YOUR GENES: THE YOU IN YOUR FAMILY
(from HK magazine – March 2011) By Dr. Odillia Osakwa
No man is an island; human beings cannot exist nor thrive without others. “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language…..” John Donne.
The biology of the living systems informs us that physical and genetic traits ultimately define and distinguish every individual as a separate and unique entity, but which is not unconnected with another. Just liken the human being to a plant that emanates from a little seed which without; the seed would not have existed in the first place. This ‘seed’ represents the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid). The DNA sequence is made up of alphabets ( biological molecules) that are the templates for …

INVEST . SAVE . GIVE . LEND . SPEND
Spending is the last item on the list, which means your responsibility is to be a good steward of all that you receive and use it to the max. Develop a plan to get rid of bad debt. The interest to your unsecured loans and credit cards every month, keeps the banks rich while you are stuck in the downward cycle towards poverty.
Living a debt free life is not impossible it just calls for discipline.
When you are carrying large amounts of Unsecured Bad Debt, even the slightest shift in your circumstances will leave you very vulnerable. Being in debt and having no reserve is very time consuming. With a reduced credit card debt burden, you will have more leisure time. You will rediscover your creativity. …

Food Affects Your Blood Glucose
Blood glucose is the main sugar found in the blood and the body’s main source of energy. If you have diabetes (or impaired glucose tolerance), your blood glucose can go too high if you eat too much. If your blood glucose goes too high, you can get sick. Your blood glucose can also go too high or drop too low if you don’t take the right amount of diabetes medicine. If your blood glucose stays high too much of the time, you can get heart, eye, foot, kidney, and other problems. You can also have problems if your blood glucose gets too low (hypoglycemia).
Keeping your blood glucose at a healthy level will prevent or slow down diabetes problems. For most people, target blood glucose levels are 80 to 120 before meals, and 100 to 140 at …

Genital Mutilation
By Joyce Yip
“When I was a child, I said I did not want to be a woman.”
Waris Dirie’s character was on stage, addressing an audience so still that you could hear the occasional hisses from reporters’ cameras and the quiet cracks from when a few in the group would take out their tissue wrappers.
“Why is it so painful? Let us try to change what that means to be a woman.” The audience rose up in standing ovation.
Though Waris Dirie is now years older than the character portrayed in her movie, Desert Flower—an autobiographical story that depicts her journey from an oppressed girl in the Somali desert to a world-famous supermodel in London—her memory of her genital mutilation from when she was merely five years old will stay with her forever.
“These are girls who are being tortured, …