How Bill Gates cured her PMS

Today I am going to talk about PMS (again ar!??!??!). Yes, again. Is is the never ending battle between me and the hormone, it was last year same time I wrote about PMS and until now I have found no solutions to it. And today I’m going to share with you a success story how this woman LJ who overcome her PMS problem with Bill Gate’s help. You mean Bill Gates is now venturing into woman’s health business? Continue to read and you will find out later.

LJ hates the word hormones, it is the magic spell that cast a decent understanding woman into a unreasonable fierceful monster, every month, wihout fail. Imagine a full quarter of our productive years was trapped in this PMS jail, say we have menses from the age of 13 to 53, over the aspan of this 40 years, the PMS takes up 25% of the time, which is 9.2 years, 110 months, 480 weeks, 3360 days, 80640 hours in our life, and what? You tell me there is nothing we can do about it??

So LJ used this “Entourage”, Microsoft's information-management program for Mac users, to send monthly reminder to the husband and herself one week before her PMS at every 28 cycle. If I ever set this program for myself, the message surely turn out like this “WARNING! HAZARDOUS & DESTRUCTIVE MONSTER IS COMING IN 7 DAYS TIME”. LJ thought this would solve all the problems as the husband understand it is the hormones that is starting the culprit behind the monthly fight.

For me I really think PMS is a magnifying glass in my life, but this maginifying glass is defected as it can only ENLARGE INDEFINITELY the small little invisible flaws and mistakes and keep it pop up in front of of eyes every 0.000023 seconds, so we see nothing but the ugliest side of human mankind, the husband or boyfriend in particular. So back to the story, LJ thought if the husband have get to know the PMS in advance, he would have be more alert and guess what man just can’t be bothered about this female hormones stuff. LJ gets even more frustrated when the fight still go on month after month.

Until one day she realized that it was not the husband responsibility to indulge her. She expects the husband to be more tolerant during that time of the month, to be more patient during that time of the time. But wait, whose problem is the PMS now? The wife or the husband? She shifted her mindset to deal with the problem face to face. Instead of expecting the husband to work on it when he sees the reminder, she chose to work on herself seeing the reminder, she chose to deal with the hysteric, unreasonable, moody and depressed self every month.

She prepared herself for a potentially tense week when she received the reminder, she has the awareness in her subconscious to start the battle. She knows this is just going to be temporary, the normal loveable self wil be back just a few days and all things will be beautiful again. So she grab a chocolate bar, tell the husband “I’m PMSing”. Cool huh?

Do you know your feet type?

I’ve experience some pain at the ball of the feet sometimes last year, at first I thought it is because I’ve wearing high heels to work most of the days, then slowly I realized even when I wear flat to go shopping or what, the pain is still there, just one particular spot on the ball of the right foot.

As I was wondering what is wrong with my feet, I came across this shop in Marina Square “Ergo Lab”, they sell ORTHOTICS AND BIOMECHANICAL INSOLES with ultimate support and comfort. Erm.. not a bad idea huh, so I went in to the shop out of curiosity.

The sales assistant offer the do a foot scan in order to know my feet better before she recommend the suitable insoles for me, so I stand on the machine which looks exactly like a scale, after a few seconds an image appear on the computer screen as below:

According to the sales assistant, I have high arch feet from what we see in the scan image. We clearly see the “footprint” on top, on bottom, but in the middle KOSONG! That means the entire weight/pressure of the body is placed on the front and back of the feet only, no wonder the ball of the foot keep on having pain after some walking.

You see, normaly human feet should look like this, that’s how we learnt to draw the footprint also right? In this case, the weight/ pressure of the body can be distributed evenly on the feet, so the feet are biomechanically efficient and can use any you want to.

For my feet type they called it HIGH ARCH, as thoug there is a high arch between the forefeet and the heel. The band connecting the forefoot and the heel is very thin or non-existant in my case. Hence the feet are not very effective as a shock absorber since the arch doesn't collapse enough to absorb it.

So they recommended me to buy this insole especially formulated to cater for people with high arch, it has this protuded portion in the middle of the insole to make good for the “vacuum arch”, so that the feet will have enough surface to absord the shock as we walk.

It cost me about SGD 49, and to be true it does help when you put this insole in the shoe, you literally feel the insole like some labour working hard to lift up that part of the feet. But most of the time, after you insert in the insole, the shoe become tighter and the discomfort at the ball of the foot has been transformed or transferred to the little toes as the shoe become too small for them.

Overall, I still give it a yes, because the pain in the toe is nothting compare to the pain in the ball of the foot. Lol.. If you are interested to know your feet type, you can do this simple experiment at home:

我的健康指数

这两个月来最常听到别人对我说的问候语就是“你最近瘦了哦？”或者“你在减肥吗？”或者是“你是有病啊？怎么瘦成这样？”一开始的时候我会怀疑这些人是不是有病啊？我明明没有瘦却说到我好像瘦的像排骨一样？Tzeh还淘气的说我已经瘦得像来自非洲的牛了。。 直到有一天我心血来潮在衣橱里拿出一见已经n年没有穿过的牛仔裤一试，哇！！！竟然可以拉上拉链，而且还挺舒服的。 这件牛仔裤是我几年前最瘦的那一阵子买的，超级紧身，穿了没多久就穿不下去了。这时候我无法在欺骗制自己，原来我真的瘦了，惨了。。

我知道你们看到这里可能会很想揍我，可是我年底就要结婚了，正当每个新娘都在努力减肥的时候我竟然under weight， 这可是天大的耻辱啊。。前两个星期去拍婚纱照的时候看着镜子竟然看到一根KAYU，好像哭喔。。有一件晚装也正因如此穿的不堪入目，难看死了！人家说当模特儿要有衣架子的身材，我的身材也是衣架子：只看到衣服，看不到架子。。

伤心欲绝的时候，我上网搜查“如何增肥”， 结果给我找到胡杏儿拍肥田喜事的增肥菜单。 她除了每天吃6餐，中间还不断的喂自己是雪糕，巧克力和鲜奶。其他人看到可能会羡慕死。我看到却想吐死。我本来除了三顿正餐就不吃零食，也不喜欢巧克力，薯片，雪糕，汽水等垃圾食物，要我这么个吃法，我看我会更瘦――不断的呕吐！

上周Tzeh妈妈和姐姐去Herbalife和营养食品减肥的时候把我也拉了过去增肥。这个牌子的食品很神奇，如果你要减肥的话，在吃饭之前喝一大杯如果你要增肥的话，要吃饭之后喝一大杯就可以。我很难相信，也找不到什么理由去相信。之前有听朋友试过也不见的有什么效果，只听说钱还真花了不少。

在喝饮料之前，店主先帮我做一个健康指数的测试，我站在一个像量体重的机器上，手拿着一根长型的拄子往前申，不到几秒钟，报告就逐个逐个显示出来：

体重 ： 43.3kg
体内脂肪 ： 20.1%
内脏脂肪 ： 1
基础代谢率 ： 1043
体内年龄 ： 18
骨重 ： 28.8kg
BMI ： 17.6

还可以嘛？我最瘦的时候才43kg，比现在还少 0.3 kg。体内脂肪好像是在标准的以下一个“slim category”，也及格啊。内脏脂肪，那个阿姨说正常人的内脏脂肪指数是4，我的只有1，不太好，因为如何内脏完全没有脂肪的话，身体器官很容易产生摩擦，容易造成损害。哈？那我该怎么办？网上也找不到任何内脏脂肪的文章，那位高人可以指导一下吗？Anyway，我的BMI明确显示我是UNDER WEIGHT， 一点点啦，可以啦。。

妈妈知道这个消息后已经把我每天早餐的分量DOUBLE给我，我也努力每天晚上喝完一杯MILO才睡觉，午餐前吃饼干，晚餐前吃饼干，我相信在不久的将来我一定可以增加1kg， 太少？ 好了好了，2kg，ok？45kg看起来就像正常人啦，嘻嘻。。

Sakit… Aduh…Sakit

I just came back from a Plastic and Surgery Clinic, but I still look the same like before. (?!) I was there not to be cosmetic surgery but to get treatment on my BIG BIG BCG scar. For those of you who may have paid attention, I have a thick dark scar of nearly 2 inches long at my BCG spot.

I had this since standard six or some where after the BCG injection, and I was not paying a lot of attention of the scar until one day I realize it is getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes I felt itchy and sometimes I felt extreme pain out of no where. Then I start to ask doctors what I can do about it. I remember one of the GP in government hospital once told me.

“When you have a wound on the BCG injection spot, the skin will grow back in order to cover the wound. That’s how normal skin works, but your skin being a little dump, they do not stop after they have covered the wound, that’s why it keeps growing and growing. If you were to cut it, there will be another wound and the skin will grow again to cover that wound, and you will ended up having a much bigger scar”

Since then, I gave up asking around for I thought there is nothing I can do about it. Until recently a friend of mine told me we can get rid of it by taking steroid consistently until the scar fall flat. I tried to search online I can’t find anything but the fact that keloids always come back no matter what treatment to be used. (Dumb skin! Really dumb!!)

I don’t know how and why and where I have the courage today to go to the clinic, I thought maybe to just to find out how is the procedure and what are the percentage that the scar can be flatten. The doctor said this when she first saw my arm “ I do not know how you can ensure this, you keloid is so big and now only you come to see me.”

I replied no one told me about you, else I would have come ten-twenty years ago. After a long discussion with the doctor, I found out that apparently the treatment for keloid is very common and it has been carried out in Malaysia since donkey years. No risk, no side effect, but PAIN.

Yes, I am in great pain now, doctor told me it would be pain for the first treatment, but she didn’t tell me it would be more pain after the injection. Gosh, right now I just feel like all the pain accumulated over the years are blasting out at one go.. No doubt a little bit of regret did cross my mind, all these years keloid has been living with me in harmony and I started the warfare, imagine eleven more to go..

Help!!! Cholesterol is killing me

Life has been tasteless for the past few days, tasteless not because I lost my taste buds, tasteless because I lost the right to eat without thinking. Doctor said I have high cholesterol, my HDL reads 1.96 and my LDL reads 3.8, so the total cholesterol is 6.1, which is way above normal range of 5.2 (what a disaster@#*&!)


First thing I reach home is to study what on earth is LDL and HDL and how do I get rid of it soonest possible to redeem my “makan” right, oh no!!!!! I cannot imagine how life would be without beef, lamb, squid, crab, egg, cheese and the list go on and on without stop. So what else is left to be eaten? Oat, fruit and vegetables, arghhhhh!!!!


Although cholesterol is very widely heard in our daily life, but now only I found out that cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that is made in the body by the liver. Cholesterol forms part of every cell in the body and serves many vital functions. Our bodies need cholesterol to:
- Maintain healthy cell walls
- Make hormones
- Make vitamin D
- Make bile acids, which aid in fat digestion


Sometimes, however, our bodies make more cholesterol than we really need, and this excess cholesterol circulates in the bloodstream. High levels of cholesterol in the blood can clog blood vessels and increase the risk for heart disease and stroke.


There are 2 main types of cholesterol:
- LDL is "bad cholesterol." It can clog the arteries, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Optimal number: Less than 2.6 MMOL/L
- HDL is "good cholesterol." It attaches to bad cholesterol and escorts it to the liver, which filters it out of the body. So HDL reduces the amount of bad cholesterol in the system. Desirable number: 1.04 MMOL/L or higher.


Total cholesterol is the sum of all types of cholesterol in the blood. It should be less than 5.2 MMOL/L. (I have more than enough of the good and bad cholesterol in this case here)


I’ve also checked online for the causes of high blood cholesterol and I could not believe how on earth did I get high cholesterol for I am not over weight, I exercise regularly, I am not under stress but.. erm.. ok la!!! I like to eat high fat meats, especially “fei cha siew”, fatty lamb and cuttle fish.


So I get myself the following cholesterol lowering plan:


- I bought myself Quaker’s oatmeal for breakfast ( I hope I can stand the tastelessness of it) . Oatmeal contains soluble fiber, which reduces the bad cholesterol. Soluble fiber is also found in such foods as kidney beans, apples, pears, barley and prunes. Soluble fiber appears to reduce the absorption of cholesterol in the intestines. Ten grams or more of soluble fiber a day decreases your total and LDL cholesterol. Eating 1 1/2 cups of cooked oatmeal provides 6 grams of fiber. If I add fruit, such as bananas, I'll add about 4 more grams of fiber, and that’s enough for a day.


- I also bought myself Salmon Oil tablet for daily supplement of Omega-3 fatty acids ( I also hope I can stand the strong smell left in the mouth). Research has supported the cholesterol-lowering benefits of eating fatty fish because of its high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids also help the heart in other ways such as reducing blood pressure and the risk of blood clots. In people who have already had heart attacks, fish oil — or omega-3 fatty acids — significantly reduces the risk of sudden death.


- I tell myself to stick to Pilates class ( I hope I can stand the boringness of it) Pilates is an exercise method, designed to elongate, strengthen and restore the body to balance. Based upon an anatomical understanding of the body's muscular and skeletal systems, the Pilates use exercises that integrate the whole body to re-educate and restore it to optimum muscular and skeletal function. There’s no link between pilates and cholesterol, it’s just something I picked up recently:)


Please give me moral support for the cholesterol fighting plan and do not tempt me into any high cholesterol food. I shall update you with the results in 3 months time. For those of you who have no idea what is your cholesterol level, please go and make appointment with the nearest clinic, you never know (huh, suddenly become so health conscious).

Stay Away from Cervical Cancer

It was to my great surprise when the gynae told me the other day that we can now take vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, gynae took out a brochure and told me “Think about it, it’s good for yourself”. Well, firstly I have not heard about it before, secondly I doubt we can prevent cancer. So I go on to study about it, here’s some fact to share:

What is cervical cancer?
Cervical cancer is a disease caused by the abnormal growth and division of cells that make up the cervix, which is the narrow, lower end of the uterus (womb). Cervix is the neck of the womb (uterus) and it connects the body of the uterus to the vagina (birth canal).

What is the cause?
Cervical cancer is caused by a common virus called Human PapillomaVirus (HPV) and at least 50% of people who are sexually active will get genital HPV. HPV has nothing to do with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. There are 46 genetic types of HPV, but not all are dangerous. Only certain types of HPV, which can be transmitted from one person to another during sexual contact, increase the risk of cell dysplasia (abnormal cell growth) and/or progression to cervical cancer.

Who is at risk?
Every year, about half a million women have cervical cancer and about a quarter million die, and it is sad to know that every two minutes a woman dies of cervical cancer. In Malaysia, an average of about 2,000 to 3,000 women are admitted to hospitals for cervical cancer every year and about 500 die from it. The National Cancer Registry Report 2003 lists cervical cancer as the second-most common cancer that affects women in Malaysia, accounting for 12.9% of all female cancers.

Can it be prevented?
Until recently the only way to prevent cervical cancer wa regular Pap Smear testing to look for early signs of the disease. Pap Smear is a test that checks the cell on the cervix for changes that could lead to cancer. The good news is there is now other means of protection against cervical cancer.

Types of vaccines:

1. Cervarix
Cervarix is a vaccine intended to protect females against the diseases caused by infection with Human Papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18. HPV types 16 and 18 are responsible for approximately 70% of cervical cancer cases.

2. Gardasil :
Gardasil is the cervical cancer vaccine that helps protect against 4 types of human papillomavirus (HPV): 2 types that cause 70% of cervical cancer cases, and 2 more types that cause 90% of genital warts cases. Gardasil is for girls and young women ages 9 to 26.

How the vaccine works?
Vaccination is to prevent HPV infection and may help to reduce risk of cervical cancer and other HPV related diseases caused by certain types of HPV. Ideally, a female should get the vaccine before they are sexually active because the vaccine is most effective in female who have not yet acquired any of the HPV types covered by the vaccine.

How much it costs?
At the moment, the market price of each dose of vaccine ranges from RM400-RM450 per dose. One will receive 3 doses where after the first does, the second and third dose will be given 2 months and 6 months after the first dose.

I came across this when I ran through all the news clipping :“The decision to protect your health is your own responsibility – you owe it to yourself, your husband and your children to do what it takes to protect yourself from this disease.” I’m seriously considering the vaccine, and you hope you feel the same and please spread the news to all ladies around.

我就知道事情没有那么简单

前段时间医生说我患了忧郁症。 忧郁症，你们知道什么是忧郁症吗？就像电影情节某个女人因为被老公抛弃受不了打击换上忧郁症胡思乱想，最后无声无息的跑上天台，“碰”跳了一来结束自己的生命的那种吗? 我心里捏了一把冷汗，难道我这么年轻，还没结婚，还没小孩，还没创业，还么赚钱，就。。。

自从阿姆斯特丹回来就没有一天睡好，和平常一样十点半上床，十分钟睡着，感觉懒洋洋，很舒服的。只不过每天到了凌晨一两点钟，总会突然咋醒，而且精神状态是非常活跃的，简直想吃了兴奋剂一样再也睡不会去。然后就会在思考，人生到底是为了什么，为什么我好像什么都有，也好像什么都没有，活在世上这么多年为自己为家人贡献过什么？失去一个男人自己得到了什么？想着想着就会滔滔大哭，越哭越凄惨，越哭越失落。

医生继续问：“你想过自杀吗？”我想了一想。“没有， 不过有时候会觉得或者怎么那么难。” 医生用很严厉的眼眶藐我一下，很沉重的语气说“这就是自杀的念头！”我惊慌的快要发抖，以前的我总是在说只有一无所有的人才有闹自杀，不负责任的人才会去死。这医生怎么搞的？随便两句话就把我判死刑？我有深爱我的家人，热情的同事，友好的死党，良好的嗜好，我怎么会轻易放弃宝贵的生命呢?

可是原来忧郁症是一种病，它无色无影无孔不入插进你每个神经细胞，搞到你自己在做什么想什么都分不清是自己是别人。医生没有给我安眠葯，她说药品帮不了你。 那我问神啊，你会帮我吗?