Authoritative sites for health information

American Academy of Family Physicians - A very good site with health information and health tools

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - U.S. national health statistics and public health information

ClinicalTrials.gov - A place to find clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health. Participation is free for those trials which are actually conducted at the National Institutes of Health

Dr. Koop - A good site for general health information

HealthWeb - An alphabetical directory leading to a wide variety of health information topics

Mayo Clinic Health Information

Medicine Net - Health information and news, written by doctors

National Institutes of Health

Medline Plus Health Information from the National Library of Medicine

Oral Health - The American Dental Hygienist Association's site. See also links at the National Institutes of Health site to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research

Pediatric Health Information - Also, see the National Institutes of Health site and the Healthweb site

Senior Health - Information from the National Institutes of Health

Teen Health - Also, see the National Institutes of Health site

WebMD - Health information and news

Virtual Hospital - A digital library of health information

Women’s Health - Extensive information on women's health at the United States Government's site for The National Women's Health Information Center

World Health Organization - Includes information on travel health

Top Sites for Health News

These sites have been selected among top news sites that do not require a subscription or membership.

ABC News - Health
Broad coverage of health stories, divided into useful categories.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Health and Science
Selected interesting news stories

BBC Health News
Good quality health stories, but narrower focus

CBS Health News
Selected, interesting news stories. Information on a limited number of special topics.

CNN Health
A variety of health stories

Environmental Health News
Health news with an environmental slant

Harvard - World Health News
News from around the world with a public health slant

Medline Plus News By Date
This has extensive news stories sorted by date and also alphabetically by topic

MSNBC Health
A good variety of health stories and health library

USA Today - Health and Behavior
Good source of major health stories, marred by pop-up ads

Please post comments on these sites.

Women's health

Remarkable strides were made in women’s health over an extended period of time. Semmelweis in the 1800’s advocated hand washing with a chlorine containing solution to prevent the infections of the mother after childbirth. Despite his success in decreasing the rate of maternal infections, this was rejected by colleagues. Fortunately, Lister later introduced antiseptics and hospital infections declined. Within the last century, advances in gynecological and obstetrical surgical techniques, the Pap smear and mammography have contributed to women’s health.

But, only recently has it been realized that a number of common medical problems may present differently in women than in men. Coronary artery disease often has different symptoms in women than in men. It is a major cause of death in women over 65 years of age. Some medications, such as pain medications, may have different effectiveness between the sexes. Depression is more common in women. The Women’s Health PHS website has extensive information on and links to sites on women’s health issues. It also has a section on men’s health. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Public website is also a useful source of information.

Anxiety

Anxiety can be divided into five categories: 1) Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD); 2) Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD); 3) Panic disorder; 4) Post-traumatic stress disorder and 5) Social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder.

• GAD goes beyond ordinary anxiety and worry. The concerns can be about minor everyday things or a feeling of anxiety without any obvious reason at all.
• OCD is a disorder in which a person’s life are taken over by obsessive thoughts and a compulsion to carry out certain actions. A typical example is that of Lady MacBeth washing her hands over and over again. More recently, the life of Howard Hughes as depicted in the movie Aviator shows the terrible toll of the disorder. For an interesting article, which begins perhaps harshly regarding the achievements of one of the most accomplished men of his era, see this link on Howard Hughes and OCD.
• Panic disorder strikes suddenly with a feeling of great fear or terror. The heart pounds. Those affected may feel dizzy, faint, weak and sweaty. After such an attack they may experience heightened anxiety, including the fear that the attack will happen again.
• Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs after event where serious harm was threatened or actually occurred.
• Social phobia is excessive anxiety and self-consciousness in everyday social situations.

The anxiety disorders may be associated with depression and other mental health problems. It is good to rule out physical health problems first. Then various forms of psychotherapy, mainly behavioral and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may be used. Medications such as the antidepressants and others may be used according which type of anxiety disorder is present. For more information on anxiety see these sites National Institute of Mental Health and Infra Psych.

More on depression

Depression can be treated. Good overviews on depression may be found at the National Institute of Mental Health and Infra Psych websites. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a scientifically proven treatment, was briefly described in an earlier post. CBT involves homework, often with a workbook, and is best done with an experienced therapist. But, it has been used in milder forms of depression as a form of self help. Workbooks by Dr. Aaron Beck, Dr. David Burns and others are available. The Mindstreet website has a computer based CBT program with a very good demo. The Infra Psych website has a detailed description of CBT. A general site with links to information on CBT, depression, mental health, and other health issues can be found at the Web4Health site. It has a number of interactive tools and questionnaires.

Should happiness be a goal for society?

Yes! Richard Layard, one of Britain’s foremost economists, puts forward this view in his new book “Happiness: lessons from a new science.” A major goal of society should be to maximize happiness and the economy should be structured toward this end.

Maximizing economic output has often been accomplished at the expense of happiness. Current economic policies are counter-productive to the extent that increasing output is accomplished by:

• increasing social mobility (which tends to weaken families and close social ties and increase crime);
• increasing status seeking;
• and ignoring the major causes of happiness: family relationships; financial situation; work; community and friends; and health.

Layard points out that mental illness is common and one of the major causes of unhappiness in the world today. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, disproportionately low spending is dedicated toward the treatment of mental health problems.

What can we do about the rat race?

Richard Layard puts forward a number of solutions. I‘m not an economist, but given below is my take on some of his views expressed in “Happiness: lessons from a new science.” The suggestions are geared towards society rather than individuals. But individuals can work for changes in society and policies.

• Decrease competition for status. Status seeking occurs across species, so it is wired into us. But encouraging excessive competition can make matters worse.
• Re-think unbridled consumerism for its own sake. Consumers are also producers. If a society consumes more, people will have to produce more.
• More taxes, carefully applied, can contribute to leveling status, provide an incentive for polluters to lower pollution, and pay for the consequences of addictions, such as smoking and alcohol. Tax can contribute toward the happiness of society.
• Cultivate respect for those who contribute to the welfare of others.
• Put less emphasis on performance-related pay; true performance is not so easy to measure. Performance-related pay tends to increase competition for status. Instead emphasize professionalism.
• Tone down advertising - especially where it targets children, enhances status seeking, or takes advantage of anxiety or low self-esteem.
• Increase cooperation.

Go to the following site for more on the topic of happiness.

Life

Will money make us happier?

More money helps, but does it make us happier? Richard Layard, one of Britain’s foremost economists in his new book “Happiness: lessons from a new science” examines from an economic point of view the implications of recent scientific advances in understanding happiness. He provides a fairly comprehensive discussion of the ideas below in his book (see books listed to right of the page) and to a lesser extent in this link to a lecture:

• Surprisingly, happiness can be measured using reliable questionnaires.
• The electrical activity and images of the brain in action relate well to subjective reports of happiness.
• Layard points out that while real income rose steadily from the late 1940s to the year 2000, the percentage of very happy people remained unchanged. Comparing happiness and income position across nations shows a similar pattern.
• After rising above poverty, having more money has a decreasing effect on happiness. In part this is because of a tendency to look at people above us in income.
• Seven factors affect happiness: 1) family relationships; 2) financial situation; 3) work; 4) community and friends; 5) health; 6) personal freedom and 7) personal values. He notes that the first 5 are in order of importance.
• Loss of important relationships tends has a relatively large effect on decreasing happiness, for example, divorce and separation. Loss of work and loss of health also have large negative effects. In general it seems that losing something has a larger negative impact on happiness than gaining has a positive effect.
• Across countries happiness can largely be explained by divorce rate, unemployment rate, level of trust, membership in non-religious organizations, quality of government, and fraction believing in God.

See the following posting for more on happiness.

Depression

Depressed? If so, you are not alone. There is a growing epidemic of depression. Everyone can get the blues, but it becomes depression when the blues are severe or stay too long. Being tired, waking early in the morning and unable to get back to sleep, not enjoying activities that used to be fun, and feeling down for extended periods can be part of depression.

If you, or anyone you know, is feeling so bad that they are thinking of committing suicide, then it is essential to get treatment. This is not to suggest that anyone should delay treatment until they are suicidal. Mostly, treatment involves medications and talk therapy.

In general, antidepressant medications, such as Prozac, increase the available amount of serotonin in the brain. In depression, the brain produces low levels of serotonin, a chemical that some nerve cells in the brain produce to communicate with other nerve cells.

Talk therapy today is very successful, and often as good or better than medications. Combining talk and drugs works even better. The two talk therapies with the most data to support them are interpersonal therapy and Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT was developed by Dr. Aaron Beck and rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) by Dr. Albert Ellis. CBT and REBT are similar. Both methods essentially are based on the idea that an adverse event triggers automatic negative thoughts. The thoughts result in depressed or anxious feelings. The activating event and the negative thoughts can be written down and examined. Then the negative thoughts can be countered with a more true, fair or useful interpretation of the events. An example of how CBT works was given in the previous post. CBT has also been popularized by Dr. David Burns and by Dr. Martin Seligman. Dr. Seligman started from an interest in learned helplessness and optimism.

For more on this topic see the following posting: More on depression.