Exercise Leads To Healthier, Happier, Focused Children

With childhood obesity on the rise, exercise should be more encouraged. According to an international study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, exercise helps children focus and do well in school. Exercise can also help children (and anyone for that matter) lose weight, become fit, and live a healthier lifestyle. Becoming healthier causes you to feel better and losing weight raises self esteem… Exercise makes you happier as well.

Many children are not doing well in school. They have hard troubles focusing; take medicine for hyperactive disorders, and just do not care. Exercise (whether running, playing kickball, or flag football) can help children take a break from school, let out some energy, and actually have fun for a change. It’s very rare that an elementary or middle school student actually enjoys going to school to learn. When I was in elementary school, recess and physical education were the highlights of my day! I always loved the tumbling unit at P.E. because we got to climb the ropes, scale the wall ladders, jump over foam blocks with a spring board, and other fun activities. Tumbling at physical education always lightened my day and allowed me to release energy while having fun. In fourth grade, I was accepted into the honors program at my elementary school and stayed in the program through high school. I still look forward to exercise daily, as it helps me get through my days.

Since children in the United States are becoming obese before they are a teenager, exercise should be more embedded into the school experience. Just how schools serve lunch, they should be required to allow kids to exercise and play and should not make P.E. an option. Many middle schools offer physical education waivers for students who do not want to participate. All that is required for the waiver is a parent signature… That’s all. Most high schools only require one year of P.E. so after freshman year, exercise is optional.

New HIV vaccine approved for clinical trials

After 10 years of research the FDA has approved the first ever HIV drug for human trials.  This dones’t mean it’s guarenteed to work BUT it is the furthest any such vaccine for HIV has made it in the FDA approval process. Of course, over here in the USA, we will probably end up buying something like this from Canada. We all know that Canadian drugs are cheaper than buying it in the states.

“If it is successful, it’ll be a jackpot for Western in terms of claiming our stage in the world as an institution that does something important,” said University of Western Ontario President Amit Chakma.  “Sometimes you need those jackpots to raise your profile. This would be the equivalent of RIM at Waterloo or MRI at NYU.”

HIV Aids vaccine could be on the horizon

On December 20, 2011 a UWO team led by Dr. Chill-Yong Kang held a press release that they had recently received approval from the FDA to begin human clinical trials of an HIV/AIDS vaccine they’ve been working on for the past 10 years.

The importance of Medicare Supplemental Insurance

When my father was placed in an assisted living facility for the first time I decided to review his options with Medicare.  As long as we have doctors in the future I knew it would be best if I began researching what advantages a supplemental policy to Medicare could do for me and quickly found out one BIG ONE. If you know anything about Medicare it’s that it covers the first 20 days of a skilled nursing home facility at full cost. From day 21-100 you only have to pay a copay.

It pays to have a Medicare supplement insurance

BUT WAIT, the copay is $128 a day. That would be $10,240 out of your pocket UNLESS you have good Medicare Supplement Insurance for days 21-100.  I ended up choosing the AARP supplemental insurance at the time.  6 months later my dad ended up going in a nursing home and now has been in one continually for the last 20 months.  The extra $50 I paid for the supplement covered MUCH more than I actually paid and has continued to pay part of the bills for needed  x-rays and hospitals bills since then.

I would also recommend a long term health care policy when planning for your retirement, at least in Florida, I don’t know about other states like in Texas.  My dad went the cheap route and only got a policy that pays for $140 a day with a $250,000 cap to it.  I’m glad he got it because a standard nursing home in Northwest Florida runs about $190 a day (Over $69,000 a year).  Most people don’t think about these expenses when planning for retirement but they can add up quickly.  Medicare will pay for a nursing home ONCE you’ve exhausted all of your personal assets.

For more info checkout the article Medicare Coverage at a Skilled Nursing Facility.

Tightening Up

Post contributed by Hilton Miranda

I got quite the surprise this afternoon when my husband arrived home early from work. Unfortunately after he played with the kids for a little while, acting like everything was fine, he sent them outside to play some more and sat me down. I knew something was up as soon as he sat me down, but I didn’t think it would be this serious. He explained how his company laid him and 14 other guys off today. As of Friday, he will receive his last check and be unemployed!!! After the shock wore off, we pulled out all of our bills and looked to see what we could do without. Bye-bye cable. Bye-bye

Are pharmicists really the new drug dealers?

Don’t get me wrong, their are plenty of above-the-board pharmacies and pharmicists that practice ethical standards but this recent story saddens me. It seems that a Nashville pharmacist has been sentenced for the unlawful distribution of the narcotic hydrocodone and filing false income tax returns. I’m sure the IRS raised a red flag on him before the “medical police” noticed it. We know the IRS is looking for some extra revenue to cover their trillion dollar deficit this year. The IRS would love if they could tax canada drugs too.

Doctor selling Hydrocodone gets caught

According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, 74-year-old Glenn Brooks purchased almost two million hydrocodone and Lortab pills in 2005 and 2006 for his Brooks Pharmacy. He then sold many of the pills for cash to people without valid prescriptions. (Lortab is hydrocodone with acetaminophen.) I believe that online pharmacies are probably more reputable than in person ones now.  The online guys in the US and Canada have even more legal loopholes to get through than the average pharmaceutical business does.

Increase in Mothers Addicted to Prescription Drugs after baby’s birth

Stop the painkillers Moms!

We are quickly becoming a society of addiction to prescription drugs.  Paid for by your health plan and legalized by the government. I was reading in USA Today this, “Medical authorities are seeing an exponential growth in the number of newborn babies hooked on prescription painkillers, innocent victims of their mothers’ addictions.”

Scattered reports show the number of addicted newborns has doubled, tripled or more over the past decade. The most reliable data found was from Florida, the epicenter of the illicit prescription drug trade, the number of babies with withdrawal syndrome soared from 354 in 2006 to 1,374 in 2010. The number of drug-exposed babies “has escalated across the country,” says Hudak, a professor of pediatrics and division chief for neonatology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville.

After exposure to months of drugs in the womb, babies experience withdrawal a few days after birth. They scream, twitch and vomit. They have trouble breathing and eating. They rub their noses with their fists so frantically that their skin bleeds. This is similar to what an adult drug addict does when going through withdrawal.

“It’s the newborn equivalent of an adult who goes off the drugs cold turkey. It’s really horrible to see these kids. They look in so much pain,” says Lewis Rubin, director of newborn services at Tampa General Hospital and chairman of neonatology at the University of South Florida.

To ease their pain and get the babies comfortable enough so they can eat and sleep, doctors give the babies narcotics and sedatives, which can include morphine, methadone and phenobarbital. “We have to re-addict them,” says Solomon, who uses intravenous morphine measured in micrograms. “Over a period of time, we withdraw the medicines. Sometimes it will take weeks.”

The big question is what can we do to stop this. I say we should cut down the pain killers by 50% for mothers after their childbirth experience.  I think this is also another good reason to have a mid-wife perform your child birth at home or away from a hospital.  What do you think the solution is?

Halloween Health Scare: Don’t Eat Too Much Black Licorice

Black licorice can be harmful to your health.

With many children and teenagers trick-or-treating tonight on Halloween, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a warning… Overdosing black licorice can cause heart problems. The candy has a chemical called glycyrrhizin, which can lower potassium levels. When your potassium is low, your heart rhythms fluctuate and your blood pressure can skyrocket. Licorice has been shown to cause problems in people over the age of 40, healthy or not.

How much is too much? The FDA says eating two ounces of black licorice every day for two weeks can send you to the hospital. For people with heart conditions and high blood pressure, as low as 5 grams of black licorice can cause you troubles. If you stop eating the licorice, however, the high blood pressure and heart issues will cease.

Candy is dangerous! I don’t see the point in eating candy if it has chemicals that cause your heart trauma, sugar that rots your teeth, and can cause you to gain weight. Candy is very dangerous and can actually be quite disgusting. If you’ve ever even looked at the ingredients on a candy bar, you’d be disgusted that you were consuming things called “glycyrrhizin, Saccharin or Acesulfame-K.”

I personally haven’t eaten candy in about a year, because of this issue. Drugs are essentially chemicals mixed together. Candy is a bunch of chemicals mixed together and packaged for sale… Candy is a drug, and it’s dangerous. It can cause you health problems similar to smoking or chewing tobacco. Loss of teeth, bad breath, heart problems… Candy is bad! Stay away!

Doctors Now Making House Calls

Ok, maybe this staement is pushing it a little but since I received the teladoc document from Aetna in the mail this week I got a little excited.  Now when I think one of my kids is dying and I might need to go to the Emergency Room I can call a qualified doctor by phone for a quick consultation with it costing $38 or less.  Not a bad deal since the ER usualy costs about $500 to walk in the door and get your vitals checked.

Of course the other option is to enroll in a medical teaching course and just learn everything your doctor knows….. that probably will not happen.

Can’t get into the doctor’s office and don’t want to sit for hours in a clinic waiting room? Aetna .. is now offering patients the option to receive treatment over the phone.

Teladoc now from Aetna – doctors on call for you

The Hartford, Conn.-based insurer  has teamed with Teladoc .. to allow members in most of Aetna’s fully insured medical plans in Texas and Florida to access non-urgent care over the phone. These guys have taken a medical management course to make sure the doctors they bring on are highly qualified.

Members in Aetna’s Medicare Advantage or Medicaid benefits plans are not eligible.

Dallas-based Teladoc, which started in 2002, is a nationwide network of licensed, board-certified primary care physicians. It has more than 3 million members.

“When a member’s primary care doctor is not available, a telephone consultation from Teladoc’s local physicians may be a good option for some members with minor illnesses,” said Dr. Robert Kropp, Aetna regional medical director, in a news release.

Some of the conditions Teladoc doctors can address include:

• Sinus problems
  Bronchitis
  Allergies
  Sore throat and stuffy nose
  Urinary tract infection
  Respiratory infection

Aetna members can call (855) 835-2362 or visit www.teladoc.com/aetna. The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you want to consult for Aetna feel free to enroll in a consultant interview course and join them.

When can I seand them a photo or video from my iPhone.  This would be an even better service if they made that part easy.

Current guidelines to diagnose miscarriage are insufficient and unreliable

Current guidelines to diagnose miscarriage are insufficient and unreliable, and following them may result in the inadvertent termination of wanted pregnancies, according to the results of a systematic review and 3 studies published online October 13 in Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Miscarriages have a history of being falsely misdiagnosed

“This research shows that the current guidance on how to use ultrasound scans to detect a miscarriage may lead to a wrong diagnosis in some cases,” Professor Basky Thilaganathan, MD, editor-in-chief of Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology, said in a news release. “Health professionals need clearer evidence-based guidance to prevent this happening.”

“The majority of ultrasound standards used for diagnosis of miscarriage are based on limited evidence,” senior review author Shakila Thangaratinam, MD, from the Women’s Health Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom, said in a news release.

Current practice to confirm clinical suspicions of miscarriage is to measure gestational sac and embryo size using ultrasound, but cutoff values to define miscarriage are not always reliable. If repeat measurement 7 to 10 days later shows no growth, clinicians often assume there has been a miscarriage. Of course ultrasound units for pain relief and rehabilitation could also be used if buying if you were to Visit LGMedSupply Online.

However, a multicenter observational study by Yazan Abdallah, MD, from Imperial College London, Hammersmith Campus, United Kingdom, and colleagues of 1060 women showed that even normal, viable pregnancies may not measurably grow in size during this time. There was an overlap in mean gestational sac diameter (MSD) growth rates between viable and nonviable pregnancies, and there was no cutoff for MSD growth below which a viable pregnancy could be safely excluded, suggesting that criteria to diagnose miscarriage based on growth in MSD and crown–rump length (CRL) are potentially unsafe. In this study, a cutoff value for CRL growth of 0.2 mm/day was always associated with miscarriage, and finding an empty gestational sac on 2 scans more than 7 days apart was highly likely to indicate miscarriage, regardless of growth. Of course even Muscle Stimulators would be of no assistance in this matter.

“For most women, sadly there is nothing we can do to prevent a miscarriage, but we do need to make sure we don’t make things worse by intervening unnecessarily in ongoing pregnancies,” Dr. Bourne concluded. “We hope our work means that the guidelines to define miscarriage are made as watertight as we would expect for defining death at any other stage of life.”

For more information on what retailers are doing to prevent technology from being used in the wrong way check out LG Med Supply’s online customer blog.

Continous improvements in the electronic medical records industry – EMR

My father is 77 yrs old and currently resides in a nursing home. While he’s been in about 5 different homes we decided on his Long Term Care based on the ratings given to the facility and their adaptation of new technology. One of these items was Electronic Medical Records.

Dr. using electronic medical records on the job

Electronic health records, also known as electronic medical records, are designed to partially or completely replace paper files. EMR or EHR advocates hope these systems improve health care efficiency, safety and patient care. However, amid federal government efforts designed to create incentives for EMR adoption, some physicians hesitate to make the transition because of high costs and concerns about the practical utility of EMRs.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), a federal government contractor, certifies EMR systems. Other groups are also designated by the federal government to certify health information technology. Certification hinges on functionality, security and interoperability, or the capacity for systems to communicate with one another and with clinical imaging devices.

In July 2010, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued criteria for the meaningful use of EMRs. Physicians must meet these objectives to qualify for federal incentive payments of up to $44,000. The criteria encompass three main components: use of EMRs in a meaningful way, such as electronic prescribing; use of EMRs for the exchange of health information and to improve quality of care; and use of EMRs to submit clinical quality and other measures.

In 2007, CCHIT added electronic prescribing capability as a requirement for ambulatory EMR certification.

“I love e-prescribing,” Dr. Hovanesian said. “If I’m prescribing a drug for a patient, I can just ask which pharmacy they go to and when they say it’s the CVS on Main Street, in about 2 seconds my scribe can send it. It’s sent, it’s there, there’s no question what we wanted them to get. There’s no discussion about whether the fax arrived or not. It’s done. That’s a beautiful thing.”

A highly desired goal of EHR functions is the ability to handle complex coding functions quickly and efficiently, Ms. Brown said. Optimus is definately at the top of the list for this with Nursing Home Software.