JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Remember when you were a kid and all your coaches and camp counselors and those vaguely hippie-ish guys who took your youth group hiking would tell you to drink, even when you weren’t thirsty? Turns out they were trying to murder you.

The Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine published new guidelines on hydration that essentially boiled down to “Drink only when you’re thirsty.” That sounds like something that doesn’t need to be said, except everyone who has done even amateur sports, or gone hiking or camping, has been advised to keep drinking all the time, even when they’re not thirsty. I remember hiking instructors who told people to drink until their urine was completely clear. This is one of the pieces of advice that the journal specifically warns against.

Too much liquid leads to hyponatremia. The overworked kidneys can’t excrete water fast enough. The sodium levels in the body get too low. Sodium helps cells regulate their fluid intake. Too little sodium in the liquid surrounding cells, and osmosis causes liquid to pass through the cell membrane and pour into the cell. The body’s cells swell, and can even burst.

Done that.

Read Sports Medicine Journal Reveals Our Childhood Coaches Tried To Kill Us.

from timeanddate.com

The conventional wisdom for surviving extreme heat is to drink plenty of water. Of course we need to stay hydrated whatever the temperature outside, but too much of anything is bad for you. This I learned in dramatic fashion exactly one year ago.

In your fear of dehydration, do not overreact and give yourself water intoxication. If you drink a lot of water (and that includes sports drinks) but you don’t eat, you risk an electrolyte imbalance. Electrolytes are chemicals such as sodium and potassium that power your cells and run the electricity in your brain. The human body is a finely-balanced system: ingest too much of anything and it takes corrective measures.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

P.S. Always carry a card with the name and number of a person to call in case of emergency. Your phone should have an “In case of emergency” entry.

The hair care industry nets billions and billions of dollars globally, and a large chunk of that money is from consumers who don’t even have hair. People will try anything to ward off baldness, from expensive transplants to drug treatments to massages or quack cures. In their desperation to keep their remaining hair or add even a handful of strands to it, highly intelligent people unleash their inner gullible moron.

And don’t get us started on wigs. There’s delusion, and then there’s self-delusion. We know you’re wearing a toupee, even if you use three of varying lengths so your hair seems to be growing! Then there are the attempts at misdirection, such as the ponytail that supposedly diverts the onlooker’s attention from the sparseness of the hair on top of the head.

Granted, bald/balding people tend to be the butt of jokes, especially in the Philippines where those who look different are mocked most cruelly by people who are less attractive than they are. And not everyone looks better bald like Ed Harris or Jason Statham.

As far as we can tell, the thickness of one’s hair is determined by genetics, diet, stress level and styling habits (Obviously too much coloring and blow-drying will hurt your hair). There are drugs that promise to cure baldness—oddly enough, the best-known ones were discovered while researchers were working on cures for other things. However, the drug that is supposed to end baldness reportedly ends the sex drive as well, so if the reason you want to grow hair is to attract female companionship, think hard.

The hair care brand Novuhair has taken botanical ingredients that are known to promote scalp health and combined them as a natural solution to hair loss.

Novuhair 2-in-1 Plus One Pack is available at Php4,980 in Mercury Drug Stores and all other drugstores nationwide.

Its active ingredients include moringa oleifera (malunggay), panax ginseng, virgin coconut oil, as well as the essential oils of rosemary, peppermint and lavender. These help improve blood circulation and increase nutrient flow to the scalp, thereby addressing hair loss.

Do you have a solution to hair loss? Let us know in Comments.

Ivan Karamazov and the devil

What exactly happened to me? Contrary to reports—though it is flattering to think that my medical condition would interest anyone—I did not have a stroke or fall down the stairs, nor did anyone have to break my door down to rescue me. (If you started these rumors, I hope you are not too attached to having skin because I will have you flayed alive.) Ironically, a battery of tests has proven that I am in rude health. I don’t even have high blood pressure, how did that happen?

As a literature major I get a kick out of telling people I had “brain fever”, a 19th century catch-all term for any inflammation of the brain. Practically everyone in Victorian and Russian novels had it: Pip in Great Expectations, Catherine in Wuthering Heights, Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein. In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan had it just before he was to defend his brother on the charge of murdering their father. When he had brain fever he saw the devil, who looked like a nouveau poor landowner.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

From left: Francine Medina Marquez, Stella Arnaldo, us, and Edd Fuentes. Photo from Stella’s Instagram.

At lunch yesterday our media friends brought us up to date on stuff that transpired while we were sleeping and whose ass we should go Ramsay Snow—Bolton now that he’s been legitimized–on. Tsk, tsk. Our blades are sharp. As they say at the Dreadfort, A naked man has few secrets, a flayed man none.

Boysen KNOxOut’s Project Edsa, the murals which make up the world’s biggest air filter, is in contention for the ACT Cannes 2014 prize.

Watch the Boysen Project Edsa video here (leftmost, third from the top) and click on the heart to cast your vote on Facebook.

Voting ends on 19 June.

ACT Responsible is a Switzerland-based, non-profit organization that collects the best ads promoting sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility in a bid to highlight how creativity is used to raise awareness on the world’s major issues.