Tag: US

Asthma A Respiratory Disorder

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Asthma is a respiratory disorder characterized by frequent wheezing, labored breathing, sense of chest congestion and frequent attacks of coughing and gasping. It is a disease of the respiratory system in which the airways narrow down often in response to a trigger meaning exposure to cold air, exercise, allergen or emotional stress. These symptoms of asthma can range from mild to life threatening and can be controlled by drugs and separate lifestyle changes.

This disorder is a chronic inflammatory condition in which the airways develop increased responsiveness to various stimuli and are characterized typically by bronchial hyper-responsiveness, increased mucus production, intermittent airway obstruction and frequent inflammation.

Diagnosis of asthma

If you are suffering from any of these symptoms you should visit the physician for proper diagnosis. Asthma is strongly suspected if a patient suffers from eczema or several other allergic conditions and already has a family history of asthma.

However diagnosis of asthma involves the following factors:

In children it begins with developed breathing problems, history of nasal stiffness [rhinitis], itchy eyes [allergic conjunctivitis] and eczema.
For adults it involves listening to the lungs with stethoscope and examination of nasal passages.
Blood tests and sputum studies are also great ways to diagnosis for asthma.
Spirometry is breathing test, which measures the amount, and rate at which air can pass through airways.
Exercise challenge tests and metacholine inhalation tests are also great procedures to evaluate airway responsiveness.

Asthma and pregnancy

Asthmatic women can face serious problem during pregnancy. If they do not take proper care, asthma can attack both the mother as well as the fetus inside the mother. Therefore uncontrolled asthma in pregnant women often lead to complications like premature birth, low birth weight and maternal blood pressure changes.

Following are brief ways pregnant women can take care of their asthma:

The expectant mother should remain active and sleeping throughout the night.
Pregnant women with asthma should do some regular exercises under the supervision of their physicians.
The pregnant mother should avoid medications like iodides, aspirin or ASA products, tetracycline, sulfonamides and antihistamines.

Treatments for asthma

Asthma can be treated with two types of medicines that include quick-relief medicines and long-term control medicines. While quick relief medicines should be taken during the first signs of asthma, the long-term medicines are taken every day usually over long periods of time to prevent symptoms and asthma attacks.

Following are the various treatments for asthma:

Children with moderate or severe asthma should know to use a peak flow meter to help keep asthma under control.
Medicines are the best treatments along with inhalers. However, medicines like beta-blockers used for treating high blood pressure and glaucoma, nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs and aspirin should be avoided.
Regular physical activity is important to reduce asthma.

You should manage your asthma to remain fit and healthy in life.

International Health Insurance Plans

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International health insurance programs are becoming more popular. The number of people who travel abroad has gone up in this current era of globalization. People who have the wanderlust find the need for a medical coverage while they are away from home. International health insurance provides broad coverage in the event of illness or injury.

Quite a few health-related mishaps can happen while travelling to a foreign country. Since you would not be a native, you might not be eligible for government-sponsored health care. If you travel overseas regularly either for business or for pleasure or maybe be as an international student, it is important that you have an international health insurance plan.an.

Basically, international health insurance generally offers two plans.

* The travel medical insurance
* The expatriate medical insurance.

Although these both provide coverage in the event of sickness or accident, the coverage vary on their length of the stay in the foreign country.

The travel medical insurance is the more popular type of international health insurance used. This is a better option for those travellers who are making one tour or cruise and only stays in a foreign land for a shorter duration like seven days to six months. This usually consists of $1 million coverage for ordinary and emergency healthcare, home country coverage and trip interruption. However these plans vary from company to company. Another factor that may come into picture is your home country and the country that you would be travelling to.

Consider the case; if you are an American who wishes to live in another country for an extended time, the expatriate medical insurance is the plan for you. It is essential to make sure that you and your family is covered in your new country. The advantage of this over the travel medical insurance is that this can be renewable annually and has a bigger coverage of up to $5 million. In most of the countries, though the medical expenses are lesser compared to that of the US, this kind of insurance gives more options in foreign land as well.

Opting for an international health insurance plan is indeed a smart move, whether you are traveling just for few days or for a longer duration. But the key point again lies in making the right choice. Decide what plan will best work for your travel insurance needs, considering all the various parameters.

Group Health Solutions Inc. in New York NY offers the most comprehensive international health insurance plans.

Fraud And Abuse A Major Reason For Waste In The Us Healthcare Spending

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Health care fraud and abuse is an important and conspicuous factor in the resource and finance drain in the US healthcare system and is responsible, to an extent, for the escalating healthcare costs.

According to a report by Thomson Reuters on US healthcare spending, the US healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, out of which the waste caused due to Fraud and abuse constitutes $200 billion, or 22% of healthcare waste every year.

The following chart shows the percentage of waste caused due to different parameters in the US healthcare spending.

Source: Healthcare analytics, Thomson Reuters

What is healthcare fraud and abuse?

Health care fraud is a criminal act in which a consumer or physician(s) deliberately misrepresents facts or information, for the purpose of undeserved or greater reimbursement. Health care abuse is a reckless disregard or conduct that goes against and is inconsistent with acceptable business and/or medical practices resulting in greater reimbursement.

How to prevent it?

Health care fraud and abuse has played such a vital role in increasing the cost of health care and has become a pertinent issue for the government as well as the general public. The question is how to prevent it?

Both Consumers and physicians have to be alert to the possibility of fraud and abuse and work to prevent it. Consumers need to get involved with their health care beyond the point of going to the doctor and taking medication. They need to be educated on their insurance plan, how much they pay, the proper names of their ailments, and they need to keep track of the services they receive and why they receive them. Simple tips that may help prevent fraud and abuse include:

“Review Explanation of Benefits to ensure accurate dates of service, name of providers, and types of services reported
“Protect insurance card and personal information at all times
“Count pills each time they pick up a prescription
“Research providers with state’s medical boards
“Report suspected fraud and abuse as soon as possible

Along with consumers, physicians too must check for any unintentional fraud and abuse happening around them. They can have training and awareness amongst their staff to prevent unintentional fraud. These joint efforts would definitely check the fraud and abuse rate in the United States and ultimately bring down the overall cost of healthcare.

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Heart Disease – Food For Thought And A Healthier Heart

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Having spent so many years working on Cardiac Care Units and lost close family members to sudden heart attacks, I know the devastating effects that a heart attack can lead to. So many lives are ripped apart each year through the failure to understand and diagnose the early warning signs.

A heart attack is the result of your head not understanding the everyday messages of your heart.

Your heart is not just the muscle that pumps blood around your body, keeping you alive, it is also the centre of your emotional intelligence. The energy of the heart manifests through your emotions (energy in motion).

Allowing this energy to run and taking the time to feel what is going on in your body, without judgment, is the way that your heart likes to interact with your head. However, because emotional intelligence is not taught at school and so much emphasis is placed on intellectual intelligence, millions of people die prematurely every year from heart attacks.

The facts speak for themselves.

According to cardiacmatters.co.uk facts and figures someone dies from a heart attack in the UK every 6 minutes. In the US this figure is nearer 1 person every minute. Of the 146,000 people who have a heart attack in the UK every year, 94,000 of them die. On top of this, 179 people in the UK lose a parent every day because of a fatal heart attack.

The symptoms usually start many years before a heart attack.

I have spent many years speaking to people who had just had a heart attack and there are many common themes. Although there are some people who do not experience some of the following symptoms, everyone who has a heart attack experiences over half of the following:

-Feeling stuck in a job or relationship for an extended period of time
-At least one, sometimes more, very poor family relationship(s)
-Low motivation for an extended period
-Not wanting to get out of bed
-High stress for a sustained duration
-A need to please others before themselves
-Feeling misunderstood or unappreciated
-Always compromising and feeling resentful about it
-Increasing aches and pains in their body
-Short, stabbing pains in their chest, sometimes only lasting a fraction of a second
-An emptiness or feeling that something is missing and no idea what it is

These are just some of the warning signs.

Knowing that all of these things happen when the IQ of your brain overrules the IQ of your heart on a consistent basis can help you identify the early warning signs of heart disease, while there is still time to reverse the symptoms. When your head starts labelling emotions as good or bad they can get repressed, heart energy is blocked and your heart cannot function properly. This is the foundation of heart dis-ease.

The good news is that heart dis-ease can be reversed if it is caught early enough.

In order to reverse the symptoms you must first become proficient at identifying them. Do you trust your feelings? Start by becoming aware of the early warning signs and asking yourself one simple question:

“Would I or the people I love benefit from me learning to identify the early warning signs of heart disease?”

If so, then learn about the early warning signs.

Indian Spices May Help Cure Cancer

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According to Indian origin doctors based in US, kitchen spices such as turmeric, garlic, ginger, saffron, and capsicum known for their culinary versatility could be a powerful weapon to fight certain pathogens that can cause cancer.

Dr Shrikant Anant of the University of Kansas Medical Centre, US stated, Over the last 10 years, almost every academic institution and industrial group in the United States has started researching on the cancer-fighting properties of natural substances. Primarily, Indian-American doctors are involved in this, followed by Chinese and Koreans.”

Anti-cancer properties of curcumin and saffron
Laboratory research on animals suggests that curcumin (a derivative of the spice turmeric) has potent anticancer properties.

Now, researchers have launched the first phase of human trials to find out just how powerful it may be.

The researchers are also conducting experiments to determine whether the natural spices are effective in inhibiting cancerous tumors in isolation or when combined with existing therapy.

Lead researcher Dr Shrikanth Anant, professor of cancer research, University of Kansas stated, “Cancer is a complex disease. No therapy is a silver bullet. It has to be a combination. So, we’re looking at options that can make treatment more effective.

Meanwhile, Dr Animesh Dhar, associate professor in gastroenterology at the University of Kansas Medical Centre, is testing saffron for pancreatic cancer.

The studies on rodents revealed that orally administered crocetin, a natural carotenoid dicarboxylic acid found in saffron, appeared not only to slow the progression of the disease but also decreased the size of the tumor by half.

Dr Animesh Dhar stated, Crocetin a compound found in saffron, which has cancer-fighting properties was extensively used in ancient Chinese and Egyptian medicine.

Explaining further, he added, Our experiments on small animals have shown that Crocetin prevents proliferation of cancer cells. We are waiting for permission from the government to carry out clinical trials.

A herbal potion BIRM for prostate cancer
In addition, Addanki P Kumar of University of Texas Health Science Centre and Dr Bal Lokeshwar from the University of Miami have claimed success in reducing prostate cancer tumors by using a herbal potion extracted from the roots of Bryophyllum, known as BIRM.

Lokeshwar stated, We conducted an experiment by injecting mice with cancerous cells and treated a few of them with BIRM for 28 days, while others were left untreated. In mice treated with BIRM, the size of the tumour reduced from 100 units to 50, while in the untreated, the tumour grew from 100 to 250 units.