A daily dose of baking soda could transform the lives of patients with failing kidneys, scientists claim.

A British team says the kitchen product – also known as sodium bicarbonate – can dramatically slow the progress of chronic kidney disease.

The household staple, used for baking, cleaning, bee stings and acid indigestion, is so effective it could prevent patients from needing dialysis, the results show.

Study leader Magdi Yaqoob, Professor of Renal Medicine at the Royal London Hospital, said: ‘It’s amazing.

‘This is the first randomised controlled study of its kind.’

‘A simple remedy like sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), when used appropriately, can be very effective.

Around three million people in the UK suffer from chronic kidney disease.

The condition ranges in severity from a mild degree of poor functioning to complete kidney failure.

Seriously affected patients may have to spend time each day on a dialysis machine which takes over the function of the kidneys.

An estimated 37,800 patients in the UK receive renal replacement therapy, which involves dialysis or a kidney transplant.

The cost of looking after kidney failure patients costs the NHS £30,000 a year – soaking up 3 per cent of the entire NHS budget.

Doctors have long wondered about the potential value of baking soda for c who commonly suffer from low bicarbonate levels, a condition called metabolic acidosis.

The pilot study conducted at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, was the first controlled test of the treatment in a clinical setting.

Researchers studied 134 patients with advanced chronic kidney disease and metabolic acidosis.

One group was randomly allocated a small daily dose of sodium bicarbonate in tablet form in addition to their usual care.

Over a period of one year, the kidney function of these patients declined about two thirds more slowly than that of individuals not given the tablets. In fact, their rate of decline was little different from what would be expected with normal ageing.

Anxious parents in Dulwich stock up on Tamiflu

Half of all British children will be infected with Swine flu. Sir Liam believes the number of children catching the disease will be higher, because it is the young who are bearing the brunt of it so far.

The average age of a British swine flu victim is 20 but the virus is more prevalent in the under-14s than in other age groups.

Children – especially the under fives – are much more likely to end up in hospital.

It is believed the young are most at risk because they spend time in large groups at school, and they have less immunity to previous strains of flu.

So, by extrapolating existing infection rates among children they have estimated that a half of children could eventually be affected.

This would indicate a worst case scenario death rate of some 21,000 youngsters.

Honey Mint Popsicles

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, washed
1 cup raw honey
2 cups filtered water
juice of one lime  (try kaffir lime if you can get it, as it’s so fragrant, or use 1/2 a lemon if you can’t get limes)

In a blender, puree ingredients until mint leaves are small pecks of green.  Transfer mixture to popsicle molds.

Freeze.

Eat on a hot day! Yummy chlorophyll  filled ice.

Hubby showed me a funny video this past week about this guy who outsourced almost everything in his life, appointments, web designing, whatever he can think of, including outsourcing dates for him. It’s a really funny video.

My mother used to rub thick coconut cream on our bodies. Our body heat would turn it into oil and she’d knead it into our skin. She soaked mung bean, ground it and used the paste to wash and condition our long hair so it would be glossy and healthy.”

Devagi Sanmugam
Mother, wife, Singapore Spice Queen, author and Singapore cooking show personality

Ami Carr Koelliker

In my previous post, I talked about my Pittburg State University dorm roommate Jennifer Knapp, who went on to be a really impactful Gospel singer. She said in an interview that her faith in Christianity was as a result of Ami Carr’s influence back in college. Ami, by the way, was our friend who lived just across our room.

Well, you know what, she wasn’t the only one touched by Ami. I was too. I don’t think Ami set out to purposely do great things like this. It’s just so like her. If anyone knows her, will agree, Ami’s just an angel. I first met her when I moved into the dorm, and she lived right across; this pretty girl with the smoothest skin and big blond hair. Ami helped me adjust to college life, invited me to her home on Thanksgiving weekend in Kansas City, showing me how a real baked apple pie was made, ask me to try her cheese baked rice (that I didn’t try, cause, no real Asian would eat rice that way, you know), just simple things like allowing me to tag along to WalMart before I had a car …. really helped me out when I badly needed it.

It made me really think. What type of influence do we have on people around us? Do we make people miserable or do we make people around us happy? I would hope that I’ve made a positive impact on people, though I have to say, I wasn’t the most giving of people in my younger years. Self absorbed was the best way to describe my worst trait then. But that’s changed now.

Anyways, thank you Ami.

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Please see Jennifer Knapp’s interview and how she described how Ami made a big difference in her life.

Jennifer Knapp – Laying It Down

“Lately I’ve been watching Saturn and Jupiter and trying to track down a couple nebulas.”

She makes the statement casually, as if everybody spends hours peering through a telescope trying to make sense out of the heavenly bodies like she does. But, of course, {{Jennifer Knapp}} is not “everybody.” One glance at her 1998 debut album, ==Kansas== (Gotee Records) is proof of that. That CD spent 80 weeks in the top 25 on Billboard’s Christian album charts, spawned over 200 concerts in a single year, sold hundreds of thousands of copies, won Dove and Billboard Awards, and landed the 26-year-old artist an elite place among mainstream music’s hottest female acts on the Lilith Fair concert tour.

With that kind of success in such a short time, it’s no wonder Jennifer Knapp is seeing stars. But, in spite of the whirlwind of fame around her, this roots-rock singer/songwriter seems intent on keeping both feet firmly planted on the ground.

“One of the things I struggle with the most [is] getting a lot more credit than I deserve,” she remarks. “The truth is, you can walk out on the stage and take credit, and then get booed for doing the same thing that [other] people are cheering you for. And in the end, it doesn’t really matter either way.”

So what does matter to Jennifer Knapp? What keeps her coming back to Christian music, this time with her sophomore release titled, Lay It Down?

To answer that question, we must first visit the artist back in August of 1992, as an eighteen-year-old freshman student at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. A self-proclaimed atheist, Jennifer was a trifle annoyed to find out the girl across the hall in the dormitory, Amy Carr, was not only a Christian, but had even decorated her room with “Jesus stuff.” And what was worse, Amy insisted on telling Jennifer all about faith in God.

“It just sounds so bizarre to me right now, looking back, but that really was the truth,” Jennifer says. “I kind of took Christianity as a complete jokeI read about other religions and things like that and none of them meant anything – they were just things I was reading on a page.”

And so Amy Carr moved in across the hall, and before long Jennifer found herself hanging out with a group of people she thought were nuts. “I actually didn’t want to hang out with Amy!” she laughs, “She was a Christian! But she expressed her faith not only through decorating. I also saw her live that in her lifestyle, along with several other people I went to college with.”

Over the next few months, Jennifer studied Amy’s lifestyle, inside and out. “I’d never met anyone like that before – [someone] who didn’t just tell you about Jesus, but showed you.”

October of 1992 found Jennifer explaining to Amy exactly why she would not become a Christian. And during that conversation, Jennifer unexpectedly felt the Holy Spirit touching her spirit, calling her to Jesus. Jennifer recalls sitting with her friend, denying her need for Christ, and then suddenly realizing how weak her arguments really were.

“I realized I had a decision to make,” she says. “And just seeing the promises of God and seeing the joy that brought into [my friends'] lives, I knew I had no choice but to say yes.”

Having reached that point in her life, this new found faith poured out of Jennifer in the way that was most natural for her: in her music. Soon she was performing up to eighty shows a year, singing about her faith in Jesus on the weekends and trying to keep up on her studies during the week. When Gotee Records came calling in late 1994 and 1995, she knew it was time to put college on hold and move ahead in the direction God was leading her, into a full-time career as a Christian musician.

So why does she keep coming back to the tiring art of her chosen career? Because of this faith in Jesus she gained as a teenager; because of the Bible verse she claims as her “theme verse for life,” Colossians 3:23-24, which says:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” (NIV)

“God asks me topursue what I do with excellence, period,” she reflects. Then she adds, ” ‘Whatever you do,’ His word saysWell, what I happen to do is be a musician. I happen to be an artist and I want to be as good at that as possible. The other thing added onto that is that its’ an incredibly powerful tool to be able to express the heart, and God has expressly given us that to worship Him.”

Colossians 3:23-24 drives more than just Jennifer’s music career, though. For the last several years it’s taken her far out of the spotlight, to out-of-the-way places like Estonia and the Dominican Republic where she’s served alongside others in short-term missionary projects.

“One of the things I’ve basically purposed in my life is to be involved in some sort of short-term mission once a year,” she explains, adding, “I’ve kind of dedicated my life to that.”

Last year, in July of 1999, Jennifer and her fellow missionaries flew into the stupefying summer heat of the Dominican Republic. And what did the talented musician do with her precious, guitar-playing, award-winning fingers?

“We were involved in building a children’s eye-care clinic,” she reports. “It required digging twelve-foot holes into miry types of clay in the middle of the morning – and it was 100 degrees already!” And during her free time, Jennifer and a few friends chose to go into the residential areas to “try and start building some relationships with the people to be able to share our faith.”

Hoping to continue what she started last year, Jennifer says she’s going back again in 2000 – and this time she’s inviting fans to come along with her. And if they can’t come, she’d still like to have their prayers – not just for the mission trip, but for all of her life and ministry.

“I would definitely [ask people to pray for] God to continue to make our path clear and understood as to how we can use this platform that God’s given us effectively for His glory,” Jennifer requests.

And in the meantime, she promises to keep her eyes focused on the heavens – with or without a telescope.

Taken from http://www.crosswalk.com/541006/