Treadmill vs Running Outdoor ! What is better ?

Most of the technology loving people around the world prefer treadmill as a good option to enjoy running at the comfort of your home. Various modern treadmills are equipped with features like speed control, elevation control, calorie count and numerous features on a touch screen that can connect to your smartphone to show your daily report. These eye-catching features make people spend thousands of dollars to get this luxury in your home. But are these treadmills better than running outdoor ? Lets analyze.

Every step is new while running outdoor : This is one of the major drawbacks of treadmill and one of the major benefits of running outdoor. The terrain where you are running matters a lot. Running on treadmill is repetition of same steps, except that you can adjust the elevation. While running outdoor every step is on a new surface, especially when you are not running on road. You take a lot of twists and turns which provide a complete workout for your complete body, while it is not so in a treadmill.

You push lesser on a treadmill : Most of you might not be aware of the fact that running on a treadmill require lesser push compared to an actual running. While running outdoor ground never moves backwards, while the surface of the treadmill starts moving backwards as soon as you start running on it. Even if you do a spot-point running on the floor, you will exert lesser pressure. So actual running is a better exercise than treadmill.

Your eyes and brain : Your eyes and brain don't do much of a work on a treadmill. At most you just look at the touch screen to know your speed and calorie count. But in actual running your eyes constantly scan to upcoming ground and your brain adjusts you steps accordingly. Even saving your foot from a stone on ground is an exercise of your eyes and brain. It improves reaction time and your decision making ability.

You can't go downhill on a treadmill: You may go uphill using the inclined treadmill, but there is no option to go downhill on a treadmill which is equally important. Downwards movement exercises our anterior tibialis muscles at the front of your legs. So using treadmill avoids the proper exercise of all leg muscles.

Outdoor fresh air : Some people think that outdoor air pollution can be avoided by using treadmill, but reality is that such conditions arise only for a few weeks during a whole year, otherwise outdoor air quality remains much better than indoor closed rooms. Better air quality while running provides better health results.

Mistakes are repeated in treadmill : If due to some reason your leg movement is not proper on a treadmill, then most probably you will keep repeating the same mistake. Outdoor running saves you from such mistakes as every step is new in outdoor running, so chances of repeating the same mistake is greatly reduced.

Running on treadmill is a lot easier and gives you more speed with lessor effort, but it is a good training tool. At least it is better than not running at all. Most of the people make false excuses like bad air quality, waking up late, bad weather and a lot more to avoid outdoor running. Treadmills can at least give those people a reason to run. One of the best things about treadmill is that you don't need to worry about your clothing and sunscreen.

BetterHealthFacts.com would suggest you to prefer outdoor running to get proper overall exercise. If you are preparing for half-marathon then it is better to run outside to let you experience the real effort in advance, otherwise directly jumping into half-marathon from a treadmill can put you in extreme discomfort. If you want to be high-tech then you may use smart wrist bands that can track your pulse rate, blood pressure, step count and a lot more. Choice is yours, but keep running and improving your health.

Read More

Body Hacks to control your Pee

Controlling your urge to pee is not a healthy habit, but sometimes we need to control it as you can't go at that particular time. Holding it for a few minutes can be made easier if you follow certain body hacks. Some of the common conditions where you might need to control the bladder-full sensation are:

• You are out on a long drive and can't find a public toilet to get the relief.
• You are in middle of a meeting and going out to answer the natural call might make a bad impression on others and your seniors might get upset due to it.
• You are in middle of a class or training session and don't want to disturb anybody by going out. 

During such time these body hacks can definitely help you. Lets go to main points without wasting any more time.

You must have noticed that the urge to pee occur more often during winters. It is because our body don't sweat during those days. During summers sweating removes the water automatically so lesser water reaches our urinary bladder. So the easiest way to hold your pee is by wearing warm clothes as it let the water out through sweating and pressure in your bladder remain less for longer duration.

You can't wear warm clothes during summer, then what you should do to control the urge to urinate. Here are some easier tips:

• Listen to music
• Sing some song or just mutter
• Solve some puzzle
• Do some calculations

Overall motive of the above activities is to indulge your brain in some activity and divert its attention from urination. Just make your brain forget peeing.

Note: If you practice pelvic floor exercises regularly, then your bladder muscles get strong and help you better in controlling your pee.

Everybody faces such situations where he/she need to control the natural call. You can share your experiences in comments section. We won't encourage you to control your pee regularly as it may harm your body.

Following pee table will help you understand how much time it takes for an average bladder to get full.

Age	Avg. Bladder Size	Time to get full
Infant (0-12 Months)	1-2 ounces	1 hour
Toddler (1-3 Years)	3-5 ounces	2 hours
Child (4-12 Years)	7-14 ounces	2-4 hours
Adult	16-24 ounces	8-9 hours

The data in above table might not fit every person, as it heavily depends on your metabolic system, your water intake, your clothes and the climate / temperature in your locality.

Read More

Carrots don't improve your Eye-Sight !

Carrots are good for eyes, but they can't improve your eye sight. Usually we think that carrots are much rich in Vitamin A, thus improves our eye-sight, which is not true. Vitamin A is found in Milk, Cheese, Egg yolk, orange and yellow vegetables. Carrots are not better than any of these food products. Carrots can help a person only if a person is suffering from malnutrition, but gulping excess of carrots, just to improve eye-sight won't help. Vitamin A is good for eyes, but excess of it won't provide you superhuman eyes.

But how this myth is popularized around the world that Carrots can improve your eye-sight ? The answer to this question might make your laugh.

During second world war, Royal Air Force of UK used some secret Radar Technology to detect enemy fighter planes even during night. Usage of that technology was a success and they shot down a number of enemy fighter planes using it, but they were not in mood to reveal about this technology. So they popularized a myth that their fighter-pilots ate carrots to improve their night vision.
Further this myth popularized beyond imagination. Enemy nations started to add carrots in diet of their pilots. Even the general public believed this myth, and ate carrots to get ready with night vision to see during blackouts.

 At that time, when sugar was an expensive item, carrots were promoted as sweetener in desserts. Dr Carrot was also shown in advertisements to improve carrot consumption. A Disney cartoonist designed a whole family of carrots named Dr. Carrot, Carroty George, Pop Carrot and Clara Carrot.

What shall i eat to improve eye sight ?

Carrots or any other Vitamin A rich food item can definitely help you in improving eye sight only if it is degraded due to lack of Vitamin A in your diet. Eating excess of carrots won't help any better, as your body flushes out any vitamin or mineral in excess. To improve your eye-sight, a balanced diet with grains, vegetables and dairy products is must. Apart from that some exercises prescribed by your specialist can also help. You must know that our eye sight changes with age as our facial muscle change, so nutrient rich proper diet is must for kids.

You must be surprised to know that :

• Sweet potato contains 4 to 5 time more Vitamin A than carrot.
• Winter Squash have 3 times more Vitamin A than carrot.
• Kale and Collards have twice more Vitamin A that carrots.

But still Carrots got all the limelight. Carrots are good as a starter if your kids don't eat vegetables, but with time you should go for a balanced diet with all nutrients in mind, not just Vitamin A.

Read More

Transplant of Eye is Impossible ! Truth about Donating Eyes

Have you seen advertisements that convince you to donate eyes ? What if we tell you that transplant of eyes is impossible. You must be thinking how can it be. What are they doing with donated eyes, if they are not fixed in someone else's eye sockets. There are various organizations working around the world to convince people for donating eyes and help someone else to see the world through your eyes. You must have seen the same thing in various movies, where a person on death bed donates eyes and the recipient gets the same eyes (even same color) as the donor, which brings tears in the eyes of audience. If you ask a specialist, then it can never happen. Enough suspense ! Lets tell the truth.

Only Cornea is Transplanted

Cornea is the transparent outer layer of eye, which is transplanted. Cornea is the only part of body which survives without blood supply or blood vessels. It gets oxygen directly from air. Other nutrients reach cornea through the liquid that surrounds it and tears that wipe down our eyes while blinking. This fact of no blood supply makes it easier to be transplanted in any recipient irrespective of blood group, unlike other organ transplants where donor and recipient need to be of same blood group.

More about Cornea Transplant

Cornea has six layers: epithelium, Bowman's layer, stoma, Dua's layer, Descemet's membrane and endothelium. All these six layer work together to focus the image correctly. Most of the blindness occur due to problems in cornea. Here are some facts:

• While transplanting the cornea, surgeon don't need to cut or join any blood vessels.
• Cornea transplant don't need any anti-rejection medication.
• Usually people suffering from conditions like Cancer can't donate organs, but cornea can be donated even by such patients after confirming with doctors.
• Very first corneal transplant was done in late 1800s and is being done routinely since 1960.
• Around 44000 corneal transplants are done every year.
• Artificial corneas are used in 400 to 500 corneal transplants every year.

Why Complete Eye Transplant is Impossible ?

An average Human Eye has got 2 million working parts and each eye is connected to brain through 1 million nerve fibers. These nerve fibers that connect eye to our brain is known as optic nerve, and it is one of the most complex organs to transplant. Even after so much advancement it would not be possible to transplant complete eye in near future.

What do they do with the rest of donated eye, if not transplanted ?

Most of the people think that eye donation means taking complete eye out of the eye socket, which is not true. In most of the cases it is just cornea donation. In such cases only the cornea of the deceased donor is taken by doctors within 4 to 8 hours of death. In very rare cases complete eyes are donated. Even in those cases only the cornea is used for transplant, while the rest of the eye is used for research purpose and training of medical professionals, before they work on live subjects.

Note: Color of eye never changes after corneal transplant, as color of our eye depends on iris which is  not transplanted in such procedures.

Read More

Mysterious Lesser Known facts about Eyes

These facts about human eyes will make you understand the value of gift given to you by nature. Most of us take this precious gift as granted and don't even take proper care of it. However our whole body is a precious gift of nature, but our eyes are most important of them, as we can't look at this nature without them.
Our eyes evolved to capture light, the fastest known thing. We could have evolved to capture sound waves to see, like Bats. It took millions of year to evolve and a lot of natural selection before we become what we are today. Lets learn something more about our mysterious eyes and how they are different from others.

Evaluating Eye in Digital World

• You must know that each of your eye is a 576 megapixel camera.
• Human eye can focus on 50 things per second.
• An average human eye have 2 million working parts.
• Human eye can detect 500 shades of grey and 10 million different colors.
• Physiologically human eye has got a frame rate of 1000 frames/sec. But if  videos of different frame rates are played on a screen, then we can't tell the difference after 150 frames/sec.
• If you have faced "red-eye" effect in photos, then you must know that it occurs due to flash as the light bounces off from the back of eyes where a number of blood vessels exist and make it appear red.

Amazing Colors of Eyes

• Different Color of our eyes is due to Melanin, which is also responsible for our skin color. Brown eyes means more melanin (which is a dark brown pigment), while blue eyes means lesser melanin which makes it a bit see through and blue colored collagen on the inner end gives them a bluish touch. Very first human with blue eyes existed 6000 to 10000 years ago. 
• Only 2% humans have green eyes which is caused due to some pigmentation in iris.
• There are six colors of human eyes which occurs due to pigmentation in iris. These colors are amber, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel and red.
• Heterochromia is a condition where both eyes are of different colors. Alexander-the-great also had this condition.

Our Brain Sees, not Eyes

• Each of our eye is connect to our brain through 1 million nerve fibers.
• Muscles responsible for blinking the eye are fastest muscles in our body, so we don't miss a scene. We can blink our eyes five times in a second. We blink more while talking and lesser while reading. On an average we blink 17 time per minute.
• To compensate for the frame-loss during blinking our brain generates the intermediate frames, which our eyes actually doesn't see. In total this time is equivalent to 10% of our daily waking hours. So 10% of what we see is actually made-up by our brain, its not real. Our brain is the actual organ that see, eyes are just an input medium.
• Human eyes actually capture upside down image, our brain flips it to see objects correctly. If you wear some goggles that makes you see objects upside-down for a few days, then your brain can fix this glitch and you will feel normal vision through those glasses.

Some More Facts about Human Eye

• Light sensitive cells in our eyes are known as rods and cones. There are 100 million Rod cells which make us see in dark, while 7 million cones make us see the color and details.
• Cone cell are of three types to differentiate red, green and blue.
• Human eye can detect a burning candle from 30 mile (48 km) distance in a clear dark night.
• Eyes can heal scratches in 48 hours. It continuously cleans any dirt through blinking.
• Human eyes are so complex that they can't be transplanted.
• Cornea of eye is the only living part of body that don't need blood supply. It gets oxygen directly from air.
• A fingerprint may have 40 different characteristics while an iris have 256 different characteristics, which makes eyes a better option for bio-metric scanning.
• Night-vision goggles are green because we can see more shades of green than any other color.
• Our eyes take 15 to 20 minutes to adjust from a bright room to a dark room. This time is roughly equal to the time taken for sun set.

Animal Eyes vs Human Eyes

• However most of the other animals also have eyes, but they are usually different from humans. Most of the animals rely on their smelling sense to give more clarity to their vision. 
• There is a misconception that dogs and cats have grey vision, which is not true. Cats have more rods cells, so they see better at night and see lesser colors than humans. Cats can see blue and green, but shades of red are confusing for them.
• Dogs are also better at night vision and have red-green color blindness. But they can analyse shades of grey better than humans. Dogs are also very nearsighted, but their hearing sense and smelling sense works far better than us, thus we misunderstand that they see better than us.
• Horse's eyes are similar to dogs but they have a 350 degree monocular vision which gives them the ability to see behind them. But depth perception of horse is not as good as humans.
• Eagle's eyes are better than humans as they are evolved to track their prey from heights. If our eyes get as better as an Eagle then we can see an ant on ground from 10th floor of a building. Similarly sharks have 10 times better clarity in their underwater vision. Its evolution. Don't feel inferior if you can't see better than an Eagle or Shark. These beings evolved according to their surrounding and need. 

Today humans have extended their vision through telescopes, microscopes, satellites, radars and sonars. With these machines we can even even see those spectrum that we can't see through our biological eyes.
Take care of your eyes and keep scrolling though BetterHealthFacts.com .

Read More

Smoking and COVID19 : Worst Combination

If you are a smoker then you might not like reading this article. It is not meant to make your fearful, but to make you quit smoking to save your life. Lets begin with some common data that we are listening in news. All News channels are saying that old age and lifestyle disease like diabetes and hypertension are the major reason behind death by COVID19. So we tried to collect the data about these diseases and compared it with those countries where death toll due to COVID19 is above 500. As of 24th Apr, we found 25 such countries. Here is the data that we collected along with the diseases data.

Country	COVID19 Mortality	Obesity Rate	Average BMI
Belgium	15.16	22.1	25.5
France	13.83	21.6	25.3
United Kingdom	13.49	27.8	27.3
Italy	13.45	19.9	26
Sweden	12.06	20.6	25.8
Netherlands	11.67	20.4	25.4
Spain	10.4	23.8	26.7
Mexico	9.19	28.9	28.1
Indonesia	8.32	25	22.9
Brazil	6.66	22.1	25.9
Iran	6.3	25.8	26.2
US	5.75	36.2	28.8
China	5.53	5.5	23.9
Switzerland	5.44	14.9	25.3
Romania	5.4	22.5	25.3
Canada	5.18	29.4	27.2
Ecuador	5.01	19.9	27
Ireland	4.51	25.3	27.5
Portugal	3.67	20.8	26.2
Germany	3.64	22.3	26.3
Austria	3.48	20.1	25.4
India	3.12	5	21.9
Peru	2.74	58.2	26.3
Turkey	2.45	32.1	27.8
Russia	0.88	23.1	26.5

The above table lists the countries according to mortality rate (high to low), along with Obesity and Average BMI of those countries. If you look at the data, you can't find a direct relationship between COVID19 Mortality and Obesity/BMI of those countries. In the above data Obesity ranges from 5 to 58.2. In this data you can't say that Obesity is higher in countries with highest COVID19 Mortality. Same applies on Average BMI as well, which is ranging from 21.9 to 28.8.

Now the next table compare the COVID19 Mortality with Diabetes and Asthma.

Country	COVID19 Mortality	Diabetes	Asthma
Belgium	15.16	4.6	4.66
France	13.83	4.8	6.55
United Kingdom	13.49	3.9	9.11
Italy	13.45	5	3.67
Sweden	12.06	4.8	8.57
Netherlands	11.67	5.4	7.24
Spain	10.4	6.9	5.24
Mexico	9.19	13.5	3.58
Indonesia	8.32	6.3	5.26
Brazil	6.66	10.4	4.88
Iran	6.3	9.6	4.41
US	5.75	10.8	5.45
China	5.53	9.2	7.92
Switzerland	5.44	5.7	6.18
Romania	5.4	6.9	2.69
Canada	5.18	7.6	4.45
Ecuador	5.01	5.5	5.77
Ireland	4.51	3.2	8.71
Portugal	3.67	9.8	4.66
Germany	3.64	10.4	5.33
Austria	3.48	6.6	2.48
India	3.12	10.4	5.21
Peru	2.74	6.6	4.99
Turkey	2.45	11.1	5.19
Russia	0.88	6.1	2.98

If we look at the above data, then Diabetes don't seem to have an effect COVID19 Mortality. In the above table diabetes prevalence among these countries ranges from 3.2 to 13.5.  You can't say that diabetes is real culprit here. But if you take a look at Asthma prevalence, then is a bit suspicious. In the above list Asthma is most prevalent in United Kingdom, which has got the third highest COVID19 mortality.
The next table compares COVID19 mortality with smoking.

Country	COVID19 Mortality	Smoking
Belgium	15.16	2440.9
France	13.83	1089.9
United Kingdom	13.49	827.7
Italy	13.45	1493.3
Sweden	12.06	716.2
Netherlands	11.67	1459.9
Spain	10.4	1499
Mexico	9.19	327.1
Indonesia	8.32	1675.5
Brazil	6.66	333.5
Iran	6.3	936.5
US	5.75	1016.6
China	5.53	976.5
Switzerland	5.44	1489.8
Romania	5.4	2043
Canada	5.18	1204.3
Ecuador	5.01	1021.3
Ireland	4.51	1133.4
Portugal	3.67	1599.5
Germany	3.64	1927
Austria	3.48	89.3
India	3.12	97.7
Peru	2.74	93.5
Turkey	2.45	1770.7
Russia	0.88	2295

The above list contain the number of cigarettes per year per person. This table clearly shows that COVID19 Mortality is highest in Belgium, which has also got highest smoking rate. Its reverse is also true. Austria, India and Peru, where COVID19 Mortality is on the lowest side have got the least smoking rate.

Conclusion : According to this minor research it is clearly visible that smoking is a major culprit behind COVID19 mortality. Asthma can also be suggested as a risk factor. More research can be done on these findings to give a more precise result.

Note: You may not control Asthma, but you can quit smoking to keep yourself on safer side from COVID19. Some researchers believe that sooner or later this novel coronavirus will spread in whole humanity, so it is safer for all smokers to quit smoking as soon as possible, and recover your lungs to fight against this pandemic. 

Save Yourself, 

Save your Family, 

Save your Community, 

Save your Country. 

Read More

COVID19 : US vs China

Coronavirus Disease COVID19 has made us suffer a lot. Present generations have never witnessed such a large scale infectious disease. Most of us just heard about such diseases from our grandparents. Some people believe that this massive spread of COVID19 is just due to high-speed travel available now, which was not there centuries ago, and it is just a coincidence that this virus (SARS-CoV-2) came out of some animal reservoir and infected humans. But some people believe that it is not a coincidence, it is either some sort of biological warfare or some biological experiment gone wrong. Most of the people around the globe are blaming China for spreading this deadly disease, but governments are not so aggressive in blaming China (might be due to some economical concerns).
According to present information COVID19 originated in Wuhan, China. And now US is its latest epicenter. Both China and US are considered as top players in world economy, so it is hard to believe if it is a coincidence or a plan. Here we have collected some stats of COVID19 spread in both China and US. Just give it a look.
The two graphs given below show the cases and deaths reported in US and China.
If we check the death graph, then we can see a sudden jump in China-death count on 17th-Apr-2020 . It elevated from 3346 to 4636, an increase of 1290 deaths in a single day. Chinese official said that this sudden increase is due because previously deaths outside hospitals were not reported, and now they have collected the data. It is hard to believe because they didn't increase the cases count in the same manner. You may check the China-data of these days.

• In the above data you may check that on 17-Apr number of deaths increased by 1290, but number of cases increased by just 357 (i.e from 83403 to 83760). Does it mean that China already knew about those cases but didn't bother to check if those people were dead or recovered. It is hard to believe that no health worker tried to find if a COVID19 patient died or recovered.
• One more abnormality of this data is that on the same day number of recovered patients decreased from 78401 to 77552, a decrease of 849. Usually cases just rise in such data, not decrease. It only means that some COVID19-positive cases were previously falsely reported by them as recovered, while they were actually dead. If they were not really sure about status of those patients then they should not have added them in recovered count, but as active cases.

These abnormality in the data provided by China, surely looks suspicious.
But the sudden change in number of number of deaths changed one thing, the Mortality-Rate. It increased the mortality rate in China from 4 to 5.5 (just equal to US) , as you can see in the chart below.
Previously most of the countries were asking why the mortality rate was so low in China, compared to other countries. By increasing the Death toll, china has tried to do some damage control.
What do you think about this step taken by China ? Please feel free to mention your view in comments section.

Read More

COVID19 Mortality Rate (Worst Affected Countries)

COVID19 disease has caused a huge loss of lives in almost every country of the globe. Here we have listed a LIVE database of countries according to mortality rate. This data updates itself everyday and contain only those countries where death toll is above 500.

Read More

Austria COVID19 Updated Stats: Cases, Deaths, Recovery

The whole world is fighting a war against COVID19, a disease caused by virus named SARS-CoV-2. Here is the updated data of infections and causalities caused by this enemy in Austria. This database get updated automatically every midnight. Here we have tried to show the disaster caused by COVID19 in form of graphs that you can understand easily. We hope this pandemic will end soon.

Read More

Ireland COVID19 Updated Stats: Cases, Deaths, Recovery

The whole world is fighting a war against COVID19, a disease caused by virus named SARS-CoV-2. Here is the updated data of infections and causalities caused by this enemy in Ireland. This database get updated automatically every midnight. Here we have tried to show the disaster caused by COVID19 in form of graphs that you can understand easily. We hope this pandemic will end soon.

Read More