See life through MJ's optimistic eyes.
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Last weekend Tim and I attended the “Yoga for Health” – Yoga and Health Symposium held at The Grand Gazebo Conference Room in Roxas City. It was an eye-opening experience because we did not just do asanas but we also learned what real yoga is all about first-hand from Guru/Yoga Instructor/Speaker Dennis E. Daguman “Dinesh’vara” and Yoga Instructor Ravi Shankar.
I have been practicing yoga since September last year. But I was not able to do my asanas for 3 months (December-January) and it showed because I gained weight. Don’t get me wrong – I practice yoga not because I want to have a healthy body – that’s just one of the reasons, but because of the reasons I wrote in this blog post September of last year.
Last Thursday, January 20th, I had the opportunity to conduct an interview with my aunt who lives somewhere in Antique. The interview was about the life challenge that she’s facing right now. I asked her some questions and she answered them all honestly and positively. Please make sure to read this post until the very end so that like me you will also learn a lot of lessons in life. To those who are going through the same life challenge, you will also learn facts about cancer chemotherapy in the Philippines and some of its side effects. I decided to write about this topic because I have noticed that when I go online and try to search for cancer patients and cancer survivors here in the Philippines, I can’t seem to find decent information. I am always directed to foreign patients and survivors. So I really hope that this will help someone from our country.
Before I continue, let me share a little something about my father first. Those who are close to me already know that my father passed away December of 2009 because of lung cancer. He battled with the disease for more than three months, but my father was no match to the cancer. Although I write about how I feel when I miss him, or post some photos of him here in my blog, I have never really shared any of my experience or my family’s, to what was the most challenging time of our lives. But to be honest with you all losing my father made me realize so many important stuffs. It was also a wake-up call that no one is invincible and we will never know when our time will come.
Papang and Auntie Diding
So I am sharing with you all today this story of my aunt. She is my father’s younger sister. The purpose of this blog post is not to scare people, but to make everyone aware that cancer exists not only here in the Philippines but all over the world and how to cope with it and survive. I hope my aunt’s story will also inspire those who are going through the same disease.
I just drank a bottle of Minute Maid Pulpy. They say it’s got ‘no preservatives added’. Aw, c’mon…It’s bottled juice. Is that even possible? So I thought maybe… I have my facts wrong all along. And all this time I have been hearing the wrong things from the wrong people. But it has been my understanding though that everything canned or bottled must have preservatives, right? I guess this time I’m wrong. But Minute Maid tastes like the real deal I must say!
I didn’t believe it the first time I heard it’s got no preservatives added. So I read the ingredients (even the fine print) and everything checked out! It really has NO PRESERVATIVES ADDED! That means it doesn’t have ingredients that may turn out to be allergens, or worse…carcinogens! Whew! Now that’s healthy goodness that tastes so good, I… am so happy to learn about this and it gives me more reason to drink this pulpy goodness all the time without any worries.
So okay, it’s got no preservatives added. That’s really good, right? Not just because it doesn’t have those icky, harmful ingredients, but it also means… Minute Maid is all natural, it’s real fresh orange juice so people like me who normally do not find the time to extract fresh juice every day can enjoy this drink instead!
I am proud to say that in spite of my weird sleeping and eating habits I am not a sickly person. In fact I have never been admitted in a hospital. But I’m not a robot so of course I also get sick sometimes. Just last week I contracted sore eyes on the day of the Visayas Blogging Summit and then as if that wasn’t enough I also had itchy throat and continuous coughing bouts right after the heritage tour. This caused me to just stay at home the whole week after the wrap-up of the three major events that we’ve been planning for almost a year.
Thankfully, the pricey medicine I bought for my sore eyes was effective and in just three days my eyes were back to normal again. What bothered me most were the coughing bouts. It rained on the morning and the afternoon of the heritage tour so I guess that precipitated to my coughing ordeal. To alleviate the cough I turned to the cough syrups that my mother always has at the ready for me and my brothers. I had to choose between two over-the-counter cough syrups – Robitussin and Ascof Forte. They were also mentioned here in this very informative article: Politics of Cough Medicine: Synthetic versus Herbal Cough Medicine.
If you have noticed, pharmacies and drug store shelves are crowded with cough syrups that promise speedy and often non-drowsy relief without needing a doctor’s prescription. Robitussin is one of the most popular and top-selling cough syrups out there and is supposedly one of the most effective. Robitussin has Dextromethorphan which is a cough suppressant drug. We’ve been using Robitussin ever since I can remember. But recently my mother has added Ascof to our medicine cabinet. I have to admit I was a little hesitant to try Ascof Forte (Vitex negundo L. Lagundi Leaf) at first because I have always been taking Robitussin. But my mother has been using it to treat my brothers’ coughs and she says that it works like a charm and she was convinced that it is a better cough medicine option because it is herbal in nature therefore it is really safe for the body. So yes my mom convinced me to take Ascof and what do you know it was indeed effective and I was able to get a good night’s sleep without having to endure the annoyance of the coughing bouts.
I don’t know if you guys have also noticed the extensive marketing techniques of cough syrup brands today. They are actually starting to become downright dirty because I have seen one of the major brands attacking the herbal products. They imply that cough syrups which are herbal in nature are not really effective at all. In my opinion they are doing this type of marketing technique because the herbal medicines are becoming more popular and people right now prefer medicines that are herbal in nature instead of the synthetic ones.
Therefore I believe that advertising actually influences us on how we choose the kind of cough medication we should take but at the end of the day we are still the ones who decide what cough medicine works for us and what med is really effective. So which do you prefer, synthetic or herbal medicines? I would really love to hear your opinion about this too guys so please feel free to leave me a comment below. Stay healthy everyone!
