Thursday, August 18, 2011

Early Treatment

An effective health maintenance strategy includes seeking medical care promptly whenever an important new problem or finding appears. If you have a lump in your breast, unexplained weight loss, a fever for more than a week, or if you have begun to cough up blood, you should seek medical attention without delay. These may not represent true emergencies, but they do indicate that professional attention should be sought within a few days. Most times, nothing will be seriously wrong; on other occasions, however, an early cancer, tuberculosis, or other treatable disease will be found.

In many cases, you can take care of yourself with home treatment. However you must respond appropriately when professional care is needed. To ensure timely treatment, you need to have plan. Think things through ahead of time. Do you have a doctor? If you need emergency care, where will you go? To an emergency hospital? To the emergency room of a general hospital? To the on-call physician of a local medical group? If you are not sure what to do after going through this blog, who can you call for further advice? Have you written down the phone numbers you need?

Only rarely will you need emergency services. But the time that you need them is not the time to begin wondering what to do. If you have a routine problem that requires medical care, where will you go? Is there a nearby doctor? Who has your medical records? My next posts will answer these questions. But plan ahead.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Swimming Pool Basics

Basics of pool care are to keep the water clean and treat the swimming pool water with chemicals. It also comprise filtration and flow of water and chemical treatments. Water circulation can be done with the help of water pumps. Pumps should work continually in most use season and when it start-up. Water pumps and filters are the central system of the swimming pool’s filtration and flow system. Basics of swimming pool claim much for appropriate use of chemical for healthy and fresh pool water.

Basics of pool rules play a role to keep you and your family safe. These rules should practice by everybody for secure and vigorous bath activity. Basic pool rules are essential to known by all who is going to swim in pool or doing any other activity.

Following are some of the significant basic pool rules.

Firstly, tell the babysitters about potential swimming pool dangers to little kids and also guide about the use of protection equipments such as alarms and latches.

Youngsters should never leave lonely near a swimming pool.

In swimming pool parties, there must be a spectator appoint at the pool for the kids safety.

When a child is lost, first check the pool. Go to the pool and scan it all from bottom as much as you can.

Never let a little kid in the swimming pool without a mature person.
These essential rules should be known by the person who is going to build a pool in his home.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Health-Risk Appraisal

Your future health is largely determined by what you do now. You lifestyle and your habits have a dominant influence on how healthy you are, how healthy you will be, how much time you will spend in hospitals, and how rapidly you will “physiologically” age.

Recently, techniques have been developed for mathematically estimating your future health risks, and these techniques are variously termed “health-risk appraisal,” “health-hazard appraisal,” or “health assessment.” You complete a questionnaire or other wise provide information about your lifestyle and health habits. Your responses are mathematically combined to complete estimates of your likelihood of developing major medical problems such as heart disease and cancer. Other estimates such as your “physiologic” age and your life expectancy also may be calculated. These techniques form an increasingly important part of comprehensive health-education programs, such as Healthtrac, Senior Healthtrac, and the Taking Care Program of the Center for Corporate Health Promotion. These techniques also have a potentially large role in helping you shape your own personal health program.

There are several things that you should know about health appraisal. First, the results are only estimates. Even though based on the best medical studies, such as the Framingham study, data from these studies are incomplete and may not apply equally to all populations. In general, the estimates may be accurate to within 10 or 20 percent. Think of health-risk scores as similar to IQ or achievement-test scores; they are approximately correct but not exact. Second, the predictions are only averages, and some people will do better than predicted and others worse. Third, any single assessment represents you at one point in time, while your actual risks depend on the changes that you make and your average lifetime health habits as well. Regular repeated assessments can help show your current status and the benefits you have achieved by lifestyle changes. Fourth, a good health-risk appraisal should be based only on those relatively few risk factors that are scientifically well established and that are associated with major health problems. These include cigarette smoking, exercise, automobile seat-belt use, alcohol intake, obesity, salt, fat intake, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, stress level, and dietary fiber. Fifth, the assessment itself provides no health benefits unless it results in changes in your health-related behaviors, and assessment might even increase anxiety. Therefore, these assessments are best used as part of a program that not only identifies risk, but educates, motivates for change, provides suggestions and recommendations, and reinforces positive effects.

I am enthusiastic about the growing role of health-promotion programs that focus attention on prevention of disease and about the use of good health-assessment tools. Well-designed programs are already having a large effect on decreasing human illness.