Do methods slimming salons use work? How about the fat loss pills that ‘burn up to 2000 kilocalories per day’? Well, in most cases, people don’t even eat up to 2000 kilocalories when they’re trying to lose fat.

Quote from Singapore Health Promotion Board’s Nutrition FAQ: The use of slimming products may lead to relatively fast weight loss initially. Many slimming products contain bioactive substances that suppress appetite, stimulate metabolism or induce water loss from the body. It is not safe to use these products without medical supervision. Moreover, slimming products are usually expensive and do not help change the overweight individual’s eating and exercise behaviors that are the root causes of weight gain. This makes maintenance of weight loss difficult.

Enough said.

With regards to numerous slimming salons using body wraps, infrared or electro stimulation devices etc – must you really be educated to realise that all these don’t work? Please don’t fall victim to their intensive marketing tactics. If they really work, why do they spend so much money on advertisements mostly showing astonishing ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures and slim figures of celebrities but little or no scientific information about their fat loss devices?

Wait. Didn’t recent TV programs show normal Singaporeans losing weight after visiting beauty salons? How do you explain that? Well, these slimming salons know their stuffs don’t work, so now they’re getting smart enough to recruit some personal trainers and nutritionists to ‘preach’ healthy living. So on top of their dubious fat loss gimmicks (where the real bucks are rolling in), they have their clients exercise and diet. Without a doubt, exercise and diet worked, and weight loss resulted. At www.PT.com.sg we offer the same services (without the body wrap nonsense of course!) at a fraction of the cost.

Seriously, only lazy people wanting a quick fix would visit these salons. But the thing is that they don’t even provide a quick fix! You’ll only get ripped of.

Here’s a very informative report compiled by the Federal Trade Commission of the United States Of America – Deception In Weight-Loss Advertising Workshop:

Seizing Opportunities and Building Partnerships to Stop Weight-Loss Fraud. A panel of experts discusses and analyses claims made by manufacturers, citing scientific references to show how these claims are false and misleading the public. The claims include:1. Consumers who use the advertised product can lose substantial weight without reducing caloric intake and/or increasing their physical activity2. Consumers who use the advertised product can lose substantial weight while still enjoying unlimited amounts of high calorie foods3. The advertised product will cause permanent weight loss4. The advertised product will cause substantial weight loss through the blockage of absorption of fat or calories5. Consumers who use the advertised product can safely lose more than three pounds per week for a period of more than four weeks6. Users can lose substantial weight though the use of the advertised product that is worn on the body or rubbed into the skin7. The advertised product will cause substantial weight loss for all users

8. Consumers who use the advertised product can lose weight only from those parts of the body where they wish to lose weight

Find them familiar? Read them in ads on the papers or on television lately?Please do take time to read the full report: Losing fat ain’t easy. Nobody said it is. Only hard work and smart dieting will help you achieve your goals. Another important key is to change your eating behaviors and adapt to healthy eating so that the weight will be put off for good. Please do show your friends and family the reports and help to prevent any more fellow Singaporeans from falling into the traps of these useless companies!

When you start looking at birthing options, you’ll notice that most of the hospitals work with mid-wives. In the USA, mid-wives are virtually synonymous with “natural delivery.” But that’s not necessarily so in Japan. In most hospitals, mid-wives work with mothers prior to the delivery (mainly making them comfortable), but doctors delivered all the babies. Many mid-wives have confirmed that doctors monopolize control of the birth process in most situations. The lack of empowerment can really weaken the role (and, in some cases, the abilities) of mid-wives.

The nurses in Japan also work under the doctor’s firm authority. Once you check into the hospital, and ask the nurses questions about the birth process, some of the answers could be alarming, because they could completely contradict what you hear from the doctor. Despite their confident show of authority, it does prove how little the nurses are actually empowered.

Through its universal health insurance program, Japanese bureaucrats are charged with the responsibility and power to ensure a “minimum standard of care for all.” Rules of the game, and in particular what is covered and how doctors get paid, are mainly set by the central government in Tokyo. Sound familiar? It should, as this is the direction we would be headed in within the U.S. if recent state level universal coverage proposals and federal prescription drug purchases for Medicare beneficiaries are enabled. The Journal article lists many of the downsides to the system, particularly in light of cancer coverage: * “Japan saves by requiring less training of doctors and paying them less” * Japanese “doctors say they have little time for patients” * Until recently, many Japanese cancer patients weren’t even told that they had the disease–family members “often felt it was cruel to burden the patient with information” about the cancer diagnosis. The Journal article further indicates that new classes of chemotherapy drugs and the spread of the Internet have “spawned a new class of activist cancer patients.” This patient activist movement has grown largely in response to the central government’s reluctance to embrace and approve a new class of promising cancer drugs. The article mentions that “a movement for more drugs and better care culminated in May 2005 when 2,000 patients and family members packed a hall in Osaka for the first national convention of cancer patients.” Now is the time to consider how this type of system would play out in the United States. People need to ask themselves how they would feel about the state or federal government telling them that a promising new cancer drug is, by law, simply not available to them or their loved one who is dying of cancer.