By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas

In my recuperation from Bell’s Palsy since the Holy Week, I was told to take things easy. And so I did.
What I did was to forget all my legal deadlines and to just do the things that I enjoy. One of them was reading easy stuff. So I dug out from dusty piles magazines that were due to be torn and to be used for starting bonfires, rather, ordinary fire in the fireplace. I found some articles buried in mags I thought I have already read from cover to cover.
One was an article written by a regular doctor columnist in the Men’s Journal published in America. It is not a scientific journal which would connote scientific studies for specific professions like medicine. Such content would be very boring for us laymen. It would be like reading a text book and I don’t plan to go back to school. Not at my age of 63. On the contrary, Men’s Journal is a mag for entertainment and information for us laymen. So the articles there while very educational are couched in laymen’s terms.
The article I am talking about was about back pain. After the doctor writer talked about surgical options in the lumbar area which entail the insertion of some plastic or other similar stuff in between the spinal discs, he also talked about cheaper options that anybody can afford. He cited the yoga pose or exercise commonly known as “Baby Cobra”. It is just like a light push-up but has to be coupled with a prescribed way of breathing. Done properly, it has deep and far-reaching or deep effects on your body.
If you have been reading our very own Dr. Penny Domogo in her column on page 4, she once cited also that specific yoga exercise as very beneficial for us because we seldom bend backwards to look at the sky. This results in our stiff backs and the irritating pain there. Especially us office workers who often just sit behind a table all day.
Then there was an old Health and Home issue. The magazine is the publication of the 7th Day Adventist who are also vegetarians. While I am a vegetarian I am not a member of that church. I buy however their magazines and books because there are good articles there on health.
One piece I missed in the past but a very important one was a snippet on apple cider vinegar. It says that a spoonful of vinegar everyday can help dissolve crystallized uric acid in the blood so these can be excreted through the urine. That vinegar is made from apple juice and is quite expensive in the market. I would like to think that our native vinegars might also have similar effects but I still have to know of any study on this, which the DOH should have done.
The other day, as I have long suspected that there are fake vinegars especially the apple cider vinegar because some stores are selling it very cheap, I came across an article in one of the national dailies that the FDA has acquired some equipment recently that can detect fake vinegar by analyzing it in the molecular level. What the FDA found out is that so many vinegars in the local market are fake, that is, they are adulterated with watered down industrial grade acetic acid. My god! Industrial grade means the acid was being used in the processing of industrial materials such as plastic, ceramics, steel, tiles, etc. And we were taking that kind of acetic acid? Sadly, the article did not mention the fake brands.
Other activities I had been doing to take things easy was watching TV. I watched the first two grands prix of F1 this season in Australia and in Dubai. The first in Australia had Hamilton of the Mercedes Benz team in pole position. He was expected to win the race as the Mercedes Benz team was unbeatable the past four years. Yet when the checkered flag was dropped, it was the red Ferrari on the line. The talent of Ferrari’s driver, Sebastian Vettel, carried the day but that Italian car company has to find a way to beat the Mercedes Benz team through a better car. Driver’s talent should only come secondary. They were just lucky in Australia and in Dubai. (More on this next week.)
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