Gadget: Chill-O-Matic Instant Beverage Cooler

The cooler which runs on two AA batteries will take any 12 oz can of soda or beer from room temperature to ice cold in just 60 seconds, making it 240 times faster than a refrigerator.

The device is available from Amazon for US$29.99 plus shipping.

 

 

 

 

Rethink What You Thought You Knew About COVID-19 Reinfection

Michael Merschel wrote . . . . . . . . .

Forget what you thought you knew about catching COVID-19 more than once. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, keeps evolving – and so has information about your risk of being reinfected.

“Two years ago, we thought if you had COVID once that you would never get it again,” said Dr. Preeti Malani, an infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. But especially with the variants that have become dominant in the U.S. this summer, that thinking no longer holds.

When it emerged last November, the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 showed an ability to reinfect people who’d had earlier versions of the virus. This summer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are sweeping the U.S., with BA.5 accounting for the majority of COVID cases. Both appear to be even more adept than other omicron subvariants at evading the body’s defenses against infection.

Even having had an earlier version of omicron does not seem to protect against symptomatic infection from the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, Malani said. The subvariants also can infect vaccinated people.

“I have friends who have had COVID three times,” said Malani, who has co-written an ongoing series of updates about the virus for JAMA. “One of my kids had it twice.” And Malani herself recently tested positive for the first time, despite being up-to-date on her vaccinations.

The good news is that despite spreading more easily, the subvariants do not appear to cause more severe disease. And vaccination still protects against severe illness, especially hospitalizations and death.

But heart and stroke patients might need to step up their precautions.

Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said it’s hard to know exactly how a pandemic is unfolding in real time, and more research is needed on COVID-19 and the heart to provide definitive answers about the risks.

But conditions such as stroke, heart failure and coronary artery disease are among those that can lead to severe illness from COVID-19, the CDC says. And in the past month, Bhatt has seen “a number of patients” with severe cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary or neurological disease die from problems related to the coronavirus.

“It’s not that they specifically died from COVID,” said Bhatt, who is also a professor at Harvard Medical School. “But COVID tipped them over.”

Some preliminary research suggests what multiple bouts of COVID-19 might mean for heart and brain health. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, using data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, found that reinfection raised people’s risks of cardiovascular and other complications when compared with people who had one infection. The risk grew with the number of infections.

The work has not been peer-reviewed, but Bhatt called its conclusions “believable” and said it made sense that with a major infection of any sort, getting infected a second time would mean more chances for problems.

The best protection against reinfection remains getting vaccinated and keeping up with boosters.

“There’s still a lot of people that aren’t vaccinated and were just thinking, ‘Well, I’ll get natural immunity, or I’ll just wait it out,'” Bhatt said. “But those strategies won’t work.”

Vaccination helps even as the coronavirus evolves, Malani said. “It still protects against severe infection. And we shouldn’t lose sight of that.”

Updated vaccines tailored to omicron are expected to be available this year. Meanwhile, taking practical steps to avoid COVID-19 might be prudent, particularly for people who are traveling.

For Malani, a week ahead of a big vacation that required a negative COVID test, she urged her family to be cautious. “I said to everyone: ‘Listen, I think we all need to be really extra careful. Because if one of us gets COVID, none of us are going on this trip.'”

Social connections are important, she said, but gatherings should be outdoors, or at least in well-ventilated areas. And people who are not feeling well should stay home.

The CDC says anyone who tests positive should stay home for at least five days and isolate from others. And while many guidelines about when to wear a mask have been relaxed, Bhatt encourages people to mask up in crowded indoor settings, “even if people around them aren’t.” Research shows it helps stop the virus’s spread.

Malani acknowledged it can be confusing when advice shifts on something such as the risk of reinfection. “This isn’t because the scientists and public health officials are asleep at the wheel,” she said. It’s what happens when experts learn more. So people should follow advice from reliable sources.

“The reason we care about this is because the vulnerable people can die, and our health care system can get overwhelmed with sick people,” she said. “And we’ve seen that happen.”

Source: American Heart Association

 

 

 

 

Spicy Sichuan Mapo Tofu Set Meal of Yayoiken in Japan

The price is 950 yen (tax included).

 

 

 

 

People with Low BMI Aren’t More Active, They Are Just Less Hungry and ‘Run Hotter’

To date most research on obesity has focused on studying those with a high body mass index (BMI), but a research group in China is taking a different approach. In a study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the scientists looked at individuals with a very low BMI. Their findings reveal that these individuals are actually considerably less active than people with a BMI in the normal range, contrary to speculation that they have a metabolism that makes them naturally more active. Additionally, they eat less food than those with a normal BMI.

“We expected to find that these people are really active and to have high activity metabolic rates matched by high food intakes,” says corresponding author John Speakman, a professor at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology in China and the University of Aberdeen in the UK. “It turns out that something rather different is going on. They had lower food intakes and lower activity, as well as surprisingly higher-than-expected resting metabolic rates linked to elevated levels of their thyroid hormones.”

The investigators recruited 173 people with a normal BMI (range 21.5 to 25) and 150 who they classified as “healthy underweight” (with a BMI below 18.5). They used established questionnaires to screen out people with eating disorders as well as those who said they intentionally restrained their eating and those who were infected with HIV. They also excluded individuals who had lost weight in the past six months potentially related to illness or were on any kind of medication. They did not rule out those who said they “exercised in a driven way,” but only 4 of 150 said they did.

The participants were monitored for two weeks. Their food intake was measured with an isotope-based technique called the doubly-labeled water method, which assesses energy expenditure based on the difference between the turnover rates of hydrogen and oxygen in body water as a function of carbon dioxide production. Their physical activity was measured using an accelerometry-based motion detector.

The investigators found that compared with a control group that had normal BMIs, the healthy underweight individuals consumed 12% less food. They were also considerably less active, by 23%. At the same time, these individuals had higher resting metabolic rates, including an elevated resting energy expenditure and elevated thyroid activity.

“Although these very lean people had low levels of activity, their markers of heart health, including cholesterol and blood pressure, were very good,” says first author Sumei Hu, currently at the Beijing Technology and Business University. “This suggests that low body fat may trump physical activity when it comes to downstream consequences.”

The investigators acknowledge some limitations on this research, including the fact that although they measured food intake, they didn’t measure what the participants were actually eating or their feelings of satiation or satiety.

The team is now expanding its research, including studies that include these measures. They also plan to look at genetic differences between normal weight and healthy underweight individuals. Preliminary analysis suggests single nucleotide polymorphisms in certain genes that might play a role. When these genetic changes were replicated in mice, the animals had some aspects of the phenotype that was observed in human subjects.

“The next stage is to understand more about the phenotype itself and understand the mechanisms that generate it more clearly,” says Speakman.

Source: Science Daily

 

 

 

 

Shanghainese-style Braised Pork Belly

Ingredients

1 piece lean pork belly, about 600 g
2 slices ginger
6 stalks Shanghai bok choy
1 piece anise
1 piece cinnamon

Marinade

2 tbsp sweet bean paste

Sauce

2 tbsp cooking wine
2 tbsp rock sugar (crushed)
2 tbsp red rice
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 to 3 cup hot water

Method

1. Clean pork belly. Drain and wipe dry with kitchen towel.
2. Rub marinade all over the pork and set aside for 3 to 4 hours in the fridge.
3. Heat 3 cups oil in a wok. Add pork belly and until colour changes evenly.
4. Remove pork and drain off excess fat.
5. Put pork into a pot. Add sauce ingredients and bring to a boil. Turn down heat to low and braise the pork.
6. While the pork is cooking, turn it over occasionally and spoon sauce over the meat. Cook until the pork is fully cooked. (about 90 to 120 minutes).
7. Remove pork from pot and allow to cool. Cut pork into thin slices.
8. Clean bok choy and cook in boiling water until done.
9. Place pork slices along the centre of the serving platter. Put bok choy on both sides. Spoon sauce on top of the meat and serve.

Source: Let’s Start Cooking

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