Everybody, in a sense, is a “personal scientist.” For example, we enthusiastically try different recipes to make foods taste more delicious. Women are extraordinary self-experimenters. Every woman can tell you how many cosmetics she has tried and what is the best for her skin. Indeed, we do variety things to ourselves hopefully to fix some ailments. Many people constantly change their behaviors such as drinking water instead of coffee, replacing meat with vegetables, and listening to music to improve their moods, let alone many unfortunate souls hopelessly try to diet, quit smoking, or abstain from alcohol. We do experiments on ourselves all the time.

In fact, many scientific discoveries were made by self experiments. 1956 Nobel Prize winner Werner Forssmann threaded a catheter to his heart through a vein in his arm to demonstrate the vascular catheterization. Barry Marshall drank Helicobacter pylori to prove that the bacteria can cause stomach ulcers. Nowadays, all insulin treated diabetic patients have to do a little experiment on themselves to figure out the best dosage and timing to inject insulin.

Recently I am also very interested in self experiments. Three months’ ago, I started to exercise without restricting my diet. Physical activities have tons of physiological benefits which I don’t need to reiterate here. But I have another motivation to do this. I am used to sitting in the chair all day long. I had tried to increase physical activities several times but all attempts had failed. This time I wanted to see how long I could carry out my plan, how much pain I could tolerate, and what kind of physical and emotional responses I had along the exercise. In particular, I wanted to know why I could not adhere to the plan. I decided to make it a scientific experiment with only one observation–myself.

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Nowadays, more than 50% of people gobble down some kind of pills regularly. Most of the pills are nutrients such as multivitamins and fibers. Recent research has unfortunately disappointed us by suggesting that all these essential nutrients in pills might behave differently in our bodies from those in foods. Nutrient pills are either less effective to prevent heart diseases or cancers, or not protective at all. Instead, some may harm our health. Even well informed people are baffled by the confusing sometimes contradicting scientific reports. The science of nutrition and health is becoming some kind of pseudoscience.

For example, at the beginning, we were told that vitamin E supplement could protect our hearts and prevent cancers. The mechanism sounds straightforward. Vitamin E, or tocopherol, is a strong antioxidant which can reduce the oxidation in cells to prevent cell damages. It has been shown in vitro, and somewhat confirmed in vivo (for example, in mice and in rabbits). Observational studies such as the Nurse Health Study suggested that those who took vitamin E pills or ate foods rich in vitamin E had significant low incidences of heart diseases. It might be THE magic stuff we are searching for.

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In an old Chinese story, a poet lost his ability of writing poems after his pen had been taken away in a bad dream. It seems that this tragedy has happened to JK Rowling too.

Last weekend, the Harry Potter and Half-blood Prince was greeted with a rousing fanfare worldwide. Millions of people wasted the whole weekend to explore the magic world. Me too.

The book is heavy. Rowling’s ability to write concisely seems not improved. This is not surprising. In fact, female writers in general like to elaborate details. For example, Virginia Woolf also had her thoughts wandering around in her writings with many unnecessary details. The volume of the book about the Bloody Queen Mary written by Margaret George was so formidable that I might never be able to finish it. A recent bestseller—The Historian, written by Elizabeth Kostova—also deterred my attempt to read it. Only Jane Austen avoided boring readers by her witty humors in the Pride and Prejudice. But her books were also full of details. Anyway, by reading the sixth Harry Potter book, most kids probably surpass their summer reading requirement, which is good.

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Many years ago, when I first touched an IBM XT computer, I was mesmerized by the charming green text on its screen, the rhythmic stroke on the dirty keyboard, and the enchanting melody of fan noise. I knew this sort of thing would cost my life dearly. Now it’s time for a change. I want to go back home and say “Honey, I am a changed man”. But it takes time.

Behavior changes go through stages. They are precomtemplation stage in which people don’t even think about their problems, contemplation stage in which people start to realize their problems, preparation stage in which people are thinking of ways to correct their problems, action stage, and maintenance stage or termination. These five stages comprise the main idea of transtheoretical model proposed by Prochaska and DiClemente (1983,1994). Although exact time periods may be blurred by overlaps among these stages, it serves as a very useful guideline in the process of either self-improvement or coached therapy.

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Today, I finally bought a Dell laptop 700m, the slimmest laptop you can find in Dell. However, I still felt gloomy. It has been a long story to reach this end.

When Dell first offered a $750 discount for any $1499 plus purchase this early spring, most people I know of rushed to buy this model (and indeed saved money because there was no tax charge then). Since I already had one Dell laptop, I did not pay any attention to it. The problem is that my wife likes small gadgets. She was jealous of her friends for the light laptops shinning in their backpacks. It became clear that my bulgy laptop (more than 8 pounds without a carrying case) was out of fashion. My wife complained to me that she felt embarrassed when she pulled our junk out of the carrying case, especially in front of her colleagues. Time has come to make a change.

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Modern human beings have to struggle with zillions of things everyday. Luckily, our brains have adapted to this messy situation by intentionally ignoring most of them. But one thing never slips out of our minds. Our own health sits on the top of everything else. The revered Chair Mao has spoken it well: “Health is the asset of revolution.”

Last weekend, I bumped into a friend who looked sullen and miserable. He just had a physical checkup. There was nothing wrong about the checkup itself. It was the blood results that bothered him. The results, unfortunately, are not completely normal. His high density lipoprotein (HDL) is lower than normal (less than 40 mg/dL).

In the era of internet, everybody is his own doctor. He quickly ran a google search and only discovered that the isolated low HDL is as dangerous as high LDL. In a sense, his protection mechanism is not well armed. What can he do?

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