Turmeric supplement drink for hangover

It looks that turmeric supplement drink helps you if you usually suffer from hangover.

 A last post, I wrote about effect of tomato on alcohol decomposition. Today, it is going to be turmeric. However, we have to be careful about this effect because it looks that this is not verified scientifically and statistically. Some peoples say that this is good, on the other hand, some people say this is bad.

Here is a fact.

In Japan, this supplement drink has already become popular among alcohol lovers because it seems to be able to help your liver decompose alcohol, and as a result of this it seems to be able to reduce chance of suffering hangover. So many peoples drink this before drinking or after drinking. If you go to convenient stores like seven eleven in Japan, you can see similar supplement drink for alcohol. If you watch TV, then you have many chances to see advertisement about this drink.

Here is a rumor.

This drink does not help you, and it can degrade your liver function due to side effect from a long term standpoint because it over drive your liver more than it can do, and it put burden on your liver. So it is something like over clocking for PC. Some peoples is skeptical about experiment results which the company announced, because experiment method was not so well considered, and they used own employees for experiments.

Here is my experience

I`m a extreme beer lover, but I`m small, so I can not handle much alcohol. However, I was lazy so I often drunk alcohol more than I could handle, and suffered from heavy hangover consequently. So naturally, I used to take this one before going for drinking. In my experience, it looked that this worked well for me because I did not feel bad when I woke up after drinking much. So it is good impression for me.

Here is my opinion.

This effect is a matter of feeling and is similar to placebo effect. When I drink this, it is time when I try to be careful not to drink too much by considering following day. So naturally I would try not to drink much without realizing this. Anyway, I like this.

If you want to try this supplement drink, this is available at Japanese supermarkets.

Picture reference

http://housefoods.jp/index.html

 

Tomato can reduce your blood alcohol level faster

 

It`s good news for alcohol lover !

Tomato can decompose alcohol in your blood faster and get you back normal faster if you eat tomato when you drink alcohol. Alcohol accumulates 30% less in your blood, and alcohol can disappear 50 minutes faster.

This is very important in the case when you want to and have to recover from being drunken. For example, you do not want your wife know that you drink beer on your way home.

Kagome and Asahi, beverage companies in Japan, announced that Tomato can help you decompose alcohol in blood faster. They cooperatively worked together to research how tomato affect on blood alcohol decomposition. Incidentally, Kakome is the beverage company which is mainly dedicated for vegetable based products, on the other hand, Asahi is the beverage company which is famous for beer products. Therefore this collaboration makes sense to provide customer good impression of both beverage and to accelerate their product sales.

They performed animal experiments firstly, and human experiments secondly.

What they did was to compare two cases, observe alcohol blood level minute by minute and take statistics. The first case was that they let adult peoples drink 100ml Sake and 480 ml tomato juice together, and the second case was that they let adult peoples same amount of Sake and same amount of water instead of tomato juice. As a result of this experiment, they found the positive effect as mentioned above. Additionally they found the reason of this. Tomato activates some enzyme higher which can metabolize alcohol in blood, and consequently tomato can reduce alcohol level. That makes sense because if you can speed up decomposition of alcohol, then you can keep lower alcohol level.

Here is a question which I think many peoples come up with and want to ask researchers.

Are there any other vegetables to be able to do same thing much faster than tomato ?

Japanese people might say that turmeric is better to help you metabolize alcohol. In Japan, now turmeric supplement drink becomes indispensable item for those who like to drink alcohol after work but have to go to the office early, and for those who have to drink alcohol much because of business like entertaining customers. I want to write about this next time because it is going to be longer story.

Picture reference

http://www.kagome.co.jp/

News reference

http://www.kagome.co.jp/company/news/2012/05/001371.html

 

Coffee can extend your life expectancy

Good news for coffee lover like me !

Coffee seems to be able to extend your life expectancy according to a recent research. Peoples who drinks a few cups of coffee every can expect 10% longer living for men and 13% for women than those who do not drink coffee, in terms of dying from diseases such as heart attack, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses. An important point is that this fact is irrelevant regardless of whether coffee is caffeinated or decaffeinated.

National Cancer Institute conducted statistical survey in order to find correlation between coffee and human life expectancy. They took statistics of those who died between 1995 and 2008, 33,731 men and 18,784 women. As a statistical matter of fact, the result shows positive effect on life expectancy. However, association between coffee and longer life time is still unclear scientifically. 

This looks  good news for me at least if I look the this time result because I have been drinking a few coffee every day since I was small. This is because my father did everyday and he influenced my habit. This is however the statistical fact including many other elements which are still uncertain effect and might contribute life expectancy, therefore, it is a little bit early to say this for sure until it is verified scientifically.

Here are lists which peoples would want to know next.

1. What kind of coffee is better for longer life and why ?

2. What time zone in a day is better to drink a coffee and why ?

3. What kinds of foods are good to be taken together with coffee and why ?

4. Does coffee affect health badly ?

At last, I have one thing for sure. Coffee smell can relax me well, so it is good mentally, and it might be good for health.

Reference (including the picture)

Facebook went public

Last Friday, the largest social network site, Facebook, went public finally, which many people seemed to expect for long time. According to Wikipedia, active users are now over 900 million peoples. Is this really ? It is almost twice population of India ! This is amazing number.

For your information, I`m gonna list up top ten largest population countries and each population below.

1. China (1347 million)
2. India  (422 million)
3. United State (313 million)
4. Indonesia (237 million)
5. Brazil (192 million)
6. Pakistan (179 million)
7. Nigeria (162 million)
8. Russia (143 million)
9. Bangladesh (142 million)
10. Japan (127 million)
 
When I heard of Facebook on TV at first time, Facebook was still available only for university students. On the TV program, Facebook was web tool used for sharing information about classes, activities, and so on in universities. When I felt that Facebook was commonly accepted, Facebook was already open for anyone else to be connected with friends. Since I came to U.S., I came to feel strongly more because Facebook is used for business as useful alternative website other than original one to keep people. For example, when I searched picking of chestnut in Santa Cruz Mountain last year, I went to the website at first in Google, but when I opened it, I found the link to another site of Facebook. And peoples are urged to go the Facebook page to get latest information about condition of piking. That was really useful in order to check the condition before visiting it. I guess that people running that picking place would update the Facebook page timely via smart phone. This story would be already applied to a lot of situations like food trucks, sale of super markets, and so on. This is very win-win relationship between suppliers and customers. Customers can know exactly what is current situation timely, and suppliers can tell what they want to tell to customers for almost free.


Let me go back to the story about the IPO of Facebook. Since a few month ago, many people expected facebook to go public, its expectation has increased day by day. Additionally, its evaluation as a company also has increased simultaneously. However, according to news paper, its profit is depending on online advertisement, and it is lower that its expectation from the market. I would say that Facebook is evaluated more that it should be actually and bubble is coming to Facebook. Its business is not new, and something can replace them. If you look back the past, myspace was paid attention highly and myspace was believed to be most successful social networking site at that time but Facebook was able to replace it. So there is possibility that something could replace Facebook as well in the future.


In my opinion, the only way that Facebook can survive is to keep its web page attractive by adding new features to keep people stay there longer, otherwise customers easily move to other place once something useful comes out.

A office in Silicon valley

 A few weeks ago, my Indian colleague asked me to go to a partner office with him because he wanted to drop off something and go to lunch at same time. It seemed to be going to take longer as lunch time, but it was chance to look inside the office in silicon valley other than our office. In our office, there is nothing special. If anything , each people put own whatever one wants inside own cube, something like pictures, status. In my case, I put pictures of my motorcycle which can always remind of how enjoyable it is to drive a motorcycle. 

When I went inside the building where many companies, especially start-ups, share space, I felt really excited about how people encourage people to do special things. Inside the building, there are many flags for countries and comments from famous guys in Silicon valley on the wall, and it is lively. When I looked at those situation, I felt that people can get motivated every time when they enter the building, and consequently it makes engineers more efficient, more productive, more innovative. The matter of office environment depends on each person`s opinion, but I think this place is great in terms of keeping and increasing motivations at least.


In my opinion, environment like office and colleagues is very important for engineers in terms of engineer`s motivation and outputs. Productivity of engineer is highly relevant to that. If people can feel motivated, then people can stay focused on works more efficiently with more innovative ideas. Consequently people can output good results immediately. Finally, people can get new challenging jobs as reward for good jobs again. This works positively. I like this process and I believe that this is what situation should be.

Irish bar at Sunnyvale downtown

http://www.lillymacs.com/index.php/ 

Last Saturday, I went to the downtown at Sunnyvale to enjoy Irish bar first time. It was at before 5pm, so It was not crowded as much as a few peoples were there. The reason why I went there was to know what fish & chips is actually. Since long time ago, I wanted to try it. Actually there is fish & chips in menu as one of Irish food there.  I, of course, don`t hesitate to order it.


I had a glass of beer, fish & chips, and Irish music.


In the bar, Irish musics were played all the time, and it reminded me of the music which was played in the movie of Titanic. In the movie, it was used at the dancing party at Class 3 stage where Jack took Rose there to enjoy dance, beer, and traditional music.


I was really excited emotionally at this music, although I can not express my feeling properly. But It might be because that the similar music was used at RPG game of Final Fantasy which I used to play on much time. When I went to pubs in in the game, this kind of music is usually played. FF might be inspired by this music and culture.


From the poster, it seems that they play live Irish music almost every Sunday. So I need to check it out someday.

Beautiful sea at Capitola Santa Cruz California

Last Friday, I took day off to spend time with my wife because I had to host peoples from Japan for last three weeks and I did not have much time to spend time with my wife. My wife had wanted to go to Santa Cruz to buy something like turkish mosaic crafts which looks beautiful when you put a candle inside it. A mosaic craft consist of many colorful glass on the surface of transparent glass cup, so light comes out through these colorful glass to show you beautiful combination of color from one candle fire. Specifically, we went to a town, named Capitola, which is located at east of Santa Cruz. 


When I got there, it was just 13pm. This was weekday, but it is small town and was difficult to find parking place actually. So I tried to go a little bit away from downtown and we finally found parking place at higher altitude place where I could see whole Santa Cruz bay. What I was amazing is that water transparent quality is clearest I have ever seen. That is really beautiful. I don`t know why but, there is no wave and the sea is really quiet, although it mush be geographical reason. I have drove a car along sea coast from San Francisco to Moro Bay and I had considered there was no place like this place, so I was really surprised at this.

I think that this place is not major, but local peoples seemingly enjoy beach, restaurant, beer with comfortable environment, temperature, and blue sky. Coincidentally, I could visit this place, otherwise nobody come unless recommended.


Anyway, I need to come to this place again to enjoy full day.

Napa winery trip

For last two weeks, an engineer visited the office from Japanese Head Quarters in order to discuss closely about what we are working together recently. The work was obviously first priority, but she fortunately had two days holiday, so it looked like that he wanted to enjoy winery at Napa. So I would take care of it. When I asked by my colleague where I would take her, I answered to him "winery at Napa", then he said to me that he wanted to go together. When I told him that my car is too small to carry many people, then he was willing to take us by his big car. I really appreciated it from the bottom of my heart. Honestly, I wanted to enjoy wine tasting, too. As I wrote about my first experience of wine tasting, I was disappointed at that a little bit because it was not what I expected. However, as is always same with anything, I think that it is not good idea to judge anything by just trying something once. So I wanted to try to judge whether wine tasting is enjoyable or not for me by taking advantage of this opportunity.


Sunday morning, we gathered at San Jose, and headed for Napa before 9am, and got there before 11am without traffic jam. Although we approached to Napa, the road got crowded. It might be because it was really going to be fine weather and many people would come to enjoy wine tasting. 

We tried a few wineries from red, white to sparking wine. Honestly, I am a beer lover, so I am not familiar with wine, its history, how to enjoy, and how to make. However, my colleague is an American, and he is very knowledgeable. So during wine tasting, I was able to enjoy the lesson together. At any place, I could feel comfortable because people there enjoyed wine casually not too politely. When I visited "Domaine Chandon", I felt so most.


From this opportunity, I change my mind about wine tasting. I like it, but it depends on situations or locations.