[High Max]

Well I also eat fish more often, even though canned, and I eat 1 banana a day usually. Omega 3's are good for you and fish andf sea food is the leanest healthiest meat you can eat.

I know green tea isn't a magical drink. That is why one should also eat fruits and veggies and other things. It is good stuff.

No, I didn't start drinking green tea because of anything the media said. I don't witness them saying much about it. I drink it because I know cultures have done it for 1000's of years and I read the benefits of it. But you must drink at least 3 or 4 cups for it to have an effect. I read a lot about it. I even conserve and use my tea bags 2 times each. I wouldn't drink more than 4 cups a day though since it can affect iron absorption (tannan) or give you too much caffeine or fluoride (it is the only natural source of fluoride for humans), but I have read that moderate amounts of caffeine are good for you.

I wouldn't say anti-oxidants are bad for you. Even people who don't know about green tea encourage getting anti-oxidants from fruits and vegetables, both doctors and other people. Since after 2000, many people have been studying green tea much more. Black tea may stain your teeth more. White tea is also said to be among the healthiest if not the healthiest kind, but it comes from the same plant as green tea and is the flower part, I think.

Time for some sleep. That is vital for health and bodily repair too and it is 1:36am here.

[Colonol Dekker]

Tea is tea. That's all I need to know. It's not a wonderful super drink. Look at everything else the mentioned asian countries do. Also for any conclusive evidence i'd need to demograph the current generation of young people who don't drink tea. Tea won't vein up your arms (as amazing as that sounds) or imbue henchness. Green or otherwise, unless your supplier is filling it with horse steroids.
 
It's tea, it tastes ok, and four cups a day is pretty normal in England. At least in my (every job i've had including army) office / house.
 
Battery death imminent, i'll attempt a phone charge at work.

[aldo_14]

Well I also eat fish more often, even though canned, and I eat 1 banana a day usually. Omega 3's are good for you and fish andf sea food is the leanest healthiest meat you can eat.

I know green tea isn't a magical drink. That is why oone should also eat fruits and veggies and other things. It is good stuff.

No, I didn't start drinking green tea because of anything the media said. I don't witness them saying much about it. I drink it because I know cultures have done it for 1000's of years and I read the benefits of it. But you must drink at least 3 or 4 cups for it to have an effect. I read a lot about it. If even conserve and use my tea bags 2 times each. I wouldn't drink more than 4 cups a day though since it can affect iron absorption (tannan) or give you too much caffeine or fluoride (it is the only natural source of fluoride for humans), but I have read that moderate amounts of caffeine are good for you.

I wouldn't say anti-oxidants are bad for you. Even people who don't know about green tea encourage getting anti-oxidants from fruits and vegetables, both doctors and other people. Since after 2000, many people have been studying green tea much more. Black tea may stain your teeth more. White tea is also said to be among the healthiest if not the healthiest kind, but it comes from the same plant as green tea and is the flower part, I think.

Time for some sleep. That is vital for health and bodily repair too and it is 1:36am here.

It doesn't matter whether you say anti-oxidants are bad for you, evidence shows additional anti-oxidants have no measurable benefit.  One thing also worth noting is that the body has pathways to deal with stressors like free radicals, and a little bit of 'excercise' is good for these pathways continued functioning (sorry for the paraphrase, this actually comes from a lecture/talk on the subject which Mrs. aldo attended).  It's also worth noting that the properties of free radicals makes them useful tools for the immune system - see http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7QcsDseZonEC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=free+radicals+t+cells&source=bl&ots=ly0osR6Stb&sig=8oYOyV6DoJ73YJyTeFPry7Lcwg0&hl=en&ei=6uODSpzKFoTY-Qal68D5AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=free%20radicals%20t%20cells&f=false (hope that link works).

The benefit from eating anti-oxidant containing fruit, etc, will be from the dietary change - the obvious nutrition, plus the probable fact that it simply reduces appetite for fattier/less health foods.

Incidentally, here is a meta-analysis (abstract) of anti-oxidant supplement trials; http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/297/8/842. Please note this bit of the conclusions; "Treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality. The potential roles of vitamin C and selenium on mortality need further study."

I would say switching your diet, as a whole, is what's probably improved your health.  Which is to be commended, of course - just don't attribute it to anti-oxidants, because it's a) dangerous and b) scientifically incorrect.  a), of course, because it's always dangerous to attribute positive or negative health changes to the wrong thing.  Kind of like how people use tannins as an excuse to over-drink red wine.

As an aside, all teas IIRC come from leaves of the same plant - Camellia sinensis - and the difference is due to the level of oxidation.  White tea may contain buds (which would be aforementioned flower part) and young leaves (apparently - wikipedia, not researching much).  I'd recommend Crystanthemum tea if you can get hold of it, too.

Ok, really am gone now.  Ta ta.

[Mika]

I have been following this topic by some time, decided to postpone participating until now.

About tea first:
Speaking of green tea, I would be extra-ordinarily careful about what brand and how often I drink it. I suspect that it would mainly be a wealthy source of pesticides, if bought from a company that doesn't have decent quality control. I could comment about some other things about health, but I don't want to derail the discussion.

Then health care:
Back in 1980s and in the beginning of 1990s we used to have a quite good health care, as villages with population count around 2000 inhabitants got a doctor and several nurses. Today, there doesn't seem to be enough money to support that kind of health infrastructure. Personally, I see this as a way of the Health Care ministry to make their budget numbers more appealing while sweeping the problem to other fields, like Social Security.

Yeah, it seems that the cost saving methods have only caused more costs in the long run. (This could be an interesting M.Sc. or Ph.D. study for those who study history of economics). Remove the doctors from small villages, you end up paying the taxi trips to city hospitals, totalling about 200 km each.

The other problem is that the doctors don't want to move to so small villages any more. Third, the government controlled health care system is being broken down to private clinics by reasons I'm not sure of. Doctors seem to get more money that way, so I suspect one motivation is indeed greed but it cannot wholly explain the whole episode. There was one fundamental change from government controlled to community controlled health care, and I'm not sure how that factors in.

If comparing the health care towards US, I have never had any problems to accept taxes for Health Care and Education, if both systems work and do their jobs. Unfortunately, health care is not in acceptable state in my opinion at the moment here. I.e. "This is not why I have paid those frickin' taxes!" Neither do I have anything bad to say about the Social Security, there are indeed some people that abuse it, but the number is not that large and the benefit is in the stability it creates in the society. I, of course, don't like it when some martial artists can practise unlimited amount of time since they are unemployed and I end up paying for them in the form of taxes. Slackers.

This is just the other side of the fence. Maybe you find something interesting in it related to the crumbling US Health Care, maybe you don't. But something is wrong if 20 % of the population is outside the Health Care due to associated costs or if the treatment of an accident can wreck the person's financial stability.

[Kosh]

Isn't fish full of mercury or something?

[castor]

Not to mention the dioxins..
Personally, I think the best plan for a healthy diet is to make it as diverse as possible. Too bad I'm way too lazy to implement such a diet :/

[Kosh]

I have never had any problems to accept taxes for Health Care and Education

Even though this is a seperate issue, it is worth mentioning that for the most part the education system in america below university is also quite broken, even though some states spend as much as half their yearly tax revenues on it.

[Liberator]

Mostly because they spend more time trying to right social injustices and keep the mentally deficient on the same page as the normal or above average, instead of teaching writing and art and math.  Not to mention they keep increasing the size of the schools instead of shrinking them in the name of cost savings.  To my mind they are not saving costs, they're warehousing the children just to keep them off the streets and out of trouble.

[Kosh]

Bigger class sizes means fewer teachers, which in turn means less people on the payroll and lower costs. In reality the biggest problem with funding is often the top heavy administration, they are the ones sucking up so much in the way of school resources. Other problems do include amazingly low standards, students who don't give a damn, parents who dont give a damn, etc.


EDIT: Back on topic I found this

The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative campaigners rail against Britain's "socialist" system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama's proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare.

Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market organisations in scorning the NHS for its waiting lists and for "rationing" the availability of expensive treatments.

As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health policy.

Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures of the NHS's 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service of putting an "Orwellian" financial cap on the value on human life, of allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue.

The degree of misinformation is causing dismay in NHS circles. Andrew Dillon, chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), pointed out that it was utterly false that Kennedy would be left untreated in Britain: "It is neither true nor is it anything you could extrapolate from anything we've ever recommended to the NHS."

[Liberator]

Reminds me of the time this guy retired at the local Board retired after 10 years of service, they gave him a $5000 Rolex, meanwhile they had discharged something like 4 teachers because they didn't have the funds to cover they're payroll.

[Ford Prefect]

The only real problem with American public schools is the fact that they're dependent on property taxes, so poor school districts get poor schools. There's nothing inherently wrong with the American public education model; schools in more affluent neighborhoods are doing just fine (other than the belt-tightening that's been effecting everyone over the past few years.) The "education crisis" that everyone loves to blow steam about doesn't really exist; our education problems are really just an extension of the poverty crisis, but poverty isn't as exciting.

[Kosh]

So out of control administrators, low standards, and bad attitudes about school has nothing to do with it?

[Mongoose]

So out of control administrators, low standards, and bad attitudes about school has nothing to do with it?

Like Ford said, it's all a function of location.  For instance, I live in a suburban area which has some reasonably well-off residents scattered about, and our local public school district has a very good reputation, as do several others in the area, largely due to the significant amount of money they have to work with.  (Didn't stop me from attending twelve years of Catholic grade/high school, though.)  Teaching positions are competitive, facilities are great, and standardized test scores are top-notch.  Compare that to schools in inner-city Philadelphia, who were so far in the red at one point that a private company took over management of most of them and have all sorts of issues with providing a reasonable teaching environment.  It's probably the same story in most urban areas in the country.

[Ford Prefect]

A) I have yet to see any evidence of an "out of control administrators" epidemic sweeping the nation and clawing at the fabric of our education system. Every field has good administrators and bad administrators.

B) Again, low standards are primarily an issue where poverty is an issue. If your school is in an area where kids have to worry about getting shot or daddy's meth lab getting busted, then yeah, the bar is probably going to be set somewhere around trying to get the kids to show up, with or without a good night's sleep or breakfast in their stomachs. The only way schools with adequate tax revenue are failing is in their efforts to keep up with the ridiculous onslaught of standardized tests that were only introduced as a response to an education crisis that doesn't exist in the first place. My mom teaches third grade, and her number one complaint, by far, is the fact that people are expecting children to do more and more before they're developmentally ready, all because we're trying to fix something that wasn't broken. Let's also not forget that it's obviously in the testing companies' interest for this craze to be perpetuated.

Oh, and C) Bad attitudes about school? Remind me of the time when kids would wake up in the morning and exclaim, "Bring on the long devision!" School sucks.

EDIT: Yes, what Mongoose said.

[NGTM-1R]

A) I have yet to see any evidence of an "out of control administrators" epidemic sweeping the nation and clawing at the fabric of our education system. Every field has good administrators and bad administrators.

The only way schools with adequate tax revenue are failing is in their efforts to keep up with the ridiculous onslaught of standardized tests that were only introduced as a response to an education crisis that doesn't exist in the first place.

Welcome to California. Educational quality is a grade behind most East Coast states, literally (I end up doing most of the same math stuff over again in 7th after I moved here). The teacher's union has a stranglehold on educational regulation and there is no accountablity. All schools are union shops. The adminstrators are, mostly, idiots because that's the most reliable method for keeping them from being union puppets and making things worse.

And I went to the schools in an very affluent area for chrissakes.

Although, frankly, I think you're behind the times. The proliferation of standardized testing has peaked and fallen away. The fad is long since over.

[Kosh]

A) I have yet to see any evidence of an "out of control administrators" epidemic sweeping the nation and clawing at the fabric of our education system.

There is this one

The headline

Michigan administrative expenses top $1.4 billion
School administration costs rise over two-times faster than instructional expenses

And there are other examples. This sums up other problems

Again, low standards are primarily an issue where poverty is an issue.

I went to one of those well off suburban schools. Generally while the facilities are nice and it had a nice selection of electives, but when it came to the core cirruculum, math and science education was pretty much a joke. At my high school, the minimum requirement for math was Algebra 2, which might seem "tough" but in reality because the cirriculum is so dumbed down and it just has you doing some really simple problems and thats it. For comparison I took the equivlent class at the local community college at the same time and it was orders of magnitude harder. Except the annoying busy work projects, for the most part I did little to no homework at home, never studied for any exams and always got top marks. We have low standards like this because the cirriculum is designed not really to teach new things, but to pass people who are either lazy, stupid, or a combination of the two. Even then, many people still don't make it. 400 something of us went in, 300 something of us came out with a diploma.

Oh, and C) Bad attitudes about school? Remind me of the time when kids would wake up in the morning and exclaim, "Bring on the long devision!" School sucks.

They could see it as a way to learn new skills, eventually leading to a good university and a good job, or at worst as a way to better themselves. But they don't, kids and schools see it for what it really is: government sponsored daycare, a place to waste 7 hours of gaming time on "books", and "learning". School sucks, but it is important, just too many in our society don't see it that way, which adds to the problem.

 

[High Max]

Not to mention the dioxins..

Depends on several things when it comes to that and mercury in fish, etc, but I will get to the dioxons in a little while.

When it comes to minimizing mercury and stuff, the type of sea food you buy and where it is from will help, but sea creatures and many that live in the rivers naturally contain mecury in their bodies from water running down the rivers and erosion washing the mercury out of the rocks in the water; not only from pollution. Tuna has a lot of mercury but shrimp and maybe sardines don't so much. If they are creatures and predators from the bottom, they will have much more. Also drinking green tea helps negate the toxins in the seafood preventing the absorption of most of it. The Japanese eat seafood all the time and are very smart on average and don't appear brain damaged, and they are fine since they know what they are doing, obviously. That seafood has omega 3's which help your brain and heart. That diet coupled with their love for learning as a culture is probably why the average Japanese is so smart.

The reason mercury is bad is because if you get enough of it in your blood, it can collect inside your tissues and can't be removed normally, and common sense tells me that it is bad because it may block blood flow and electrical signals as a result of sitting in your flesh. Kind of like how any poison blocks the flow of fluid and other things.

Also, I do agree that you must be careful where you buy your green tea from. I use Stash premium green tea that I buy from Fred Meyer's. It claims to come from Brazil and is grown in an area that uses no pesticides. I also went to their website around the time I started drinking it and I feel better physically and mentally when drinking this vs another brand I tried.

Sad thing about the dioxins is that you can't completely eliminate your exposure to them in industrialized countries, but you can minimize them by staying away from certain products or chemicals and doing research and not using hair dye, hair gell, colon, or perfume, and not using very strong detergent, and being careful what kind of soap you buy among other practices.

I know, off topic, but I was just replying to this.

So out of control administrators, low standards, and bad attitudes about school has nothing to do with it?

I also think that is a problem, Kosh. Too many people in this culture don't value education and the average teachers here don't seem to be as good as ones from some other countries. Also, these schools aren't strict or disciplined enough and they even let kids buy junk food and energy drinks at school, almost like they encourage it, which could cause problems and may explain some of what causes a high obesity rate with many kids and a lower energy level more so these days here, since kids are much less likely to moderate what they eat or know the risks. It sounds messed up. But that is the price you pay when there is too much freedom and no balance.

[Turambar]

AAAAAAAAAANYWAY

How about we have a healthcare discussion where one side isn't based entirely on right-wing lies and propaganda.

I think that the current plan isn't enough, and that it should be the first stage in a major overhaul of the health system.  Mostly, the plan only really addresses the problems with health insurance, while not addressing the problems with malpractice and malpractice insurance and other factors that inflate the cost of healthcare.

I believe that if we get healthcare for everyone, take the inefficiency and inflated costs out of the healthcare system and invest in preventative medicine, people will have more money to use on other things which will in the end pay this whole thing off.  It will create real wealth, not corruption wealth that goes to overseas swiss bank accounts and is never seen in the USA again

[iamzack]

Woah, I actually agree with Turambar for once.

[Liberator]

...wealth that goes to overseas swiss bank accounts and is never seen in the USA again

Which stems from a progressive tax scheme that punishes people for being TOO successful.  What reason do I have to start a business and work at making it successful or accept that high paying executive position that leaves me with no life away from my office if I am not going to be rewarded for it?