My favorite person, the Dalai Lama. He is such a cute man with wise words. Please enjoy this short video:
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Category Archives: Health
Reversing cavities
I am SO tired of having rotten teeth. I am at the point where I want to pull them all out and wear dentures. Remember dentures? All the old people had them and they would take them out and soak them in a jar on the nightstand, and then put them back into their mouths when they get up to eat breakfast.
Of course, I am to blame for the condition of my teeth because I love my Coca Cola, my Good News candy bar, chocolate chip cookies and constantly snacking while I watch movies and series on Netflix.
Recently one of my teeth really hurt and a trip to the dentist (Hideki Kurokawa – who is a really great dentist) confirmed a cavity that is causing inflammation. Not good. Not good at all so I will be having a root canal done this week by Nozomu Yamauchi at Island Endodontics. Dr. Noz is super good – really super good. And I can say this because I have a mouthful of teeth that have been root canaled by many different endodontists, and Dr. Noz is the best by far.
Meanwhile, cruising on Google for information on rotten teeth solutions (I really just want to pull them out), I came across a lady dentist who looked to be my age and she talked on my level. Her name is Dr. Ellie Phillips. She said I can reverse cavities by re-mineralizing my tooth enamel with some simple tips and a small lifestyle change. I watched and listened, and then I watched and listened some more, following her links and other videos that she has produced. One of them said to stop flossing.
What?!??? Stop flossing? That is almost sacrilegious! But truth to tell, flossing is a chore I would love to give up. Reverse cavities? I don’t think so – but then I do hope that it is possible. Strangely and coincidentally, I picked up a bag of Xylitol gum at 7-11 this morning with my spicy ahi inari sushi (ono!) because it called to me – and this was before I watched Dr. Ellie.
So long story short, I will recap who she and others said.
Demineralization of the tooth enamel causes holes. To stop caries (pre cavity stage), limit sugar, stop infection of outside surface of tooth by correcting PH levels to alkaline and give it the minerals that a healthy microbiome needs in the mouth. Use sodium floride with rinses and brush teeth with Crest Cavity Prevention toothpaste and Listerine Cool Mint flavor. If you feel you must floss (not recommended by Dr. Ellie), then do so when you have toothpaste in your mouth.
After meals, chew on Xylitol gum. Xylitol is a natural sweetener that inhibits plaque from sticking to your teeth and has long term effects for oral health. It is highly recommended for pregnant mothers because babies are born with healthy microbiomes from the start and it lays the foundation for good oral health for life. Xylitol has a very long term effect – 5 years after stopping use in a trial test, participants still had good oral health and less cavities.
Stop nibbling and sipping between meals. Saliva needs to be present to nurture and mineralize the teeth, and sipping or eating washes away our saliva until it is replaced, which takes about an hour.
There is much more information, and watching one video can lead to others such as how to whiten teeth naturally. The commercial methods to whiten teeth actually destroy and weaken teeth so I’ll stick to having my yellow teeth. However, I did bite the bullet and ordered Dr. Ellie’s kit (Crest toothpaste, rinses, Listerine, and Xylitol mints) because I am a believer. Her gum is cheaper than the one at 7-11 and reviews of the fruit flavored one says it tastes like Juicy Fruit gum – yum!
So, maybe I will keep all my teeth and be happy with them. That would be nice, right?
Update: I was informed that they can’t ship the kit to me due to shipping restrictions! What a bummer! Ah well, I can still order the gum and/or mints (on sale until May 14, 2024) at 20% off. I will go to Longs and get the kit products since they are all over the counter stuff.
Jazzercise for Aunty. Really?
Cool for Kupuna is a weekly show on Sundays at 5:30pm on KITV2. I don’t get tv stations but I can watch past episodes on their CoolforKupuna.com website.
Sue Jorgenson is a returning local (Kaimuki!) gal who interviews, visits, and tries all kinds of interesting things around the island that us old mature people would enjoy. I recently met her at the Hawaii Potters Guild when she had a lesson in wheel throwing and panned over the hand building area (where my good friend Esther Nowell used to teach and still plays on Mondays.). This episode will air on Sunday, March 24, 2024 on KITV2.
Her January 14, 2024 episode featured Kaimuki (for the 3rd time) and featured W&M Hamburger and Jazzercise at the Kaimuki YMCA. I watched it, saw seniors moving and moving slowly, and I thought to myself, “Self, you can do this. You really DO need to exercise!” So I joined the YMCA on a monthly basis ($59/mo), signed up for Jazzercise ($15/mo) and went to my first class yesterday morning at 8:00. I figured earlier is better so I can eat breakfast after class instead of moving around with food in the tummy and then having to go. You know what I mean by “go.”
Well, there were some people younger than me, a few that were older, the room was air conditioned and totally not crowded and I was raring to go! (NOT that kind of “go”, but the other kind of “GO!”)
It started off slow – tap, tap, double tap tap, and arms up, up, sway, sway, stretch, shift – nice and easy for the warm up. I liked it! Except it then started adding more steps and different songs and a faster tempo, more steps, slide, ball change, kick, kick, turn, arms up, over, out, all at the same time as legs and feet moving to the beat – and I was SO out of my comfort zone of being a couch potato. I had to sit it out when they grabbed their weights and did a couple more songs and routines. I wanted to go home already. I joined back into the group for the “cool down” – my favorite part.
It wasn’t fun yet. It was mental and physical torture because I didn’t know the steps and my body was not used to an hour of intentional movement. That Cool for Kupuna video (shown below) slowed down the participants in class so I wasn’t expecting that my heart would race, my head swimming with frustration, and me looking like the oldest one there because of being two beats behind them and confused.
Oprah Winfrey, in her book “Things That I Am Sure Of” spoke about determination. If you determine something, the universe and all the powers that be will conspire to make it come true.
And so, as I took my break sitting on a chair and watching the enthusiastic teacher (Caroline Dang) and her devoted students moving and grooving to the upbeat music, I said to myself, “Self, I am determined to become really good at Jazzercise – and I will dance again.”
And so, I will continue.
Update: I went to my 2nd Jazzercise class but this time I ate my regular breakfast of oatmeal, yogurt and coffee a bit earlier than usual. Was able to “go” before class and showed up a little bit late. And I did it! I wasn’t feeling woozy or weak, but still out of sinc with the dance steps. I didn’t do the weights but I didn’t sit it out. It’s happening and I am so glad for it! I guess I should not go on an empty stomach.
Miracle tree, for real
We have moringa (kalamungay) trees growing everywhere in Hawaii. I had one that was so big that I cut it down to the ground over a year ago and it still produced stem shoots that I hacked off. And now I have another stem shoot working its way up and out. Filipinos use it in cooking and I have tried it in salads and soups but never really paid attention to it.
David Wong is the owner of Mountain View Farms in Waianae and pal Wandaful sent me a link to an interview that Anne Lee of the Star Advertiser’s Dining Out section did with him. Blew my socks off.
Imagine not using pesticides, herbicides or bringing in enhanced soil products to grow healthy vegetables by stimulating the natural microbiomes in the soil. I love his farm with his huge stumps of old moringa that produce useable shoots that are dried and encapsulated. I love how he takes care to produce oil from the seeds that can be used orally and/or topically. I am ordering a bottle for a dear friend who has cancer because it may work when conventional medicines will not. I will keep a bottle for myself because it may help my skin issues (dark sunspots, dry spots) and also arthritis in my hands. I will make a more concerted effort to incorporate the leaves into my diet. After all, it is free and nature’s gift to our well being.
As a side note, David was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer in 2014. Instead of doing the conventional cut/burn/poison treatments, he went to Korea instead. Diet was one of the key factors in him being cancer free to this day. He takes 2 capsules of moringa morning and evening, and a dropperful of the oil at night under his tongue.
I have tons of seeds from the poor hacked up never-say-die stump if anyone wants to start a plant. Moringa plants can grow super tall and now I am thinking to plant a row of them against my back fence to block out that terrible monster house apartment that totally took away my previously charming view with 120+ linear feet of roofline, windows, and walls.
I am knee deep in research to improve my soil using the Korean Natural Farming (KNF) protocols that David Wong adopted. I will be posting about that journey as time goes on. It starts with undercooked rice buried under leaves.
Wish me luck!
Is it all Bad?
Pal Dexter (who also sent that neat history of the Ala Moana Center) sent this as a must see. Really? So I watched, and I hope you watch it too:
How to make Black Garlic
Black Garlic is the latest addition to my daily arsenal. Yasumi Gojo of Healing Seitai gave me a few heads of black garlic and asked me to try them. Her husband made them in an old rice cooker and she was sharing it with her clients. Some of them reported better blood pressure and better health. Pal Ryuko who is in the beginning stages of Parkinson’s says it makes her feel stronger. I think that it is making my grey hair black again!
I began to eat one clove a day in the morning and increased to 3 cloves a day. I do like the taste of garlic and the only difficult part of it is peeling the paper off – but it is easy enough to do.
Yasumi taught me how to make this great health supplement with a rice cooker, and I now make my own black garlic with a lot of extra to share.
The recipe
- Peel off most of the paper from each head of garlic (actually, this step is not necessary). I use the Christopher Ranch bag of raw garlic from Costco because it is grown in California. I can fit about 18 heads of garlic in the 5 cup rice cooker.
- Lay down a layer of wooden chopsticks or popsicle sticks on the bottom of the rice pot so the garlic is not resting on metal. Cover the sticks with a paper towel, then pile in the garlic heads. Try to keep the garlic away from the side of the pot so it doesn’t burn. Cover the pile of garlic with another paper towel.
- Close the lid, plug in the rice cooker, and set it on “warm”. Leave the rice cooker on warm for 10 days. The smell is quite strong during the first few days so I keep it in the garage. Unplug the cooker and remove the bulbs when cool enough to handle.
Line the bottom with wooden sticks 
Cover with a paper towel 
Add the cloves of garlic – try not to let it touch metal.. 
Cover with another paper towel. 
Cook on the warm setting for 10 days 
Ta Dah! Black garlic!
And that’s it! I store the blackened bulbs in a bowl on my kitchen counter and peel and eat 3 cloves every morning. When my supply starts to get small, I start a new batch in the rice cooker. Actually, I am constantly making batches of black garlic because I like to share with others who are interested and may have some issues that it could help, just as Yasumi Gojo shared with me.
Costco also sells black garlic. I like the bottle it comes in, and each bulb has only one round clove in it! However, it is rather pricey and it is also from China. Pal Wandaful said she looked up “black garlic from China” and didn’t like how sketchy their practices are with bleach and questionable fertilizers.
I think that I am having more benefits from taking black garlic than my hair getting darker, but I can’t say for sure. It is a natural remedy that has and entourage effect. I just learned about that while researching the benefits of CBD and cannabis. It is the effect on one’s body that doesn’t just treat one thing. It treats everything.
And for that, I am more than willing to have garlic breath in the morning until I brush my teeth. And since we still wear face masks, nobody really notices anyway.
Masks to help us all
Pal Jalna shared a video about wearing masks – presented by a young girl in the Czech Republic.
Aunty must admit to going on errands and not wearing a mask but after getting coughed on by a clueless girl who didn’t heed the 6 feet apart rule and was coughing without regard, I started wearing a mask and spraying my hands with sanitizer each time I touched something outside of the house.
Then, after watching this video, I will always wear a mask when I go out. Not just for my sake, but for all of us. Then we can get back to normal sooner, with an appreciation for what normal is (was).
Here is a video done by a surgeon teaching us how to make a mask: https://www.drstreicher.com/dr-streicher-blog/2020/3/a-surgeon-sewing-a-surgical-mask
Here is one that Kay of Musings shared and liked: https://www.craftpassion.com/face-mask-sewing-pattern/ This one looks rather easy (the 1st one by Dr. Streicher is the easiest) but when you click on your pattern choice, do NOT click on anything that looks like a green box with “START” on it. This will take you to another place – it is a link to an advertiser. I don’t like that, but the patterns are good.
And here is another one that Kay shared and liked better because of the fit: https://www.unitypoint.org/filesimages/COVID-19/UnityPointHealth-OlsonMask-Instructions.pdf
Here is a no sew mask with a large handkerchief and 2 hair ties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBVtkX0yJ4Y&feature=youtu.be Very easy and actually brilliant! This version and the first version with Dr. Streicher was shared by our president of the Hawaii Stitchery and Fibre Arts Guild. Mahalo, Aileen!
Best wishes to all, and may the force be with you!
Hand Sanitizer recipe and virus update
Aunty’s Seattle based daughter sent an easy hand sanitizer recipe that she and her chemist PhD pal (Marcy Kang) made.
8 ounces (1 cup) of 91% Isopropyl Alcohol
2 ounces of distilled water
10 drops of your favorite essential oil
Mix in a bowl, pour into 2 oz. spray bottles and label them. (makes 4 bottles)
Easy! Right? Well, with this coronavirus craze going on, finding isopropyl alcohol was very difficult because most stores were sold out. The only place I could find it was at the Pillbox Pharmacy in Kaimuki. It was much more expensive there and I also ended up buying a pint of their awesome Oregon strawberry ice cream but both, imo, were well worth it. You could use the more normal 60% isopropyl alcohol but it won’t evaporate as quickly.
How did it turn out? Quite nice, with a strong alcohol after smell, which is rather comforting in this day of coronavirus paranoia.
Speaking of which
Dr. Edwin Endo sent an email about this virus and what to do.
Here is the text:
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT – A simple but good to know guide on Coronavirus
1. If you have a runny nose and sputum, you have a common cold
2. Coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose.
3. This new virus is not heat-resistant and will be killed by a temperature of just 26/27 degrees (82-85*F). It hates the Sun.
4. If someone sneezes with it, it takes about 10 feet before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne.
5. If it drops on a metal surface it will live for at least 12 hours – so if you come into contact with any metal surface – wash your hands as soon as you can with a bacterial soap.
6. On fabric it can survive for 6-12 hours. normal laundry detergent will kill it.
7. Drinking warm water is effective for all viruses. Try not to drink liquids with ice.
8. Wash your hands frequently as the virus can only live on your hands for 5-10 minutes, but – a lot can happen during that time – you can rub your eyes, pick your nose unwittingly and so on.
9. You should also gargle as a prevention. A simple solution of salt in warm water will suffice.
10. Can’t emphasize enough – drink plenty of water!
THE SYMPTOMS
1. It will first infect the throat, so you’ll have a sore throat lasting 3/4 days 2. The virus then blends into a nasal fluid that enters the trachea and then the lungs, causing pneumonia. This takes about 5/6 days further.
3. With the pneumonia comes high fever and difficulty in breathing.
4. The nasal congestion is not like the normal kind. You feel like you’re drowning. It’s imperative you then seek immediate attention.
Overkill and hype
It is better to be overly cautious but keeping our hands off of our face and clean are the 2 best ways to stop this virus from invading us. In this day and age of internet news and reports, we sometimes have too much information and this can spread fear and survival behavior out of perspective.
Financially, it is killing the stock market and will affect Hawaii as a tourist destination, which will hurt us for a while. We can’t do much about that but we won’t run out of toilet paper and water.
A year from now we will look back and breathe a sigh of relief. For now, please keep on washing hands and don’t panic.
Coronavirus explained – really well
Jalna had this video on her blog. It is short and very informative. It is important to wash our hands and avoid touching our faces. Thanks, Jalna!
Like an Ohmmmmmmmm, for your lungs
Aunty is not a doctor of medicine so this is not medical advice. Aunty must say that as a disclaimer, and also because Aunty sometimes tries weird (and wonderful) stuff.
Decades ago, in my twenties, I attended a workshop on iridology (the study of the eyes) from the renown Dr. Bernard Jensen. He stressed diet (you are what you eat), herbs and healthy lifestyles, attitudes and choices.
He did not like the choices of the traditional medical doctors which were dominated with 2 therapies – drugs and surgery. He, and Dr. Richard Schulz (HerbDoc.com) were constantly criticized for their radical and risky therapies of nutrition, cleansing and herbal remedies. Their retort was to ask: what is more radical and risky: a) cutting or interchanging parts out of the body and/or bombarding the body with chemicals that have the ability to blast through and destroy cells and systems; or b) clean out and flush toxins from the colon and other body parts and then use natural plants and herbs to aid in the healing process?
Choices
Aunty feels that the main difference in modern vs alternative (sometimes referred to as pseudoscientific) medicine is that modern medicine treats the symptoms and the subsequent side effects and natural alternative medicine treats the causes. To be a believer in alternative medicine, one must also believe that the body is capable of healing itself.
This is not to say that Aunty does not believe in modern medicine at all. Because of the dedication, research, and the leaps and bounds of medical discoveries, modern medicine helps and is sometimes the reason we live long and well. It’s also faster – take a pill and your headache goes away, put a stent in your arteries and your blood flows again, get a pace maker and your heart beats the way it should.
It is also the standard of choice for most people, and an easy way out. Going the all natural route of diet or cleansing, changing one’s lifestyle and actually exercising and revamping attitudes takes a lot of effort, and it goes against the mainstream way of life, subjecting the ones who do the “radical” naturopathic route to ridicule and condemnation sometimes, “Oh yeah, so-and-so didn’t believe in going to a regular doctor, did only natural stuff and he died.” A question to ask then is, has anyone ever died due to the intervention of modern medicine? Drug overdose, mistakes and misdiagnosis, surgical errors, etc.?
It doesn’t hurt
So, in a roundabout way, Aunty comes back to the “Ohmmmmmmmmm” of this subject, for this “self healing of lungs” is neither naturopathic or modern medicine. It’s other realm kind of stuff from Master Sha. Whether or not you believe him to be a healer or not, this leap of faith into a different kind of exercise may make you a believer in your self, and your body’s power to heal.
Basically, it is: Sitting up straight, contracting the perinium (down there, ahem), placing a hand over the lower chakra (just below the belly button) and the other hand over the lungs, imagining golden light while chanting “Compassion”. It sounds weird but very do-able. Aunty’s doctors will probably not think much of it, but if it works for even one person, the weirdness is worth it. Greater lung capacity and removing blockages is a good thing, right?
This Normal Aunty still goes to the doctor and sometimes (but not always) takes his advice. Naturopathic Aunty takes nutritional supplements and herbal formulas for elimination (tmo, lol). Weird Aunty is always looking at other methods for cures and maintenance of good health and wellness, because Aunty believes there is so much more that we do not yet understand until we search or take notice of what is revealed.
And thus, I share, for truly, I wish you good health, great lungs, and a long and prosperous happy life.
Your normally weird Aunty