TEA: NATURE'S PERFECT DRINK.
Good news for tea drinkers from the BBC.
Tea is healthier than water, it seems. Yay! It not only doesn't dehydrate, it's actually healthier than water. Since---thanks to Nick---I am fully addicted to tea, this is good news for me. I drink AT LEAST four cups a day. I'd been worrying that maybe I wasn't getting enough straight water, but it turns out that tea is just as good for you.
[quote begins from "Tea "healthier" [sic] drink than water" at BBC online]
Tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers, UK nutritionists found.
Experts believe flavonoids are the key ingredient in tea that promote health....
These polyphenol antioxidants are found in many foods and plants, including tea leaves, and have been shown to help prevent cell damage....They found clear evidence that drinking three to four cups of tea a day can cut the chances of having a heart attack.
Some studies suggested tea consumption protected against cancer, although this effect was less clear-cut.
Other health benefits seen included protection against tooth plaque and potentially tooth decay, plus bone strengthening.
Dr Ruxton said: "Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so its got two things going for it." .....She said it was an urban myth that tea is dehydrating.
"Studies on caffeine have found very high doses dehydrate and everyone assumes that caffeine-containing beverages dehydrate. But even if you had a really, really strong cup of tea or coffee, which is quite hard to make, you would still have a net gain of fluid.
"Also, a cup of tea contains fluoride, which is good for the teeth," she added.
[quote from article ends]
The article does suggest that tea may prevent the body from absorbing iron. Too bad; I'll take a pill!
WHY "VERONICA'S VEIL" = A COPY OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN IMAGE, WHICH IT OTHERWISE RESEMBLES NOT AT ALL.
Oh, please. This image is supposed to be "Veronica's Veil"? And it's being compared to the shroud of Turin?
Okay, look. I am honest about liking weird science, strange stories, and inexplicable phenomena generally. Because I'm far from looney, I am always happy when someone comes up with a plausible explanation, but I've been following the shroud research, and I haven't yet heard anything that explains how the shroud of turin was made. I've heard lots of discussion about what it is, and who it is, and who made it, and I've got an open mind as to any or all of those questions, but what I really really want to know is how.
The Veronica's veil "image", however it was made, is clearly a copy of the shroud. Anyone who has read the history of the shroud can see this. I don't know how the image got on the cloth, but it's clearly a painting or drawing by human hands (else God can't draw). It is nothing in any way like the shroud, which isn't visible except as a photographic negative, and which has been studied for years by doctors and scientists. The shroud is an amazing artifact with an anatomically accurate photograph of a crucified man somehow imprinted on it. Whatever it is, and how it was made, it's not something that science can explain.
The image shown in this article is a sketch or drawing. It doesn't look like the face of a human being; the eyes are nearly at the top of the head and the features fill the whole head. (This appears to be true of the shroud because the jaws are bound with a cloth that in the negative 'blacks out" part of the face). In the shroud image (in the negative), you can see the roots of the man's teeth and---x-ray like---the shadow of the man's sinus cavities.
The proportions of the "Veronica" image are all wrong and the pope should perfectly well be able to see that it is a sketch of some sort. It appears to be a drawing BASED on the shroud image: you can see the crooked [broken] nose, the owlish eyes (because in the shroud, the surrounding bones are visible), the "forked beard" (because in the shroud image, it's partly caught under the band used to bind up the dead man's jaws) and the blood trail at the hairline. The "bruises" on the nose may be based on the sinus cavity shadows revealed on the x-ray like shroud image. I'd have to look again at the image to be sure.
If you read the shroud research, you'll see that MANY icons throughout history seem to reiterate the features of the so-called "shroud man" and to attribute them to Jesus.
For information about the shroud, check out The Shroud of Turin website here. You might also want to look at the Shroud of Turn education project. You can see published scientific articles at these sites as well as photographs of the shroud (both the unrevealing positive image and the photographic negative).
So far, I haven't heard any explanation to debunk its strangeness except by people who haven't done any recent research. I'm hoping that someday I will. I'm not Catholic and I am not comfortable with the idea of an artifact with characteristics that physicists can't explain.
Whatever the shroud may be, it's far stranger than you probably imagine. The "Veronica" icon is at best a poor copy of the "positive" image.
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