Very cool ways to trick your body

Christmas time is here, and since the doctor is off on vacation you need to take care of yourself.
Let Rasmus' friendly guide lead the way to health (and wealth - if you are a pearl diver that is)

* How to cure a tickling throat - dig into that ear
When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm," says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose, and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. "This spasm relieves the tickle."

* How to cure a toothache
Just rub ice on the back of your hand, on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and index finger. A Canadian study found that this technique reduces toothache pain by as much as 50 percent compared with using no ice. The nerve pathways at the base of that V stimulate an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands.

* Clearing a stuffed nose - no cleenex or sudafed required
A good way to relieve sinus pressure is by alternately thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. This causes the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, to rock back and forth, says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. The motion loosens congestion; after 20 seconds, you'll feel your sinuses start to drain.

* Curing your dizzy head
Put your hand on something stable. The part of your ear responsible for balance -- the cupula -- floats in a fluid of the same density as blood. "As alcohol dilutes blood in the cupula, the cupula becomes less dense and rises," says Dr. Schaffer. This confuses your brain. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional foot-on-the-floor wisdom.

* How to cure that stich (or "hold" as we say in Norwegian) when running
If you're like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.

* How to relieve that side stich (or "hold" as we say in Norwegian)
When you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.

* Curing that Freezing head
We've all been there, eating your Ben And Jerrys while watching lost and suddenly at the end of the bucket you realized you ate too fast and too much and your head is pounding frost! Here comes the solution to all your troubles.
Press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. "Since the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, your body thinks your brain is freezing, too," says Abo. "In compensating, it overheats, causing an ice-cream headache." The more pressure you apply to the roof of your mouth, the faster your headache will subside.

* How to cure that sleeping limb (In norway we call this having "ants")
If ex your hand falls asleep, rock your head from side to side. It'll painlessly banish your pins and needles in less than a minute, says Dr. DeStefano. A tingly hand or arm is often the result of compression in the bundle of nerves in your neck; loosening your neck muscles releases the pressure. Compressed nerves lower in the body govern the feet, so don't let your sleeping dogs lie. Stand up and walk around.

* Here's the portion that will make you rich
So you are diving for pearls, but all the other boys stay down much longer than you and take all the nice ones... here is the trick to outsmart them all!
Take several short breaths first -- essentially, hyperventilate. When you're underwater, it's not a lack of oxygen that makes you desperate for a breath; it's the buildup of carbon dioxide, which makes your blood acidic, which signals your brain that somethin' ain't right. "When you hyperventilate, the influx of oxygen lowers blood acidity," says Jonathan Armbruster, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at Auburn University. "This tricks your brain into thinking it has more oxygen." It'll buy you up to 10 seconds.

* And Finally; A Party trick
So you have solved all your problems and are ready to go to the party. This is how to really impress the host (and ALL the other present) (if someone who is a CSCS says so, this has to be right... and NO - I will not tell you what a CSCS is....)
Have a person hold one arm straight out to the side, palm down, and instruct him to maintain this position. Then place two fingers on his wrist and push down. He'll resist. Now have him put one foot on a surface that's a half inch higher (a few magazines) and repeat. This time his arm will cave like the French. By misaligning his hips, you've offset his spine, says Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., co-owner of Results Fitness, in Santa Clarita, California. Your brain senses that the spine is vulnerable, so it shuts down the body's ability to resist.

Now that I have prepared you for the christmas season (and pearl diving) - go out you curious monkeys and put knowledge to practise.

Baluba - a peculiar Origin

This is primarily going to be interresting for Norwegians, but just in case anyone else is curious, I'm posting this in English.
Many Norwegians use the word "Baluba" - it used to describe disarray and chaos.
The funny thing is that the word does not exist in any dictionary - neither Norwegian nor German, English, French.... and yet it is used both in oral speach as well as in the written word (newspapers and books alike).
The expression probably refers to the Baluba tribe in Zaire - as far as I can understand it is their history of fighting that has brought about this expression's origin.
But how it made its way to this remote portion of the world is beyond my understanding.
Does anyone outside of Norway know of this expression? Please comment or email me.
Recently when I raised this issue it was even guessed that the expressions is particularly used in Bergen - since my family is from Bergen, it is not impossible that I picked it up that way.... Another person at the table who grew up in Oslo had never heard of the expression.
If anyone has any thoughts on this I would love to hear it.

Cowtipping - Mythbuster

This is great!
I remember at camp how some kids over breakfast said they had been out cowtipping during the night....
Guess not so much after all.
I've always wanted to tip one myself though, so I am also slightly dissapointed at this news....
Great illustration of force needed in the actual article - link at bottom.


Cow-tipping myth hasn't got a leg to stand on
By Jack Malvern

IT IS the kind of story you hear from a friend of a friend — how, after a long night in a rural hostelry and at a loss for entertainment in the countryside, they head out into a nearby field.

There, according to the second-hand accounts, they sneak up on an unsuspecting cow and turn the poor animal hoof over udder.

But now, much to the relief of dairy herds, the sport of cow-tipping has been debunked as an urban, or perhaps rural, myth by scientists at a Canadian university.

Margo Lillie, a doctor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, and her student Tracy Boechler have conducted a study on the physics of cow-tipping.

Ms Boechler, now a trainee forensics analyst for the Royal Canadian Mounted Corps, concluded in her initial report that a cow standing with its legs straight would require five people to exert the required force to bowl it over.

A cow of 1.45 metres in height pushed at an angle of 23.4 degrees relative to the ground would require 2,910 Newtons of force, equivalent to 4.43 people, she wrote.

Dr Lillie, Ms Boechler’s supervisor, revised the calculations so that two people could exert the required amount of force to tip a static cow, but only if it did not react.

“The static physics of the issue say . . . two people might be able to tip a cow,” she said. “But the cow would have to be tipped quickly — the cow’s centre of mass would have to be pushed over its hoof before the cow could react.”

Newton’s second law of motion, force equals mass multiplied by acceleration, shows that the high acceleration necessary to tip the cow would require a higher force. “Biology also complicates the issue here because the faster the [human] muscles have to contract, the lower the force they can produce. But I suspect that even if a dynamic physics model suggests cow tipping is possible, the biology ultimately gets in the way: a cow is simply not a rigid, unresponding body.”

Another problem is that cows, unlike horses, do not sleep on their feet — they doze. Ms Boechler said that cows are easily disturbed. “I have personally heard of people trying but failing because they are either using too few people or being too loud.

“Most of these ‘athletes’ are intoxicated.”


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1858246,00.html