Toxic Chemical in Infant's & Children's Feeding Products

A year ago while I was looking for a gift for my baby niece in-law, a doctor friend strongly recommended me to buy a special feeding bottle. The special thing about this bottle was that it does not contain the chemical "bisphenol-A" (雙酚A in chinese or BPA in short) .


Okay, that was the first time I heard about this chemical. I read the brochure and roughly know that it is harmful to health. That's about it.


Now that I am pregnant, I start to pay more attention to the quality and safety of baby products (the melamine milk scandal just make me more paranoid). When I did my baby-stuff shopping in HK (where prices are generally 20% cheaper than S'pore), I realised BPA-free products have come into the mainstream market. Parents are careful in picking up only BPA-free bottles, sippy cups, eating utensils and even toys. A shop owner told me that BPA is a big topic among parents not only in HK, but in Taiwan (click here for a chinese news articleon BPA), Korea and Japan as well.


So why is there little awareness of BPA in Singapore? I asked my friends, the most "kiasu/ 怕輸" full-time-baby-sitting mothers (who only buy the most expensive and best quality products for their babies) about it, none of them heard about such issue.


According to Bisphenol-A Free, BPA is a "hormone-disrupting chemical considered to be potentially harmful to human health and the environment. It has been known that scratched and worn polycarbonate feeding bottles will leach this chemical into liquids."

As usual, depending on who is funding the research, there are conflicting research datas that either support the claim that BPA is toxic or it is not harmful to human health.


While FDA and European authorities are being rather fiddle-minded over the issue, Canada government is a little more decisive and it officially puts BPA under the toxic chemical list.

Though the controversy continues, I am not going wait for few decades for the scientists to be sure and I rather be kiasu to stick to the safe side. Why risk exposing my baby to any known potential harm?!

Luckily I found this excellent "Z Recommends" that gives a comprehensive Report on BPA in Children's Feeding Products. This comes in really handy to help me purchase BPA-free milk pumps, milk bottles, utensils and toys etc for my little prince. I am glad that the expensive Combi training cups that I bought from HK are safe to be used.

What I really missed...

The lifestyle that I dearly missed:

Now I can only drool (with much envy) at other cyclists on the road, while my own road bike collects dust at home.

Sob sob, I wonder when can I ever race or be adventurous again! ARRRRGGGgggghhH!!!

Karyn session 4-12

I am very guilty for not being able to record Karyn's progress promptly. So here is what happened in the past 1.5 month.


Since Karyn has completed her study she managed to squeeze out more time to do Pilates twice weekly amidst her super hectic child-caring schedule.


Though her pain was initially relieved by few pilates sessions, her baby boy is growing fast and is making it even more stressful on Karyn's back whenever she carries him. Thus the pain on her left lumbar area originating from her herniated disc continued to come and go over the weeks, and severity varies depending on how much she carries him.


One day she called me to complain about numbness on the lateral side of her right knee, I suspected it might be due to her twice weekly jog or due to her aggravated disc condition, but on the safe side I asked her to consult a doctor.


She consulted a private orthopaedic doctor and, based on verbal description of her symptoms, he concluded (without any physical/ manual/ functional check-up) that Karyn was suffering from ITB symdrome. So she was told to do some ITB stretch and given anti-inflammation cream. To my surprise, she was also told that she could continue her jogging as per normal. Both me and Karyn felt that this particular doctor was not very helpful as he did not really investigate the real cause of the problem, he just wanted to get his patient out of his office asap. With the recommended stretch and medicated cream, the numbness at Karyn's knee did not really go away.


Then she developed numbness at her right toes. She thought it was due to her new running shoes. But I was skeptical and urged her to consult another doctor instead.


An orthopaedic surgeon from Tan Tock Seng Hospital who specialises in spine finally confirmed what I suspected. The numbness at her knee and toes were actually symptoms refered from her herniated disc. He advised against surgery as the herniation is still very much preliminary, and he also discouraged the use of pain killer or analgesic cream as they only masked the symptoms. He ordered Karyn to continue with Pilates as main treatment as it can help correct mechanical problem in the spine. He also advised her to swim regularly.


With few Pilates sessions focusing on core control, lumbar stabilisation and spinal extension, the numbness dissipated gradually. Karyn was all excited and got herself into the pool soon after the consultation. She swam so hard and long that after her swim her back pain turned from bad to worse! Karyn was totally puzzled as swimming was "supposedly" good for back pain but yet it made hers worst instead.

Moral of the story? always get 2nd medical opinion if you feel that the doctor was not detailed or proficient enough to help alleviate your problem. And be easy on your body if you have not done certain exercise for a long time. For Karyn she probably overstrained from the swim as she had not swim for years! Too much good thing is not neccessarily good and moderation is the key :)

Post Rehabilitation Therapy for Stroke Patient through Pilates

Here is a real-life account of how Pilates can be used as post-rehabilitation therapy for stroke patients. Extracted from "The Road Back", Spring 2005 Newsletter of The Stroke Association of Southern California.

"The Ultimate Birthday Surprise"

LINDA, a 49 year-old woman, lies unconscious in a hospital bed, hooked up to the usual assortment of tubes and machines. She is in a coma, and has been in this suspended state for three weeks.

A few of Linda’s friends are clustered around, waiting for something…but they’re not sure what. Their expressions project a sense of weary helplessness. Suddenly, Linda opens her eyes and looks around the room. Her gaze falls on the faces of her friends, then is drawn inexplicably to the calendar hanging on the wall nearby. She points at it, struggling to speak. No words come out. She woke up on her birthday. It was Linda Riback’s remarkable birthday surprise!

Twenty-one days earlier, a friend of Linda’s arrived at her apartment to pick her up – and when there was no response to his knock – he broke down the door to find her passed out on the floor. She had suffered a massive stroke. The friend called 911 and she was rushed off to the hospital.


After Linda came out of the coma, she was extremely weak. She couldn’t speak or walk, and she found herself railing against the less than-optimistic prognosis being offered by her doctor. As commonly happens, she felt an intense anger rising in her about what had happened, fixated on the question: “Why Me?” Fortunately, in Linda’s exploration of the question, she came to a clear realization that dwelling on the past would only impede her forward progress.

Linda went through hospital and post-hospital rehabilitation and eventually regained the ability to speak and walk, though she still had great difficulty with the latter. Luckily, when her insurance coverage ran out, her resolve to recover more fully didn’t. She signed up to be a “guinea pig” in some clinical trials in stroke rehabilitation. At the University of Southern California, the researchers asked her, “What would you like to do better?” The therapists then designed a specialized program for her, working on such practical things as how to get up from a lying position on the floor.

The concentrated rehab helped empower Linda, so before long she was able to turn her attention to another pressing issue: how to pay the bills. She had just started a new job in accounting when her stroke occurred, and being thrown out of the working world so abruptly had severely damaged her self-esteem. She felt she was now ready to take on a new employment challenge, but had no idea how to “get back out there.” While she was strategizing, Linda called an old friend from her college days who worked in the film industry. The friend was shocked to learn of Linda’s stroke and subsequent loss of employment. She helped Linda get a job at Paramount Pictures.

During this period Linda also continued to work on her physical recovery. To her delight, she began working with Halli Lorentz, a highly skilled and creative professional who became her good friend as well as her trainer. By working intensively on a Pilates machine, Linda’s walking improved dramatically, as she steadily regained strength and agility. Halli also helped
Linda “unlearn” many bad movement habits she had adopted to compensate for loss of function. Halli designed a home exercise program for Linda, too, stressing that if she wanted to maximize her recovery, she must be working out nearly every day of the week.

It should be obvious by now that Linda possesses a couple of qualities that are vital to stroke recovery: a willingness to try new things, and a tenacious perseverance. Even now, many years after her stroke, she is still experimenting. She recently signed up to be part of a new clinical trial, which involved implanting bions in her arm that provide electrical stimulation to the nerves. How effective is it? Linda doesn’t know yet. But, as she says, “You have to keep trying. Each week you’ll get better and better.” That is not an empty claim. Linda does keep getting better and better. There’s no better proof than that.

Menstruation & Inversion

An interesting email from reader, Karen:

"During a general discussion about Pilates with a friend who practices Yoga, she asked me if female Pilates students are told not to do similar inverted exercises like the plough (roll-over / jack-knife / short spine), head / shoulder stand during menstruation. I told her no, and I asked her why not. She replied that her Yoga instructors had explained that the flow of energy during those days will be blocked during inversions and may cause giddiness.

I did a quick search on the internet, and there are basically 2 schools of thought :
Not OK (http://www.yoga.com/ydc/enlighten/enlighten_document.asp?ID=74&section=9&cat=93)

It's OK (http://yogapilates.suite101.com/article.cfm/practicing_yoga_on_your_period) (http://www.yogajournal.com/basics/831).

Presently ignoring the philosophy behind Yoga, I hope you would share thoughts as female Pilates instructor on the topic, and whether a female body executes the Pilates exercises differently (from your personal observations) during the different stages of the cycle.

Thanks,
Karen"

First of all, I need to thank Karen for bringing up this topic for discussion. I myself was confused when I first started off in fitness industry too.

In the past, it was believed that performing inversion exercise during menstruation may lead to 'retrograde menstruation', where menstrual blood tissues 'leaks' out of the womb thru the fallopian tube openings into the pelvic area. These blood tissues then stick to pelvic organs and continue to grow and respond to fluctuation of female hormones throughout the menstrual cycle, causing symptoms of endometriosis. Thus women were advised to avoid inversion exercises during menstruation.

However, retrograde menstruation happens natually in almost all women, but only 3-10% of them suffer from endometriosis. So there must be other factors (e.g. genetic and immune dysfunction) that actually cause the condition. And inversion exercises should not be blamed on its own.

Others were concerned that inversion exercise might cause vascular congestion, leading to heavier menstrual flow. However vascular congestion can also be aggravated by standing and other physical activity, not just inversion pose alone.

My take is, inversion exercise is safe to be performed during menstruation, as long as you don't hold it for too long (seriously, what's the point of holding yourself long in the inverted pose?!). As with any other exercises, one should listen to their body and see what works and what doesn't for their own body. If you have much heavier menstrual flow or pelvic pain after doing inversion exercise, then do less or avoid them completely in future.

*To side-track a little, inversion exercises are absolutely NO-NO for people with high blood pressure, stroke, post-natal and glaucoma.

A special Pilates Challenge

My friend, Jacqueline, has just opened her very own pilates studio, The Pilates Place, at Tras Street.

On its website, besides having the usual information about the studio location, class schedules and intructors etc., there is also special opening promotional package that I think it's really value for money.

But what impressed me was the brilliant marketing idea, "Wedding Challenge"!

Jacq is going to train her bride-to-be friend (Mei) intensively for a month, and see if Pilates can transform Mei's body in time for her wedding. You can follow Mei's progress at her blog. I think that is going to be fun!

In fact, Pilates is really useful for any bride who wants to look their best on the BIG day. Not only Pilates can tone up all the crucial areas like abs, arms and back muscles, it also makes the bride walk and stand with proper posture, so that she will look elegant and confident in that beautiful gown! Here is what Lynn Robinson, the co-founder of Body Control Pilates Education, said about how Pilates can be incorporated into the wedding plan: