Decipher the Ancient Myth

While playing with my App, Nutrition Tracker, I gradually understand some old Chinese sayings, like "the more fish one has, the bigger one's brain is". Omega 3 is the required nutrition to have a healthy brain. The critical part in Omega 3 is DHA that is hard to be synthesized by human body. The natural food that contains high DHA is mostly fish. Although Salmon has been more popular than cod. According to the USAD food nutirion database and the calculation from Nutrition Tracker, for an adult, if one has 8 ounces of cooked salmon weekly, one doesn't need to take any supplement for Omega 3 at all. In another words, if one has two or three big meals with fish weekly, one will have enough Omega 3 to have a healthy brain. This amazingly explains the old Chinese myth I didn't understand before. This is a great book about how to cook fish: Fish: Fish: Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking. 

New Release for Nutrition Tracker

Features in 0.7 release uploaded on Jun 15, 2014:

1. Export data. The diary can be exported to an comma separated values (csv) file for a physician/dietitian to review or analyze. The file is easily opened with Excel or other spreadsheet.

2. Log caloric intake and match to your activity level. This enables you to set goals for weight change.

3. Easy input of food. Foods that you’ve already entered are now on the top of search results. Saves time entering data.

Features in 0.6 release:

1. Add the lookup feature. You can now lookup nutrition facts for a specific food.

2. Missing nutrients are listed at the top of the nutrition report in order of decreasing priority. It’s now easy to figure out which nutrients you’re missing.

3. At the report output, click on the nutrition name, you can see the list of food with high value for that particular nutrient.

4. Add DHA/EPA information in the report.

Check it out at:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.tigerparents.nut

The Alternative for Vitamin C Supplement.

Vitamin C is a critical nutrition to our health. Few people know that a medium size of orange has enough Vitamin C as one daily vitamin C supplement pill has. Vitamin C can be used to alleviate the cold syndromes and shortens the cold period though it can not prevent to get cold. Vitamin C also can help recover the damaged skins by Sun exposure.

One day, one orange is enough for daily intake of Vitamin C calculated by Nutrition Tracker according the data provided by USDA.

If one gets cold, one can have two or more oranges to ease the cold syndromes.

To get more information about the Vitamin C, one can read the long article here:
http://health.cvs.com/GetContent.aspx?token=f75979d3-9c7c-4b16-af56-3e122a3f19e3&chunkiid=21522

Pick points from Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing.

When I started to read the book, Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing   I could not stop. Thanks for my friend, Xi's recommendation. Every chapter shows a new aspect that we should watch over for our health and the current medical field have totally ignored. It not only tells the experiments and theories from farms or labs, but also gives us advice how to apply the principles into our daily life. 

The most valuable and intriguing point I got from this book is the new way of analyzing our health issues. Current medical field is using an isolation model to cure the diseases. But our body is a very complex system. Is the isolation method really sound? For people having the same disease, like diabetes, they get there due to different reasons, such as less exercises, poor diet, or poor gene. They should be treated differently. Being healthy is quite an individual thing and is highly correlated to how people live, the life style. This is fascinating to me. As I haven't seen any model to simulate human's living environment or life style with AI to diagnose the root cause of the diseases. Is it possible to build a model to cure some disease or all diseases with an AI model? It is an open problem for me. 

The book also gives some practical advice that are very helpful to apply in our daily life. In chapter 3, it gives toolbox for the stress reduction: 
1. Join the flock that could be a club that shares your passions, a sports team, a spiritual group, volunteering. 
2. Enhance your behavioral freedom and increase your sense of purpose. Take time to care for and pamper yourself, and exercise daily. 
3. Play a tag and dust-bathes often. Doing exercises in a voluntary and enjoyable way. 
4. Get a good night's roost. 
5. Put the right foods in your gizzard. Having cage freed chickens and eggs, more leafy greens, spices and herbs. This agrees with my experiments with my Nutrition Tracker project. As the more I play with it, I realizes that we can get most nutrition from natural food and leafy greens is the best.  

To the end of the book, it talks about aging and cosmetics. Most of time we are not aware that the cream we apply to our face or body contains chemicals leading to cancers. So examine your skin care products and stay away from hydroquinone, mercury, steroid, retinoid, alpha-hydroxy acids, mineral oils, parabens, phthalates, sls (sodium lauryl sulfate), vitamin E, and artificial fragrances. Try to use hydrosols, like roman chamomile (anthemis nobilis), neroli (citrus aurantium), rock rose (cistus ladaniferus), lavender (lavandula angustifolia), rose (rosa damascena), rose geranium ( pelargonium graveolens).

How to Select After School Programs?

I would put two key values on any after school programs. In fact not just after school, any school:

1. The kid is much happier while attending the after school program. The kid wants to come back again and enjoys it a lot. 

2. The kid is very motivated after attending the program. They love to talk about what they have learned or share their stories. Then It is a good sign of the valuable program. 

It is hard to know things first hand. As parents, we should talk to the kids and know their feelings. If we observe anything wrong, we need to go down and figure out the reasons. One can drop by the class to see what really happens in the class. Or one can talk to the teachers to see if they really care individual needs. 

Tech Innvators Who Went to Montessori School

http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-innovators-who-went-to-montessori-school-2014-3

Thomas Edison - "I like the Montessori method," Edison has been quoted saying, according to historians at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park. "It teaches through play. It makes learning a pleasure. It follows the natural instincts of the human being. The present system casts the brain into a mold. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning."

Famous Montessori graduates:
https://docs.google.com/document/preview?hgd=1&id=1iRuFD-ubKDs7hQhdXcQMYvH26EHTJVSXDdE3g9GIW00

Related books:
Montessori from Start:The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three

A New SAT Aims to Realign With Schoolwork

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/education/major-changes-in-sat-announced-by-college-board.html?_r=0