I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
-Florence Nightingale
Monthly Archives: August 2014
What’s on your Bucket List?
What is it that you have always wanted to do, but never got around to? Why haven’t you completed this wish? What is holding you back?
Happy Friday!- Quote of the Day
“I have never in my life found myself in a situation where I’ve stopped work and said, ‘Thank God it’s Friday.’ But weekends are special even if your schedule is all over the place. Something tells you the weekend has arrived and you can indulge yourself a bit.“
-Helen Mirren
Try not to wish your life away. Too often we find ourselves waiting for Friday, why? We all work for the weekends, but why? You can always make money, but not memories.
.
Central Park; Photo Cred: B.
“I’ve got 99 problems…”
Quote of the Day
” I’m really interested in moving our society away from a society needing Xanax and Prozac, and that is really feeling depressed, to one that is celebrating, and so I find just walking around in colorful clothes, people smile.”
-Patch Adams
Tips for a Healthy Lifestyle from Me to You
Here’s that word moderation again… keep that in mind as I list a few healthy tips:
1. Eat a colorful plate of foods.
2. Get at least a half hour of exercise in. (They say an hour of exercise is 4% of your day, so why not?)
3. Learn something new.
4. Breathe. Meditation for just 10 minutes a day could hep clear your mind, help you handle stress better and even help with the symptoms of medical conditions. Learn more here: http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/meditation/in-depth/meditation/art-20045858
5. Smile.
– B, Care Transitions
How Exercise Helps Us Tolerate Pain-Repost from Well
“Regular exercise may alter how a person experiences pain, according to a new study. The longer we continue to work out, the new findings suggest, the greater our tolerance for discomfort can grow.
For some time, scientists have known that strenuous exercise briefly and acutely dulls pain. As muscles begin to ache during a prolonged workout, scientists have found, the body typically releases natural opiates, such as endorphins, and other substances that can slightly dampen the discomfort. This effect, which scientists refer to as exercise-induced hypoalgesia, usually begins during the workout and lingers for perhaps 20 or 30 minutes afterward.
But whether exercise alters the body’s response to pain over the long term and, more pressing for most of us, whether such changes will develop if people engage in moderate, less draining workouts, have been unclear.”
Repost: New York Times Article “Small Changes, and Hopes, for Preventing Dementia”
Small Changes, and Hopes, for Preventing Dementia
What we really want, if we’re honest, is a pill or a shot that would allow us to stop worrying about ever sinking into dementia.
Instead, what we’re hearing about preventing dementia is, in many ways, the same stuff we hear about preventing other kinds of illnesses. Healthy lifestyles. Behavioral modification. Stress reduction… Read more here: http://nyti.ms/1zGLRtm
What is your biggest fear of aging?
Quote of the day
It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.
-Betty White
Be Careful- Repost from CNN’s blog The Chart- How reliable is the drug information you find online?
June 26th, 2014
08:04 AM ET
How reliable is the drug info you find online?
When people want to learn more about a new drug warning, they turn to the internet – that’s no surprise. But is the information they find there accurate and up-to-date? Not always, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week.
“Despite debates over its credibility, Wikipedia is reportedly the most frequently consulted online health care resource globally,” the authors write. “Wikipedia pages typically appear among the top few Google search results and are among the references most likely to be checked by internet users.”
Wikipedia, along with Google and WebMD, is where more than half of all Americans turn to for health information, according to the report.
Researchers found that when the FDA issues a drug safety warning, Google searches about that drug increase 82% on average in the following week. Wikipedia pages about the drug see a 175% increase in views on the day of the announcement.
The paper, titled “Drug Safety in the Digital Age,” primarily focused on how quickly these web sources were updated with information concerning drug labels and warnings. The study examined the Wikipedia pages for their safety warning content, as well as their timeliness in updating drug safety information, for 22 prescription drugs over a 2-year period.
More than one third of the Wikipedia pages in the study were updated within 2 weeks of an FDA announcement, according to the paper. More prevalent diseases (defined as affecting more than 1 million people in the United States) were more likely to be updated in this time frame than the less prevalent conditions.
About 23% of the Wikipedia pages were updated more than 2 weeks after an FDA announcement, taking, on average, 42 days to post the new information. More than a third of the website’s pages remained unchanged more than one year later, according to the study.
So where should you go to get the latest drug safety information?
Report author John Seeger recommends consumers be “cautious about information that comes up when you do searches online” and “cross-reference it with the more authoritative source.”
“As a public health and regulatory agency, it is a priority for the FDA to provide consumers with clear and accurate information about the safety of the drugs they take,” FDA spokesperson Tara Goodin said. “While there are a number of useful websites that contain information about FDA-approved products, ultimately, FDA.gov remains the best resource to find accurate and timely information about the safety and effectiveness of approved drug products.”
The authors of the study pointed out some discrepancies with the FDA’s current web set-up: “Currently, safety communications are housed on the Med-Watch portal, whereas electronic drug labels containing information on efficacy, dosage, and contraindications are located in the Drugs@FDA database — and there is no obvious link between these two resources.”
The FDA emphasized that “Drugs@FDA is not the agency’s primary communication method for new, emerging drug safety information.” Instead the agency highlighted the FDA’s Drug Safety Communications site, which brings adverse effects and information to light early in the investigation process.
The FDA also has two Twitter accounts that have drug safety announcements: @FDA_Drug_Info (which has 143,000 followers) and a drug-safety-specific account @FDAMedWatch (20,900 followers).
The study calls for the FDA to have a greater online presence in social media, as well as to extend partnerships to popular online resources. The FDA has already experimented with working with WedMD and sending official FDA alerts to registered users. The authors’ findings suggest that having the FDA update and/or automatically communicate drug safety information to Wikipedia pages could potentially be beneficial.
The report authors also suggested giving academic credit to medical and university students for editing and updating articles online. The University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine became the first to offer credit for this in September 2013.
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/26/how-reliable-is-the-drug-info-you-find-online/
Care Transitions LLP 