Interesing Tid-bits 3.

- When you want your beverage to be cold, ice cubes are added. Why ice cubes and not a giant wad of ice? The small pieces of ice have many surface areas, increasing the contact between the liquid and the cold ice, speeding up the cooling time. Such like ice cubes increase the cold surface area, the carpal bones increase the surface area in the wrist (i.e. carpal). By increasing the surface area in the wrist, if one were to fall on the hand/wrist, the impact is reduced as the force is transmitted through many bones (recall that there are 8 carpal bones), reducing the likely hood of a fracture.

- I've said before on this blog let food be your medicine and medicine be your food; however when does a food actually become a medicine? The difference between a natural health product (NHP) and food is that a NHP makes a specific health claim. Food is also considered to be an NHP if it is encapsulated (e.g. a clove of garlic is food, whereas concentrated garlic supplements in pill form are a NHP).

- The Traditional Chinese Medicine term tian kui represents menstrual blood in Western medicine. However, the translation of this term is heavenly water. Do any of the female readers find this translation hilarious? :P

- There are three types of disease preventions: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary preventions - the patient does not have any immediate disease risk factors, but wants to improving his or her health in order to prevent illness.
Secondary preventions - the patient does have risk factors for disease.
Tertiary preventions - the patient has the disease, but wants to work on managing or reversing his or her diagnosis.