Search
Related Links

 

 

Informative Articles

Enhance your Sexual Life
SEXUAL HEALTH : Some researchers believe one of the major causes of impotence in males is high or low blood sugar, caused by eating foods high in sugar and empty carbohydrates. A typical fast food diet such as a hamburger, fries and a coke with a...

Ephedra: It's Not Just for Weight Loss Anymore
Americans are buzzing about the FDA’s recent decision to reverse the ban on ephedra and ephedrine supplements in the United States. Known as the “world’s oldest medicine,” ephedra has been used for thousands of years for its variety of healing...

Natural Health Secrets
I don't like to take off-the-counter drugs for common illnesses like colds, headaches or stomach upsets. I have always relied on natural remedies like honey for stomach upsets or lemon tea for colds and good old sleep for headaches. I think that...

Non-Allergenic Acne Treatment Products
Having acne can be seriously detrimental to your self- esteem. This is why trying to find the best treatment for this rather common problem is important. When you buy acne treatment products, you often aren't aware of whether they will cure...

The Healing Power of Natures Herbs
In today's world doctors and medicines are the ones we trust when it comes to our health matters. Medical progress is good news for all of us, but I've got good news too! Nature, our oldest doctor, has simple solutions to treat many cases...

 
The Challenge of Aging

Growing older is challenging enough, but trying to get a handle on medical breakthroughs that might actually improve our lives, breakthroughs that might even save our lives is overwhelming. Never mind the hundreds of press releases that churn out of university research labs, private enterprise and government think tanks, never mind the barrage of television talks shows that naively and implicitly endorse an abundance of untested consumer fads and follies every waking day.

With mountains of medical information, much of it accurate and some not, individuals with access to the Web and other health information resources are starting to wonder whether or not the family Doctor has the latest research in hand. We start to wonder: Is our doctor aware of the latest clinical trial affecting our malady? Maybe he is, maybe not.

Our doctors and other health support personnel are highly skilled, naturally talented individuals who are also overworked, are being asked to take on more responsibility everyday. The knowledge base we are building about disease, genetics and biomedical research is simply explosive. Even as universities and teaching hospitals exploit technology as best they can to empower their students, knowledge overload is limiting the very capabilities we are trying to improve upon. While medical students can take advantage of the support of their school's resources, how does the mid-career health professional keep attuned to all of the relevant advances in their specialty? Like it or not, we need to take more responsibility for understanding our health. It means learning to tell the difference between the science of medicine and the politics of healthcare.

We must learn to discern among our own conflicting attitudes about our health: we may be angry about the high cost of medicines, but we still welcome the health benefits from having them. The wait in the doctor's office may indeed be the result of a


poorly managed healthcare system, but much of the treatment you receive there is the culmination of many years of pure scientific research. It is essential we take the time to know the difference.

Who are the people that need this information most? The answer is simple: the terminally ill, the chronically afflicted and the elderly. Burdened with the reality of disease and declining quality of life, real discovery and its application should be the paramount mission of the caregiving community. Aside from the immediate need of these people, all of us need to better understand our bodies, the possibility of disease, the complexities of our imperfect health care system and what to expect as we move through our own life cycle. No matter who we are, we are in need of an ongoing education in science, regardless of our station or our age, our lives depend on it.

As a community, we need to discover new ways to communicate, we need new ways to archive, store and retrieve accurate data, we need new ways to disseminate timely scientific information and do it in a way that can be accessed and understood by a less educated population. We need a new focus on interpretation, education and dissemination.

As individuals, we need to learn how to express ourselves more effectively, we need to articulate our concerns and shed the Godlike reverence we have for doctors and replace it with a real respect for their abilities, experience and limitations. Most importantly, we need to begin doing it for ourselves.
About the Author

Gary Bryant, a consumer health advocate, is the executive producer of the award winning web resource, BreakThroughDigest.com. He is also the author of Searching The Web for Health, A Guide to Reliable Medical Informat

 

National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health
Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine offers access to health information for consumer, patient, and physicians ...
www.nlm.nih.gov
 
Health and Medical Information produced by doctors - MedicineNet.com
Doctor-produced health and medical information written for you to make informed decisions about your health concerns.
www.medicinenet.com
 
Medicine in the Yahoo! Directory
Collection of sites for health professionals, with sections on specific disciplines, organizations, continuing education, conferences, publications, ...
dir.yahoo.com
 
MedlinePlus Health Information from the National Library of Medicine
Health information from the National Library of Medicine. Easy access to Medline and Health topics, medical dictionaries, directories and publications.
medlineplus.gov
 
Medicine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Medicine is a branch of health science and the sector of public life ... The practice of medicine combines both science as the evidence base and art in the ...
en.wikipedia.org
 
Journal Home - Nature Medicine
Nature Medicine has a vacancy for a Locum Assistant Editor for six months. The position involves working in all aspects of the editorial process, ...
www.nature.com
 
The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles on ...
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly general medical journal that publishes new medical research findings, review articles, and editorial ...
content.nejm.org
 
eMedicine Clinical Knowledge Base
eMedicine features up-to-date, searchable, peer-reviewed medical journals, online physician reference textbooks, and a full-text article database in 62 ...
www.emedicine.com
 
Open Directory - Health: Medicine
the entire directory, only in Health/Medicine. Top: Health: Medicine (11429). Description · Medical Specialties (4888); Surgery (2265) ...
dmoz.org
 
the www virtual library biosciences medicine
www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/wwwvl/ - Similar pages
 
Medicine - home
Bimonthly journal covering the latest results in clinical investigation relevant to hospital and office practice.
www.md-journal.com
 
Institute of Medicine
The Institute of Medicine serves as adviser to the nation to improve health.
www.iom.edu
 
ScienceDaily: Health & Medicine News
Medical Research News. Health news on everything from cancer to nutrition. Full-text, images, updated daily.
www.sciencedaily.com
 
Google Directory - Health > Medicine
Search only in Medicine Search the Web. Medicine. Health > Medicine, Go to Directory Home. Categories. Alternative Medicine (6308) Basic Sciences (66) ...
www.google.com
 
the world wide web virtual library biosciences medicine
www.mcb.harvard.edu/biopages/medicine.html - Similar pages
 
PLoS Medicine - A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal
PLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal published ... Every issue of PLoS Medicine contains a selection of readers' responses. ...
medicine.plosjournals.org
 
Medicine On-Line - Medicine Online -The International Medical Journal
Medicine Online - independent and peer reviewed journal published by Priory Medical Journals - priory.com.
www.priory.com
 
Entrez PubMed
PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
Stanford University School of Medicine
Home Page of the Stanford University School of Medicine.
med.stanford.edu
 
Medicine OnLine
Meds.com offers medical information and education on cancer (lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, leukemia) and HIV / AIDS for patients, ...
www.meds.com