When it comes to lowering your health insurance premiums it takes no rocket scientist to figure out how it’s done. If you’re trying to reduce your insurance premiums then you need to become less of a risk for the insurance companies. You can become less of a risk for insurance companies through exercise, eating healthy and preventative care.

If you’re not exercising at least three times per week then you have got to get on a program. A good program consists of you doing cardiovascular training three times per week for 45 minutes. You should be weight training at least twice per week for 30 minutes. For some, getting to the gym might be out of the question. If it’s difficult for you to get to the gym, then take up some other form of exercise including walking, running, hiking and sports.

If you’re not currently eating 5-6 meals per day then you have got to get on the band wagon. All nutritional experts agree on the principle of grazing throughout the day, taking in smaller portions for meals. When you are doing this you are allowing your body to digest food much easier thus creating a faster metabolism. When your metabolism speeds up then you are able to lose weight and get in shape. Along with eating five to six meals per day also remember to eat healthy. The best part about eating healthy is that there are many options for healthy food. The best tip for eating healthy is to keep it as natural as possible. Try to avoid processed food at all costs.

Preventative care is you being proactive with your body, and going in for a check-up if something feels out of place. Preventive care is you avoiding unnecessary risks that could jeopardize your health. This mindset is you acting, and not being acted upon. If you are truly exercising a preventative attitude then you won’t allow yourself to get obese or unhealthy, because you are in control of your future. If you exercise, eat healthy, and implement preventative health care, you will be able to not only live longer and healthier, but you will also have reduced your health care substantially.

Dealing with lower back pain can be tough for some patients. At times, the pain is hard to manage, and painkillers might not be the right solution. Depending on the facts of the case, doctors may use epidural steroid injections. In this post, we will discuss some of the aspects of such injections in detail.

What’s an epidural steroid injection?

The use of injections for low back pain is limited to certain cases, but this is certainly one of the many ways to treat chronic pain. An epidural steroid injection essentially contains an anesthetic drug for pain relief with a corticosteroid. For the uninitiated, corticosteroid is a form of steroids known to have anti-inflammatory benefits. The injection helps in reducing the pressure from the nerves and surrounding areas and muscles, which can offer considerable respite, while the painkiller ensures immediate relief. Corticosteroids may work independently for pain relief, but since most patients want immediate effects, an anesthetic medicine is used.

Knowing the procedure

Please note that you cannot ask your doctor for epidural steroid injections. Unless the patient has stopped responding to nonsurgical treatments, doctors don’t try ESIs. In most cases, certain imaging tests are done, so as to find the right spot where the nerve roots at pressed or have a problem. In some cases, a x-ray machine may be used by the doctor, just to find the right point where the needle must be placed.

The need for epidural steroid injections

Typically, epidural steroid injections are used as the last resort to offer pain relief, especially in cases of extreme pain, often related to a condition known as “lumbar spinal stenosis”. This condition mainly starts from the lower spine and often spreads to the legs. There is limited information on how these injections may work in the long run, but like most steroid injections, this too offers relief for the next few weeks. It is always best to talk to your doctor, who can suggest more details in this regard. However, in cases of lumbar spinal stenosis, other treatments are tried and used as well.

What are the side effects?

There can be a few side effects with ESIs, but that varies from case to case. In most cases, the focus is on reducing the pain, so the minimal adverse effects are ignored. However, if you have issues with breathing or have swelling on your facial area, do contact your doctor immediately. There can be some pain at the injection site, but if that doesn’t subside in the next couple of days, check with your doctor. For immediate swelling at the injection site, you can use ice, which will also offer some relief from the associated pain.

Pain management clinics have a lot of information on epidural steroid injections. If you need to know more about lumbar spinal stenosis, you should consult a doctor at the earliest. With early intervention, other treatments may work more effectively for you, but it also depends on how you respond to the standard treatment plans.

Health is what can be defined as the general condition of a human being concerning all aspects of his life. In general good health is acquired by means of a combination of physical, mental and the social comforts and securities. You have to realize that maintaining good health is a never ending process and you have to constantly be on the lookout for ways and means to stay healthy.

Hygiene is one of the main factors that constitute to good health. Keeping yourself clean and tidy which involves brushing, bathing, washing hands especially before a meal etc. The list is endless and all these contribute to your well being and health. If hygiene is a factor that helps improve health, stress can affect your health adversely. Stress management is imperative to remain in good health. If you are in a job that often has you completely stressed out, then give some relaxation techniques a try. They can help to relieve stress.

Health care can be described as the treatment and the management of the various illnesses both physical and mental that you may contract through the years. Today more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that health and fitness are of prime importance in life. This improves the health and fitness industry that come out with various types of fitness equipment that promise to keep you healthy and fit.

To live a healthy life you may have to make some changes in your lifestyle by consuming a nutritious diet, drinking more water everyday, increasing your intake of foods that can give you more roughage, putting a brake on the fried and processed food intake and incorporating a regular exercise regime like going for a walk daily. Remember you are not required to carry out any hectic work-outs. It is just to ensure that all parts of your body remain supple. This is especially necessary as you grow older and various aches and pains start getting you down.

Health is such a significant matter that you simply cannot let things just be. You have to make a deliberate attempt to be healthy and remain so.

As a person grows older, the basal metabolic rate of the body tends to slow down primarily due to lack of activity and regular physical exercise. As the age of person increases, the calorie requirement of the body decreases. As the senses of smell and taste tend to decrease in older people, they often find food less palatable, resulting in situations called under-eating. However, vital nutrients are still essential for the body even at this age and require proper nutritional care supported by healthy diet.

Eating less during old age often provides an invitation for various unwanted diseases. Older people who are underweight are easily prone to get infected primarily due to a depleted immune system that fails to offer protection against invading pathogens. Apart from this, under weight persons are at an increased risk of developing various other diseases including anemia and osteoporosis. Nutritional abnormalities in older people could sometimes be an indicative of a serious medical complication such as cancer, dementia, heart failure or depression.

However, there are multiple ways through which elder persons can gain back the weight. According to doctors and nutritionists, elder people should take diet that is rich in nutrients and vitamins. These include fruits, vegetables, fluids and fibers. Dental and oral problems could also lead to decreased diet intake. Hence, it is important to have a routine checkup of gums, teeth and mouth. Elder persons often find it easy to taken liquid foods rather than thicker foods. Other options include serving finger-foods, liquid food supplements and serving familiar, palatable and tastier foods that are presented in a pleasing manner.

Within the last few years there as been an aggressive push on the part of government, professional organizations, and other authorities to institute a uniform EMR system. This includes generous subsidies allocated by recent legislation and mandatory legal requirements to occur in the next few years. As a practicing and academic physician with a masters degree in public health, I would like to briefly note some observations.

Intuitively, a uniform, easily accessible EMR seems like a very good idea. In fact, one of my major difficulties in practice occurs when a new patient arrives without copies of previous diagnostic studies or lists of medications. This is compounded in an incapacitated or elderly individual with many medical conditions and medications, and when there is a language barrier. Such patients may have great difficulty, or be incapable of, relaying this information to the new physician. To go online and immediately retrieve it would be very helpful indeed.

However, in these days of lower reimbursement and higher practice volumes, time spent imputing information may be time spent away from patient care. You may have experienced a visit where your doctor, using an EMR, has his eyes and hands on the computer much more than on you. I personally have accompanied relatives to physicians and emergency rooms where the doctor spent almost no time talking to, or examining the patient but instead sat in front of the computer, recording or retrieving information.

Also, these electronic records include templates where “check off” of existing information, rather than recording of original information is involved. This helps improve physician reimbursement by conforming with insurance company guidelines for level of service. It does little, however, to record the doctor’s thought processes or enhance the necessary medical information provided by this specific physician.

Don’t get me wrong. Good information is a good thing. But, it must be good for the patient and not just there to satisfy an insurance company. Also, it must contribute to, not detract from, the overall quality of care.

More and more people today are worried about the costs of long-term health care. They are worried if something happens to them they may run out of money and burn through their reserves. The average nursing home stay is 2.5 years of care and the average cost is over $130.00 per day. That is the average yet in many areas with nursing shortages and higher income demographics the rates are more significant. It is estimated that more than 10% of us who reach age 65 will nursing home care for more than 5-years.

It is very important to have long-term health care insurance to:

Protect your assets

Provide peace of mind

Provide assurance of quality care

Provide choice and control over receipt of care

Avoid dependence

Receive tax advantages

Paying for Long-Term Care? Here is The Bottom Line:

Medicare – This program may pay for skilled nursing facility care for a very short period of time – but no longer than 100 days – and only when you meet all the Medicare requirements for daily skilled care.

Medical – This program, called Medicaid outside California, may pay for skilled, rehabilitation and custodial care that is not covered by Medicare, but only if you first “spend-down” assets to federal and state legal impoverishment level guidelines.

Personal or Family Assets – Most people provide for long-term care expenses from personal or family income, assets and resources.

Long-Term Care Insurance Programs – Specially designed programs to pay for long-term health care expenses. HIPAA defines Federal tax treatment of insurance policies that provide long-term care coverage. Policies that meet certain criteria are designated as “qualified long-term care insurance” and will receive certain tax incentives: the cost of coverage may be deductible and long term care benefits received will not be reported as taxable income. Please consult your tax advisor for information about your personal situation.

Play it safe and know your options regarding long-term health care and know protect your assets. Think on this.

An international trade builds one alternative to exporting service is to import customers. Cross border travel for medical services in Dubai is a growing market in health care delivery, stimulated by demand from aging consumers in affluent nations. UAE can offer inexpensive but high quality treatment in modern hospitals is creating a boom in health care tourism in Dubai. The biggest and the most significant part of the health care system in Dubai takes place in dentistry. Lots of people all over Europe and Dubai residents prefer make their glam smile in Dubai. They can even combine dental treatment and recuperation with a vacation.

Nobody has collected the complete worldwide statistic about how many people travel to Dubai for dental and medical care related reasons every year or how many they spent. But UAE general report pointed out that in 2000, medical patients alone spent over 27$ billion. If the medical travelers from around the world spent in UAE even half as much that year, the total business in 2000 alone would have been in excess of 40% billion.

More importantly, Dubai is growing rapidly and turning out to be an immense opportunity for nations to come and have their dental treatment there. Most insurance companies in Dubai have already accredited hospitals and private clinics where visitors can seek emergency medical treatment. Now a few hospitals in Dubai are going a step further – they are getting themselves accredited by the Join Commission Accreditation of Health Care organization. A full accreditation from this organization allows a hospital to pitch for the insurance traffic too. Traveling has never been so healthy before.

America, often referred to as the melting pot, has many different cultures. Each state within America has different cultures. You can even drive to your neighboring city or town and find they have a slightly different culture than the people of your city or town. Actually, if you want to get technical, each household seems to have its own culture!

Each culture is defined by how the members of the culture interact with one another and the outside world; their traditions; their beliefs; what they consider socially acceptable. Some people define their culture by race, while others define their culture by region. Some people define their culture by education, while others define their culture by financial status. However a culture is defined, America has a plethora of them!

While cultures differ in many aspects, they are similar in one: they are made up of people – living, breathing, human beings – and all human beings have one thing in common, which is the ability to get sick or be injured.

It sounds so simple, but it’s so important. It doesn’t matter how much money you make; you can get sick. It doesn’t matter how many degrees you have; you can get injured.

Many people don’t purchase health insurance unless their employers offer it, and even then some people opt not to buy into their employer’s health care plan. At the same time, many Americans are either unemployed, or aren’t offered health benefits by their employers.

It doesn’t matter what color you are, where you live, how far you went in school, or how much money you have – everyone needs adequate health care. If you are one of the millions of Americans who doesn’t have a health insurance policy, you need to start searching for one now. Take advantage of your employer’s health benefits package, or, refer to your state’s insurance bureau to find health insurance companies that offer policies you can afford.

It is almost the end of the year. If one of your new year’s resolutions is physical fitness, I have a few tips that can help.

1) Focus on positive thinking. When you can keep up with your physical fitness plan, you should congratulate yourself every time. It is not easy to keep up with fitness plan. You really need to have a strong will. Be proud of yourself.

2) When you fall back from your fitness schedule, you should not berate yourself. Some people are too hard on themselves, and they never start over again. Your physical fitness New Year’s resolutions are the promise to yourself. They are not the test of your willpower.

3) You should stay away from unhealthy temptation as much as possible. If you are on the diet, you do not want to keep a huge bucket of ice cream in your refrigerator. It can only make your life harder.

4) Be realistic. Some people expect to achieve physical fitness over night. They make fitness plans that are impossible to keep. Realistic physical fitness plan must fit into your lifestyle. You must ask yourself, “Can I really go out for a run every evening?” If the answer is “No”, you may want to rethink your new year’s resolutions. If you know that you can not do them every evening, you may be able to do them twice a week.

5) Try to keep your resolutions with a friend. You can help encourage each other. A good friend will make your fitness resolutions fun.

Medical tourism is a booming industry and every year more and more medical tourists are visiting various destinations for receiving top quality treatment at affordable prices. As a medical tourist you need to do some research while selecting the country, hospital and doctor for your treatment. Also you need to make sure everything is planned well before you go abroad so at you have a pleasant medical trip and don’t have to face any complications in an unknown destination.

Below are some tips that can be helpful for your medical trip:

1. Research – All experts would recommend you to research a lot before you travel abroad. Researching will help you in understanding the procedure, risks involved, time for stay, recovery time etc and at the same time also help you from getting victim of any scams etc.
2. Always seek information about hospital accreditation, success rates, patient’s testimonials etc.
3. Check for doctor’s information like education, experience and boar certifications.
4. Consult if the treatment or procedure is safe.
5. Get information about the climate and weather conditions at the medical tourism destination.
6. Keep necessary contact information with you like relatives, friends, embassy, doctor etc.
7. Take necessary vaccines if needed before leaving the country.
8. Check is traveling abroad will be cost effective and also if it is safe to travel to the country.
9. Better seek the services of a medical tourism company, they specialize in medical travel thing and can arrange quotes for you very quickly. Also as they work with various hospitals you can have multiple options to choose from and select the one that best suits you.