Patients Increasingly Are Seeking Medical Information Online

 Medical Information  Comments Off
Nov 282011
 

As of 2011, over 75% of the US population uses the internet. Eighty percent of these internet users are looking up health information online. Almost 20% of internet users have also gone online to look for others with similar medical problems.

Sixty percent of internet users for medical information think the information is either the same or better than the information received from their own doctor. Interesting enough, of those folks using the internet for health information, almost 60% of them did not discuss this information with their doctor.

What are patients looking at exactly? First and foremost they are looking at information related to their own condition around the web. This may include diagnostic options, treatment side effects, and for second opinions. Also, they may be looking up their doctor and his/her practice specifically for reputation.

Keep in mind that any person with a computer and a website or blog may place health information on the internet. It’s not extremely difficult. What can be very difficult, however, is for the average consumer to delineate fact from fiction when reading through all of this material.

Additionally, there is no standard grading reference to ensure information online is of the highest integrity.

Regardless of this possibility, the fact that so much health information is available online allows consumers to become much more educated in their condition(s). They can participate more fully in treatment decisions and become actively engaged in their outcomes, After all, knowledge is power.

Health information from national medical societies can generally be trusted, such as the American Medical Association, American Cancer Society, etc. These are safe. However, if one is looking for medical information on groundbreaking technologies such as regenerative medicine, those sites are typically conservative. Continue reading »

 Posted by admin at 10:54 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Chronic Pain – Definitions and Management Options

 Chronic Pain  Comments Off
Nov 272011
 

The 1990′s was officially the decade of the brain, but the science and management of pain was also receiving considerable attention. Traditionally, patients with chronic pain are difficult to manage and costly to treat (Hoffman, 1996; Bearman and Shafarman, 1999). Most experience difficulties in performing common daily activities, and many are depressed, hopeless, and without supportive family or social contacts (Cianfrini and Doleys, 2006). They are more likely to experience other clinical problems, be unemployed, and use alcohol and other drugs to excess (Weisberg and Clavel, 1999). These patients tend to be demanding of their primary care providers and generally unhappy with their health care. Providers have been frustrated with an inability to provide adequate symptom relief, and are left with few options when conventional treatment regimens fail.

Pain symptoms are a major reason for seeking health care in all industrialized nations (Smith et al., 2001). Epidemiologic data from the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-1) identified the prevalence of chronic pain in the U.S. to be about 15%. This data has been corroborated by several authors in Western Europe (Smith et al., 2001; Andersson et al., 1999; Bassols et al., 1999) and Australia (Blyth et al., 2001). The data indicate chronic pain is a common problem, impacting millions of people in terms of general health, mental health, employment, and overall functioning. Specifically, older adults, females, those of lower socioeconomic status, and the unemployed seem to be disproportionately affected (WHO, 1992).

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage” (NIH, 1995). Pain taxonomies vary, but most authorities recognize three distinct categories of pain: acute, cancer-related, and chronic nonmalignant. Chronic nonmalignant pain may develop in response to trauma, misuse, disuse, or disease processes other than cancer, but it is primarily defined as pain that persists long after a reasonable period of healing is expected (NIH, 1995). Continue reading »

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Importance of the Nutrition Health Wellness Triangle in Our Life

 Wellness  Comments Off
Nov 272011
 

Regarding nutrition health wellness, unlike what most people think, life is not a matter of living and dying; it is not measured by absolute life and death. Rather, it is being measured by a spectrum of health – a spectrum of health where one side of the extreme is death and the other is that of a healthy well-being, not just of being alive. So, taking that spectrum of nutrition health wellness as a basis, we may say that the healthier one is, the farther he is from death. In this matter, the passage of time is automatically included since one’s heath would usually begin to deteriorate at a certain point in his age.

But even if the deterioration of health is inevitable as time as passes by (at least practically, but not theoretically), we can still do something with personal health nutrition wellness lifestyles and habits to slow down the deterioration of health in a number of ways – or rather in many ways that has to be integrated. Some of these nutrition health wellness improvement ways include proper physical activity, a healthy psychological disposition, and a carefully planned nutrition, with the last one being the focus of below.

Why the proper food is vital for health nutrition wellness and longevity? Our body is being fed and maintained by using different chemicals, primarily with oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, along with some other elements needed like calcium, iron, zinc, etc. All of these can only be taken from eating and drinking, or in other words, through nutrition, with the exception of oxygen which can be taken in by breathing. These chemicals are what promotes and helps both our mind and body function, so we could say that nutrition is the foundation and the corner of the health nutrition wellness triangle. This is because without proper nutrition, the body cannot have any form of energy needed to utilize its movements, thus hindering the possibility of having a proper physical exercise or wellness activity, thus decreasing health. Continue reading »

 Posted by admin at 10:49 am  Tagged with: , , ,
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