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Smallest ever baby born in Germany… and survives

By
Inge
 – March 4, 2010Posted in: Health

baby-feet I read the following story in different German newspapers:

Goettingen, Germany – A baby weighing just 275 grams has been born in Germany and survived, the lowest weight for a viable birth of a boy ever recorded, doctors said Thursday. Doctors normally assume that survival is impossible at birth weights below 350 grams.

The little boy was born in June last year in the 25th week of pregnancy, said Stefan Weller, a spokesman for the University of Goettingen Hospital. He spent six months in intensive care and was finally discharged in December after growing to 3.7 kilograms.

Weller said doctors had checked every available record worldwide of premature births and found no viable birth at a lower weight.

English version found at: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/312505,smallest-ever-baby-born-in-germany-and-survives.html#ixzz0hDwIdApm

In The Netherlands, abortion is legal until 24 weeks of pregnancy. So the difference between ‘a person whose life is worth it to be saved’ and ‘a bunch of cells which can be aborted’ is just one week in this case. Am I the only person who thinks this is mind-boggling?

Link to the image: sfkids.org

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A Neti Pot To Treat Allergies?

By
Inge
 – April 15, 2009Posted in: Health

Day 296: that time of year...It’s that time of the year again. A few weeks ago the weather was cold and damp, but today temps hit 23 degrees Celsius over here and the trees are blossoming. It’s great, but for me it has one big disadvantage: allergies! I’m always late getting started on my allergy medicine, but this year I notice my allergies start extremely early. I remember from previous years that I had to order new ones late May, early June, so this year’s allergies are extremely early and it took a while before I made the connection. I thought I had the flu because I suffered from extreme fatigue, felt sick and wanted to stay in bed all day long. I felt to miserable to do anything.

I use a feedreader to keep up-to-date with internet news, and using that I read something in the New York Times about a simple and cheap way to get rid of allergies. It already exists for thousands of years in India but it gets more popular in the West right now: the Neti Pot. According advocates is good for about anything. The device itself is fairly simple: it’s a small ceramic jug, which looks like a flattened tea pot. You put a saline solution in it and rinse your nose and sinuses with it. It treats colds, sinusitis but also hay fever. At least, it claims it does.

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Yoga: Good For Your Body And Mind?

By
Inge
 – April 8, 2009Posted in: Health, Science

yoga I really like practicing yoga. It clears my mind and strengthens my muscles. On top of that I notice it improves my flexibility. I feel much better altogether after starting my yoga practice. I just read an article on Science Daily in which is argued that yoga is good for you and that there are scientific reasons to prove it. In the article they write that “scientists proved that” practicing yoga is related to higher  levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in one’s brain and therefore it helps to decrease anxiety and stress-related symptoms. It also would decrease depression.

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Positive Psychology, the Geeky Way

By
Inge
 – June 5, 2007Posted in: Health, New Media

ipopin You don’t have to be a psychologist to know there are clear differences between a pessimist and an optimist. But did you know those differences go deeper than you think? In psychology, pessimism is associated with different psychological conditions like depression, low self-esteem, low self-efficacy and even higher accident-proneness. It’s very difficult to change a pessimist into an optimist, because this attitude is deeply engraved in someone’s personality.
In another field in psychology, cognitive psychology, a lot has been discovered about the ways people learn and how they process information. When you want to learn something new, you need to practice. One way of doing that is rehearsing the information you need to learn over and over again. The more often you repeat the information, the better the brain will retain it. This principle doesn’t only apply to academic skills like learning to speak a foreign language or acquiring technical skills, but also to behaviour.

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