Gaccha
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12 minutes ago, WhiteBuffaloATM said:being healthy is nothing to do with (faddish) “diets”
nor is that apple cider vinegar weight loss bs
weight is basically calories in / calories out. no “ supplements” involved.
We now know this way of understanding is flawed. The body holds your fat in a way which is unaffected by strategies which simply count calories. It is too responsive to feedback loops.
Think of your fat storage as like a deep dreeze in the garage. Insulin spikes (produced the most by sugar but there are many culprits) open the deep freeze and let the calories in. Fasting is the only way to get the fat out of the body.
It sounds intuitive to say 10 calories = 10 calories but it's not true. 10 calories of certain foods are far worse than others. The science on this is staggeringly complex, and I recommend a deep dive into the scientific literature. But we all intuitively grasp this; we feel "empty calories" from highly processed foods are worse than some fruit or vegetables. And we're right.
Please nobody listen to this 1980s simple and wrong message. We also know the equally naive idea that eating fat is bad is also wrong. It had the same wrong simple idea: fat = fat. Not true. In fact, eating fat is needed to lose fat.
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42 minutes ago, Chad3000 said:
I couldn't live like this.
Hope you have a healthy life to 105. I'll be happy to die at 95.
I would have thought the same.
But the fasting changes your feelings about it. The buzz of energy I get and feelings of constant elation are so strong, and I know from experience that drinking the alcohol will immediately dampen these effects, so I generally avoid the alcohol. I'll do it to be sociable but I don't crave it.
By fasting in the morning, I'm much more alert, less sleepy, more active, more positive.
The recovery from running nowadays is so quick that I sometimes forget I ran a couple of hours before.
To go back to 3 meals a day and minimum exercise is a horrifying thought.
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Yep. After a high blood pressure result, I went all in over 2 years ago and I'm down to 20.5 BMI. You need commitment. And forget the idea about your metabolism slowing down: that's not science, it's not a thing. Metabolism only really slows down over 60 years old and not even by much.
I run (not jog) 8km every 2 days. Build yourself up to this. Start with babysteps: 1 slow jog of 5km per week. Lots of running Apps to help you build up. I find this so easy now that the next day I feel nothing.
I don't eat for 18 hours. Eat within a 6 hour time period only. If you have a pretty sedentary life, you only need one meal a day. So stop eating at 6pm and next eat at 12pm. But splash out on it. So long as the body enters "famine mode" for 3 or so hours a day (it kicks in around 15 hours of not eating), then you're cutting away that fat. You'll feel high when you enter famine mode. It just feels great.
During the 18 hour period, only water, tea (no milk/sugar), coffee (no milk/sugar). Or herb teas.
No sugar. This is your true enemy. Substitutes work with a lot of people (e.g. Stevia). You can buy no-sugar chocolate, no-sugar sweets, no-sugar ice cream etc. But even these you should probably not take during the 18 hour famine period (the science is out on this).
No alcohol. Except say once a week.
You'll need to control hunger pangs. Drink Japanese Green Tea. That will kill your hunger. Fill your stomach with water. Drink hot ginger.
Every morning, do a bit of weightlifting in your bedroom and around 100 press-ups and sit-ups.
You'll start to lose body fat rapidly. You'll find getting below 17.5% body fat is extremely challenging but the first few kgs will be surprisingly easy.
Buy a body fat/BMI/muscle weight measurement machine. They're dirt cheap.
You will feel massively more energetic and sleep better. And girls will be hitting on you, and your wife will be angry and try to get you fat again.
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There's a confusion here between the government education for the layman in Nakhon Nowhere and what herd immunity always has and will always mean.
Covid-19 was never going to evaporate out of existence. Herd immunity does not mean that. Rampant infections in the UK, USA despite high vaccination levels do not mean herd immunity is unachievable. Quite the contrary, you are watching it happen.
Firstly, relax. This thing is endemic but it will end up something like the common cold. Secondly, herd immunity refers to indirect protection through the herd. Think of shoals of fish or herds of zebra.
The individual gains protection because they are surrounded by layers of others with pretty good camouflage etc (zebra stripes etc) but which is far from great. For one person the immunity is not enough... but for the herd it is enough. The vector is blocked. The virus can only get so far. It's chance of successful infection per each person is reduced enough that it eventually runs out of steam. Herd Immunity.
Unfortunately, governments and the WHO have messed around with propaganda campaigns to the extent of even changing the definition of herd immunity on the WHO website. It has been foolish and undermined confidence in them. It has clearly created confusion as demonstrated in this thread. It has given the impression the governments are lying or acting foolishly.
The COVID-19 will infect you. But the aim is to blunt its effectiveness until it all but inevitably warps into a Common Cold. And then that's when they want you to catch it.
More people are going to die, but the number is only around 4.5 million so far. Far below 1% of the World's population, so the strategies being used are working. So breathe in.
Stay strong girls and boys. If you are under-60, have no co-morbidities (e.g. obesity or diabetes) then AstraZeneca's current research position is that you will never need a booster, let alone the hysterical claims of once every 6 months for the rest of your life suggested by this thread.
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The virologist is the guy who knows but he's dumbing it down for us.
Herd immunity is inevitable. But it will likely happen by infection. Eventually the virus will evolve into something like a typical cold as our defence mechanism will be too well adapted for variants to defeat it.
The virus will be endemic and will always be around in animals as "reservoirs" for it. But every 7-10 years it'll come back as they always do and this is good because it'll repeatedly prime our immune systems to deal with it.
It's being defeated. It's taking time. But we're winning. The virologist is staying on message because the public still think of vaccines like a magic bullet. He has his propaganda for the average Thai family living in Nakhon Nowhere. They don't understand disease vectors and they don't understand the meaning of Herd Immunity. He's keeping it real.
There are more sophisticated explanations available of reality for those of you who want to read them.
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On 9/25/2021 at 7:05 PM, Puccini said:
What is the truth in the case of the OP?
The mass or volume of the content of the packaged food container is by law stated clearly on the label. Are you suggesting that the truth is that the person (hereafter referred to with the pronouns she and her) who made the allegedly defamatory Facebook post does not know how to read, ie is illiterate, and that this truth is hurting her?
I think this is more my experience.
When I see posts ranting about Lazada or Shopee experiences, I can't help but feel so many didn't do the simplest steps of due diligence. Check the product details (not rely on the photo), check the seller has a +95% satisfaction score, obey the simple rules to obtain a product refund.
Similarly, when I see reviews on Agoda or Facebook I am struck by how warped, odd, eccentric, trivial the complaints are.
I've ordered hundreds of items off Lazada. I pay by debit card. I've had to return two items. In the first case, the company sent a delivery rider to take the wrong product back and then immediately delivered the correct item.
In the other case, the electronic item was broken. I sent it to Lazada as required in their procedure. They independently inspected it within the assigned 5 days window and refunded the money. The company itself was extremely apologetic because they didn't want a bad rating on their Lazada score.
The companies with reputations will follow reasonable complaints or they'll die out. Stop ordering from 1-day-old sellers with no reputational scores based on photos.
It is ok to have an open mind but not so open your brain falls out.
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I read the "mae moo" (Mother Pig) gossip/slander column on Sundays... and that's it.
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20 hours ago, EricTh said:
What is a police force search box? Is that an official website in your home country?
They would insist on some homepage of a police website for the home country and require you type your name into the searchbox. They'd print off the (inevitably) blank page.
Please don't look for any rational reason for choosing the website, there isn't one.
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One way to be fairly confident about this is to check on Google Maps App the location's activity levels. Unfortunately since it is outside of normal business hours as I check this they are not visible, but once it opens at 7am you can see the number of visitors.
This is simply Google watching the GPS of phones in the area. If the level is the same as the "normal levels" (as defined by Google by an average of the past) then you are good to go. In real time you can see how many are using the bank.
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19 hours ago, EricTh said:
Did he have any criminal records before coming to Thailand? I think Thailand should start vetting dangerous criminals from now on.
Your comment reminds me of Thai Immigration efforts to do just that about 5 years ago. It lasted one year and it had me collapsing in laughter at the amateurish nature of their efforts. They had me type my name into my home country's police force search box and if nothing came up then it was all good.
Their effort reflects a desire to do what you suggest. And the laughable failure reflects a brute reality: for most countries, criminal convictions are highly sensitive information which will not be revealed to random requesters. Typing even a serial killers name in many countries' websites will come back blank. The USA might be the giant exception.
The Thai government would have to put together multiple treaty arrangements to do this with lots of qualifiers and reassurances. The West is understandably reluctant to provide such access to a backward country.
Of course, both the UK and USA have permanent police representation in Bangkok and Pattaya to chase down severe crimes by their own citizens. The fashion has been to regard certain crimes as so heinous that even if committed outside the country they can be prosecuted by their country of citizenship.
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The countdown clock restarted from the day you re-entered the Kingdom. So 90 days from then, you'll need to do it again.
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It's designed to create a "sludge effect" (opposite of a nudge). The aim is to annoy you into cutting the amount of social time. Has it made your social life worse? If yes, then it's working. If it cuts the spread by 10% then that is effective even if you barely notice at an individual level.
Drinking inconspicuously is very different to the raucous drinking of the pre- pandemic times. Many bars are selling but the atmosphere is restrained and almost all of it is within social bubbles. Without the shouting and partying, the virus struggles to spread.
Delta has seemingly burnt itself out. Soon life will return to the bars and clubs, and you'll have a great story to dine off for years to come. Stay strong.
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4 hours ago, chilly07 said:
Reference for pre peer review?
You can understand that it can take several hours to complete a literature review, and in this case, I surveyed the literature purely for my own interest. So, unsurprisingly, I haven't re- found the paper.
However, I did find a news report which references a double sinovac and AZ booster:
"Dr. Chawetsan also revealed that, in neutralizing antibody tests, those inoculated with two doses of Sinovac and one dose of AstraZeneca have the highest immunity levels against the Delta variant (271.17), followed by two doses of AstraZeneca (76.52).
Those inoculated with two doses of Sinovac and one dose of Sinopharm have immunity levels at 61.26, while only two doses of Sinovac have the least (24.31)."
There was then a news report listing the efficacy rates of several mixing regimes. They are impressive results.
The results were as follows:
- Two doses of Sinovac: 92.36 U/mL of antibodies
- One dose of Astrazeneca: 51.04 U/mL of antibodies
- Infected with Covid-19 and recovered: 60.86 U/mL of antibodies
- First dose Sinovac, second dose AstraZeneca: 615 U/mL of antibodies
- First dose AstraZeneca, second dose Sinovac: 221.1 U/mL of antibodies
If you concerned about these issues, it's important that you don't simply solicit one paper from people on Thai Visa, but conduct a literature review, looking at 20 + papers until you're satisfied.
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2 hours ago, Puccini said:70% or 80% of what? Of the entire population, or of the part of the population eligible for the vaccination?
80% of the entire population.
That number is a back-of-an-envelope calculation inferred from the R number(the number of people 1 infected person infects). Since children seem resistant to this particular outbreak, they might be regarded as de facto part of the herd already.
Rather oddly, it was researched in mid-2020 that owing to the strange infection pattern of this virus the most effective way to vaccinate was to prioritize the least vulnerable first! I've not seen research to back-up this model but clearly governments decided to take the more sentimental path of prioritizing the vulnerable first. Whilst this is intuitive ("we must surely protect the vulnerable first!" etc) and understandable, it may have increased the required herd count percentage (so 80% instead of, say, a selected 77%).
Although old people are extremely vulnerable to this virus, there is nothing inevitable about that. The post-World War one virus had a W-shape pattern, afflicting the very young, a small range of the middle-aged and the old. So sentimentality with other viruses could be useful in the herd accumulation of immunity.
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If you take a look at drugs.com it tells you what the official position. There is a section for the layman and a section for the professionals.
In one of the diovan versions it says "may be administered with or without food". In that situation, it is up to you. Do you feel nausea then try the other way. They have feedback from patients that state the side effects of the drugs.
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You need to provide details. Diovan alone has 4 variations in the way it is commonly administered in the United States. On the random dosages I checked at drugs.com, it said it can be taken with or without food.
Go to drugs.com, type in the exact drug name, check in the dosage section for when to take. Also, you should always do the interactive check (as somebody did for you here) as Thai doctors seem remarkably indifferent to this matter.
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It is destined to be reached in Bangkok on 22nd October.
It will not be reached by more remote locations until mid/late-2022.
The number of 70% makes little sense. The herd number required to end the infection spread is based on the infection rate of the virus. Since the Delta variant is highly infectious, it implies a required number of 80%, possibly higher. 70% simply won't work alone; there will have to be herd immunity achieved through infection. This seems to be assumed by limited vaccinations of children.
The government accepts the infection level so long as ICUs do not become engulfed in patients (hence "flatten the curve" rhetoric of early 2020). They have increased the number of ventilators fourfold in the last 16 months.
There is little sign of Thai resistance to vaccination. They do display scepticism to Sinovac but the evidence of a mixed regime (Sino followed by AZ) is so far extremely good (pre-peer reviewed papers show it to have higher efficacy levels than two AZ shots). With fairly tight government control on information and a docile population used to commands of the bureaucratic state, they will do what they are told.
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2 hours ago, clivebaxter said:
I just tried and got - the page you are looking for does not exist
Initially, it goes to an Ad page, which you then have to close and the Google Maps (or App designated by your phone system for map operations) will open. It *might be* you have your phone on a hard block of Ad pages so it's saying no such page exists.
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They definitely should have provided a little map.
The App they want you to install is the very useful "Google Maps" App. If you install that, it will change your life. Within the App, it can quickly provide directions, tell you the costs and availability and schedule of the various means of transport. For example, it shows the bus routes, GrabTaxi costs or even the time to walk there.
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Here is a screenshot after I scanned the "scan me" icon in your attached photo.
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The "Scan me" icon in your photo provides the map. If you open any scanner on your phone, it will send you to the website with the map on it.
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Despite doing a 90 days report at MTT since the "overstay" error kicked in on the App (i.e. they've had a chance to file a 90 days with the new visa extension onto the database), the App continues to wrongly display overstay (50 days now). My next report is not until December but I tire of their incompetence. A decent IT guy could probably sort their database out in 20 minutes.
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Sir, you sound very immobile and that also suggests only limited contact with other persons. If you have minimal disease vectors (the ways the disease can reach you) then the probabilities are in your favour.
I want to set out reality.
The virus will, in around 6 more months, become endemic. This is a good thing. This means the people in your area will have either been vaccinated or infected and are now virtually bulletproof. The virus will infect everyone every 2 or 3 years and this will bump up and prep their immune systems so they remain strong against it. The virus like previous COVID outbreaks will be experienced as a common cold. This is called herd immunity.
When you are surrounded by a protected herd, you are protected. If you are not vaccinated, you are a "freeloader", strictly speaking. But you have clear reasons to not get vaccinated so there is no ethical dilemma here.
The virus, even the most scary variants, will inevitably become harmless. The scenario of a continuous escalation of more and more dangerous variants cannot happen; to believe that this will happen is to misunderstand the immune system.
The immune system has multiple layers. The simplest layer is the foot soldier peasants, the antibodies which are struggling with the current variants. But as backup you have your armoured elephant reserves: the T-cells. They *cannot* be defeated by variants once they've experienced the basic version of the virus in the last 10 years (possibly 15 years). Getting vaccinated simply means teaching your elephants how best to charge the enemy.
The delta variant is a problem because it infects around 5 people from 1 infected person. This implies a need for 80% herd immunity via vaccinations/ infections.
So there will probably be a quiet outbreak in 20 years time, which we'll not notice because it'll be among children who were born since and they won't be harmed by infection. I suppose it might be a short page 15 news article.
If you can get vaccinated, then don't be picky, even one jab of Sinovac is very likely to prevent serious illness or death.
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I tried to argue with the Immigration lady yesterday at Muang Thong Tani about the failure of the online reporting but she infuriated me with kind, polite chatter. Outrageous.
She explained they are moving the database onto an entirely new system so it could take 2 or 3 months.
She suggested I use the postal system if the online doesn't work at any point in the future. This requires sending the documents at least 15 days before the last day. The online can only be used 14days or later. So if anyone knows any good time machines on Lazada then please let me know.
By the way, my strategy of turning up in the afternoon paid off. There tends to be crowds in the mornings, but when I arrived at 1:15pm on Friday, there was not a single other foreigner.
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Hayfever starting..
in Health and Medicine
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I think hay-fever is a real euphemism for this topic. It's pollution. Bangkok has suffered from air pollution of seasonal occurrences of pm2.5 particles for around 5 years now. They are very bad for you since they are the perfect size to destroy your health.
For today, the old centre of Bangkok is expected to reach 150 AQI+. This is pretty awful. Air pollution of more than 50 is unacceptable. You should be wearing a mask to deal with it. Over 200 and you should be wearing a full HazSuit.
I've experienced 450 AQI. My nose was blocked for 2 months afterwards. But it did help me focus on this issue.
I rinse out my nose every day with sterilized salt water (buy even in 7/11) and I take Aerius. Aerius is far more expensive than regular antihistamines but it deals with this exact issue. Rinsing the nose will after a couple of months soothe your sinus which is probably inflamed by the pollutants.