The number of health web sites is daunting even for someone like me who writes about health for a living.  Now, Laura Landro who writes “The Informed Patient” column for the Wall Street Journal  has provided this handy list for some old stand-bys and some new ones. She points out that the .coms will bombard you with ads. The .govs or .orgs are  a little quieter. Check them out and let me know what you think. Do you have favorite health web sites?

 

WebMD.com—This long-time leading health-care site has added a healthy eating and diet center that includes food and fitness planners, a health-and-weight calculator that gives personal results on six different weight and fitness measurements, and a customized calorie-intake planner for weight loss.

VisualDxHealth.com—Offers some 2,000 medical images and information to help identify more than 180 skin diseases, rashes and conditions; allows searches by age, sex and body part. Interactive quizzes on recognizing skin cancer.

QualityHealth.com—Offers health-risk assessments, symptom checker, and personalized lists of questions to ask your doctor based on conditions and symptoms. Allows users to create blogs and join online communities.

Healthline.com—Includes a prescription medication image gallery; pill finder profiles to help identify medications by size, shape, color and visible markings; and new risk assessments, quizzes and calculators such as body-mass-index calculator and breast-cancer-risk assessment.

Wellsphere.com—Sends text-message reminders to go to the gym or take your medication, and sends daily health and fitness tips; allows users to log fitness goals on a mobile phone. Provides nutrition information for menu items at restaurants and suggests healthier alternatives.

RealAge.com—Interactive site offers quiz to determine biological age based on 150 questions about health status and behaviors. New heart-health checkups to gauge heart-attack risk.

Consumermedsafety.org  —This new site is sponsored by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit watchdog group that tracks and analyzes reports, mainly from hospitals and health-care professionals, of medication errors and safety risks.

WhyNotTheBest.org —This new site from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund compares care at 4,500 hospitals nationwide, using data from Medicare’s Hospital Compare Web site and the federal government’s Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey. The site is primarily aimed at health professionals, but consumers also can readily check on their local hospitals.

hazmap.nlm.nih.gov — HazMap, a federal database, is designed to provide health and safety professionals and consumers with information about exposure to chemicals and biologic substances at work and with certain hobbies. The site recently added 180 new chemical profiles, and now covers more than 2,000 chemical agents and 225 occupational diseases. Consumers can search by symptoms or diseases.

EverydayHealth.com —The site, which recently merged with Revolution Health, links 24 separate health sites catering to various interests. The pregnancy-information site, for instance, is based on a best-selling series of books and is found at WhatToExpect.com. Another, CarePages.com, allows hospitalized patients and families to set up their own Web sites to keep relatives and friends posted on the patient’s progress.

 HealthCentral.com — This is a network of sites covering various conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and diabetes. Users can sign up for news alerts and updates, join communities and watch videos of experts discussing treatments. The home page has a cool symptom checker that can be used to check by gender and body part.

 

Just in time for Valentine’s day comes this funny little ditty from grist.org, the environmental news web site, called “Breaking Up with my Blow-Up Doll.” 

Many plastic sex toys are made with phthalates, those chemicals in plastic that have been linked to cancer and other diseases. You know — that new car smell? Sex toys have it, too, and it’s the smell of phthalates.

Umbra, the green advice columnist on grist.com, suggests in this Grist TV video that you can buy environmentally healthy sex toys that don’t have chemicals. It’s worth a watch because it’s so silly.

 Seems like a good day to revive this post from a few weeks ago.

Here’s a timely test for all  Minnesotans: What are the signs of frostbite? What do you do to treat it?  How cold does your body have to get before hypothermia sets in and you literally start freezing to death?

Here are the answers to today’s pop quiz, courtesy of Dr. Doug Brunette an emergency room physician at Hennepin County Medical Center.

Frostbite: Your skin literally freezes.

What it looks like: Frozen skin. It becomes hard and pale, and red and painful as it thaws.  When you get cold, your body responds by not sending blood to the extremities in order to preserve your core temperature.   In a -30 degree wind chill skin freezes after only a few minutes. Skin dies in two ways: At the time of the exposure and because of the lack of oxygen.

What to do:  Immerse affected areas in warm water, about 102 degrees.   Get medical help if sores and blisters develop.

Hypothermia: You are literally freezing.

What it looks like:  Shivering, slurred speech, very slow breathing, pale cold skin, and fatigue.  Hypothermia becomes fatal when core temperatures get too low causing cardiac and respiratory failure.

What to do: Medical help should be called immediately.  Remove the person from the cold, remove wet clothing, insulate the person’s body from the cold ground, monitor breathing, share body heat, and provide a warm, nonalcoholic beverage if a person is able to swallow.

What not to do:  Do not apply direct heat, massage the person, or provide alcoholic beverages. That could cause cardiac arrest.

For those who haven’t lived here long enough to know, here are the ever sensible cold weather tips:

1. Always dress for the weather, being sure to cover ears, nose, face, and head at all times.
2. Wear mittens instead of gloves
3. Wear two pairs of socks and waterproof shoes to keep feet warm.
4. Clothes should fit loosely to avoid a decrease in the amount of blood supplied to legs and arms.
5. Do not smoke or drink because it can affect your body’s blood circulation.
6. Always travel with a friend incase help would be needed or something would happen.
7. Pay attention to the “real feel” temperature.  This temperature factors in the wind chill, which may be much lower than the reported air temperature.

This is the saddest divorce story I’ve ever heard. A husband, a surgeon no less, donated a kidney to his wife. Now they are divorcing, and he calls reporters into his lawyers office to publicly demand that she either return the kidney or pay him $1.5 million for it. You can read the whole story here on CNN.
Dr. Richard Batista, a surgeon at Nassau University Medical Center in New Jersy, married his wife, Dawnel Batista, in 1990. They had three kids, and he saved her life with his kidney in 2001.  She filed for divorce in July 2005, although he claims she began having an extramarital affair 18 months to two years after receiving the kidney transplant. According to the reporter,  Batista fought back tears after talking about their bitter divorce battle. “There’s no deeper pain or betrayal from somebody you loved and devoted your whole life to,” he said.

His wife’s attorney denied that she had an affair while they were married.

Batista, 49, said he has no regrets about donating the kidney, only about the failed marriage. He said he still recalls the day after the surgery took place.

“There is no greater feeling on this planet. As God is my witness, I felt as if I could put my arm around Jesus Christ. It was unbelievable; I was walking on a cloud. To this day I would still do it again,” he said.
It’s not possible for him to get his kidney back, obviously. Is it fair for him to make the demand? Should a judge take it into consideration in the divorce proceedings? And isn’t this one of saddest divorce stories you’ve heard?

It’s been a great winter for sledding. So good, in fact, that the number of serious sledding injuries is way up. Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) said that so far this winter there have been nearly twice as many spinal injuries than there were in all of 2007. Some 13 patients have been admitted for sledding injuries, compared to 6 in 2007.

That doesn’t include the head bumps, bruises and scrapes that are not serious enough for admittance.

Tynisha Webber, 23, of Hutchinson is a classic example of how fast things can go wrong on an icy hill.

She went sliding with her two sons, aged 4 and 5, last week at Rocket Hill, the local sledding spot in Hutchinson. Her son begged her go down; “Come with us Mom!” She got on a saucer. Her youngest son climbed a double-wide sled with a friend’s daughter who was 13, and they headed down the hill with Webber trailing behind. She saw the jump coming when it was too late.  Later people who saw it said that when they flew had three feet of air beneath them before they landed.

“My son flew off and bruised his cheek. My friends daughter,  she was fine. I hit solid ice on my bottom. I felt crunch, crunch. I laid there and thought, ‘I have to call 911.’”

Today she’s in a body cast in a hospital bed at HCMC. She’ll have to wear the cast for at least three months while the smashed vertebrae in her lower back heals.

“I was close to being paralyzed,” she said.

Her sons will have to say with their father until she can take care of them again, and she won’t be able to work her job as a home health aid. The only good news is that social workers at the hospital helped her sign up for Minnesota Care, so at least the worst of her health bill will be covered, she said.

“It’s not what you expect when you go out to have fun with your kids,” she said.

HCMC officials said they expect to see more sledding injuries because the ice under the snow makes the hills especially slick. Out of the 13 people admitted this winter, 11 were in 2008 — five in the last week of December. Since New Year’s, they’ve had two more.

Here is the list of safety tips from HCMC:

•    Choose designated sledding hills with a gentle slope and long run-off area; avoid steep hills
•    Avoid ice-covered hills
•    Stay away from roads, lakes, rivers, heavily wooded areas, parking lots, etc.
•    Make sure the sliding area is free of obstacles
•    Be aware of others sliding on the hill
•    Dress appropriately – layers are best because they can also help “cushion” any falls and wear a helmet
•    Don’t pile too many people on one sled
•    Always ride on the sled sitting and facing forward
•    Avoid jumps or piles of snow that can cause a sled to become airborne
•    Children under 12 should be supervised by an adult
•    Children under 5 should be accompanied by an adult on the sled
•    Don’t “drink and sled,” alcohol use and sledding do not mix!
•    Seek medical attention if you suspect an injury

Webber has some ideas as well. She’d like the city of Hutchinson to mark the jumps with colored spray paint. At least that way sliders could see them before it’s too late.

What’s your sledding story?