Preparing for Pregnancy
ACCORDING TO THE MARCH OF DIMES, THE BEST GIFT you can provide to your future baby is 9 months of a healthy pregnancy. There are some things you can do …
Category: Articles
Nutrition and the Pregnant Women
Pregnancy can be one of the most rewarding and healthiest experiences in a woman’s life, both mentally and physically. A pregnant woman glows with vitality and life and can transfer …
Protecting Yourself From Skin Cancer
There are three basic types of skin cancer. The most common and least life threatening is basal cell carcinoma. The other two are squamous cell carcinoma and malignant melanoma. Melanoma …
Foot Fungus
Fungus is a type of disease-causing organism. Athlete’s foot is the most common fungal infection. Fungi love dark, warm and moist places, so the moist areas between your toes and …
Diabetic Foot Care
Diabetic foot complications are the No. 1 reason for non-traumatic foot amputations in the United States and cause one in five people with diabetes to enter the hospital. Proper foot …
You Can Beat Diabetes
FICTION: If you’re at high risk for diabetes, you’re going to get the disease. FACT: The Diabetes Prevention Program – which followed more than 3,000 overweight, pre-diabetic men and women at …
What is Diabetes?
Diabetes Mellitus is a disease characterized by a disorder in metabolism in which glucose (sugar) levels are high in the blood due to an absence or abnormal use of the …
Diabetes & Home Glucose Monitoring
Managing diabetes is a full-time job. For an estimated 16 million Americans with diabetes, a healthy diet, exercise, medication and self-monitoring of sugar levels are all part of a daily …
The Buzz On Bug Bites
The Buzz On Bug Bites During the summer months, children and adults alike are subject to bites from mosquitoes, bees and ticks. These insects, found almost everywhere, are responsible for …
Tips For Keeping Your Family Healthy
Hand Hygiene: Make sure effective hand washing is done by every member of your family on a regular basis, especially when coming in from the outside, before eating, after toileting …
How To Boost Your Metabolism Naturally
Why People Are Overweight: People who are overweight often say they have a “glandular problem” when they refer to their weight. By glandular, they are referring to their thyroid gland. …
New Hope For Men With Prostate Cancer
American men are 35% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than women are to develop breast cancer. Yet for years, research to save men from prostate cancer fell …
10 Things Every Man Should Know About Prostate Cancer
One out of every six men will get prostate cancer sometime in their life. Over 192,000 cases are expected in 2010 – more than breast cancer. The chances of getting …
When You Or Your Loved One Suffers A Traumatic Brain Injury
What Causes Brain Trauma? Frequently, brain trauma comes on very quickly and is a shock to all involved. It is most often seen as result of serious falls, automobile/motorcycle/ diving/ …
Is It A Cold Or The Flu?
It’s often hard to tell the difference between flu and common cold symptoms. Both are respiratory illnesses caused by a virus, but they are caused by different viruses. There is …
Flu Symptoms
Symptoms of the Flu: The flu involves a sudden onset of illness. It is usually accompanied by a high fever (greater than 101 degrees Fahrenheit) and extreme fatigue that knocks …
So You’re Having A Colonoscopy?
What Is A Colonoscopy? A colonoscopy is a diagnostic screening test to detect the health of the large intestine (also known as the colon or bowel). It is often used …
How To Avoid Being Misdiagnosed
The goal of your health care team is to “do no harm .” That means that each member of your team is committed to your safety and security. With that being …
When You’re Diagnosed With Cancer
As we all know, cancer is a devastating disease. It is not only devastating to the patient… but it devastates everyone who cares about the patient. Once you have been …
Questions To Ask Before A Diagnostic Procedure
So your doctor has ordered a diagnostic procedure. Many health care consumers feel uncomfortable asking questions of their physicians. Doctors are supposed to be the one with all the knowledge …
Hearing Aids
Helen Keller was once asked if she had her choice, which she would prefer, to see or to hear. She said she would want to hear; that being deaf made …
Hearing Loss
Millions of people in the U.S. have impaired hearing, so you are not alone if you suspect you or someone in your family might have hearing loss. The first step …
When Is It Time To Find A New Doctor
Upon graduation from medical school each new doctor takes the Hippocratic oath in which s/he pledges to do ‘no harm’. These young doctors subsequently spend the rest of their career …
When To Switch Doctors
Doctors are human beings. They have feelings and they have emotions…just like their patients. There are many doctors out there giving all sorts of care. Some are great doctors but …
Understanding Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is a disease of the bones. Over time, bones can become brittle and porous and break easily, sometimes from only minor injury. Eight million American women and two million …
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
WHAT ARE STDS? HOW DO YOU GET THEM? STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) are conditions acquired or spread through activities involving intimate bodily contact with an infected person. Activities which involve …
All About Menopause
What are peri-menopause and menopause? Peri-menopause is the transitional time period before menopause occurs, when a woman still gets her period, but starts to experience changes in her menstrual cycle …
How Do You know Your Pregnancy Isn’t Going Well?
Pregnancy is a time of joy and great anticipation for most expectant families. However, that happiness and tremendous hope for the future can suddenly be halted by the diagnosis of …
Kegel Exercises For Urinary Incontinence
Whether you experience urge incontinence or stress incontinence, Kegel exercises – performed correctly – can offer relief. By strengthening the muscles that hold urine in the bladder, you can either …
Newborn’s & Mother’s Health Protection Act
Group health plans and health insurance issuers generally may not, under federal law, restrict benefits for any hospital length of stay in connection with childbirth for the mother or newborn …
What I Need To Know About Advance Directives
There may come a time in your life when you will be unable to make your own decisions regarding your medical care. An Advance Directive is your life on your …
What is Home Health Care?
Home Health Care Services are care giving services that are provided to persons in their home environment. The need for services must be documented by the person’s primary doctor and the …
How Your Diagnosis Is Made
Be sure to bring your PatientAction.com online Health History with you to each new doctor visit. Bring a list of each medication you are on and their doses or the …
Can I Refuse Care?
Goal of Patient Care: When you are a patient in the health care setting, it is important for you to realize that the members of your health care team have your …
How To Be A Good Visitor
It’s No Fun Being a Patient: Being a patient is scary and stressful. Worries about the diagnosis, treatment and outcome are just the top of the iceberg. There are also …
When You Or A Loved One Needs Hospice
Why Hospice? Many families insist on caring for loved ones at home upon that person’s diagnosis with a life threatening illness. That is a very very noble gesture and most …
Giving Hope To The Dying Patient
What is Hope? Hope is defined in the dictionary as “a confident yet uncertain expectation of achieving a future good which, to the hoping person, is realistically possible and personally …
What The Dying Patient Can Expect From The Bedside Nurse
Of all human experiences, none is more overwhelming than death. In the course of their work day, nurses frequently deal with the dying… and death. As such, they realize that …
How To Prepare For A Doctor Visit
Being prepared for a doctor visit can make a huge difference in your comfort level as a patient. If you spend a few minutes preparing for your visit, you will …
How To Be A Patient Advocate
When you assume the role of patient advocate for someone you love or care about, you will be playing a very important role in the safety and security of the …
Why You Need A Patient Advocate
As a patient you absorb a lot less information when you are anxious, scared, vulnerable, in pain, medicated, immobilized, unconscious, drowsy and/or undressed. In such scenarios, ask a trusted family …
Warning Signs of Stroke
Stroke, or brain attack, is the third leading cause of death in the United States. The devastating affects of stroke often can be prevented if you quickly react to the …
How Can I Tell If I’m Having a Heart Attack?
So much has been written about the signs and symptoms people experience when having a heart attack. But would you really be able to tell if you were having one? …
When You Or Your Loved One Suffers A Traumatic Brain Injury
What Causes Brain Trauma? Frequently, brain trauma comes on very quickly and is a shock to all involved. It is most often seen as result of serious falls, automobile/motorcycle/ diving/ …
What to Expect in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)
The Need for ICU: Being in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a very scary and frightening experience. Patients are there because they are critically ill. There are many types …
In Case of Medical Emergency
Access to Emergency Care: Federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986. In 1986, Congress passed legislation ensuring that all members of the public have access to emergency treatment …
Navigating Through the Emergency Room Experience
As a health care consumer seeking emergency room (ER) care for yourself or someone you are advocating for, you may consider an Urgent Care Center as a viable alternative to …
Getting to the Bottom of the Mammogram Debate
Music, we’re told, can soothe the savage breast. Data about breasts, in contrast, can ignite rather savage controversy, and propagate confusion. That seems to be the immediate result of a …
Medication Safety in Ambulatory Settings: This One’s for You!
Barbara Olson, Nurse, Other Clinical, 09:43AM Sep 19, 2010 Last week the New England Journal of Medicine published an interesting commentary about safety in ambulatory care settings (Patient Safety beyond …
Cancer Survivorship: Role of Healthcare Providers
Cancer Survivors he term “cancer survivor” includes all people living with cancer. Whether cured, in remission, or living with known active cancer, patients who see themselves as survivors play a …