Friday, November 07, 2003

# 58: To microwave or not to... • Men: Be thin and fertile... • Tip of the Week: Computers & useful information

To microwave or not to...

With the advent of the microwave oven, society changed forever. The magic oven was suddenly in nearly every restaurant and every home. They even entered the hallowed territory of contemporary popular music. As Dire Straits sang: "We've got to move these microwave ovens, we've got to move these colour TV's..."

Some hailed the microwave as manna from the scientists. A life-easing machine of the highest order; an object of desire; a popcorn maker of impeccable credentials. Then there were those who simply refused to 'nuke' their food, as they put it. They didn't know what they were talking about but they knew they didn't trust those little white boxes to cook their food. It now seems that they intuition had some substance to it.

The men in white coats at Spain claim that microwave ovens really hit green vegetable where it hurts, right in the bioflavinoids! The scientists compared broccoli which had been microwaved to broccoli which had simply been steamed. The microwaved broccoli lost 97% of it's bioflavinoids whereas the steamed broccoli only lost 11%. Now these bioflavinoids are important nutritionally because they are anti-oxidants which take care of unhealthy free radicals in the body. It seems that microwaves generate more heat than other forms of cooking and this wipes out the friendly flavinoids. Steaming is best with pressure cooking and boiling still a lot better than microwaving.
For making popcorn, microwaves are still very good indeed...

Men: Be thin and fertile...

One of the most worrying pieces of medical news in the last few decades has been the falling sperm count in men. The average sperm count of European men has dropped by 25% in the last quarter of a century and over 25,000 British couples seek infertility treatment every year. Male infertility is the cause of about half of these infertility problems. A drop of 25% in 25 years is hugely significant considering the many thousands of years we have been on the planet. Nobody knows the cause of this. Tight nappies when a baby, iodine poisoning, bad nutrition, residues of the contraceptive pill in tap water, pesticides, inoculations and modern pharmaceuticals have all been blamed but nothing proved.

Now New Scientist has found another possible cause - obesity. 52 men were weighed and had their semen analysed. The men with a healthy body weight (or BMI, body mass index) had an average of 18 million spermatozoa in their sample but the 'overweight' had only 3.6 million; the really fat ('obese') had a mere 0.7 million. The fatter men not only had less sperm than the thin ones, they also had less healthy sperm, according to Dr. Roudebush, the scientist who carried out this ingenious, but relatively simple study. He thinks that obesity may be 'partly to blame' for the mysterious decrease in sperm count over the past 25 years. So now you have yet another reason to get into shape, guys.

Homeopathy Tip of the Week:
Computers are now very big time in homoeopathy. When you see your homeopath look at his/her laptop, understand that the pc contain many libraries of useful homeopathic books. When I first studied homeopathy, 21 years ago, I slowly started building a library of homeopathic books. Now you can get ALL the books in one piece of software. So, although homoeopathy is natural, it is not old-fashioned and modern technology is able to top it up with diesel as far as giving homeopaths instant access to all the literature.

For more on the state of homeopathy in the UK, have a look at

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