“More Women Are Investing in IUDs after President Trump’s Election” plus 4 more Health

“More Women Are Investing in IUDs after President Trump’s Election” plus 4 more Health – TIME

More Women Are Investing in IUDs after President Trump’s Election
Mary Tyler Moore Showed How to Live Well With Type 1 Diabetes
What Happens When Doctors Only Take Cash
Why Jet Lag Is Worse than You Think
5 Mantras to Help You Become Calm and Confident

More Women Are Investing in IUDs after President Trump’s Election

Posted: 26 Jan 2017 08:11 AM PST

The number of women who visited their doctor to discuss intrauterine devices (IUDs), a form of long-acting reversible contraception, rose nearly 19% after Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States.

New data from the electronic health record company AthenaHealth shows that out of one million patient doctor’s visits examined within the AthenaHealth network between October and December 2016, visits that coded for IUD management or insertion rose about 19%.The researchers said that it was the first time in five years that a spike in visits related to IUDs increased in November and December.

After the election, recommendations for women to get IUDs spread widely on social media. IUDs are considered highly effective, with only a 0.2% to 0.8% typical use failure rate (compared to an 18% failure rate for condoms and 9% rate for the pill). There remains concern that Republicans’ plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act could get rid of birth control coverage without copays, especially since the Trump Administration has not released a new health care plan.

Birth control pills can cost anywhere from $160 to $600 each year, while IUDs and other long-lasting forms of birth control can range from $500 to $1,000. However, IUDs last for years after they’ve been inserted. Hormonal IUDs can last around three to six years depending on the brand, and the non-hormonal IUD can last up to 12 years.

“The morning after the election we had an immediate uptick in calls from women who were concerned about the election,” Gretchen Borchelt, the vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center, told Vox.

As TIME has previously reported, American women have been slow to adopt the IUD compared to women in other countries, largely due to bad reactions from early versions of the method. Today, the IUD is considered safe and effective. Studies have also shown that more women choose the IUD or other long-acting contraceptives if money is not a barrier.

Mary Tyler Moore Showed How to Live Well With Type 1 Diabetes

Posted: 26 Jan 2017 07:45 AM PST

Actress and activist Mary Tyler Moore passed away yesterday at the age of 80. No cause of death was immediately available, but Moore spoke publicly for many years about her struggle with type 1 diabetes, with which she was diagnosed at age 33.

In a statement, Moore’s rep referred to her as “a groundbreaking actress, producer, and passionate advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.” She had served as International Chairman for the foundation, now known as JDRF, since 1984.

“Mary Tyler Moore’s legacy is that of a woman who tirelessly committed herself to helping the millions with T1D,” said JDRF in a statement. “Over the past 30 years, Moore educated about and increased awareness of T1D around the world and raised millions of dollars for research that will one day lead to a cure. Among her efforts, Moore was actively involved in JDRF Children’s Congress, sitting alongside children diagnosed with T1D to share their stories with elected officials on Capitol Hill and demonstrate the importance of continued T1D research funding.”

According to the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus magazine, Moore’s frequent lobbying visits to Congress over the years helped increase JDRF’s research budget to more than $1 billion.

Moore became active in diabetes advocacy after she was diagnosed with the lifelong disease herself. In 1997, she told the Archive of American Television that her diabetes was discovered when she was in the hospital after suffering a miscarriage.

“While normal blood sugar levels are to be somewhere between 70 and 110, mine was 750,” she said. “They were amazed I was still walking around. And to this day they don’t know which came first, the miscarriage or the diabetes—which caused the other’s onset.”

Moore later told MedlinePlus that she was “incredulous” when she first received her diagnosis. “I was, after all, a very healthy and active adult, and I didn’t ever expect something like that to happen to me,” she said in 2006.

It’s a common misconception that people with diabetes are always overweight or sedentary, says Deena Adimoolam, MD, assistant professor of medicine, endocrinology, diabetes, and bone disease, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. While lifestyle factors often contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes, they have nothing to do with the onset of type 1.

Symptoms of diabetes can include extreme thirst, frequent urination, drowsiness, sudden vision changes, increased appetite, sudden weight loss, heavy breathing, sweet-smelling breath, and even unconsciousness. Both types affect the body in similar ways, aside from one major difference: “In type 2 diabetes, the body is producing insulin but cannot use it properly,” says Dr. Adimoolam, who was not Moore’s physician. “In type 1, the body is not making any insulin at all.”

Without insulin, diabetics can develop life-threatening complications, says Dr. Adimoolam. Once a child or adult is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, they need to take insulin—via injections or an insulin pump—on a daily basis.

“We pay close attention to how much they should be giving themselves, depending on what foods they’re eating, when they’re exercising, and when they’re under stress, for example,” she says. “We teach them to use insulin to balance different factors in their life, so they can live as normal a life as possible.”

Moore told NIH MedlinePlus that paying close attention to her diet and exercise routine helped her get better control over her disease. She also credited research, funded by in part JDRF, for helping to develop laser eye surgery that saved her from diabetic retinopathy—a complication of diabetes that causes blindness.

Still, she admitted that living with diabetes is not always easy. “The millions who suffer from diabetes still confront he specter of devastating complications, despite our best efforts,” she told the magazine. “Insulin is not a cure—it is life support, enabling us to live our lives until a cure is found.”

In addition to retinopathy, diabetics can also develop nephropathy (a condition in which the kidneys don’t function properly) or neuropathy (nerve problems that can cause pain and affect the sense of touch).

Dr. Adimoolam says that it is possible for these conditions to develop even if diabetes is carefully managed. Diabetes also becomes trickier to manage as patients reach old age, she says, since they may be dealing with other medical conditions that can affect blood sugar levels or other aspects of insulin control.

But, she says, the earlier diabetes is diagnosed—and the more closely it’s monitored—the lower a person’s risks for complications throughout their life.

In 2009, Moore told People that she thought she’d have to “recline on a chaise the rest of my life” after her diabetes diagnosis. She proved herself wrong, however, adding that “there have been challenges, but I’ve triumphed.” And through the years, she showed that it’s possible for someone with diabetes to live a long and healthy life.

“Patients are living longer and doing much better, and we’re not seeing complications nearly as frequently as we were, let’s say, 50 years ago,” says Dr. Adimoolam. “We are lucky to have new technologies and advances in medicine that have improved the lives of people with type 1 diabetes significantly.”

This article originally appeared on Health.com

What Happens When Doctors Only Take Cash

Posted:

When Art Villa found out, after one too many boating accidents, that he needed a total knee replacement, he began asking around to see how much it would cost. The hospital near his home in Helena, Mont., would charge $40,000 for the procedure, he says. But that didn’t include the anesthesiologist’s fee, physical therapy or a stay at a rehabilitation center afterward. A 2015 Blue Cross Blue Shield study found that one hospital in Dallas billed $16,772 for a knee replacement while another in the same area charged $61,585.

It was in the midst of this confounding research that Villa, who’s 68, heard about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, whose business model is different from that of most hospitals. There, the all-inclusive price for every operation is listed on the website. A rotator-cuff repair for the shoulder costs $8,260. A surgical procedure for carpal tunnel syndrome is $2,750. Setting and casting a basic broken leg: $1,925.

The catch is that the whole facility is cash-based. It doesn’t take insurance of any kind. Not Aetna. Not Cigna. Not Medicare or Medicaid. Patients or their employers pay whatever price is listed online, period. There are no negotiated rates, no third-party reimbursements and almost no paperwork. “We say, ‘Here’s the price. Here’s what you’re getting. Here’s your bill,'” says Keith Smith, who co-founded the Surgery Center in 1997 with fellow anesthesiologist Steven Lantier. “It’s as simple as that.”

To Villa, the model seemed refreshingly subversive. The Surgery Center would charge $19,000 for his whole-knee replacement, a discount of nearly 50% on what Villa expected to be charged at his local hospital. And that price would include everything from airfare to the organization’s only facility, in Oklahoma City, to medications and physical therapy. If unforeseen complications arose during or after the procedure, the Surgery Center would cover those costs. Villa wouldn’t see another bill.

Sometimes called direct pay, and closely related to concierge care, this sort of business model was once seen as the perquisite of rich folks and medical tourists from foreign lands. But nowadays many of the people seeking cash-based care are middle-class Americans with high-deductible insurance plans. For a patient with an $11,000 family deductible, for example, it might make more sense to seek out a cash-based center like the Premier Medical Imaging facility in Minneapolis, which offers a basic MRI for $499, than to cough up the several thousand dollars that the same procedure generally costs at a traditional hospital. Cash payments don’t count toward a patient’s deductible, but for some it’s worth the gamble.

Self-insured companies, like the trucking and storage firm where Villa is the chief administrative officer, are also fueling the trend. Because such companies pay their employees’ medical bills out of their operating budget, it’s in their interest to steer everybody to the cheapest option. Villa, for example, says his decision to go to the Surgery Center saved his company money, since his $19,000 bill is less than it would have been charged, even with a negotiated discount, by a traditional hospital. The Oklahoma state public employees’ insurance fund, which covers 183,000 people, recently did similar math. In 2015 it announced a new rule: If patients go to a traditional hospital, they pay their deductible and co-payment. If they go to a cash-based provider that meets the fund’s criteria, including the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, they pay nothing at all.

While no organization keeps track of how many cash-based medical centers have cropped up nationwide in recent years, Smith and Lantier say they’ve witnessed an explosion. In Oklahoma City alone there are roughly three dozen centers that are all or partly cash based, specializing in everything from radiology to oncology. Texas has two dozen such facilities, and in Torrance, Calif., the Ocean Surgery Center posts many of its prices online. Thousands of cash-based primary-care practices have also sprung up across the country.

This trend may accelerate nationally. With the Affordable Care Act on the chopping block, many experts expect the free-market model to take off. While congressional Republicans have yet to produce a viable replacement for the Obama Administration’s health care law, almost any change is likely to result in more Americans’ choosing high-deductible insurance plans, which would help fuel the cash-based marketplace for years to come.

A few days after Villa’s knee-replacement operation was completed on Jan. 17, his daughter captured a video of the happy patient, in headphones, “boogying down the hallway,” as he put it, of the Marriott Residence Inn in Oklahoma City, where he stayed for a week and a half to recover. After the surgery a physical therapist and a nurse visited Villa in his hotel room, bearing gifts: an ice machine, pain medication, a thermometer and detailed, hands-on instructions for his recovery, all of which were included in his original bill. “I’ve really never experienced this quality of care,” Villa says.

There is good reason to think Villa’s experience could be the shape of things to come. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order instructing the Department of Health and Human Services to begin weakening Obamacare, while standing by his previous promise that any replacement plan will allow Americans with pre-existing conditions to access affordable insurance.

To meet these goals, Republican leaders have been targeting a series of reforms that President Obama opposed. They will likely allow insurers to sell across state lines, resulting in the sale of more plans with limited coverage of basic health care or prescription drugs. They will also likely scrap the prohibition on bare-bones, high-deductible “catastrophic” plans and eliminate deductible limits entirely. If the final draft includes all or any combination of those provisions, the result will be many more Americans’ signing up for low-premium, high-deductible plans–precisely the type of insurance that has driven the rise of cash-based medicine over the past six years.

But even without a new Republican system, cash-based care has been growing under Obamacare, which required insurers to provide more-comprehensive coverage and to offer plans to anyone who wanted one. Insurers made up for having to cover a more expensive patient population by getting customers to contribute more out of pocket with higher deductibles, co-payments and co-insurance. While Obamacare imposed limits on how high deductibles could be–$7,150 for an individual and $14,300 for a family–the out-of-pocket contributions rose for many Americans, turning more patients into price hounds. If you’re paying cash for that mole removal anyway, why not find the cheapest dermatologist in town? The Surgery Center of Oklahoma, among the first in the country to post its prices online in 2008, saw an uptick in business after Obamacare. “I guess it’s ironic that Obamacare created this market for us,” Smith says, with a laugh.

In the health care world, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma’s business model is considered radical, in part because the industry, as it’s structured now, doesn’t lend itself to price transparency. Providers charge different insurance companies different amounts for the same procedures, and in many cases, insurers’ contracts explicitly bar hospitals from publicly disclosing their reimbursement rates. That many regions of the U.S. are now dominated by one hospital chain also creates a monopoly problem: if an insurer wants to offer plans in that area, it’s got to accept the hospital’s rates. Some providers say it’s not possible to set prices in the first place, since medical procedures aren’t normal consumer products.

In arriving at their price list, Smith and Lantier did an end run around the whole system. They asked their fellow doctors how much compensation was expected per procedure, factored in necessary expenses like surgical equipment and medical implants, then tacked on a 10% to 15% profit margin. Since their surgery center does not employ the army of administrators that is often required to haggle with insurers and follow up on Medicare reimbursements, their overhead is smaller. The whole operation is 41 people. “Finding an average price doesn’t require complicated math,” Smith says. “It’s arithmetic.” Since posting the price list eight years ago, they’ve adjusted it twice, both times to lower rates.

One problem with a free-market, cash-based system of health care is that it promises to work really well for people like Villa, whose companies stand to save money by avoiding traditional hospitals, but less well for others. Without safeguards, it threatens to marginalize the poorest and sickest among us, who could not possibly afford, say, a $19,000 knee replacement without help from an employer, the government or a charity. While Americans tend to accept certain inequities as a reality of capitalism–there are always going to be people who succeed and those who fall behind–we are less comfortable with them when it comes to health care. We don’t like the idea of families going bankrupt after a cancer diagnosis or losing coverage after a parent loses a job. In poll after poll Americans of both political parties say they support provisions ensuring that people with pre-existing conditions can access health care.

Twila Brase, president of the conservative Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom and one of the most energetic advocates of free-market-based health care, acknowledges the problem. For a direct-pay system to work, she says, providers must be willing to give away care. “Charity has always been part of the medical practice,” she says. (Smith and Lantier say they perform charitable operations, although to avoid being inundated with requests, they don’t report details.) Another way to make a free-market-based system work is to increase government safeguards: expand Medicare and Medicaid, compel states to create “high-risk” pools to underwrite coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, or require insurance companies to cover everyone. Which explains in part why replacing Obamacare is so vexing for the GOP: all that sounds a lot like Obamacare.

Villa, meanwhile, remains a convert. When he returns to work, he says, he’s considering helping his company create financial incentives to steer employees to the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. “Even with airfare and hotel stays,” he says, “the savings could be huge.”

This appears in the February 06, 2017 issue of TIME.

Why Jet Lag Is Worse than You Think

Posted: 25 Jan 2017 11:29 AM PST

If you’re traveling cross-country to run a race or participate in a sporting event, you may want to prepare for the time change in advance. A new study of professional baseball players shows that jet lag doesn’t just affect mental performance—it can also affect physical performance, as well. The authors say their findings can have implications for all types of athletes, and they offer strategies for lessening the impact.

The new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from researchers at Northwestern University, looked at Major League Baseball data from more than 40,000 games spanning 20 years, including teams’ travel schedules and players’ performance in hitting, running, pitching and more.

Traveling two or more time zones before a game affected play in subtle but detectible ways, the authors found. For example, teams from eastern states who had just returned home from a game out west tended to have fewer stolen bases, doubles and triples, and were subject to more double plays, than those who hadn’t traveled as recently.

Pitchers from both home and away teams also gave up more home runs after traveling eastward. The effects are enough to erase a team’s home-field advantage, the authors say. They speculate that jet lag may have even played a role in Game 6 of the 2016 National League Championship Series, in which the home-team Chicago Cubs scored five runs off the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers’ ace pitcher, Clayton Kershaw.

The effects of west-to-east travel were stronger than those of east-to-west travel, supporting the argument that they are due to the body’s circadian clock—not just time on an airplane or scheduling issues in general, says Dr. Ravi Allada, associate director of Northwestern’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology.

The study isn’t the first to show that jet lag can impact athletic performance. Allada says the new findings add to the evidence that jet lag isn’t just all in one’s head. “We know, based on studies in animals and humans, that when you misalign your internal biological clock with your external environment, there can be a lot of consequences in terms of health,” Allada says. “And the circadian clock is present in muscle cells, too, so it makes sense that one might see an impairment in muscle activity or muscle efficiency, as a result of this misalignment.”

Based on these findings, Allada recommends that baseball teams send their starting pitchers to games across the country a day or two early, when possible, so that their internal clocks can adjust to the local environment.

Similar advice could also apply to anyone traveling for athletic events—especially eastward—he adds, like runners going to a destination marathon or adventure race. That also includes people who have been away and are heading home for an event: an aspect of jet lag that people don’t often think about, says Allada.

“The rule of thumb is that the body clock can shift about one hour a day, so if you’re traveling across three time zones, you’d want to ideally give yourself three days to adjust,” he says.

If your schedule won’t allow for an earlier trip, he recommends faking it for a few days by trying to wake up and go to bed according to the time-zone of your event, even while you’re still at home. If you’re traveling west-to-east, exposing yourself to bright light earlier in the morning can help, as well.

Allada says there’s not yet a lot of research to back up the effectiveness of these strategies, but he believes they could benefit anyone looking to optimize their performance. “That’s something we’d love to study in the future,” he says, “to work with athletes and see if these interventions actually have real impacts.”

5 Mantras to Help You Become Calm and Confident

Posted: 25 Jan 2017 10:00 AM PST

Can one simple phrase actually make a difference in your life? According to Sherianna Boyle, the answer is most definitely yes. She is the author of Mantras Made Easy ($15, amazon.com), a collection of chants and slogans meant to help people tap into the power of positive thinking. “Just like you are programmed to respond to the ring of your phone, you can program repeated words and phrases into your subconscious mind,” writes Boyle, a licensed school psychologist and adjunct psychology professor at Cape Cod Community College. “Mantras are a way to clear up negative actions, opening up new pathways for positive ones.” Whether you’re looking to manage your anxiety, find more joy in your life or summon the courage to start a new chapter, Boyle’s got a mantra that may help. Below are five of our favorites from her book.

Health.com: 25 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be a Happier Person

To achieve inner peace..

“My breath is deep; my eyes are soft; I am at peace.”

You are taught many things as a child: how to tie your shoes, brush your teeth, and read and write. Breathing is not something most people were taught how to do. As the benefits of mindfulness (and mantras) stack up, this fortunately is beginning to shift. You do not have to be formally trained to learn how to breathe well. You can start right now by reciting this mantra. Take a long, slow, deep inhale (inflating your lower belly) and a slow, extended exhale (drawing your navel in), reciting this mantra in between. Do this for five rounds.

To beat anxiety…

“It’s got to be better than I think.”

This mantra takes you beyond your thoughts. It reminds you that your thoughts could never capture the possibilities and magnificence that are available to you when you allow yourself to move through your feelings and detach from thinking. This mantra was passed on to me by Zoe Marae, PhD. She described it as a way to complete what she referred to as “repeaters.” Repeaters are what you can attract into your life based on old patterns. Reciting this mantra opens the doorway to new ways of being, and as this occurs new perceptions will surface. As Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion, shares, sensations create perceptions. Utilizing this mantra gives you a much more open feeling, providing an inevitable shift in the way you see your world.

To attract success…

“I have the confidence and knowledge to take action.”

Creating a life of abundance does require some level of action. First, you are going to want to create a plan. Ask yourself, “What steps will I need to take to put things into motion?” After giving it some thought, write down these steps on paper. Be sure to include the resources available to you. Secondly, you will need to cultivate the energy required to put this plan into action. See this mantra as being one of the ways you will create the energy to manifest what you wrote down.

To find happiness…

“I give myself permission to prioritize the things that bring me joy, creativity, and connection.”

At times, you might lose your sense of direction, or wonder if your life choices are off base. For example, you may crave a different lifestyle or a compatible companion. This mantra reminds you that perhaps these doubts mean that you are being connected to your divine purpose. Your creative energy can stimulate healthy change and lead to happy experiences. So allow yourself to feel these doubts, and ask yourself if they could become motivation for you to reclaim happiness. Rather than focus on what is missing from your life, this mantra encourages you to incorporate things that bring you joy (e.g., animals, nature, art, music, etc.).

Health.com: How to Get More Energy, From Morning to Night

To find the confidence to start afresh…

“I am evolving and changing for the better.”

This mantra reminds you that because you are made of energy, you are always in motion. We know cells have the ability to regenerate themselves. Since you are made of trillions of cells, you are never exactly the same as you were the day before. See change as part of your evolution. Using this mantra is a positive way to support the evolution of your brain, mind, body, and spirit.

This article originally appeared on Health.com

Lexo edhe:

Rapitful Shqip

Search This Blog