Following the idea of using “psyche” as the name for the section of Alaya.net related to the soul, today I set up “soma” for a new section containing posts related to the body.  Other possible names would have been “health”, “beauty”, or “personal care”.  Yet while all these do relate to the body each of…

Could an ‘elixir of life’ really increase your lifespan? 16:44 7 October 2010 Health Jessica Hamzelou, reporter A chemical elixir can add 10 years to your life! According to the media, anyway. How much of the claim that an amino acid cocktail can boost longevity should be taken with a pinch of salt? For starters,…

If I read this correctly, hazard ratios of 1 would mean that mortality and myocardial infarction rates between the HRT treated (numerator) and control (denominator) groups are equal. Hazard ratios of less than 1 indicate that mortality is lower for the HRT treated groups, which is what the study concludes. Note that the 95% confidence…

There has been purslane at the farmers market recently. Purslane is in the same family as Miner’s lettuce – the Portulacaceae family which is also called the purslane family. There is purslane that grows wild all over San Francisco in the cracks of the streets. If you are bicycling along and look down at a…

What: Chocomatcha is this amazing drink: a mixture of pure cocoa powder and matcha green tea powder.  For my chocomatcha I like to use organic unsweetened almond milk and no sweetners or other additives. Why: Chocomatcha is a very refreshing drink which undoubtedly is beneficial to drink.  The benefits of chocolate – particularly pure, unsweetened…

Today I was happy to learn that a company in my city which makes tofu and supplies it to the restaurant I was eating at does not use genetically-modified soybeans. Sometimes it is difficult to ask a restaurant if the tofu they use is non-GMO. I have learned that the following questions are useful: Is…

From time to time most people probably experience times when we feel kind of itchy all over or on certain areas of our bodies. Of course such a feeling can be related to many possible factors including histamine response in the skin. Yet it can also be from organisms such as mites which can live…

I was at this restaurant a while ago and they served these amazingly delicious little hors d’oeuvre wrap things which are called maing kham. I wanted to create this post about it for reference purposes. Want to experiment with different recipes and ideas. The ones I had had cashew, prawn (which I no longer eat),…

There has been some stuff in the news [abstract] recently about new findings related to Oogonial Stem Cells. It has traditionally been believed that all of the oocyctes (eggs) in a human female’s body are present when she is born and that the system which produced the eggs no longer creates new ones after this.…

Today I input my stats on a page at the BBC which rates where you are on the “Global Fat Scale”. The result: My size is that of an average person from India.  If everyone in the world had the same Body Mass Index as me, it would mean 35 million tons less of human…