Vision Eyecare Lasik Health and Medical News/Updates

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Dr. Ned Calonge knows firsthand how hard it is to tell Americans they'd be better off with fewer routine medical tests. A long-time family doctor in Colorado, Calonge presided over the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force…

View full post on Yahoo! Health News

A handful of drugmakers are racing to develop a new class of medicines they believe could be the biggest weapon against heart disease since statins were introduced in the 1980s.

View full post on Yahoo! Health News

After six years braving England's frigid winters, a tropical disease was the last thing Chelsea's injury-prone striker Didier Drogba thought would keep him on the sidelines of the Premier League.

View full post on Yahoo! Health News

Smokers stubbed out their cigarettes in tapas bars and restaurants across Spain as one of Europe's strictest anti-tobacco laws came into force on Sunday.

View full post on Yahoo! Health News

The World Health Organization laid out a new plan on Wednesday to combat tuberculosis and the nearly 2 million deaths it causes each year through a combination of better testing, diagnosis and drugs.

View full post on Yahoo! Health News

Police say Hungary’s top investigative agency is taking over the inquiry into the toxic sludge reservoir that burst, flooding several towns in western Hungary and killing at least four people.

View full post on Yahoo! Health News

Have you taken responsibility for your health and fitness? No. Then you need to. If you don’t, illness and lack of health will take responsibility for you. In this first part of a two part article, I explain why your current health and fitness is a direct result of your decisions and actions.

Who has influence over how fit and healthy you are? Whose decisions and actions have brought you to the level of health and fitness you have at the moment? The answer to both these questions is “You do” and “You.”

You are responsible for your health and fitness. You and no-one else. “What about my doctor, or gym instructor? Is it not their responsibility?”

No! They are merely responsible for prescribing or advising in very specific circumstances, and usually to correct a problem. Correcting a problem does not create health and fitness, it just removes a problem. You are responsible for your health and fitness, not your doctor or gym instructor.

It is very important for you to realize that the levels of health and fitness that you will enjoy (or suffer from) in the future, will be down to the decisions and actions that you take. It is your responsibility.

Your current and future health and fitness is not the result of chance. You have got the results you have chosen, and you will have the results you chose.

Look at these figures. Smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise reduces your life span by about a decade. Not doing exercise for 30 minutes every day reduces you life span by about 5 years.

You decide not to exercise, not to eat healthily, and you decide to smoke. You decide to die a decade early.

You decide to exercise for half an hour a day, eat a good diet, and be a non smoker. You decide to live an extra decade.

Powerfully Positive People, know that your actions are like picking up a stick. You chose to pick up a stick by the near end, but when you pick up one end of the stick, you also end up picking up the other end. The two ends are inseparable. When you make a decision, you chose to act in a certain way today, here and now. You know the here and now result. The other end of the stick is often years off. The effects of your decision will be felt in the future but are for now out of sight (and out of mind?).

Let me give you an example. When I used to smoke, I picked up the near end of the stick, i.e. satisfying my nicotine craving. I also unwittingly was picking up the negative health effects of the other end of my decision. If I had kept smoking, one of these effects would have been to possibly go blind in my later years (smoking is one of the biggest causes of premature blindness in the western world. It was this fact that prompted me to successfully give up smoking).

So, you are responsible for your health and fitness results, and no one else. Where you are today is the direct result of what you have decided in the past.

In the second part to this article, I will show you how you weaken yourself by not taking responsibility, and how you automatically empower yourself when you do take responsibility. I also share the FIRST BIG STEP you need to take as soon as you have admitted, “I am responsible.”

In the first part to this article I showed you how your health and fitness results are a direct result of your health and fitness decisions. You are responsible whether you like it or not. In this second part to the article, I share with you what all Powerfully Positive People know, hat is how saying you are not responsible robs you of your health and fitness power, while taking responsibility, give you all the power you need. Plus I share the one big step you need to take as soon as you have taken responsibility.

When you do not take responsibility for you health and fitness, you rob yourself of the majority of your power over your health and fitness. You may say “I am this way because of my genes, or my metabolism.” Well what influence do you have over your genes or metabolism? Very little or none. If you grant power over your health and fitness to external influences your outlook is bleak. You have no chance. The world is a scary place, and you are at its mercy.

On the other hand, if you say “My genes and metabolism are just an influence on me, and I am ultimately responsible for my health and fitness” you claim back your power (didn’t you feel a little of that power as your read those words?). The world is a brighter place and you can for the most part, chose what you do, where you go, and what you achieve.

Those who have taken responsibility for their health and fitness are plain to see. They are the sports stars, and athletes that are idolised (don’t you have a favourite sport’s hero?), or those fit people that you know which everyone takes notice of and admires. Every one of these people has taken responsibility for their health and fitness.

Once you tell yourself that you are responsible for your health and fitness, and that you are able to work with influences such as genes, metabolism, or the lingering effects of past illnesses or injuries, you must take THE FIRST BIG STEP.

What is this first big step?

It is to start getting yourself a health and fitness education.

Most people’s health and fitness education stopped the moment they left school, or college. Your health education should be a life long study, rather than just a few years in formal education. Rather than your teachers being responsible for your education, you need to realise that you need to be responsible, and responsible on an on going basis for the rest of your life. It is only by acquiring this knowledge will you know how to act to ensure that you become healthy and fit and remain so for the rest of your life (like me learning about the effects of smoking on my sight).

And it is not difficult. Taken a little bit at a time over the rest of your life, it is easy, and becomes, enjoyable and second nature. Health knowledge is all around. In newspapers, magazines, on the television, books, and on the internet. And as soon as you tell yourself that you want to learn what you are reading, you will automatically take more in and remember it more. And the more times you read something, the more it sinks in. Make yourself the habit of reading every health and fitness article twice. You’ll be amazed at the results.

What about the maze and masses of often conflicting information out there? Well, I can tell you from experience that this is a little bit of a myth. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll find that the maze is not as big as you expected it to be.

So decide today to become a Powerfully Positive Person, and empower yourself by taking responsibility for your health and fitness, and start getting your lifelong health and fitness education.

GlaxoSmithKline and its partner Shionogi are progressing a new drug against HIV into final-stage clinical testing, ramping up competition in a class of AIDS drugs known as integrase inhibitors.

View full post on Yahoo! Health News

Liquid Vitamins/Supplements- why are they becoming so popular today? There are several reasons for the popularity of liquid nutrition that will be discussed in this article. However, it is necessary to first point out that it is essential for everyone to take nutritional supplements in some form every day. Our body cannot make vitamins and minerals by itself, so we are all responsible with supplementing our diets with the vitamins and minerals that our bodies need. We can get these essential vitamins in one of two forms: liquid vitamins or pill form vitamins. There has been an increase in the popularity of liquid vitamins recently with increasing complexity and new age ingredients that go beyond simple vitamins to include antioxidants, herbal extracts, and other specialized ingredients that promote general health and well being. So, what are the benefits to liquid vitamins? First, remember when you were a kid and they had to force you to take your nutritional health supplements? This is nothing new, as no one likes to swallow a giant vitamin. Large, pill form vitamins are a nuisance, and people often avoid taking their vitamins because they have to choke down a large pill. With liquid nutrition, this issue obviously does not exist. Almost everyone can swallow a liquid supplement with no trouble. So, the first and most important pro of liquid vitamins is that they are easier to take. Second, the delivery system of liquid vitamins is much faster. Liquid is more easily absorbed into the body than pill form supplements. As soon as liquid vitamins hit a person’s tongue, the process of absorption begins, and the liquid vitamins can begin taking effect immediately. 

The third pro of liquid vitamins is that they only need to be taken once a day instead of three times a day, as some pill vitamins require. Fewer doses per day are cheaper, as it requires a person to purchase less of the liquid vitamins than one would have to purchase with pill vitamins. Fewer doses per day are also beneficial to the person who has a sensitive stomach, because there are fewer opportunities for liquid vitamins to cause stomach upset. Now more than ever, it is essential that everyone supplement the food that they eat with vitamins and minerals. Whether this supplement is taken in the form of liquid vitamins or pill vitamins is largely a personal decision. However, as this article has pointed out, the benefits of liquid supplements most likely outweigh the drawbacks. Taking Liquid Nutrition Mainstram Although there have been Liquid Supplements on the market for some time, they have not yet been accepted as mainstream, until now. A new product called Vitavegamin is set to change all that. Similar to RedBull that set the pace for the energy drink category, Vitavegamin is set to do for liquid nutritional supplements. High grade supplements that have proven health protection and benefit are alternatively refered to as Alternative health care. People turn to unconventional therapies and herbal remedies for everything from hot flashes and trouble sleeping to cancer and heart disease. They crave more “care” in their health care. Alternative medicine, including the use of nutritional supplements, is slowly becoming accepted by a growing number of health care insurers. In just the past few years more insurers have started offering patients limited coverage for such practices as acupuncture, nutritional counseling and other complementary or alternative forms of care. Quality and scientific formulations are the key. Vitavegamin is a premium blend of high grade vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other ingredients to maintain general health and well being, produce in an FDA approved GMP facility. Just as hundreds of energy drinks attempted to follow the footsteps of RedBull, there will be others who will follow the footsteps of Vitavegamin. For more information visit www.vitavegamin.com