CPR, Heimlich, and Tracheotomy August 26, 2006
Posted by dorigo in food, internet, news, science.3 comments
Anybody should know how to perform these. The more so if you are a parent.
So for your convenience, here are three sites to visit, print out, and keep in your kitchen - possibly attached to your bulletin board if you have one. These save lives!
The first is a site which shows a video on how to perform CPR on a unresponsive, non-breathing child (e.g. after an electric choc). You can even download the video and keep it on your computer: http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/videodemo/child-cpr-video.html
The second site is a good explanation of how to perform the Heimlich maneuver, with several drawings. You can even learn how to do it on yourself with your fists or by leaning on a chair: http://www.heimlichinstitute.org/howtodo.html
The third site explains very clearly and concisely how to do a tracheotomy to a patient who is choking and to whom the Heimlich maneuver has not produced any result. After reading this, I think I would do it if conditions arose: http://www.tracheostomy.com/surgery/emergency.htm
I hope I will never need to do any of these. But choking is by no means a rare occurrence in children!
On a diet again August 26, 2006
Posted by dorigo in food, personal, science.3 comments
In 2002 I finally found out how to lose weight - after thirtysomething years of overweightness. I lost 20 pounds in three months, my BMI went from 27 to 24, and I decided from then on that I would be fit for the rest of my life…
Easier said than done, right ? Right. But I decided to hold on a protocol for weight watching. My own protocol states that:
- I always have to try and restrain my greed for bread and junk food and alcohol
- I can, however, eat freely if my weight is below 74 kg
- I have to check my weight daily if I am close to that attention threshold
- If my weight goes above 75 kg, I have to start dieting until it goes down to below 74 for at least a few days in a row
My diet is simple. I have a light breakfast (coffee and 200 calories), skip lunch (that is have no more than 250 calories of carbohydrates), drink a lot of water, allow myself a few coffee cups if I have to, and at dinner I have only one entree with lots of vegetables and either carbohydrates (pasta or rice with vegetables or something like that) or lean meat. No alcohol whatsoever, no bread whatsoever, no pop (but I allow diet coke), no desserts. Fruit is allowed in small amounts.
The diet above amounts to roughly 1200 calories a day. The graph below (particularly the falling line on the left) shows that indeed it allows me to lose 100 grams per day, which is on par with the calories deficit.
In the plot above, the x axis is in days and spans from june 2002 to today. The y axis is my weight in kilograms. As you can see, I try to start dieting every time my weight goes above 75 kg, with mixed success… Let’s see what happens this time.
