Live Long and Dirty

What does constipation, rheumatism, arthritis, chronic fatique, heart disease and cancer have in common?

Toothpaste.

What does heart-attack, stroke, sleeplessness, depression, and yes, even AIDS have in common?

Toothpaste.

And in what common household item will you find hidden pain relievers, blood-clotting chemicals and other newer exotic poisons?

You guessed it.

This last Christmas I, make that Santa, brought my 4 year old some pretty expensive bubble bath, and every time we use it, I wonder why it says in giant font, "Contains no Sodium Lauryl/Laureth Sulfate". What the hell do I care about sodium lauryl whatever? I just wanted something that would fit nicely into his stocking. So last night was the end of the soothing and calming blend of overpriced "foam" bath, and today the empty package on my desk prompted me to find out why I should care. I'll try to be brief.

SLS is an inexpensive detergent used in almost everything in our homes used to clean things, from shampoo to garage floor cleaner. Garage floor cleaner? I haven't seen the floor of my garage in years. Anyway, this SLS has amazing penetrating power ( 8----> ) and is easily absorbed into your skin and will stay there for a long time. This is bad for many reasons, one being that SLS has a pretty strong estrogen mimicking quality. As you probably know, estrogen is a mostly feminine hormone, and when this mock estrogen gets into your system, all hell breaks loose, for men and women alike. Things like infertility, gender confusion, breast cancer, and menstrual problems can be the result.

There is so much more that I'm just going to send you here to read more for yourself. I'm also sending you here to see this really really bad website which claims that toothpaste can cause AIDS. And lastly, I will direct you to the beautiful image above, where you can see what a lack of toothpaste can do. I'd say constipation is worth the risk.

NEAT-o

I don't know what I learned today. It's Sunday and I'm lazy. As usual. I suppose if I learned anything, it's what I figured out today when calculating what I need to do for the first quarter of this year.

If I want(ed) to lose 20 pounds in 3 months, I need to burn 777 more calories than I inhale, every single day.

So if my body uses 2000 calories a day just living, breathing and scratching my ass, plus another 1000 or so doing the usual getting in and out of my car, walking back and forth to the kitchen, and kicking the stupid printer 20 times, I guess that means I could eat 3000 calories a day and stay the same weight. Right? But if I went to ass-kickboxing every day, which Muscle and Fitness magazine rates at 800 calories burned per hour, (ummmm.... yeah, I wish) could I lose the same weight and keep eating the same food? Or could I lose that 20 pounds by just eating 2000 calories a day instead, and not do any exercise at all? Somehow that sounds like a lot of food for just one day. I'm thinking maybe I'll go for 1,500 calories a day and getting my ass kicked twice a week. Or...

I could start becoming a really serious fidgeter. According to Professor Leonard Storlein, from the Department of Biomedical Science at Wollongong (yes, Wollongong) University, you can burn up to the equivalent of a 6 mile run just by fidgeting, or what doctors call NEAT, NonExercise Activity Thermogenesis, all day long. Unless of course, the Great Moments in Science website is a sham. It's worth a try though.

Happy Birthday Little Sista!

Death Domain

I've been looking around at my site stats the last few days (ok, I check them every day. several times.) and I've been noticing two things that are bringing me a lot of traffic.
My Phallic Phriday posting somehow got linked on a site called Penis Size Links. Penis size links? It's been surprising to see how many referrals come from them, and funny that most of them are in France.
Another hot one is from my Anti MADD Magazine posting. Why are so many people searching for Anti MADD? I had to know so I did a little searching myself. Today it appears that I've learned some pretty useless medical trivia.

Besides being a Mothers Against Drunk Drivers hater, anti MADD can refer to an antibody for something called a Mitogen-Activated Death Domain protein. I don't exactly know what the hell that means because all the medical terminology I could find meant nothing to my brilliant yet unaccustomed brain, but I was intrigued by the DD part and looked further into that. A Death Domain is something in every cell of our bodies that regulates apoptosis, which is the natural process of programmed cell death. Apoptosis is important in several ways, one being that if at the right time during our fetal development, the cells between our fingers didn't die off, we'd look a little something like this picture here. I think about 1 in 50 people are born with Syndactyly, which is webbed feet. Stupid women who smoke up to 10 cigarettes a day during pregnancy are 27% more likely to have a baby with abnormal fingers and toes.

Ashton Kutcher has webbed feet.

And I don't mind at all.