anything for my health apart from an alcohol fast that ended when I went on holiday last month (walau, Hokkaido is home to many first class breweries, can?)

But that’s going to change with another HPB initiative. The 1Million kg Challenge aims to make the whole country lose 1 million kg through healthy choices in diet and fitness. That hopefully will make Singapore light enough to be towed out of this region and away from the haze.

So if you don’t want to be in the haze*, and want to be healthy, do sign up for the challenge at www.millionkg.sg to pledge your weight loss or complete healthy tasks to be rewarded** with prizes.

The other challenge the HPB has initiated is this #1mkg Blogger Challenge. mrbrown, DanielFoodDiary, and myself will try to get as many people signing up on the 1 Million kg Challenge portal. Please click through this link or my picture on the right to sign up, and I’ll be credited with the referral.

This is where I beg and grovel for your help. Because if I come in last, they’re going to make me do something humiliating, like wearing spandex and doing hot yoga or something. So, tolong. Because mrbrown looks better in spandex than I do.

Over the next three weeks, mrbrown, DanielFoodDiary, and myself will be talking about our challenges in becoming healthy. We’ll be accompanied and mentored by the evil Dr Leslie Tay, who will torture us with tales of tasty hawker food while telling us it’s bad for us.

mrbrown and myself will also be at Ngee Ann City this Saturday between 3 and 4pm, supporting the launch of this campaign. Come and have a chat with us, and maybe give us your weight loss tips.

Think you’re up for the challenge? If so, then it’s game on! #campaign4mrbrown2wearspandex!

*sorry, joking. Haze beyond our control
**minimum system requirements: participants must be between 18 and 64 years old, and have an existing BMI of between 18.5 to 37.4

Eric Khoo’s Recipe – A Film About Dementia

I was invited to watch an Eric Khoo telemovie last Tuesday called Recipe. It stars Zoe Tay, Li Yin Zhu, Moses Lim and Jayley Woo, and deals with the topic of dementia.

Why is this important? Dementia affects our aging population, and our aging population is growing. In 2005, there were about 22,000 recorded cases of dementia among the 65 and older in Singapore and this looks set to double even before 2020.

What this means for people with dementia, caregivers and the healthcare network cannot be underestimated. And yet, there are many of us who don’t know enough about dementia to even begin to know how to deal with it.

For example, dementia is not normal aging. In whichever form it takes – either Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia (which is caused by strokes), it is an illness that needs medical attention, and it is a condition that needs care and monitoring.

I wish I had known even this basic information years ago, because this subject matter is something I feel very strongly about – my family is dealing with it. Nonetheless, I am glad I’ve learned from the wealth of information available in our healthcare system. Being the immediate family member in charge of managing my father’s illness also presents an educational opportunity – telling my friends, and my father’s friends what’s going on with him is something I seldom tire of.

But I am glad that there are attempts made, like this telemovie, to put the issue up for education and discussion.

This film tells the story of the journey of Madam Ching, who’s been running her hawker stall for several decades selling scissor cut curry rice.

Trouble starts when the snaking queues for her famous fare begin to shrink after her culinary skills take a dive and become erratic. Her daughter Qiu Yun steps into the picture when an accident occurs at the stall. And at follow up medical appointments, it is discovered that Molly has the beginnings of dementia.

The other players in Madam Ching’s journey are her family, friends, workmates and customers, and they all share in her pain, fear and at times outright terror at the unknown.

It is a sensitive portrait of people dealing with and trying to make sense of the sometimes unpredictable family life that dementia brings.

It is something that is close to my heart, and you know I would never encourage anyone to watch Channel 8, but here it is, I’m telling you now – when they screen this on the telly on 29 September, 9pm, WATCH IT. Or record it to watch later.

For more information on dementia and on Recipe the telemovie, please click through: http://hpb.gov.sg/HOPPortal/health-article/HPB055017

With HRH The Queen of Caldecott Hill. Zoe Tay's performance in this tele movie is her best ever, IMHO. — With HRH The Queen of Caldecott Hill. Zoe Tay’s performance in this tele movie is her best ever, IMHO.

Please Take Dengue Seriously

Read this first, then come back to this post.

Yes, you can die from dengue. But mostly, people don’t exhibit serious symptoms, and are often not ill enough to be hospitalized.

It’s been the same with this outbreak, and I’ve found that as a result, people are being a bit blase about the current epidemic despite the media blitz by the NEA.

Some people wait till they get a rash before going to the doctor. Here’s news for you: If you have dengue, and a rash appears, your platelets are likely to be crashing and you might need a blood transfusion.

Our experience with Kai at 8 weeks old shows how you can never be too careful. He didn’t have a fever, didn’t cry more than usual, and the only reason we took him to the pediatrician was because our confinement nanny said she hadn’t seen anything like the freckles he was sporting.

I remember being frustrated at the NEA for not being able to inspect the vacant apartments in our block because the owners had been uncontactable. That is apparently being changed, and officers are now able to break into homes to search for and destroy mosquito breeding grounds.

After Kai had dengue, I had immediately contacted the NEA to ask them to inspect our condo and our neighbours – with one particularly suspicious house turning up empty even though they had a disused swimming pool which was looking all green and slimy.

The officers had responded by inspecting our apartment regularly. I was indignant at first, until I was told that many complainants to the NEA were actually inadvertently breeding mosquitoes themselves – my mother included. She had complained about the excessive numbers of mosquitoes in her garden, and the NEA came and found aedes larvae in her flowerpots.

Even something as innocuous as a plastic tarp covering a motorcycle collects enough rainwater to breed mosquitoes – and a person has in fact been fined for doing so.

There have been over 6,000 cases of people contracting dengue this year so far. If it goes on at this rate, don’t be surprised if there are fatalities. The thing is, we can prevent this from happening by pitching in to get rid of mosquito breeding grounds.

So please, just do the five step mozzie wipeout check in your home. If not daily, then weekly.

Everyone Is Responsible For Fighting Dengue

This year’s dengue outbreak is scary. So far this year, there’ve been 4,756 (1 Jan – 19 Apr) cases, and it looks like it might increase some more.

I’ve previously tweeted and posted on Facebook about this, and the reflex response from readers have been the same: “too much construction lah, it’s all in the construction sites”.

The NEA has reported that the majority of sites found to have bred mosquitoes have been homes. Now I’m not saying that the construction sites are not responsible at all, but the fact remains that no matter how much you want to blame someone else or some other site for the spread of this disease, the solution to breaking the vector cycle of is still firmly in your own hands.

Dengue is not an airborne transmitted disease – it is spread by the Aedes mosquito, which gets the virus from an infected person it stings. So the way to stopping the spread of the disease is to eradicate the breeding of the mosquito – which you will probably know, occurs in stagnant water.

The NEA has a dengue website at www.dengue.gov.sg with statistics and information pertaining to the disease. We’ve all seen in the papers news about the huge “cluster” of dengue in the one block in Tampines, and the dengue website has a map of “hotspots” as well.

This is both helpful and unhelpful, because while you are aware enough to avoid going to these hotspots for instance, you might downplay the fact that regardless of hotspots and clusters, people (the other vector) are mobile. They could get bitten, come back home to Toa Payoh, get bitten by another Aedes mosquito, and voila, another cluster and hotspot is created.

This outbreak has been so serious that the NEA has also implemented a Dengue Community Alert System, which displays three colour codes depending on the dengue situation, and the corresponding actions to take.

I hope you get the picture, and I appeal to everyone to “Do The Mozzie Wipeout”, a 5-step exercise to perform every day:

1. Change water in vases (on alternate days, if not daily)

2. Turn over all water storage containers so they don’t collect rainwater

3. Remove water from flower pot plates (on alternate days, if not daily)

4. Clear drainpipe blockages

5. Cover bamboo pole holders

The national anti-dengue campaign will be launched tomorrow (8am, 28 April) at Senja-Cashew Community Club, 101 Bukit Panjang Road. Do come if you can.

The NEA has also launched a new Facebook Page and they encourage people to follow @NEAsg on Twitter for dengue updates.

Again, I appeal to you to take action and not simply blame it on the construction sites. Naomi and I had a very serious close shave with Kai’s bout of dengue – and I will recount that ordeal in another blog post.