Listerine Treats Blisters and Prevents Infection

Yesterday I posted a quick blog about how marshmallows can treat a sore throat. Continuing my trend for this week, here’s another home remedy you might not know about - Listerine can treat blisters!

Listerine Treats Blisters

Because of its alcohol content and other germ-fighting capabilities, Listerine is perfect for treating open blisters. Dab some on a cotton swab and moisten the affected area 2 or 3 times a day. Listerine prevents infection, speeds healing, and often soothes the pain. Not right away, of course - You’re pouring alcohol into a wound. It’s going to sting. But mint extracts have a history of cooling irritated tissue.

"Don't worry guys - we got this."

The History of Listerine

In 1879, Listerine was developed as a surgical antiseptic. That means it killed the germs in living tissue to prevent rot or gangrene. Later it was used to treat toe fungus and gonorrhea. It also showed up in cigarettes.

I’m not sure who the first person was to say, “Hey, let’s gargle this and see what happens!” It might have been a distant relative of the guy who looked at the pink things dangling from a cow’s underbelly and thought, “I’m gonna squeeze one of those and drink whatever comes out!”

 But I digress. Listerine is truly a multipurpose solution. Check out this website for other uses, including treatments for acne, body odor, and bug bites!

Marshmallows Soothe Sore Throats by Promoting Mucous Production

Hello everyone!

It has been brought to my attention that my posts are too lengthy to be blogs. At first I thought, “Preposterous! I’m a writer! A writer needs space!” And then I looked over some of my latest posts…

Yeaaaaah…

So here’s what I propose: You’ll be getting smaller posts, but there’ll be a lot more of them, one after the other. Think of them as little tidbits to pique your interest and capture your curiosity throughout the week. This way, I can get more posts out, encourage active readership, and keep this blog alive.

So, this week, we’re looking at unusual home remedies!

Marshmallows to Treat a Sore Throat

I promise this isn’t just an excuse your kids can use to avoid a spoonful of Robitussin. Eating a couple marshmallows, or melting them down in a hot cup of cocoa, can help ease a sore throat. Not only does the goo feel good going down, but the gelatin in marshmallows can promote mucous production, thus soothing inflamed tissues.

Thank you, my puffy, fluffy friends.

Marshmallows used to be made of extract from the marshmallow root. Yep, marshmallows used to be vegetarian! The extract is what used to make marshmallows gooey. Today, the extract has been replaced by gelatin, a cheap by-product of the meat industry. I’m told my blog tends to gross people out, so I’ll leave the details of gelatin at the very bottom of my post this week. Scroll all the way down at your own peril!

 If you prefer an herbal remedy (with far less sugar) try boiling two teaspoons of marshmallow root in a cup of water. Let the tea steep for 90 minutes before removing the root and reheating the tea for ingestion.

Although I couldn't find the study myself, this article reports that marshmallow root tea was tested in the 90s and found to be more effective than 2 out of 3 common over-the-counter cures.

Gelatin is a protein that comes from the denatured collagen found in animal skin and bone marrow. Based on their size and the popular demand for their meat, it is likely that the gelatin found in most marshmallows comes from cows.

Why Does My Stomach Growl? Am I Hungry?

I had an interesting experience the other day: while sitting in the office of one of my favorite professors, my stomach kept interrupting the conversation. I’m all about an open forum for new ideas, but my belly seemed to have only one thing to say – “Food. Now.” So, red-faced, I asked if it’d be okay to continue our talk while I munched on an apple.

Why do our stomachs growl? What possible purpose does it serve? Do we really need an alarm system to tell us we haven’t eaten in a while? I thought I’d do some digging.

Your Guts – A Brief Rundown

Anyone who has suffered from heartburn has learned that the stomach is not behind the belly-button as many cartoons would have us believe. In truth, your stomach is a grapefruit sized sac just under the center of your ribs. In America, as many as 40% of adults suffer from GERD (gastrointestinal reflux disease.) Those with GERD often report intense pain in their chests, and will misdiagnose themselves as having heart problems.

Sometimes when I eat habanero or ghost pepper salsa, I think my heart is going to stop, too.

"Why, yes, waiter - I could use a glass of water."

Your stomach has pure acid inside it – hydrochloric acid to be precise. Some foods, such as citrus, tomatoes, and peppers can increase the amount of acid. The good news is that your stomach has a mucous layer to protect itself from these occasional flare-ups. Yes, you read that right – boogers in your belly is a good thing. 

The bad news is that if you’re frequently adding acid to the stomach (like I do,) you’re bound to burn out that layer eventually. Messing with acid content can lead to stomach ulcers, which is where the mucous runs out and a hole is burned through the lining. Or, high acid content can slip through the top of the stomach and spill into the esophagus, causing heartburn, and potentially cancer.

This is why habitual vomiting by bulemics or alcoholics can be dangerous, because it carries the acid into unprotected places in the body. Belly boogers only go so far.

Heading south from the stomach are the upper intestines, where the partially-digested food is treated with bile (the smelly stuff in poop) to get rid of the acid. Then the mush makes a 20-22 feet journey through your upper intestines, where bacteria and villi (teeny little worm-like dudes in the walls of your guts) strip the food of its vital nutrients – vitamins, minerals, nutritional content, etc.

The final stage of the journey is the five foot span of lower intestine, which includes the colon and rectum, where the now nutrient-empty food is packed together and vacated from the body.

For more information on this process, please see the world-renown medical text Everybody Poops.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

You can call is a growl, a grumble, or a rumbly-in-your-tumbly; we all hear it eventually. Sometimes your stomach calls out for food when you’re hungry. Other times you hear squishy noises after you’ve just finished eating. Are these your stomach trying to send you complex signals? Can we learn to speak intestine-ese and decode these squishy sounds?

No. Just no.

Even when you’re not eating, muscles are constantly churning your stomach to aid digestion and moving along your intestines to push through food. This muscle movement is called peristalsis. If there is air trapped in your gut, when your muscles cause motion, the motion can manifest as sound.

This video kind of freaks me out, but it illustrates two important points:

1. Your intestines move food along with muscle contractions similar to squeezing a tube of toothpaste.
2. Air pockets (as evidenced by the empty spaces in the video) are very common and not harmful. No need to worry about belly balloon-animals.

I'd argue that it also illustrates how we all look like space aliens from the inside, but I don't think that's what the video set out to do...

Anyway, your guts are making sounds all the time because they’re always moving. The difference is what’s inside them that’s blocking the noise. If you shake a piggy-bank that has only a few quarters in it, that piggy-bank is going to make a ton of noise. But, if you save your money and stuff that pig to the brink, shaking it won’t cause as much noise because there’s no empty space for the sound to rattle through.

So if you're full, the noise is dampened. It's not that your stomach makes noise to alert you to being hungry, it's that it makes noise all the time. You only really hear it when you need food.

What Are Calories and Why Shouldn't You Count Them?

I spent a good chunk of time last night (45 minutes) running on the treadmill in my basement. After nearly an hour of huffing, puffing, and sweating, the machine chirped and informed me that I had burned 320 Calories.

“Success!” I shouted, thrusting a fist into the air. “How awesome am I?”

Then I went upstairs and ate a handful of iced animal crackers, clocking in at 200 Calories.

Here’s the problem with Calories - they’re numbers. Stupid, little numbers. Have you ever seen a Calorie? No, and nor could you. Calories are a concept, much like Santa Claus. Except, instead of getting a new Xbox for being a good little boy or girl, believing in calories can help you fit into that new jacket or bathing suit.

And instead of coal, you get love-handles.

This post is all about these annoying little buggers and some better methods for dealing with them.

What is a Calorie?

If I told you what it takes to boil a liter of water, you’d probably tell me “heat.”

“But how much heat?” I would ask.

And that’s probably when you’d stop talking to me.

To take a liter of water from room temperature to boiling (76 F to 212 F,) you’d need about 75 Calories of heat. And that’s all well and dandy, but aren’t Calories supposed to be something in food? Why am I using them to measure heat?

A calorie is a unit of measurement for energy. It is the amount of energy it takes to raise a milliliter of water by one degree centigrade (or Celsius for non-science folks.) A kilo calorie, or just Calorie, (note the upper case,) is one thousand calories, meaning it’s the energy required to raise a liter of water by one degree.

That’s confusing. I get it. But bear with me - the important stuff comes next.

The energy in food is measured in kilo calories (Calories.) The daily recommended caloric intake for women is around 2000 Calories and for men it's 2500 Calories. That means that men need to take in enough energy every day to bring 32.47 liters (or 8.58 gallons) of room temperature water to boil!

Is it hot in here, or is it just my eating habits?

Holy Toledo, that’s a ton of energy! It seems like there’s no way we could eat that much in one day. But you’d be surprised how quickly it all can add up.

Superfoods and Junkfoods

It’s camping tradition that I always bring a full box of Hostess^TM King Dongs. I’d say what they’re actually called now, but I’d hate to get my website blocked. Heck, I'll say it anyway - Ding Dongs (teehee!) Anyway, even though I know these tasty little snack cakes are pure fat and sugar, they’re a vacation staple for me. As Julia Child said, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

Just one King Dong has 160 Calories, or two boiling liters worth of energy.

During my vacation recently, I ate two to three of these delicious snack cakes a day. We also visited a restaurant that supported a “Low Calorie” menu. All the items listed on the menu were supposedly less than 550 Calories, just over 7 boiling liters of energy. One of these items was a chicken salad.

A Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese from McDonalds has 750 Calories, over a third of the energy you need to keep your body going all day from a single sandwich. And enough energy to boil two and a half gallons of water.

The trouble with Calories are two-fold. For starters, a number doesn’t adequately describe the nutritional content of food. Even though 550 Calories seems like a lot for a salad, a diverse array of vegetables is better for your body than three Hostess King Dongs. They have the same amount of energy, but different nutritional values. The salad would have iron, fiber, vitamin A and other important nutrients, whereas a King Dong really only has fat and sugar.

Yeah, so what if they're trying to kill me? I love 'em anyway.

 The second problem with Calories is where we get them from. A $0.99 snack cake is much cheaper (and often tastier) than a $12.00 salad. If we don’t have time to cook our own meals, we’ll often resort to fast food because it’s cheaper and faster. But convenience comes with a trade-off. We sacrifice nutritional content for money, racking up massive Calorie counts. This is a driving force behind the growing obesity epidemic among lower-income Americans.

The Take-Home Message

Unless specifically told to by your doctor, please don’t bother monitoring your Calorie intake. It is a game that will drive you insane. If you’re like me, you’ll end up eyeing cans of soda-pop with spite and making finger-crosses when you walk past the candy displays at a grocery store. Once, a friend offered me half his Snickers^TM bar and I hissed at him and called him a “Temptress.”

Thou caramel creep! Thou nougat-y nosferatu!

The numbers matter, don't get me wrong. Taking in too much energy but not using it all is why our bodies grow fat. It's important not to eat too much at any one sitting in order to prevent putting on weight. But calories, in and of themselves, are not as important as the ingredients that go into the food you eat.

I always suggest reading the ingredients list on any food you buy. If some of the first ingredients are High Fructose Corn Syrup, Milk, Whey, or other sugars and fats, it’s best just to stay away from it. Or, enjoy it in moderation. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional cookie, so long as it is part of a balanced diet.

And no, a balanced diet is not a cookie in each hand. I tried to pull that one before.

My Apologies, Again

After the passing of my grandmother, my mom and I took a much-needed vacation. For the past week, I've been in a cabin off a private lake without cell-phone reception or internet. I'm not saying this to brag, (although it was RIGHTEOUS!) but to explain why there has been a gap in my postings. Starting next week, I'm resuming classes at Dearborn. As such, I will be reducing my posts to two posts per week. I still intend to fully research my posts, providing you nothing but the best information.

Thank you all for your patience and I hope to see you here again, soon!

-Cory