Category Archives: Health and Medicine (健康・医療)

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) I’ve had sleepwalking episodes ever since I can remember. Of course, I don’t remember what happened during the episodes, but other people have told me about them or in some cases the evidence upon waking up is irrefutable.   Medically known as “somnabulism” it has been estimated to occur in 1.5 to 15% of the population, with the highest incidences in children between three and seven. It occurs during the Stage III and IV non-REM deep sleep phase.   I’m always a bit surprised when I wake up after having a sleepwalking episode. I once woke up on the beach and have awakened in my car a few times (apparently I didn’t do any driving). Sometimes the incidents are comical, like finding my flashlight in my refrigerator or my socks in the bathtub.   When […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) I’ve taken many MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) ever since they first came out on the Net. Almost all of the courses I’ve taken have been in the medical field and I’m currently working through a Clinical Psychology course offered by the University of Queensland.   The knowledge I learn in them often comes in handy. For example, a few weeks ago in aikido practice, one of my 3rd grade girls came to me crying, saying that so and so had hit her hand. I used ki to identify where the injury was and asked her where it hurt to confirm my finding. To my surprise, it followed the dermatome for the median nerve’s recurrent and palmar digital branches. My ki scan had directed me to the location of the median nerve and my MOOC […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) It must have been a night when I was in the third or fourth grade when I went peered into the kitchen where my father was sitting, unusually sober for a change.   He looked at me and said, “What’s wrong? Can’t sleep?”   I nodded.   He said, “When you can’t sleep, don’t! People worry that if they don’t sleep they won’t be able to function normally the next day, but during the war we went for days without sleep. Not sleeping won’t kill you!”   He went on to make some suggestions, “Turn the light on. Read a book. Write something. Stay up. Most of the time you’ll find you get sleepy and then you can go to sleep. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. Just stay up and go through your […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) I see a lot of ads for cosmetic products pushing collagen on TV. Most people aren’t aware that collagen is a family of proteins. There are at least 28 types of collagen which are found in particular locations in the body (some locations have more than one type). Type I collagen is the most abundant protein in humans and is found in extracellular matrix (ECM) of loose connective tissue, bone, tendons, skin and the cornea of the eye. Thus, not all of the types are related to skin care. For example, Type XXI is found in the heart, skeletal muscle, stomach, kidney and placenta. This is something to keep in mind when you see an ad promoting just “collagen.” Also, if you’re really worried about collagen, you might want to consider taking vitamin C to […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) People often worry about cholesterol, but cholesterol is needed to stabilize cell membranes and as a precursor to the bile salts and steroid hormones. Cholesterol is either obtained in the diet or synthesized by a pathway that occurs in most cells of the body, but especially in the liver and intestinal cells. The adrenal cortex and gonads also synthesize cholesterol and use it for steroid hormone synthesis. Cholesterol synthesis requires acetyl CoA, which can be produced from glucose, fatty acids or amino acids. Cholesterol gets packaged into chylomicrons in the intestine and Very Low-density Lipoprotein (VLDL) in the liver. It gets transported in the blood in the lipoprotein particles together with triacylglycerols. The chylomicrons are converted into chylomicron remnants. The VLDL gets converted into Intermediate-density Lipoprotein (IDL) and then into Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) which […]