Oddity Central

Chinese Woman Nearly Loses Eyesight After Undergoing “Punching Therapy”

Posted: 08 Jul 2016 12:42 PM PDT

An old woman from Harbin, China, has almost gone blind after enduring numerous beatings as a form of therapy. The simple-minded lady actually believed that by getting hit in the head and other parts of her body would actually improved her health.

The woman, known only by her surname – Bao – started attending “punching therapy” sessions in 2011, at the recommendation of a therapist from the “Natural Shock Health Club.” Somehow, receiving heavy blows to the head, eyes and body didn’t convince Bao that the treatment was a seriously bad idea, so she kept attending the painful one-hour sessions twice or three times a week. She was apparently convinced that getting hit repeatedly could cure all illnesses, although anyone with a bit of common sense would probably realize the beatings would only cause illnesses, not cure them.

After enduring punching therapy about 160 times in 18 months, Bao started noticing that not only was the bizarre treatment not curing her health problems, but it was also affecting her vision. After receiving hard blows to the head and eyes, the woman found that she couldn’t see clearly out of her right eye. She apparently informed her Natural Shock Health Club therapist, who reassured her that it was a “normal reaction” of her body and that it would go away eventually. So she kept playing punching bag in the name of health, only her sight gradually got worse. She could barely see anything with her right eye, and after visiting an eye doctor, she was diagnosed with cataracts.

catracts

Posted: 08 Jul 2016 10:45 AM PDT

German company Kaffeeform combines dried coffee grounds and biopolymer to create stylish-looking coffee cups and saucers that are not only durable and dishwasher-safe, but even smell a bit like coffee.

For every cup of coffee you brew, about two tablespoons of grounds wind up in the trash. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but just think about the millions of coffees consumed around the world every single day, and you’ll start to see the problem. Sure, some of those coffee grounds are recycled as fertilizer or beauty products like face masks, but most of it ends up at landfills. It was while contemplating this issue that German designer product designer Julian Lechner came up with a radical new and sustainable way of recycling coffee grounds – turning them into tableware.

Lechner first came up with the idea of using coffee grounds to create eco-friendly crockery while attending university in the Italian city of Bolzano. "We were always drinking coffee at university," he remembers. "Before classes, after classes, meeting friends, hanging out at espresso bars—all the time. And that's how I started to wonder, What happens to all that coffee? It was all just getting thrown away." He began consulting with his professors about ways of using coffee grounds to create a solid material, but it took him years to actually come up with a viable solution.

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