When we are young, healthy and full of energy the concept of limiting or budgeting our activities is silly concept. Get hit with an chronic illness, acute illness with long recovery or time passes and the aging body is not as spry as it once was the spoon theory starts to make sense.

[video:https://youtu.be/O1B_c4UMub0?t=37]

A more complex graphic of matching spoons to activities.

The spoon theory concept can also be used to monitor changes is physical and mental stamina. In pain control one might not notice a lessening of actual pain experienced in a day, but by watching spoons could notice doing more activity for the same amount of pain.

So if I miss answering the comments today, as I did last week - the spoon limit was hit early in the day. I need to sit at the keyboard to think, compose and write sometimes it just is not going to happen.

Another organ has been scientifically proven to have the ability to heal itself. Lungs damaged by smoking can heal – study

The study found nine out of every 10 lung cells in current smokers had mutations, including those that can cause cancer.

But in ex-smokers, many of those damaged cells had been replaced by healthy ones akin to those seen in people who had never smoked.

Up to 40% of the total lung cells in ex-smokers were healthy, four times more than in their still-smoking counterparts.

Campbell said the damaged cells had not been able to “magically repair themselves”.

“Rather they are replaced by healthy cells that have escaped the damage from cigarette smoke.”

Preventing damage to lungs is more than avoiding smoke.
Cleaning products as bad for lungs as smoking 20 cigarettes a day, scientists warn

Lung function decline in women working as cleaners or regularly using cleaning products at home was comparable to smoking 20 cigarettes a day over 10 to 20 years.

The scientists who carried out the study advised that such products should be avoided and can normally be replaced with simple microfibre cloths and water.

"While the short-term effects of cleaning chemicals on asthma are becoming increasingly well documented, we lack knowledge of the long-term impact," said Professor Cecile Svanes, a medic at the University of Bergen and the senior author of the study.

Breathing exercises from spiritual training, historical medical practices and martial art practices are being taken up be modern medicine. This article describes six techniques.

As early as the first millennium B.C., both the Tao religion of China and Hinduism placed importance on a “vital principle” that flows through the body, a kind of energy or internal breath, and viewed respiration as one of its manifestations. The Chinese call this energy qi, and Hindus call it prana (one of the key concepts of yoga).

A little later, in the West, the Greek term pneuma and the Hebrew term rûah referred both to the breath and to the divine presence. In Latin languages, spiritus is at the root of both “spirit” and “respiration.”

Recommendations for how to modulate breathing and influence health and mind appeared centuries ago as well. Pranayama (“breath retention”) yoga was the first doctrine to build a theory around respiratory control, holding that controlled breathing was a way to increase longevity.

In more modern times, German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz developed “autogenic training” in the 1920s as a method of relaxation. The approach is based partly on slow and deep breathing and is probably still the best-known breathing technique for relaxation in the West today. The contemporary forms of mindfulness meditation also emphasize breathing-based exercises.

Continuing the Journey into Chinese Medicine

China's Real-time update on coronavirus outbreak

China’s virus response has been ‘breathtaking’
ByPepe Escobar

Apart from crisis management, the speed of the Chinese scientific response has been breathtaking – and obviously not fully appreciated in an environment of Total Information War. Compare the Chinese performance with the American CDC, arguably the top infectious disease research agency in the world, with an $11 billion annual budget and 11,000 employees.

During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014 – considered a maximum urgency, and facing a virus with a 90% fatality rate – the CDC took no less than two months from getting the first patient sample to identifying the complete genomic sequence. The Chinese did it in a few days.

During the swine flu in the US in 2009 – 55 million infected Americans, 11,000 killed – the CDC took over a month and a half to come up with identification kits.

The Chinese took only one week from the first patient sample to complete, vital identification and sequencing of coronavirus. Right away, they went for publication and deposit in the genomics library for immediate access by the whole planet. Based on this sequence, Chinese biotech companies produced validated essays within a week – also a first.

My local hospital consider themselves prepared from the article in the local paper today.

At St. Charles Health System, the four-hospital system is prepared in case anyone comes or calls in with concerns of having contracted the coronavirus, Gudmundsson said.

The hospital wants residents to know that they have weekly conversations with the CDC, the state and county health officials, and all are in alignment on prevention and treatment.

“We feel very prepared,” Gudmundsson said. “Hopefully the virus wear themselves out and eventually go away.”

But if someone is concerned and contacts a medical professional, they will be asked a series of questions, she said. Anyone walking into a clinic or the hospital ER will be asked if they have a fever and lower respiratory symptoms like a cough or trouble breathing, she said.

If they answer yes to any of these questions, they’ll be asked to wear a mask. In addition, if they have traveled to China in the past 14 days, or have been in contact with a person under investigation for the virus in the past 14 days, additional precautions will be taken. The person will be placed in airborne isolation, and CDC will be contacted for further recommendations and potential testing.

“There’s no treatment for this,” Gudmundsson said. “It’s like the flu. It’s a virus. There are no antiviral medications that we’ve been recommended to prescribe by the CDC.”