MEDICAL-REFERENCE

Medical fundraising is the same as other fundraising campaigns – only the objective is to benefit all, and not just a specific group. Here are 10 effective ways to building a medical campaign that funds your needs.

1. Create Sympathetic Awareness

Whether you’re raising funds for cancer research, or to build a new wing to a children’s hospital, your campaign must generate a great deal of sympathy for your cause. Through Ads, banners, social media inserts, blogs and other media, make sure people see pictures of the patients who will benefit.

2. Know Your Donor Base

What draws donors to your program? Where do their sympathies lie? Which demographic is more likely to support your cause? Collect these statistics by studying the responses you get. Then target these groups specifically to get more mileage for your campaign.

3. Be Specific

List exactly what kind of equipment you want for your research, along with costs. If it’s a hospital building you’re constructing, share plans with details of wings, number of beds, what kind of treatment rooms are planned and so on. The more details you share, the more support you’ll get.

4. Determine Goals

Meet up with your hospital or research board and determine both long and short term goals. Then plan your fundraising campaign, setting all expectations beforehand. Stagger your goals – you may not be able to achieve them all in one single campaign.

5. Identify Key Players

Identify who’ll present the public face, and who’ll manage the backend and daily campaign tasks. Assign roles and responsibilities early on so that everyone’s in synch. Identify people for media handling, mailing, social media updates, planning committee, and volunteer rallying and so on.

6. Create A Blog

Write articles on how you’ll use the funds to benefit the public. Refer to the medical benefits that other campaigns have brought to society. Summarize technical details in a reader-friendly format; people need to know that you know what you’re talking about.

7. Stick To The Same Messaging

The general public may not understand a great deal of medical jargon. It’s important therefore, to stick to clear messaging, and ensuring that everyone on your team speaks on the same terms. It won’t do for one person to talk about X while another talks about Y.

8. Brainstorm Ideas

Ask everyone on your team to come up with ideas. Consider everything from silent auctions, merchandizing campaigns, and benefit concerts, videos, television Ads, print Ads, online banner Ads and so on. Always check each idea for feasibility, expense and possible outcomes.

9. Look For Endorsements

A celebrity endorsement can give your campaign a great deal of mileage. Look at Angelina Jolie standing for cancer research and Bono standing for AIDS research. Talk to celebrities who have personally experienced medical tragedies, and seek endorsement.

10. See What Other Organizations Are Doing

If other hospitals or medical charities are raising funds at the same time in your area, make sure the dates don’t clash. For example, if organization X is holding a marathon race to save children, choose another day to hold your event. In this way, you’ll get sole media attention.

Gagan works for Causewish.com , a medical fundraising website that helps you to easily raise money for your medical expenses.

In these days of unhealthy or junk foods, many people believe a diet with raw foods is an ultimate path to healthier lifestyle. They also believe a raw food diet can decrease the risk many diseases and lead a bulky dieter to a leaner figure with full of energy and smoother skin.

However, the scientific studies suggested that in some points, the raw food devotees are right about this diet, but long-term continuation could be a path to serious nutritional deficiencies.
So, is raw food diet healthy for our body? Are those beneficial facts about raw diet true? What are the nutritional deficiencies results from continuing a raw diet? Read on to find out some real answers based on the scientific study outcomes.

What is Raw Food Diet?

A diet consists of unprocessed or uncooked foods, mainly plant-based foods that are not heated above 115 degree Fahrenheit, is known as raw diet. In other words, a raw food diet is a specific type of diet in which a dieter needs to consume around 75% foods in a totally raw or natural state. Devotees believe this food style is the most wholesome for our health and it helps to retain the essential enzymes as well as nutrients of the foods.

Advantage of Raw Diet Based on Scientific Study Outcomes

Actually, there are not enough scientific studies done to evaluate the healthy benefits of consuming raw foods. In fact, only a few studies have attributed some positive points. Accordingly, in this post, I have discussed some of the most appreciated studies related to raw food diet.

A recent study on consumption of raw cruciferous vegetables, published by the American Association for Cancer Research, suggested that cruciferous vegetables might decrease the risk of bladder cancer, if consumed raw. According to the study findings, high temperature diminishes a potential bladder cancer preventive agent “isothiocyanates” from cooked cruciferous vegetables. Oppositely, raw cruciferous vegetables retain the potential compound isothiocyanates and based on the study outcome, consumption of cruciferous vegetables in raw state might be helpful in reducing bladder cancer risk.

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Top Reasons to Improve Body Strength and Prevent Injuries

Twisting an ankle, pulling a muscle or falling over can all seem like niggling problems at first, but over time they can develop into more serious problems and prevent you from partaking in exercise or your usual routine. Likewise 'stress' injuries such as stress fractures and problems like shin splints and runners' knee can also end up developing into chronic issues that never go away.

In other words, in many cases it's not the 'big' injuries that take us out of the game, but rather the smaller problems and the general wear and tear that take their toll on our body over time. The good news though is that there are many ways you can avoid these kinds of injuries, and by using the right exercises and habits it's possible to make your body more resilient to regular stress. Here we will look at how to do just that.

Stretching | The Art of Flexiblity

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Stretching regularly helps you to increase your flexibility over time and this can immediately make you less likely to pull a muscle or over extend. This is simply because you increase the range of movement you're capable of without hurting yourself meaning that it takes more of a slip to hurt yourself. Stretching right before exercise or physical activity will help you to avoid hurting yourself during that exertion, but generally stretching on a regular basis will increase your general flexibility so that you're less likely to hurt yourself even if you slip in the street with no warm up.

Muscle Strength | The Armour to Prevent Injuries

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Your muscles can help to increase your physical strength when it comes to lifting, pulling and pushing of course, but they can also help you to avoid injury from falls and twists and this works in a number of ways. For one, muscle provides you with an extra layer between your skin and your bones. This means that if you fall over you will have an extra layer of 'armour' to protect you.

Another benefit of muscle strength is that it will give you more stability meaning that you can prevent a fall or a twist. In particular this means thinking about your supporting muscles in your legs and your mid-section which are designed specifically for stabilizing your body and helping you to maintain your balance. To train these supporting muscles you need to use 'compound movements' which are movements like bench presses, squats ad clean and jerks that are designed to use multiple muscle groups at once.

Muscle Balance | The Vital Component to Injury Prevention

As well as muscle strength, what's also important is muscle balance. This means making sure that all your different muscle groups are developed to a similar level - and overdeveloping any single group can lead to injury on its own. For instance if you have very strong hamstrings and weaker quadriceps, this can actually cause knee problems by exerting uneven pressure on your knee cap. At the same time an uneven balance can of course make you more likely to fall over or injure yourself as you won't be able to balance so evenly.
When training it's very important to make sure that you train each and every muscle group, and that you don't neglect any area. Speak to the personal trainers in your gym and get them to help you devise a workout that addresses every separate part of your body.

Balanced Diet | A Lifestyle Choice to Prevent Injuries

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Your diet doesn't just affect the quality of your skin and your weight, it also affects your strength and resilience. A deficiency in magnesium or calcium for instance can lead to weak bones, while not getting enough protein will make it hard for you to build strong muscle. If you engage in any regular exercise, or you have proven prone to injury in the past, then maintaining a healthy and balanced diet is highly important.

Technique and Stance

If you engage in sport then using the wrong technique will make you more likely to injure yourself so it's important to perfect it and to check now and again that you aren't slipping into bad habits. Even every day activities have technique though, whether that means walking correctly to having the correct posture when sitting or standing. Make sure that you practice any regular movements and develop your muscle memory to make sure you're doing everything in an optimally stable fashion.

Author Bio: Linda Watson is a Physiotherapist in Perth. She is an enthusiatic person and believes in keeping herself fit at all times. She isn't a great believer in the trend of body building and feels that improving core strength and muscle strength is extremely importantin order to avoid injuries. She also gives quality advice about fitness on her blog.

Have you ever thought what antibiotic resistance is?
Do you know what could be the effect of taking antibiotics for a long time?

After reading the above two questions, a question may also arise in your mind – why you need to be concerned about antibiotic resistance? You need to know that antibiotic resistance is now considered as the real threat for our next generations. Improper administration and lack of proper knowledge about the fatal threat of antibiotics are now forwarding our next generations to the upcoming threat. As a result, it is an immense need that you must keep yourself concerned about the possible effects of resistance to antibiotics.

However, if you never heard the term antibiotic resistance or have less knowledge about the drug resistance fact, pay your full attention and carefully read this post to understand what antibiotic resistance is and the possible threat of antibiotic resistance.

What are Antibiotics?

Antibiotics are potential drugs that are frequently prescribed by physicians to kill or stop the growth of bacteria or microorganisms. It is usually prescribed, if your immune system is exposed to harmful microorganisms.

What is Antibiotic Resistance?

As I have mentioned above, antibiotics possess potential killing and inhibitory properties over bacteria and other microorganisms. When these microorganisms grow the ability to survive with the lethal doses of an antibiotic drug, it is called antibiotic resistance. More precisely, it is the loss of antibacterial properties of an antibiotic.

How Bacteria Grows the Ability of Resistance?

Image via Wikipedia

If you are not a medical professional or quite unfamiliar with the biological terms, it may be difficult for you to understand this mechanism properly. That’s why, I am writing this part in a non-academic style to make you understand the mechanism in an easier way.

The understanding of bacterial resistance to antibiotics will first require you to understand how antibiotics work. Usually, antibiotics kill or inhibit bacteria by inactivating or neutralizing an essential cell protein in bacteria. When bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, this essential protein is either removed or altered. Eventually, this changing in the essential protein of bacteria discourages antibiotics from attaching to the target site.

Over dosing of antibiotics and frequent consumption of antibiotics in diseases, where these drugs are not greatly required, are the major reasons for the bacterial resistance to antibiotics. You may know that from the beginning to the far end, every being in this world – either plant or animal – is going through and will go through continuous changing in genetic coding. The genetic material of bacteria is also going through spontaneous changing or mutation. As a result, these bacteria are not only upgrading with new genetic material but also improving their resistance to antibiotics. You need to know that these genetically altered bacteria are now preventing antibiotics from inactivating the specific protein. Many potential antibiotics have already lost their effectiveness over different gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Tetracycline and drugs of the first-generation and second-generation penicillin are the greatest example of drugs that have already lost effectiveness over several gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.

What are the Real Threats for Next Generation?

In fact, the bacterial resistance to antibiotics is due to random changing or spontaneous mutation in the genetic coding of the bacteria. In other words, it is an environmental or biological pressure for the bacteria to keep their existence from extinct. More frankly, if a bacterium fails to find out the survival techniques now, the next generation will obviously discover the techniques with improved genetic model. Consequently, the drugs that we are using now to kill or inhibit bacterial growth may not work in future.

As the bacteria are growing resistance to antibiotics, we need upgraded and more improved drugs to stop the bacterial growth in our body. Although, the scientific studies and researches are running in full throttle to discover new and improved antibiotics, but the antibiotic resistance is underlying a significant risk and danger to our next generation. As the potential drugs are losing effectiveness, misuse of these potential drugs may lead us to a day when we will not find any alternative to stop these bacteria.

Not many people realize how easy it is to come into contact with toenail fungus. You could easily get these funguses from someone else, if you have shared shoes or even walked barefoot where an affected person has walked. For this reason, it is important for you to take care of your feet on a regular basis. Accordingly, in this post, I have discussed five simple steps to proper foot care. Following these steps, you could easily keep your feet out of reach of funguses.

Washing your feet is necessary to proper foot care

Washing your feet properly will reduce your chances of getting toenail fungus and will help you keep your feet feeling fresh. You should wash your feet thoroughly every time you are in the shower. In addition, if you feel you have ever come in contact with someone who may have had a foot fungus, you should wash your feet right away. A little trick people use is when they wash their feet; they use epsom salts in the bath water or even in a foot spa. The epsom salt will help fight any pathogen lurking around. This is because pathogens can't live in an environment that has salt.

Avoid pedicures

Many people think that when they go to a salon to get a pedicure, that the salon's supplies are sanitized. The salon may claim they provide proper foot care. However, you are still taking the chance of microorganisms getting onto your feet. It's essential that if you really want a pedicure, you can either do it yourself, or make sure the salon will use your tools. If the salon refuses to use your tools, you should refrain from that particular place and find a salon that accepts your tools.

Avoiding gym lockers with bare-feet

Think twice before you go walking around a gym locker room floor without any socks and shoes. Because, these floors are filled with so many bacteria, funguses and other microorganisms and they could easily pass onto your feet. You may also get athlete's foot disease, if you walk on these floors with your bare-feet. Athlete's foot is very common, so you will want to do everything in your power to ensure you will not get this type of fungus.

Image via Wikipedia

Living with someone who has a foot fungus

If someone in your household recently has foot fungus, you may be freaking out thinking you will be doomed to get this fungus now. However, if you know the steps of proper foot care and apply them on a regular basis, you could keep yourself out of reach of these funguses. What you should do is use your own blanket, sheets, and towels for the time being. Also, make sure you are not walking around barefoot and they aren't either. Make sure they are doing something to get rid of this fungus. Every Time you take a bath or if you have a foot spa, make sure you apply some lemon or epsom salt to the water, it will work wonders to fight off the potential fungus if you have it on your feet.

How may you get rid of toenail fungus?

If you have toenail fungus, you may feel destined to have this fungus forever as it may seem like it will never go away. Many people have trouble getting rid of this fungus and keeping it away. However, there are many products available in market to proper foot care. You can buy these products over-the-counter. In addition, you can just use natural remedies such as previously mentions, lemon and epsom salt.

For Toenail Fungus Removal visit the clinic as soon as possible.

Everyone hates motion sickness. Most of the times, it comes unexpectedly and stays for a while.  Motion sickness can even come when you take any short trip on a car or by boat. That’s why you need to be prepared for the unexpected dizziness and fatigue symptoms. Small children are especially vulnerable to travel sickness. The symptoms would normally go away with age. If you’re tired or nervous you will be even more prone to getting the motion sickness.

Natural herbal remedies can help you in alleviating all these symptoms. Unlike the herbal remedies, a lot of motion sickness drugs may cause some side effects on your body. Ginger, liquorice, cayenne, catnip and black horehound are known for their medical qualities. So why not use the natural medicine for your advantage? All you need to do is to prepare a bag of natural medicine before the trip.

Valerian root

Valerian root is known for its soothing effect. It gently sedates your nervous system when you’re anxious. It can also alleviate travel anxiety that causes motion sickness. Root tincture is more effective than a dried root infusion. It would also help you fall asleep when on the plane.

Peppermint

Peppermint oils help in soothing your stomach. Have a cup of refreshing peppermint tea before the journey. You can also add a few drops of peppermint oil on your scarf or a handkerchief for the long road. The smell of the peppermint would calm you down.

Ginger

Just like peppermint, ginger has a soothing effect on your stomach. Chewing on a ginger root would definitely prevent any motion sickness symptoms. If you don’t like the taste of fresh ginger, then make some ginger tea and take it with you on a journey.

Chamomile

Chamomile will not only help you with a hangover, but also would ease your motion sickness pain. If you don’t like the bitter taste of the chamomile tea, choose a German brand of the tea – it has a milder taste.

Catnip

Catnip has a milder taste than peppermint. Your children would particularly like it. Volatile oil and tannins are the active elements of catnip. Its infusion would calm your nervous system down and reduce the travel sickness symptoms.

Liquorice root

Its anti-inflammatory qualities would deal with your motion sickness and fatigues symptoms. You can either take a liquorice tincture or a decoction before the trip. However, you should avoid taking it if you’re pregnant, or suffer from hypertension or diabetes.

Black horehound

Nice purple flowers of this herb would calm down your nervous system and help you in combating travel nausea and fatigue symptoms. The herbal infusion or a tincture of black horehound would make miracles when on a journey.

These simple herbal remedies would help you remain healthy when on a journey. A simple herbal tea or an infusion would soothe your stomach and alleviate the nausea. You can sweeten your herbal tea with a bit of honey, put it in the travel mug and enjoy the great taste when on the road. You can also put a bioband on your wrist to prevent any nausea. The combination of herbal remedies and bio bands would guarantee you a motion sickness-free trip.

Natural remedies against the motion sickness - This is a guest post by Ste Tasker.

Managing chronic pain can be a confusing proposition for patient and physician alike. So many medications are now available to treat chronic pain that it can be a bewildering prospect to sort through which are helpful and which are not. Some patients believe that jumping right to opioid medications is the best way to treat pain, and some would not ever take opioids no matter how intense their pain became. For doctors, a system was needed to fully wring the most pain relief from available analgesics.

To address this need, the World Health Organization developed the pain ladder. This is a systematic approach to pain medications, their administration, and pain relief. It involves slowly increasing the amount of medications used, and it ends with the strongest opioids available. By working a patient up the pain ladder, doctors and patients can find the best cocktail that controls pain with the least amount of opioids used.

Learn more about Analgesics.

Non-Opioid Analgesics

Non-opioid analgesics are generally the medications found over the counter. For instance, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as Advil and Aleve, should be used first when attempting to address a patient’s pain. Prescription strength alternatives to these over the counter NSAIDs, such as high dose ibuprofen, are also an important first step in the pain ladder. Some patients have great pain relief with these medications, but some experience no effect.

Learn more about Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

Strong NSAIDs are also available by prescription, such as Celebrex and Voltaren, and are also part of this rung of the ladder. They can sometimes treat pain when others do not. Aspirin and acetaminophen should not be ignored, either, as they can help some patients with mild pain.

Adjuvant Analgesics

Adjuvant analgesics are the newest members of the pain ladder family. These are medications that are traditionally used for other conditions, specifically depression and seizures. Although the usage of these medications for pain is a new concept, researchers have been testing their efficacy as analgesics for a long time. For instance, the tricyclic antidepressants, such as amitriptyline, have been researched for decades for their usage against chronic pain.

Newer depression medications are also used for pain relief. In fact, Cymbalta is the first drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of chronic pain. Anti-seizure medications are helpful, particularly for nerve related pain. Gabapentin’s ability to treat peripheral neuropathy has been well documented, but recent drugs in this category, such as Lyrica, are even more effective as treatments. When these drugs are combined with a non-opioid analgesic, it can often control the manifestation of chronic pain.

Weak Opioids

Weak opioids are medications that have a small amount of narcotic medication in them, but they are usually combined pharmacologically with a non-opioid analgesic. Medications in this subset include codeine, Darvocet, dihydrocodeine, and Tramadol. These medications are generally prescribed for mild pain, but when they are combined with the non-opioid and adjuvant analgesics, they often completely relieve pain.

The weaker opioids have less risk of side effects, such as nausea, constipation, and sedation. They also have less risk of dependency, and this makes them attractive as treatment for chronic conditions. It is the combined effect of this medication with the previous two categories that forms a cocktail that is quite effective against moderate to severe pain.

Strong Opioids

Strong opioids are used when the previous medications fail to control pain. These medications include morphine, hydrocodone, oxycodone, and fentanyl, among many others. When prescribing these medications, the weaker opioid is replaced with the stronger one, and the non-opioid and adjuvant remain in place. This allows for the prescriber to use the least amount of the strong opioid as possible.

Of course, the usage of strong opioids has side effects. Many patients report feeling nausea, and the sedation is often severe. In addition, constipation is an important concern, because high dose opioids can slow down the gastrointestinal tract. This usually is addressed with stool softeners and laxatives. The possibility of dependency is greater with these medications, although it is less likely when they are taken as prescribed.

Climbing the Ladder

The pain ladder is used in a systematic fashion to achieve the best possible pain relief with the least powerful drugs. All pain patients are initially started with non-opioids. In fact, they may be self-medicating with them over the counter, but prescription strength NSAIDs should still be attempted for efficacy. If they do not work, then an adjuvant is added. Many adjuvants are specific to nerve pain, and they may not be helpful for other conditions. In addition, some adjuvants carry serious side effects, so they must be used with caution.

The next step is to add a weak opiate to the current cocktail. Some researchers question the usefulness of this step because many weak opiates are ineffective and carry the risk of certain toxicities. However, their low risk of dependency makes them a viable alternative before stronger opiates are used. The final step is to use strong opiates, starting out with very small doses. The dosage is then increased until the pain is controlled or the side effects are intolerable. This medication is generally used alongside the adjuvant and non-opioid to attack the pain from as many angles as possible.

This article was created by BASIC Spine which is a California based chronic pain management and surgical institute Founded by Dr. Ty. We specialize in helping people from all over the world with their pain and can provide answers to complex pain that other doctors are unable to diagnose.

Last month (December 18, 2012), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a new press release, warning five LASIK (Laser-Assisted in Situ Keratomieusis) providers to discontinue the misleading advertising and promotion.

According to FDA warning, the agency found that the following five provides were not providing sufficient information about the associated risks of Lasik surgery in their promotional tools and advertisements.



Furthermore, the agency reported that the above five providers were also lacking proper information about adverse events and warnings. According to the press release, the agency also warned these eye care providers about legal proceedings. The FDA might take legal actions like injunction, seizure and civil money penalties, if these providers do not make required changes in their advertisement and promotions.

You need to know that:

Lasik surgery can provide some serious effects to your eyes including dry eye syndrome, temporary loss of vision and symptoms of debilitating visual like starbursts, double vision, glare and halo.
Lasik surgery is irreversible and the outcome of this surgery may not always achieve the optimum results.
The agency also recommends that patients who want take the Lasik surgery must consult with a proficient eye care specialist about their expectations, associated risks and possible side effects of the surgery.

Disclosure: Sponsored

Boston laser is a pioneer Laser Eye Surgery Center based in Boston, USA. They also have braches in UK and Middle East. Over the past few years, the Boston laser Group has maintained an excellent reputation among their clients. The specialists of this eye care group have extensive clinical experience and sophisticated training in Lasik surgery. They have the best renowned eye surgeons to perform the surgery.

Dr Samir Melki MD PhD of this group is one of renowned eye surgeons in USA and UK. He is currently working at Harvard Medical School as a clinical faculty. In addition, he has a professional experience of conducting thousands of procedures on laser eye surgery. Lasik Boston (the Boston Eye Group) and Dr. Samir Melki is among the first eye care providers in New England to offer Femtosecond laser-Assisted Cataract Surgery.