How has Obamacare affected our health insurance? Especially for those individuals who were commonly rejected because of prior health conditions? Now everyone is eligible for health insurance, so how does that affect the big picture?
Will we ever be able to repair damage to spinal cords? This would benefit so many individuals suffering from paralysis. How close are we to this development?
Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is plaguing the world. It is a rapidly mutating virus that affects millions of people. Now there is hope for developing a vaccine to prevent transmission.
I've often felt such heartache for pediatric patients undergoing chemotherapy, not only because of the obvious sadness that accompanies cancer, but also because they wouldn't be able to have children later in life. Is what I had thought true? How does chemotherapy actually affect fertility later in life?
This article is pretty impressive. I, for one, cannot handle drinking energy drinks. I drank some when I was in college and they always made me feel jittery and wired (I guess that's the point though, right!). This article talks about the potential side effects that most teenagers and young adults don't know about energy drinks. The most astounding fact was that "consuming just one energy drink with alcohol may be equivalent to drinking a whole bottle of wine and several cups of coffee." Hello!? Maybe you'll rethink your energy drinks next time.
Have you ever wondered about exercising during your pregnancy and the potential benefits? I've always thought about that concerning the benefits to the mom, but not ever though about the benefits for the baby in the oven. This article discusses the enhanced brain function of babies whose mothers exercised for 20 minutes three times a week throughout their pregnancy. Pretty neat!
Sepsis is definitely the number one killer of patients in my medical/surgical ICU. Most of our patients come in because of some kind of infection that their bodies cannot fight on their own. Usual symptoms that these types of patients exhibit are tachycardia (high heart rate), fever, and hypotension (low blood pressure). We place patients on vasopressor medications (medications to increase blood pressure) and on antibiotics. Then we wait to see if their bodies will recover from the infection or if they will continue to get worse. This article is about a biomarker than can be identified to show whether or not patients have bacteria in their blood (in other words "sepsis").
This is a quick read about a few things that you can do to get healthy now! Some of them seem a little goofy, but the majority seem like they are right on beat. Take a look!
Unfortunately the first death of the season has already happened. The flu season affects everyone a great deal, but especially nurses! Flu patients can have some of the most complex disease processes especially if they go into full blown acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Hopefully this winter isn't as bad as the last.
I've always thought that laughing is one of the best ways to relieve stress. You can be stressed to the max and find relief in someone telling a funny joke! In this article it talks about the hormone cortisol and the negative effects that it has on memory retention. Cortisol is released when the body is stressed. Why not get rid of a little of our own Cortisol and laugh a little more?
