Vegetarianism or Non-vegetarianism: which is better?

In the civilised world, at the heart of many heated debates is this question of which is better: vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism? A statistic says that, more or less, 1000 people switch from a non-vegetarian diet to vegetarianism. There are several reasons for this increase; prime among which are to prevent animals from being killed, to lose weight, and in order to prevent certain associated conditions.

Those who like their may be tempted ask: what’s so great about vegetarianism? Or may even entertain suspicion on that regard. An explanation for them is that our body is built to adapt to a vegetarian diet. The human intestine is six times longer than that of the human body which is similar to that of herbivores. Our teeth, intestine, hands, and genitals are systemised to support a vegetarian diet.

Likewise, fruits and vegetables decay gradually, whereas meats tend to decay in a very short period of time.  Consequentially, within minutes of entering our system, non-vegetarian foods start to generate a lot of waste products. We are unable to efficiently digest non-vegetarian foods, especially during constipation, non-vegetarian foods tend not to get digested easily and stay within our system. Acids which are produced in the intestines of animals help digest non-vegetarian foods easily. In human intestines, however, produce alkaline saliva which does not work well with meats increasing the time it takes to digest them.

Also, the foods we eat determine our characteristics. Vegetarians tend to be quiet and able, but as we keep consuming meet, our characteristics may shift to folly – as we may acquire the characteristics of carnivores. When we consume meat, we eat also the chemicals that the animal may have ingested, the pollutants in its body, and the pesticides that the butcher may have sprayed on it.

Miscarriages, diseases that affect the eyesight of new-borns, diseases associated with jaundice may be spread from the parasites in meats from Asian countries.  The now prevalent Chikungunya disease is spread from chickens. Likewise, Mad Cow disease is spread from cattle.

The pesticides that are sprayed on fruits and vegetables are easily washed away when preparing them.  This is why we are always advised to wash them before we eat them. But boric acid, which is used to prepare prawns and fish, stays within the flesh synthesizing antibodies and hormones. This does not happen in fruits and vegetables. There is a chance of contracting Trichinosis Infestation in parts of our stomach when consuming under-cooked pork meats. Likewise, the acids that form in pork and beef can be poisonous to our blood vessels. Vegetables tend not to have fats, even groundnuts, coconuts, etc. which have fats do not have cholesterol. Generally, vegetarian diet does not have too much fat.

Doctors often advice to eat vegetarian diet during pyrexia and stomach upsets.

Vegetarian diets can also be beneficial for the heart. Several studies have shown that switching to a vegetarian diet, reduces the chances of obesity. It can also reduce the chances of diabetes, blood pressure and certain types of cancers. Vegetarians should especially consume foods that contain protein which contain acids. Examples include milk, yogurt  soya milk, lentils, ground nuts, butter, and legumes.

Meats have high iron content; there can be no doubt about that. But they also tend to be high in fat also. But dried beans, dried fruits, spinach also contain iron. Alongside, oranges, tomatoes and broccoli contain vitamin C as well as iron. Young ladies need iron especially during menstruation. This is because they need an increased circulation during this period which is facilitated by the intake of iron.  This is also helped by tonics and medicines prescribed by physicians.

Cow’s milk can provide vitamin D; soya milk can also be consumed for the same. Vitamin D can be synthesized by the exposure to the morning sun – not the afternoon sun! Vegetarian diet contains more calcium than its non-vegetarian counterpart. Milk, yoghurt, soya, leaf vegetables, orange, tofu and legumes contain sizable amounts of calcium.

Legumes and nuts contain about 15-18 mg of zinc, which reduces the prevalence of fats in our body.  Consuming milk products, tofu and nut varieties help reach the levels of zinc that your body requires. One should not consume sweets which contain high levels of fat after converting to a vegetarian diet. Steamed lentils are advisable. Fruits and vegetables should be consumed copiously along with reduced-fat milk products.

Even Americans and Europeans are continuing to switch to vegetarian diets. It is an added bonus for vegetarians to know that Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy are some world renowned vegetarians!

Benefits of Water Therapy

For them that wonder what is needed for a healthy body, those who favor Western Medicine, or those that simply want to try new developments should be aware that Water Therapy is a novel medical practice. When water therapy is practiced, the unwanted waste products in our body get excreted and our body gets cleaned easily. We must strive to clean our body. Those who follow the PanjakarmaChikitchai to expel bodily toxins could try water therapy as an alternative therapy as well as a natural therapy.

Only clean water is required for water therapy. Clean water should be protected well. Potable water should be filtered after being boiled, and should be left to cool. The water should not be neither hot nor cold, but tepid.

Many people have the habit of drinking hot water, but this is not advisable because our optimum body temperature is at 98.4 degree F. This is our stable temperature. But when we drink hot water, it raises our temperature further requiring our body to reduce its temperature to counter the increase. This is unnecessary. Also, hot water can facilitate our body movement, in particular our digestion which increases our gastric juices and acids. This expedites digestion. If the stomach is empty, this can cause flatulence.  Hence, drinking hot water is not advisable.

However, drinking hot coffee or tea does not affect it. Because its level is lower, that is, it is generally consumes only 2-3 times a day. These kinds of drinks contain dissolved foods to be digested, but water tends not to contain such dissolved foods. Likewise, drinking cold water is also not advisable. When drinking very cold water, it causes the same problem as hot water, in that, it reduces the body temperature. This requires the body to increase its temperature, and stabilise it at 98.4 degree F. Sometimes the body may not stabilize at this level and may continue to keep increasing its temperature. Apart from this, the digestive and acid-secreting organs may secrete excessively causing problems with digestion. Sometimes microbes spread through cold water, which is also unnecessary. It is advisable to avoid all these problems. In order to stabilise digestion, drinking tepid water is recommended. If you still want to drink cold or hot water, heating or cooling it by 5 degrees centigrade is recommended.

During water therapy, five glasses of water or 1 ¼ litres should be consumed upon waking up. 1250 ml of water should be consumed before engaging in any work in the morning. If you are unable to drink it all at once, you may drink it at intervals. This level of water should be consumed within 45 – 60 minutes. For those that are unable to drink it all at once, moving limbs according to walking gestures may help.

Those that are just starting out may follow the above water therapy three times a week. Then gradually after one or two weeks, may do it daily. You may feel the urge to urinate about three or four times within the hour of starting out. This will stabilize within one or two weeks.

Those that want to follow this by drinking water every morning should avoid drinking hot beverages like milk, coffee or tea before going to bed. Only then will water therapy be efficient. Drinking water like this cleans our blood, stabilizes our digestion, and will ensure efficient expulsion of waste products through effective maintenance of the pancreas, liver and kidneys. It will reduce appetite and stabilise body temperature. It will allow effective functioning of the body by expelling body wastes.

For those who exercise or walk in the morning, should do so after drinking water and attending calls of nature. This helps to stabilise body temperature. Doing so allows temperature to reduce after urinating, cooling the body. Those who suffer from gastric discomfort should follow this daily to heal everything from mouth ulcers to the cause.

Worldwide studies prove the effectiveness of water therapy. A recent study in Japan has found that water therapy helps the following illnesses - Headaches, High blood pressure, Overweight, Leg ache, Diabetes, Sinusitis, Runny nose, Asthma, Acid reflux, Flatulence, Constipation, Stomach upset, Irregular menstruation, Kidney problems, Male or female potency. For anyone who wants to help improve their health can truly benefit from following water therapy today.

Google Maps Returns to iPhones

You've seen them since September, when iOS 6 was released, parked by the side of the road, scratching their heads in abject silence, lost as a male over 30 at a Justin Bieber concert. Apple iPhone users, dealing with the loss of Google Maps.
Ever since the last major update to Apple iOS, which drives iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, things just haven't seemed right in the world for us iPhone users. We've simply lost our direction. Despite a number of enhancements that provided new features Apple fans like myself are enjoying often, there was as hole in our geographic hearts.
Android fanboys, this is where you fight that uncontrollable eye-roll. Because you never lost that loving feeling — Google's Maps offering has always been the heart and soul of how you get around. That and your Google Music playlists.
When Apple Maps took over from Google Maps in September, the responses ranged from shrugs to downright mouth foamage. Yes, that's a word. Don't look it up. Entire cities were missing. Even an Apple executive was fired over the morass (debacle? melee? furor?) following Google Maps getting the axe for Apple's own product. I'm sure he hit the ground running, although if he had an iPhone, he didn't know where he landed.
It's understandable - that's the American way, right? A company enjoys the fruits of someone's labor for years, watches their stock double and triple and quintuple (that's a word, too), then pushes 'em down a perp walk for one lousy error. 

Let's face it, Google's mapping system is more accurate, because it's been around longer, and has had years of feedback from trusted users. Kind of like the Twinkie, whose pending absence has caused its own chaos as of late. Google Maps are more accurate, and simpler to use. You could tie into all of your saved places. You could use street view and see that damned couch still sitting in your neighbor's front lawn.
Well, Google Maps is back, at least for iPhones. Yes, I know, it will work on iPads, too, if you expand it to fit the screen. But that's so gauche. Let the festivities begin! Snap the new Google Maps for iPhones app up up while it's still hot - in fact, it's already been snapped up, so many times it's the #1 app in the iTunes Store.
Google has upgraded the clarity of their maps, and thrown in Business Photos to boot, so you can figure out whether a particular restaurant has the ambience you desire to pop the question. Because dude, 2012 is about to end, and she's been waiting foreve

Facebook Makes A Huge Data Grab By Aggressively Promoting Photo Sync

Facebook was already taking in 300 million photos a day, and that rate is about to dramatically increase. It’s now ushering users onto its background uploads feature Photo Sync with a big banner at the top of its mobile apps’ news feed. Just two taps and your last 20 photos plus every one you take in the future are auto-uploaded to a private album from which you can share and Facebook can mine metadata.

The rollout of Photo Sync that started yesterday is perhaps the biggest thing to happen to Facebook photos beyond friend tagging and manual mobile uploads. Friend tagging jumpstarted Facebook’s growth with a jolt of narcissism over a half decade ago. If someone tagged you in a photo, you likely checked it out the second you got the notification, along with all the other photos in the album. Later it began offering photo sharing from mobile, but its biggest problem remained the arduous upload process.

 
Photo Sync sands that friction down to a smooth marble surface and it’s about to get a ton of users. Each of Facebook’s iPhone and Android apps have well over 115 million monthly users who will end up seeing this banner that casually requests you “Get Started” when it’s actually a serious decision.

Once enabled, every photo you take gets uploaded with no work on your part. That means all six tries to get that perfect portrait, the 30 photos you took of that gorgeous sunset, the pic of those cute pants you want to buy, and everything in between. All you do is select which to share, and a moment later they’re visible to your friends on Facebook.
When you might have shared one photo you could share four. Instead of squinting to type in descriptions on your phone, you might share more of those landscapes and other abstract shots because you’ll be able to add descriptions when you share them from the desktop. This will generate more photos of friends to draw them back to the site, and content for them to consume in the news feed.

You’ll see the full force of Photo Sync if Facebook combines it with its facial recognition feature. Rather than tagging friends manually, Facebook will analyze your Photo Synced album for the mugs of friends, apply tags automatically, and all you’ll have to do is approve them.

In the meantime, Facebook is probably going to suck in some terms of service violations and other very private photos. Even if people know that no one else can see them, some might panic when they see photos of them drunk, sloppy, nude, or in otherwise compromising positions within the Facebook Chrome. Right now Facebook doesn’t do a great job of explaining how the feature works so it could cause some to be caught by surprise, freak out, and turn it off.

But that’s probably worth it to Facebook because of the immense amount of photo metadata Photo Sync will give it. As I wrote yesterday, the feature is essentially Facebook’s entrance into cloud storage. While you might not share all the photos you upload, Facebook can still pull out geolocation to help it figure out where you are now and what local business ads to show you.. Eventually, brand recognition like the ability to identify Nike shoes in your photos could aid ad targeting too.

There no big launch event yesterday because Facebook didn’t need one. In fact, it probably didn’t want one, considering it didn’t even notify bloggers like me as it usually does. The banner atop the the news feed of its iOS and Android apps could easily get tens of millions of users to enable photo sync. If its competitors in social networking and now cloud storage don’t realize what’s happened, they won’t be able to react. But Facebook just found a way to to get its next 219 billion photos a lot faster than the first.

Google, Twitter activate voice tweets for Syrians

Google and Twitter announced they have reactivated a voice-tweet programme to allow Syrians affected by the shutdown of the internet to get messages out.

The service allows people with a telephone connection to compose and send a tweet by speaking on their phones.

Google and Twitter said they were reactivating the system which was used in 2011 when the internet was shut down in Egypt by authorities for several days.

Google's David Torres acknowledged that many Syrians may not be able to use the service because telecom networks in the war-ravaged country are also functioning poorly.

"But those who might be lucky enough to have a voice connection can still use Speak2Tweet by simply leaving a voicemail," he said.

Those able to dial out can leave messages on several phone numbers: +90 212 339 1447 or +30 21 1 198 2716 or +39 06 62207294 or +1 650 419 4196, "and the service will tweet the message," Torres said.

"No Internet connection is required, and people can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet."

AFP correspondents noted that Internet and telephone communications, including mobile phones, were cut in the capital.

On Thursday, activists accused the regime of preparing a "massacre" when the telephone lines and internet first went down, while the authorities explained the cut was due to "maintenance" work.

Washington branded it as a desperate move on part of the regime.

7 features Apple killed off in iTunes 11

Apple's latest iTunes brings plenty of new features, but also puts some golden oldies out to pasture.
The software, which went out yesterday as a free update, comes with a redesigned player and a more extensive album view for browsing music. Apple's also more deeply integrated iCloud and its stores within the software.
But some of that march towards simplicity has come at the expense of some old features. Few of the deep-sixed features seem like logical deletions, and others are already bringing ire from longtime users who expected to see them on the other side of the update.
Read on to find out what's gone.

 

1. Cover Flow
Cover Flow was the headlining feature of iTunes 7 in 2006. The feature put album covers in a "flow" together, that let you flip between them as if they were floating in front of you.
Short of the built-in visualizer, it was really one of iTunes' biggest eye candy features, but it was also a way to show off the fluidity and smarts of the software when browsing through music with a multitouch trackpad. Apple's even been sued over using it, and initially lost a $625 million patent lawsuit until the judge reversed the jury verdict.
Apple completely nixed Cover Flow in iTunes 11 in favor of its new album view, which will expand out an album to show you the songs within when you click on it. The Cover Flow feature remains on iPhones and iPods.

 

2. The de-duper
In the world of collecting and organizing digital music, you might get a duplicate or a thousand in your library. By default, iTunes won't let you re-add another music file if you've already added it, but accidents happen and large libraries can overlap.
In iTunes 10.7 and earlier, Apple offered a built-in tool that would sniff out duplicates and put them on a single page. It wasn't great, but it was something, and free. In iTunes 11, the feature is missing in action.
Third-party tools like $40 TuneUp can bridge the gap with a feature that finds and deletes duplicates, grabs album art, and fixes metadata. Mac users can also use the $15 Dupin.

 

3. iTunes DJ
iTunes DJ was a neat feature that would let you put together a never-ending playlist in a pinch. You could even tweak it to make sure it wouldn't play the embarrassing chunks of your music collection by limiting selections to a certain playlist or genre (see above).
What made it really stand out, however, was a feature Apple added in iTunes 8.1 that let other people at your party put in a request for a song from their mobile device, and even vote on upcoming tracks. If a party host agreed, that song would go on, making the whole thing feel a little more social. Google's defunct Nexus Q device (which is currently being reworked) wanted to take that same idea and turn it into a standalone product. In iTunes 11, though, it's MIA.

4. Gapless playback editor
As the name suggests, the gapless playback feature plays songs back to back, without any break -- something that's useful for tracks meant to be in immediate succession. One of the best examples: Pink Floyd's "The Wall."
Curiously enough, gapless playback in iTunes 11 still works just fine. You just can't tweak any of your existing music to make use of the feature from the options editor. That's a bummer for any live-show or big 1970s concept CDs you might have planned on ripping.

What devil magic is this?

5. Multiple windows
In an effort to simplify iTunes' user interface, Apple also stripped out one of the features power users loved: the option to break out functions into their own windows.
This was particularly useful if you wanted to do a little multitasking, like listening to Internet radio while going through and producing a playlist, all the while keeping those two actions separate. Another example: shopping in Apple's online store while managing an iOS device.
With iTunes 11 you're limited to just that one window and whatever task is in front of you -- just like on the iPhone or iPad.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing this is gone.

6. The other sidebar
Apple merely hid the source list sidebar, but you can still get that one back. What we're talking about is the feature that would give you genius recommendations based on any song you were currently on, often polling the iTunes Store for music you might not even have.
On the plus side, this means Apple is not jamming its store down your throat nearly as much, but it's moved some of those recommendations so far out of the way that you really have to hunt to find them.
Apple's effectively replaced this sidebar with a special genius recommendations menu that pops out right next to a song when you click on a context menu. This shows you songs you already have in your library, but doesn't introduce you to new stuff that might be a better match. For that you need to look at the "related" or "listeners also bought" links from within a song's page on iTunes -- assuming it's there. 

7. Quick volume control, song progress in mini player
Apple's mini player now does quite a bit more than it used to, such as providing search and displaying album art. Even so, it's missing a few handy things such as the volume knob and progress indicator that would show you how far along in a song you were.

The mini player in iTunes 10.7 (top) and in iTunes 11

You can still access the volume settings without leaving the mini player, though it takes an extra step -- you can either click on the AirPlay icon and adjust the master volume, or click on the album art and adjust it from the pop-up window. But the progress bar? That's long gone.

GM Cars to Use Apple Voice Assistant Siri

General Motors (IW 500/4) said Tuesday it will integrate Apple's (IW 500/9) voice-activated software Siri in some of its cars next year to allow iPhone users to perform hands-free tasks.
 
GM announced at the Los Angeles International Auto Show it will use the Siri intelligent assistant in the Chevrolet Spark and Sonic LTZ and RS.

"Through the cars' standard Chevrolet MyLink infotainment system, customers with a compatible iPhone running iOS 6 can direct Siri to perform a number of tasks while they safely keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel," GM said in a statement.
"To further minimize distraction, Siri takes hands-free functionality even further with an eyes-free mode that enables users to interact with their iPhone using nothing more than their voice while keeping the device's screen from lighting up."

Drivers will be able to use the system to make hands-free calls, play songs in the iTunes library, or switch music sources from radio to iPod mode. They may also listen to, compose and send messages to people in their contact list.

Cristi Landy, Chevrolet marketing director for small cars, said, "Safe, easy, reliable and portable connectivity is a top priority for our customers, and Siri complements MyLink's existing capabilities to help deliver an incredible driving experience."

Apple announced earlier this year it was working with car makers to build Siri artificial intelligence technology into voice control systems in automobiles.