HOW TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE A BAD BREATHE

Halitosis is the medical term used for bad breath. Bad breath can be caused by numerous factors, and many people do not even know they have it. Know the signs that you may have bad breath so you can prevent it.

Health problems such as periodontal gum disease, yeast infections of the mouth, tooth cavities, extremely dry mouth, medications, mouth breathing or lack of saliva, and chronic gastric reflux all cause bad breath. Infections such as pneumonia, bronchitis, sinus infections and postnasal drip, diabetes and liver and kidney diseases also can cause bad breath.

Detecting Bad Breath
1. Check your tongue. The tongue should be pink and shiny. If it is white or dry, you may have bad breath. It is important to brush and floss your teeth and tongue (or use a tongue scraper) each day, as bacteria can grow between teeth and on the tongue, causing bad breath.
2. Foods such as onions and garlic and gastric reflux disease cause bad breath. These foods have strong odors and stay with the body until they have passed completely through the body systems. Since your mouth is where all your food is broken down, it makes sense that foods are absorbed into your blood stream and carried to your lungs and given off in your breath.
Most people breathe into their hands to check for bad breath. You can also lick the back of your hand and let it dry for a few seconds then smell that area. If it smells bad, you have bad breath.
3. Dental problems such as tooth cavities, gum disease, plaque or dirty dentures can create bad breath. Maintain good oral care with daily brushing and flossing. See your dentist for a proper cleaning every six months.
4. Dry mouth can be caused by a lack of saliva from dehydration, medications or mouth breathing (morning breath) and smoking. Smoking does dry out your mouth and causes unpleasant mouth odors.
5. Diseases such as diabetes or kidney or liver problems cause bad breath. Any lung disease, sinus infection, tonsillitis, pneumonia or bronchitis can produce bad breath. With diabetes, kidney or liver failure you may have a fishy breath. Uncontrolled diabetes can also cause a fruity breath.
Eliminating Bad Breath
Drink plenty of water. Some mouth rinses recommended by your dentist can kill odor producing bacteria. Use alcohol free mouthwash as the alcohol dries out the mouth that can exacerbate bad breath. Chewing sugar-free gum can produce saliva to eliminate bad breath.

Avoid foods that cause bad breath and limit sweet candy and chocolate, as the sugar prompts bacteria to reproduce in the mouth. Green tea has anti-bacterial properties to eliminate bad breath, as does cinnamon. Fresh fruits and vegetables such as apples produce more saliva in your mouth and help to expel bacteria. Oranges also help to eliminate bacteria, as they are high in vitamin C. If halitosis persists despite changes mentioned, consult your healthcare provider to rule out a more serious problem

STATIN

Statins are drugs that can lower your cholesterol. They work by blocking a substance your body needs to make cholesterol. Statins may also help your body reabsorb cholesterol that has built up in plaques on your artery walls, preventing further blockage in your blood vessels and heart attacks.

Statins include well-known medications such as atorvastatin (Lipitor), simvastatin (Zocor), lovastatin (Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), rosuvastatin (Crestor) and others. Lower cost generic versions of many statin medications are available. Already shown to be effective in lowering cholesterol, statins may have other potential benefits. But doctors are far from knowing everything about statins

Whether you need to be on a statin depends on your cholesterol level along with your other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. If you have high cholesterol, meaning your total cholesterol level is 240 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) (6.22 millimoles per liter, or mmol/L) or higher, or your low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL, or "bad" cholesterol) level is 130 mg/dL (3.37 mmol/L) or higher, your doctor may recommend you begin to take a statin. But the numbers alone won't tell you or your doctor the whole story. If the only risk factor you have is high cholesterol, you may not need medication because your risk of heart attack and stroke could otherwise be low. High cholesterol is only one of a number of risk factors for heart attack and stroke.

If your doctor decides you should take a statin, you and your doctor will have to decide what dose to take. Statins come in varied doses — from as low as 5 milligrams to as much as 80 milligrams, depending on the medication. If you need to decrease your LDL cholesterol significantly — by 50 percent or more — it's likely you'll be prescribed a higher dose of statins. If your LDL cholesterol isn't as high, you'll likely need a lower dose. Talk to your doctor if you have concerns about the amount of statins you're taking.

PURSUING A CAREER IN CIVI ENGINEERING

“Choosing a career in civil engineering is the best decision anyone could make” says Mr. Louis Coetzee, a civil engineering lecturer at University of Pretoria (UP). It sees easy to choose a career, but the important thing is making the right choice, a career that will give you the privilege to express yourself and bring out the best in you. The best way to do this would be, finding out about a particular career before considering it. The bottom line is doing what you love most. Considering a career in civil engineering would not be a bad idea, because it will offer school leavers a chance to build skill and expertise that will be of use to both the government and various public firms in a continuous basis. Like every other profession, it will be considerate to know about civil engineering before pursuing it as a profession.

Civil engineering is a wide field that deals with planning, designing, supervising, managing and maintaining large construction projects such as highways, airfields, harbors, water and sewage systems, and buildings. A person pursuing a career in this field will be surprised how broad it is. Civil engineering is a complex and hectic career to pursue. This profession has historically has been male dominated because of the nature of job but it is amazing to know that women are getting involved these days but not a large number, as most of them are discouraged by the complexity of the work.

To pursue a career in civil engineering, a matric exemption or a senior certificate with mathematics and physics science is required, computer studies, geography and technical drawing is required as well. A compulsory admission test has to be written to study civil engineering. A minimum of 4years full-time BEng or Bsc is required, followed by 3years of practical training under a registered professional civil engineer.  Once a degree is obtained, the next step is getting a license; first, the fundamental of engineering exam must be completed. After the completion of the exam, the person is qualified as an engineer-in-training or an engineer intern.

Within South Africa, different major universities offer civil engineering in which school leavers considering a career in this profession can apply such universities are university of Pretoria (UP), University of South Africa (UNISA), University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (UKZN), Wits and University of Cape Town (UTC). For those wishing to study abroad, there are 5 top universities that offer civil engineering as well, such as Stanford University, Purdue University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and University of California Berkeley.

His advice for school leavers who want to pursue a career in civil engineer is to remain persistent, never allow distraction of any kind because they will be surprised how board the profession is and the level of work that is involved. Women rarely consider a career in civil engineering, the nature of work might be the reason for that but Mr Coetzee encouraged women not to back off, rather to pursue their dreams against any discouragement. He believes that the more women employed in the industry, the better the future of civil engineering industry. What a man can do a woman can do even better he says, so women should be encourage to start considering a career in this field. Anyone considering a profession in civil engineering has not made a wrong choice but must learn to be focused and diligent.

POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME

Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is an extremely common endocrine disorder. The prevalence of PCOS is conservatively estimated to occur in 5-10% of reproductive-aged women. This disease has been recognized since at least the 1930's. While a clinical diagnosis of PCOS may encompass several distinct subsets of patients, most experts in the field agree that there are some common clinical and laboratory aspects of this common disorder

One common feature of PCOS is increased body weight. Women with PCOS tend to be heavy and have trouble losing weight. One underlying mechanism behind the ovulatory irregularity and the obesity is probably insulin resistance. This means that the cells of women with PCOS do not respond as well to their bodies' own insulin as those of someone without PCOS. This puts women with PCOS at higher risk for developing diabetes during pregnancy or later in life.

Treatment for PCOS depends largely on an individual woman's fertility desires. For those women not desiring immediate pregnancy, there are basically two options to help regulate menstrual cyclicity and prevent endometrial hyperplasia. The most common option is the use of oral contraceptives (birth control pills; BCPs). BCPs will give most women normal bleeding patterns and prevent hyperplasia. Since ovulation can occur unpredictably in women with PCOS, BCPs also provide adequate contraception. The hormones in BCPs will also help reduce acne and facial hair in most patients with PCOS. In women who do not require oral contraception, progesterone given for 10-12 days every 30-60 days will induce a reliable menses.

In women for whom unwanted hair growth is particularly bothersome, significant improvement can be obtained with a combination of medications. As already mentioned, BCPs are extremely useful in this regard. Other medications may include drugs that reduce the secretion of androgen hormones or interfere with their action in the skin and hair cells.

Alternatively, for women with PCOS who desire pregnancy, ovulation induction is often necessary. This involves medical treatment in order to help the ovaries release an egg each month in a reliable fashion. For many women this involves simple and relatively inexpensive oral medication. Others may require more intensive and expensive therapies utilizing injectable medications. For full coverage of ovulation inducing agents go to the section on ovulation drugs.

Finally, there are some new therapeutic options available for women with PCOS. As already mentioned, insulin resistance may represent the underlying problem for a lot of PCOS patients. A relatively new class of drugs that help sensitize the cells to the action of insulin, thereby reducing insulin resistance, has recently been shown to help induce ovulation in women with PCOS who failed previous simple therapies. Certain of these agents may also help women with PCOS to lose weight. Some of the more common drugs are: Metformin (Glucophage) and Actos.  Glucophage is much simpler to administer and is frequently associated with weight loss.  It is a general goal to obtain a weight loss of at least 10%.  Many studies have shown that a weight loss of 10% leads to a 30% pregnancy rate.  Although weight loss is difficult to achieve and the idea of dieting is stressful for almost anyone, we have had much recent success with a variety of approaches.  The first is the Atkins type protein based diet.  This low carbohydrate diet helps to reduce insulin secretion and encourage weight loss.  Other options include the sugar buster diet or formal weight loss systems such as Weight Watchers.  Also please remember the first week of any dietary change is the worst.   If you can hang in there with week one, any diet will seem more natural.

In women who cannot tolerate or don't conceive with oral medications such as Glucophage or Clomid other options are available. These include injectable ovulation medications such as Gonal-F or Follistim. also in vitro fertilization is available with excellent results.

PCOS is a common readily treatable disorder. The challenge is for the doctor to meet the specific needs of the patient during her entire life span.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MANDELA DIES?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MANDELA DIES?

This has being the question on each and everyone’s mind since the African freedom icon Tata Madiba Mandela was admitted at the Pretoria hospital.

The former president Nelson Mandela marked two months in hospital on Thursday, as his compatriots extended their national vigil. The anti-apartheid hero was rushed to the Pretoria Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital on 8 June with a recurring lung infection.  His condition is still said to be "critical but stable". The government has been secretive about the Madiba’s health, issuing infrequent and barebones statements and declining to comment on the specifics of his condition

Some believe the anti-apartheid hero and paragon of racial reconciliation is the glue that holds the diverse nation together. “For as long as he lives, South Africans breathe a little easier and believe in their country a little more. When the day after Mandela dawns, that belief will be shaken, not dramatically or immediately, but slowly and perhaps imperceptibly. South Africa will, quite simply, be a different country.”  Say David Smith in his article “ what will become of South Africa after Nelson Mandela dies” With fewer nuances, a persistent myth holds that black people have been waiting for his passing before unleashing a “night of the long knives, genocide of whites” to “cleanse” South Africa.

The ANC is in trouble whether he is alive or dead, “I think it will lose more ground. I hope it does, because it has become arrogant. Its strength has been diminished in each election since 1994 and this time it may go under 60 percent. It is riven with factions and eventually it will disintegrate. That will not be bad for the country, but good for the country” smith added. The idea that South Africa is hanging on to one man and one party is a failure to understand the processes we have to go through.

It is time for South Africans to wake up and take responsibility, rather than depending on one man. Mandela will not live forever and nobody should expect him to live forever on this planet. It is time to grow up and get going and allow Mandela to rest in peace.

FASHION TODAY

Fashion is a general term for a popular style or practice, especially in clothing, footwear, accessories, makeup and body piercing, says Tsepo Massina, a fashion designer student at Midrand Graduate Institute. She added that it is a distinctive and often habitual trend in the style with which a person dresses, as well as to prevailing styles in behaviour.

Fashion today is not just the clothes but also the accessories too. Clothes, shoes, bags, jewellery and Beauty products all constitute today's Fashion trends. As far as clothes are concerned, Fashion is based on fabric, colour and cuts. Fashion trends change according to the season. For instance, during summers the common colours worn are the pastel shades and lighter fabric. Come winter and the preferred colour ranges are the darker and brighter ones and the fabric is heavier therefore Fashion today depends on the time

Fashion today is also basically pulling from the past to create your own look. "Vintage" is usually thought of as older looking clothes but today it really means from any era in the past. Bright colours are worn a lot. The number 1 rule of thumb in fashion today is simple: buy things that fit. Not too tight and not too baggy. When you wear clothes that fit, you are bound to look, at the least, decent. Nothing too wild and you'll be great!

These days anything could be fashion, people come up with ideas on their own to create fashion suitable for their desire. People are so obsessed with fashion that most clothes become similar. In her article, “what women wear” Laura cox emphasised that modern women dress badly, because following fashion makes them all look the same. She added that people are too concerned about what’s fashionable. Women have such boring wardrobes these days because they must follow fashion, she says, they must, and they must. But sometimes it’s about saying, oh, this would work well with that.

 It is difficult to know what to wear now, because people dress in similar ways these days. Today everybody wants to look good but it all depends on what you believe is fashion for you; the main thing is, wearing something that makes you comfortable.

FINDING MR OR MRS RIGHT

If you can get in close enough, checking out someone's smell is a valuable way of finding Mr or Ms Right. Despite our aversion to smell and our much reduced olfactory areas in the brain (at least compared to dogs and horses) we are in fact surprisingly sensitive to it. Newborn babies and their mothers can identify each other by smell alone within hours of the birth – which is one reason why we now like to make sure that the baby goes straight on the mother's breast as soon as it is born. This is something that we share with most other mammals. In sheep and goats, the mother learns to recognise its newborn young by smell within 24 hours, and in the following days will allow only that lamb to suckle. And the lambs themselves learn to identify the right mother to suck from in the same way, though they are, perhaps understandably, a bit slower and it usually takes a couple of days' exposure to the mother's smell.

In fact, smell provides one of the best markers of who you really are. The reason for this is that your smell is determined by the same set of genes, the major histocompatibility complex genes (MHC), as your immune system. It is part of who you are, your personal chemical signature. The MHC gene complex is particularly susceptible to mutation, producing new immune complexes with each new generation. This is probably just as well, as these are our first line of defence against bacteria and viruses which are themselves undergoing constant genetic change.

Our immune-system genes have evolved to be almost as changeable as virus genes in an effort to track the ever-changing biological threats that we face from them. So smell may be one way of checking out who's a good bet and who's not, but it's not the only function of smell in this context. Female moths famously dribble molecules of an incredibly powerful scent into the air. Male moths can detect these scents in the tiniest quantities from hundreds of yards away and find them quite irresistible. These sexual attraction scents are known as pheromones and occur widely in the animal kingdom, including monkeys. There has been some debate as to whether or not they occur in humans, but, in fact, there is considerable evidence to suggest that they do.

There do appear to be significant differences between the sexes in their respective sensitivity to odour: women are much more sensitive than men. There is now quite a lot of evidence that women in particular are quite good at identifying their children and their lovers by scent alone. However, we are by no means perfect at this, it must be said, and it is probably just as well that we don't manage our social world by smell rather than by vision – we would be likely to make an inordinate number of embarrassing mistakes if we did. However, it seems that, having identified the right person, smell plays a very important role in sexual arousal for women in a way it doesn't for men. Perhaps as a result, women rate smell as more important in mate choice than men do, whereas men rely much more on visual cues, reflecting the fact that men tend to make up their minds about a prospective mate from further away than women do. Women need to get up close and personal.

In a large questionnaire-based study, Jan Havlicek, Tamsin Saxton, Craig Roberts and their colleagues found that women rated odour as more important than visual cues in a range of non-sexual contexts (such as meal choice, flower choice and attention to unfamiliar landscapes) as well as in contexts of sexual arousal and lover choice, but men did not. For men, visual cues were much more important, especially in sexual contexts and lover choice.

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF

Jesus emphatically stated that loving your neighbor as yourself is second only to loving God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matt. 22:37-40)
No one wants to hurt someone they love which is why it is easier to over look the trespasses of our loved ones than those of mere acquaintances. But who is our neighbor?
When asked this question, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan where an innocent man was robbed, beaten, and left for dead along the roadside. Before long two men who were assumed by all to be upright and moral, passed him by and left him to die. A Samaritan, who was looked down upon by the Jews of that generation, showed compassion for the afflicted man and stopped to help. The Samaritan therefore, according to Jesus, was the man's neighbor. (Luke 10:29-37)
As we grow in Christ we begin to take on His character, producing the fruit of the Spirit such as gentleness, kindness, and selflessness. Since we are instructed by the Savior to love our enemies, how much more does he want us to love those who are not our enemies?

Jesus said that we are to be kind to all men (Matt. 5:45) because the Father is also kind and sends the sun and rain upon us all, whether just or unjust. But those who selflessly help us in difficult times are the ones Jesus said are our neighbors and we are to love them even as we love ourselves.

When a born-again Christian begins to mature in Christ, the love for other members in the family of God begins to develop and grow. It is just as natural as young siblings growing to love each other in any other family. Anyone who doesn't have this kind of love for the brethren doesn't have perfect love towards God.
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also." (1John 4:20)

Most families experience conflict and yet still love each other. The test of true love comes from hardships or when the chips are down and we realize which of our friends or family is truly our neighbor.
Looking around at all the people we pass by each day we need to realize that if we had experienced the same kind of relationship with any one of them over the years as we have with those we're closest to, we would have loved them just as much. Every man, woman, and child is someone's father, Mother, brother, or sister and should be viewed as such.

Most of us have been helped out of a difficult situation by a kindhearted person at one time or another during our lifetime and according to Jesus, that person is our neighbor. However, during our lives we have encountered many people and none of us know which of these, whether friend, family or even stranger, would have done the same had they been given the chance, which is also true of all of those we will encounter in the future.

Therefore, since we don't know for sure, we should view all people as our neighbor. Likely as not it would surprise us to know which of those we pass each day would do for us what the Good Samaritan did for the injured traveler should we fall on hard times.
Learning to love each other is a process and learning to love our neighbor as ourselves helps us learn to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind.

FATHER'S LOVE

Like mothers, fathers come in all different shapes, sizes, and personalities. The most basic and universal understanding of father is one of begetting children. A father is much more than a begetter. Father is not a name but a relation and a presence. Steve is a person before becoming Paul’s father. Fatherhood is added on to his personhood.

Recall some father-roles in movies and in television. Take for example the role of Stanley Banks (“Pops”) in “Father of the Bride.” Just thought of ‘losing’ his daughter in marriage evokes comically neurotic tendencies on the eve of the wedding. In “Life with Father,” Clarence Day (Clare) is a financier whose thriftiness and dislike of surprises make for fun when, time and again, his wife Vinnie and his four boys outwit him. In “Mr. Skeffington,” Job Skeffington is the tender, loving father to an only daughter, spurned by her vain mother.
In “The Bill Cosby Show,” Cliff Huxtable, the father and obstetrician, is thoroughly engaged in the lives of his five children. He protects, disciplines, and loves them. As a moral guide, he teaches them values by example. A devoted husband, he stands firmly with his wife, especially in front of the children. The Huxtable family loves their Dad – flexible, funny, and fun – as we do.

The mature television series, “Blue Bloods” captures a similar image of father in different circumstances. Henry Reagan, the super-patriarch of an Irish Catholic family and once the police commissioner of the NYPD, is always the pre-eminent father-figure, first to his son Francis (Frank), a widower and the current police commissioner. Henry lives with Frank, the father of a daughter and two sons, also part of the NYPD. Danny, one of Frank’s sons, is the father of two young boys. The three fathers are present to the various family members providing them with stability and guidance – moral and spiritual. With the Reagans, fatherhood and family unite to claim center stage in this weekly drama about the New York police department.

Today, though speaking about God invites criticism, silence is no answer. A word then about God-language. God, who is beyond all human language, reveals the Divine I-AM-Who-Am as masculine in the Hebrew scriptures. God is Adonai (Lord), Melech (King), Avinu (Our Father). These are figurative and not a literal ways of speaking about the ineffable source and creator of the universe. Nevertheless, God as father, is revealed in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

To some, the name father ascribes gender to God. Such language, they say, confirms a patriarchal system that keeps women subservient and prevents them from gender equality.
Extreme feminism faults a patriarchal culture for developing the doctrine of the Father’s eternal relationship to the Son. Accordingly, “the Christian tradition has made the image of God’s fatherhood literal. “. . .  This tendency favors dominance of male over female onto God’s being, thereby eclipsing women as equal carriers of the divine image” (Catherine Mowry-Lacugna, “Fatherhood of God,” Encyclopedia of Catholicism, 520). Lacugna admits that Jesus did not refer to God as Amma (mother).  However, within this view, ample doubt remains – a doubt that Jesus’ words about his Father addressed to his Father, are insufficient to justify, let alone prove, God’s eternal fatherhood. Why?  Because they were written, interpreted, and developed in and by a patriarchal culture.

In the Johannine gospel alone, reference to the Father occurs more than 110 times. In chapter seventeen, Jesus’ prayer to his Father reveals what the Father means to Jesus. It gives us an intimate sense of the relationship between Father and Son. As revealed dogma, the procession of Son from the Father, according to their one nature, is literally true. Did Jesus not know better?