As it is, Americans are reportedly consuming more than the recommended amount of salt per day an average of one and a half teaspoons, half a teaspoon more than the ideal amount.
But one teaspoon of salt is not exactly the ideal amount for everyone. Two out of three Americans belong to the following demographics: suffering from high blood pressure, aged over 40, or African-American adults. These people have a lower recommended daily consumption of salt only two-thirds of a teaspoon, which means that about 70% of Americans are eating more than twice the healthy amount of salt.
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According to the British newspaper, Guardian, the administrators at Mid Strafford NHS foundation were so obsessed with meeting the four-hour maximum waiting time admission target that patients were often quickly shuttled to unstaffed units used as ER patient "dumping grounds" without having their conditions adequately screened.
Filed Under (eDrug News) by Admin on 31-03-2009
We speculated last week that the big health insurance companies and their PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) may soon attempt to force employees toward mail-order drugs. It’s certainly a real possibility after the PBM Express Scripts began providing mail-order delivery as a default option for employer-based health plans.
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The unstable economic times that we now find ourselves in does not only impact our financial capabilities; it is also causing several health issues. In a recent post, we saw how financial worries may have triggered potentially dangerous behavior in some pilots in India, and they are not alone. We are as much prone to health risks as anyone else during these trying times if we do not take care of ourselves.
Recession can trigger stress, anxiety and depression factors that can affect the heart. Stress may lead to accelerated artherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries, elevated blood pressure and increased heart rate.
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According to a Health Affairs article, Kaiser Permanente found that 84 percent of the time required to seek care in a physician's office was unrelated to patient care. To obtain a 16.4 minute face-to-face visit with a doctor:
- Patients had to spend 50 minute (round trip) traveling to the physician's office.
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Waiting a few minutes before drinking your hot tea may be more than simply avoiding a burnt tongue; it may even be a way to prevent throat cancer. A new study carried out in Northern Iran, where large amounts of hot tea are consumed on a daily basis, established a link between drinking very hot tea and an increased risk for cancer of the esophagus.
Hot is defined as having a temperature of 158F (70C), usually the temperature of freshly boiled tea. The study was published on the website of the British Medical Journal. The findings are not really meant to cause alarm, though; the general advice is to wait a little bit and allow foods and beverages to cool down before swallowing.
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The iPhone is certainly well on its way to being your medical buddy.
A new application has been released onto the iTunes App Store last Friday Cholesterol Coach from Melbourne-based Pocket Pixels, a software developer for the iPhone platform.
It is a known fact that in the United States, high cholesterol or hypercholesterolaemia is one of the leading causes of heart disease and stroke. Of the more than one hundred million Americans who are believed to have high cholesterol levels, over thirty percent are considered high risk for heart disease and stroke.
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Confirm BioSciences, the San Diego-based bio tech company that developed HairConfirm (a home hair follicle drug test kit) and SteroidConfirm (a steroid test kit), launched a new addition to their product line: LeadConfirm Professional. This new test is a more convenient and non-invasive way of determining the amount of lead exposure a person has been subjected to.
Prior to the release of this product, testing for lead exposure meant the extraction of blood samples. While this may not be too much of an inconvenience for adult subjects, children do not particularly respond well to this testing method. A vast majority of lead testing, however, is conducted among children, lead poisoning being the leading environmentally induced illness in children.
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In 1973, then Governor of the State of New York Nelson Rockefeller lobbied for strict drug laws in order to curb what was then considered as a heroin epidemic. What resulted are drug regulations that are considered as the stiffest in the country, which includes jail time even for offenders involved in non-violent drug cases and first-time user-offenders.
On Friday, though, New York state officials have agreed to loosen the reins on these harsh laws, partly in order to save the state more than just a few dollars as it tries to weather the economic downturn that is sweeping the country. The savings due to the modifications to the laws may reach up to a quarter of a billion dollars.
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We have previously reported on the harmful effects of foreign aid on Africa in regard to AIDS treatment vs. AIDS prevention and the exorbitant costs of treating AIDS.
In this article by Dambisa Moyo, Wall Street Journal:
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