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Showing posts from January, 2018

Types of Headaches

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Many of us are familiar with some form of the throbbing, uncomfortable, and distracting headaches . The World Health Organization points out that nearly everyone experiences a headache once in a while. Although headaches can be defined as pain “in any region of the head,” the cause, duration, and intensity of this pain can vary according to the type of headache. If your headache is less severe, read on to learn how to identify the type of headache you may be experiencing and what you can do to ease your symptoms. Causes Migraine headache is caused by inflammation or irritation of structures that surround the brain or affect its function. While the brain itself has no pain nerve fibers, everything else above the shoulders, from the neck, skull, and face, can cause a person to have of head pain. Systemic illnesses, including infection or dehydration, can have associated headache. These are known as toxic headache. Changes in circulation and blood...

Pregnancy and Migraine

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Migraineheadaches  are a type of vascular headache that results from blood vessels dilating directly in the brain. These are different from stress or tension headaches. Migraine headaches are like the lottery when it comes to pregnancy. If you were prone to getting migraines before getting pregnant, you may experience stronger headaches, or you may find that they diminish during pregnancy. It is also normal to experience your first migraine when you are pregnant. Here is everything you need to know. Causes of Migraine Headaches What exactly causes  migraine headaches  isn't known. But, migraines appear to involve changes in nerve pathways, neurochemicals, and blood flow in the brain. Researchers believe that overly excited brain cells stimulate a release of chemicals. These chemicals irritate blood vessels on the brain's surface. That, in turn, causes blood vessels to swell and st...

Health Benefit from Cold Temperature

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When the weather dips into the single digits, most of us want to do absolutely nothing but dive back under the covers. And it’s all  for a good reason: With extreme cold weather comes health hazards like frostbite, seasonal affective disorder and even an increased risk of heart attacks. Now that the thermostat is dropping and sweater weather has arrived let’s try to look on the bright side. Cold weather, believe it or not, has quite a number of positives in the form of health benefits . Read on to learn how the cold can actually help you feel better!       1.       Help Fat Loss Humans have stores of active brown fat tissue (BAT). Unlike white fat, which stores energy and comprises most body fat, brown fat is active in burning calories and using energy.BAT can essentially turn calories from food into heat. It generates heat by uncoupling proteins, particularly UCP1, within the mitochondrial membrane.Indeed, st...

Top US Healthcare Positions

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We're always striving for better health, and the people who hold some of the jobs on the 2018 Best Health Care Jobs list can help you breathe, eat, walk, speak, hear, move and see better. They can also help patients prevent disease, illness and injury, as well as diagnose, fight and treat illness. Many of the highest-paying jobs are among the Best Health Care Jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that employment growth in this sector will be much quicker than the average for all jobs by 2026. Here are the top US healthcarepositions .       1.       Registered Nurse One of the most in-demand careers in the entire US, registered nurses are projected to generate over 580,000 new jobs by 2018. This does not count the hundreds of thousands of jobs that will become available when older nurses retire. Those following the path toward becoming a registered nurse will find many job prospects and great opportunities.    ...

Healthcare Ransomware

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Ransomware  is malicious software that encrypts or removes access to computer files until a ransom payment is made. In an incredibly short amount of time ransomware has grown from fringe cyber-attack to widespread epidemic. Researchers saw an average of over 4,000 ransomware attacks per day in Q1 2016 – a stunning 300% increase over the attacks they saw in 2015. An estimated $325 million in ransom payments has been generated by just one type of ransomware alone, CryptoWall 3.02, and with the success of several high-profile attacks on hospitals, criminals are increasingly targeting healthcare providers.And when attacks do happen, the damage can be devastating. The loss of access to patient records alone can result in critical services being suspended and communication grinding to a halt. Historically, following most data breaches, cybercriminals put the sensitive user information accumulated from the attack up for sale on the dark web. Depending upon the type of personal...

Healthcare Hardware Device

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Open-source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so anyone can study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or the hardware based on that same design. Some open-source hardware projects can potentially be used as active medical devices. The open-source approach offers a unique combination of advantages, including reducing costs and faster innovation. A wide range of open-source hardware that includes healthcare sensors and low-cost single-board computers are readily available on the consumer market. It has a large community of supporters, and there are open software libraries available to simplify many tasks.       1.       Tablet PCs and Notepads Tablet PCs are becoming one of the most popular healthcare hardware options for medical offices and hospitals. Their lightweight portability allows physicians to carry the machine with them during procedures and patient visits, giving them the opportunity...

Treatment for Cerebral Palsy Reduce Muscle tightness

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Cerebralpalsy (CP) is experienced in different ways for each child diagnosed, but muscle issues are generally a common symptom of all children with the disorder. Muscles are often too stiff or move in spastic ways. They can become rigid or move in a way that is uncoordinated. The stiffness, rigidity, and spasms that many children and adults with CP experience are disruptive, uncomfortable, and even painful, or interfere with swallowing and breathing. There are numerous treatments and therapies for spastic cerebral palsy, ranging from therapeutic and supportive treatments to surgical and medical interventions to decrease functional impairments and muscle-stress symptoms. Here are some treatment options for CP. Physical therapy The first type of treatment for CP is physical therapy. The goal of physical therapy is to provide as much independence to the child as possible. This treatment is centered on flexibility exercises and stretching out stiff muscles.Physica...

Diabetes Type 1 vs Type 2

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According to the American Diabetes Association, 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes each year. And 86 million people in the United States with prediabetes are headed towards developing Type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is not unique to the United States.Moreover, it’s a global issue, affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide. When people are diagnosed with diabetes, they often have many questions, especially about the differences between Type 1and Type 2 diabetes. There are, in fact, multiple different forms of diabetes, but the more common forms are Type 1 and Type 2. How are they alike? Both types of diabetes  greatly increase a person's risk for a range of serious complications. Although monitoring and managing the disease can prevent complications, diabetes remains the leading cause of blindness and kidney failure. It also continues to be a critical risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and foot or leg amputation...

Connected Health save Healthcare Industry

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Technology-enabled care, or connected heath care as it is known, is helping to redefine the patient-caregiver relationship and simplify treatment, from diagnosis to cure. For technologists, it means more capable, smarter gadgets that can read a person’s vitals more accurately, determine whether there is or could be a problem, and then proactively treat the patient without him or her ever knowing there was an issue. Health care, then, becomes proactive. For providers, connected health care can open up a whole new model based on value, not the number of procedures performed. And it offers new, easier ways to interact with patients. Also, connected health care means a friendlier, more satisfying experience—something like a new lease on life. But, even as healthcare has become more effective, it has also become more complex and costly. Growing and aging populations are putting increased pressure on health-care systems that are already crashing under the burden of chronic diseas...

Patient Loyalty

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Consumer loyalty to healthcare providers is not what it once used to be. The realities of the new healthcare market—consumers with high passion for healthcare providers, the rise of digital health disruptors and providers with lagging loyalty metrics—make providers vulnerable to patients switching to competitors. So, how can healthcare providers reset the patient loyalty? They can take a page from competitive consumer industries with experience having to earn their customers’ loyalty. By adopting patient engagement practices from such consumer industries, healthcare providers can respond to this market disruption. What’s more, they can keep the patients they have—and earn new ones. Here are some key findings and possible solutions. ● 61% would switch providers to get an appointment quickly ● 52% would switch to get an appointment at a convenient location ● 47% would switch for a better understanding of care costs ● 50% would pay more for weekend or after-hours appointme...

Healthcare Referral System Broken

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A large percentage of processes in healthcare involve documents and forms that must be scanned and stored outside their existing EMR system such as records from referring physicians, patient consent forms, patient instructions, etc. With so much paper still floating around, opportunities for HIPAA violations increases 86% of mistakes made in the healthcare industry stem from administrative activities. Here are some facts that show how healthcare referral system is broken.       1.       Excessive regulation Probably half the nurses at most hospitals could handle a lot of the GP work that gets done, but they can’t, because the government doesn’t allow them to. When it takes a couple hundred thousand in education costs to become a doctor, doctors are going to demand money!              2.       Shortage of Doctors Studies show that there will be a sho...