Brief notes

Just one of those round-up sort of posts that I do when I haven’t got too much to say about a subject.

1. In Formula One the off-season shenanigans continue, with Renault sure that they’ll get Alonso back for 2008, but the man himself not saying. Speculation is high that in 2009 he’ll be driving a red car. Meanwhile, Ralf Schumacher is touting for the McLaren drive by singing their praises, as well as testing for Force India, the team who have taken over Spyker. Finally, Pro-Drive will not be competing in 2008 because of a question of legality over their use of McLaren “customer cars”. Do we think that someone out there doesn’t like Dave Richards?

2. Arrington’s having a pop at PayPerPost again - in fact, a couple of times over the last few days. As a much better writer than I once said “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Is there something going on between PPP CEO Ted “Whoo” Murphy and Mr A? I think there could be. And Scoble used the ‘e’ word again in a recent blog post to describe PPP. Let’s get real, people, shall we? It’s only blogging; it don’t mean nuthin’.

3. If you’ve got a Canon camera of a certain vintage (go to this page and look for Case Id 37383 for details) you could be at risk of a fault that will stop the CCD functioning properly. Thankfully, Canon are offering free repairs for the fault (via an authorised Canon repair centre) and - having got my camera back today - I can confirm the service is speedy and the work excellent.

4. Eastbourne Borough are STILL unbeaten in the league - 16 games into the season - and are tussling with Lewes at the top of the table. The Boxing Day game between the two sides could turn out to be a promotion decider.

5. Once again, the tolerance of one culture unto another never ceases to amaze me. This time it’s the Sudanese, who have been rioting in (appropriately) Martyr’s Square, calling for a British schoolteacher to be executed because she allowed her class of six and seven year olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed. It’s good to know that all the different races and religions in the world continue to get along together so well.

6. There’s supposed to be a big announcement tonight by the British Inventors Society that will change the face of the world by introducing “something” that could produce climate-safe energy at 80% less cost. Think this is one of those wait-and-see type of things; after all, another British invention was supposed to revolutionise personal transport, but most people won’t have ever seen a Sinclair C5!

Update: 7. Forgot to say that The Wolf’s Howl passed a milestone of its own this week - it now has over 100 posts! Yay!! The first was on 21 March, and this one is number 106. That makes an average of one post every 2.4 days, which is a better rate than I ever expected to be blogging at. Whether it’s worth reading is another issue entirely, but then you’d be a better judge of that dear Reader than I would be.

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All opinions in this blog are either my own or else they’re made up just to get a rise out of you and make you angry. Either way, they’re probably not very well thought out or expressed so do yourself a favour and don’t take the world so seriously.

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Tags: EastbourneBorough, Formula One, Arrington, PayPerPost

Milestones? Not quite…

Well, it was nice while it lasted; I wrote this time last week that two milestones had been achieved in the week. One was the fact that at work, the Veganicity brochures had gone to the printer.

We got the proofs this week and, you know how you can read something a dozen times and still not see the error? That’s what happened - so I spent part of today having to re-edit the file, create new PDF’s and send those to the printer. And guess what? I STILL got it wrong… and had to do it again.

Finally got it sorted, though (I hope) and hopefully we’ll get finished copies sometime next week.

And then probably find lots more errors.

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All opinions in this blog are either my own or else they’re made up just to get a rise out of you and make you angry. Either way, they’re probably not very well thought out or expressed so do yourself a favour and don’t take the world so seriously.

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Tags: Milestones, Printing, Errors

Weights and measures

Part of Wolfie’s Nutrition Guide : An occasional series

Milli-whats?
I realise that my post the other day about vitamin C may have confused some people, because of the use of “mg”. As not everyone is familiar with the system of weights and measures that is used in relation to nutritional supplements, I thought I’d give you a brief guide.

Most vitamins, minerals and other nutrients are measured in milligrams or micrograms. These are indicated as “mg” for milligrams and “mcg” or “μg” for micrograms. (”μg” is the correct form, but you will see “mcg” in some places - particularly websites where the character set may not be 100% accurate).

In the same way that a gram (g) is a 1,000th part of a kilogram (kg), so a milligram is 1,000th of a gram and microgram is 1,000th of a milligram. So:

1 gram (1g) = 1,000 milligrams (1,000mg)
1 milligram (1mg) = 1,000 micrograms (1,000μg)
0.1 milligram (0.1mg) = 100 micrograms (100μg)

What are these IU things?
There are three special nutrients, though, that are also measured in International Units (iu). These are vitamins A, D and E. International Units are a system that was introduced to offer a standard for the potency of each of these three nutrients. They are all available in many different forms, all with different potencies, so by introducing International Units it was hoped to standardise things and make things clearer for the consumer.

Unfortunately, this didn’t really work because a different standard was adopted in some parts of the world. In the UK, however, this is how International Units are defined:

3.3iu vitamin A = 1μg retinol (pre-formed vitamin A) or 6μg beta carotene
40iu vitamin D = 1μg vitamin D
1iu d-alpha tocopherol equivalent (α-TE) = 0.67mg vitamin E

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All opinions in this blog are either my own or else they’re made up just to get a rise out of you and make you angry. Either way, they’re probably not very well thought out or expressed so do yourself a favour and don’t take the world so seriously.

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Tags: Weights, Measures, Supplements

Wolfie’s Nutrition Guide

An occasional series

As I think I may have mentioned on these pages before, I work for Health Plus, a company that sells nutritional supplements. I use our products on a daily basis and can honestly say that they have had a positive effect on my health. But during the course of an average day, I find myself answering some quite basic questions from customers - things that you’d think would be general knowledge but don’t appear to be. There are many reasons for this - including the restrictive legislation that exists regarding what can and cannot be said about the nutrients in a supplement - so I’d like to offer the first in an occasional series of articles about vitamins and minerals. I’ll try not to get too technical (’cos otherwise I won’t understand it), and I’ll try not to ramble on and hopefully the information I offer will be useful for someone out there.

As we’re well into the cold season now, and as the one thing everyone knows is that when you have a cold you should take vitamin C, I’ll start there.

Vitamin C is one of those nutrients that is known as an antioxidant; what this means is that it helps the body to fend off free radicals. These are molecules containing oxygen that have an unpaired electron which creates an uneven electrical charge. The molecule then tries to re-balance itself by robbing neighbouring molecules, which triggers a set of reactions that can damage cell membranes, proteins, carbohydrates and even DNA - the genetic material of the cell. This reaction continues until the free radical is neutralised (or scavenged) by an antioxidant. Other antioxidant nutrients include vitamins A and E, and the minerals selenium and zinc.

Most people know that vitamin C comes from oranges, but it can also be found in most other fruits and vegetables. The problem is knowing how much, or how little, you’re getting from your diet. One study a few years ago that I read about reported that, in a random sampling of oranges, the vitamin C content ranged from nothing to 180mg. This uncertainty about the nutritional content of food is what first leads many people to take a supplement - especially in the winter when they feel they need extra protection.

Used by the body in over 300 biochemical reactions, vitamin C can:

• Help make collagen - the building block that your body uses for all its skin, connective tissue, cartilage, tendons and more
• Reduce the risk of viral attack
• Help the growth and repair of tissue
• Maintain normal blood fat and cholesterol levels
• Help your immune system to function fully - even when under attack.
• Assist the uptake of iron from the diet
• Aid haemoglobin and red blood cell production

It is also a vital co-factor for the proper metabolisation and utilisation of other nutrients; Zinc, for example, is much more well absorbed in the presence of vitamin C.

Unlike some other nutrients, the human body is unable to synthesise vitamin C, so we have to rely on external sources - our food, basically. Linus Pauling, well known advocate of vitamin C supplementation, was of the opinion that we lost the ability to synthesise vitamin C because of our fruit rich diet. However, vitamin C is the most unstable of all the vitamins so is easily destroyed in food by poor storage, peeling, over-cooking, etc. It is also water-soluble (meaning it is not stored in the body but is flushed away), so a daily intake is essential.

So how much do I need?
Well, opinion is divided. According to the EU, you only need 60mg per day. This is what they call their Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA). According to the powers-that-be, this is all you need to stop yourself being deficient in vitamin C.

But avoiding deficiency is not the same as promoting good health. To do that, you need much more than 60mg - even eating just your five-a-day should give you more than 60mg per day (provided you’re eating good quality produce rather than fast-grown, insecticide-riddled, watery rubbish). Linus Pauling (who studied vitamin C for many years and attributed his staving-off of cancer to the nutrient) used to take 25g (25,000mg).

Most sensible people would suggest that you need something a bit more in the middle. I take around 2,000mg per day, and I up it to around 6,000mg a day if I should happen to get a cold (which I rarely do these days) until the symptoms disappear.

What should I take?
The most common form of vitamin C in any type of product - from nutritional supplements to fizzy drinks and everything in-between - is ascorbic acid. This also tends to be the cheapest option, just because it is so common. Ascorbic acid is not right for everyone though; if you have stomach acid problems, you’ll want to avoid it and choose something that contains calcium ascorbate or sodium ascorbate. If you want a chewable tablet you should go for these, as well; if you chew ascorbic acid tablets over a period of time they will strip the enamel off your teeth. Most chewable tablets, though, will contain sugar to make them palatable. This can be a mixed-blessing as too much sugar can interfere with vitamin C absorption.

Start with 1,000mg per day and see how you go. If your intake of vitamin C has been very low previously, you might notice a laxative effect when you take this amount. This should lessen quickly as your body gets used to the intake. If it doesn’t, reduce your intake to 500mg and try again. When your body is used to that, try going back up to 1,000mg.

Some people find they get on better with tablets, some people prefer powders (usually mixed with water or fruit juice); either is good - just make sure that you’re getting 500mg or 1,000mg of elemental vitamin C.

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All opinions in this blog are either my own or else they’re made up just to get a rise out of you and make you angry. Either way, they’re probably not very well thought out or expressed so do yourself a favour and don’t take the world so seriously.

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Tags: VitaminC

At it again

I’m not a big fan of religion - any religion, I make no distinction’s - because I see it as a arbitrary construct by man that places “the church” between humans and their God. Let me make it very clear I do not want to stop anyone believing in any God they wish to; that’s for each of us to decide. What I’d like to see is for religion to stop trying to tell us what we should be doing, saying and thinking and just let us get on with it.

I’ve already commented on the recent case of a Jehovah’s Witness mother who died giving birth because her religion forbade her to accept a blood transfusion. Now, today, we have the (admittedly not as tragic or heart-wrenching) case of Philip Pullman being attacked for being pro-atheist and anti-Christian. It seems that the trilogy of books His Dark Materials are a thinly veiled attack on religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular - at least according to America’s Catholic League. Their spokesperson is urging people not to see the film (premièring today in London) that is based on the first novel, and wants parents to keep their children away from the books.

The Golden Compass joins a long list of films that have upset people (who often haven’t even seen the film) based on the portrayed attitude to religion. Prime examples that spring easily to mind are The Last Temptation of Christ and Monty Python’s Life of Brian; but what everyone seems to forget with all of these things, and which seems to have been forgotten once again, is that we live in free society (supposedly) where we can believe what we like: if I want to believe the earth is flat, that’s up to me. If I want to believe in God, that’s also up to me. And so is not believing in God.

What the Catholic League should be doing is saying to people who go to see the film or who read the books, “OK. That’s one point of view. But we’ve got another one which we think is better. Let’s tell you about it”. Isn’t that the Christian thing to do?

Only if we encourage debate and the exchange of ideas and belief systems can we possibly hope to live in a peaceful world. Getting all territorial over what is, at the end of the day, just a transient entertainment seems the wrong way to go.

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All opinions in this blog are either my own or else they’re made up just to get a rise out of you and make you angry. Either way, they’re probably not very well thought out or expressed so do yourself a favour and don’t take the world so seriously.

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Tags: GoldenCompass, Pullman, Catholic