Here’s a simple question: Why have the worlds of healthcare and “medicine” always avoided making health fun?

Here’s a simple answer: Making health fun just ain’t easy. (Please pardon the “ain’t.”)

Think about it. The worlds of health, healthcare, and medicine have long been owned by the elite. Typically, in years past, it was only the rich or privileged who were able to get medical training. Historically, the elite in their ivory towers of medical knowledge didn’t write down their wisdom for the general public; they wrote “scholarly” papers designed to talk in big terms using big words to “big” people with big vocabularies (and, many times, with big heads.) “It’s complicated, so it must be discussed with big words and in long, dull documents,” they said. And that is where they stopped. And that has become medical tradition.

Well, they were right…sort of. Health and the workings of the human body are pretty darn complex. There’s a whole lotta stuff going on inside of each of us. There’s a lot of “this thing connected to that thing causing the other thing to do some different thing.” We’re pretty amazing creatures full of complicated “machinery.”

But those medical elitists were wrong, too. Complicated or not, every single one of us has “health” (more…)

Lots of people talk about having “hypoglycemia” or low blood sugar. And, lots of people think they have low blood sugar when in fact they don’t. Hypoglycemia was even quite the fad back in the 1970s. Lots of people made lots of money selling books and diet products to help “fight the disease”.

Actually, hypoglycemia isn’t a disease, but rather an indicator of some other problem. It is the other problem that causes the blood sugar to drop too low leading to all of the symptoms of hypoglycemia. The shakiness, blurry vision, nervous feeling, sweating, headache, weakness, rapid or pounding heartbeat (and more) are all symptoms of low blood sugar, but the low blood sugar is itself a symptom from some other cause.

Most often, hypoglycemia is related to diabetes. It can happen when blood sugar gets too low from using too much insulin or from not eating when you should. Lots of medicines can lead to low blood sugar, especially diabetes medications. Certain cancers, chronic diseases, and severe infections can lead to hypoglycemia. (more…)

Hal just kept working. He worked and he worked and he worked. He worked through breakfast. He worked through lunch. He worked clear through until almost dinner. He just couldn’t stop until his work was done.

He hammered the last nail to a flattened finish. Then, he stepped back to take a proud look at what he’d made. That’s when he suddenly got “low.”

As Hal took that step back from his just-finished project, he knew something was very wrong. He became sort of dizzy, feeling light-headed. His felt weak. He noticed he felt sweaty even though it was a cool 72 degrees in the garage. He felt nervous and kind of shaky.

He sat down on the sawhorse sitting next to him. He took a few deep breaths and tried to clear his head. That’s when his little brother, Sal, walked in. He noticed the look on Hal’s rather pale face (more…)

Health literacy and social media are a match made in heaven!

The power of social media and social networking has been dramatically highlighted by events all around the world. From toppling governments to funny flash mobs with their viral YouTube videos, social tools with their broad sweeping reach have shown a world-changing power almost unrivaled in human history. Certainly nothing has driven so much change, so many people to act or react with such immediacy, in such short time frames as have social media tools.

Health literacy skills in the U.S. are rather sad with only about 1 in 10 American adults having “proficient” health literacy. Around 93 million have only “basic” or “below basic” health literacy skills. This is in part due to general literacy skills which are themselves rather sad, according to the 2003 International Adult Literacy & Lifeskills Survey (published in 2005). Rima Rudd, Sc.D., from the Harvard School of Public Health, (more…)

236,000,000,000 dollars! That’s how much low health literacy costs Americans each and every year; global costs are incalculable. Health Nuts Media presents an animated white paper on the challenges of low health literacy as well as solutions for increasing health literacy and improving consumer engagement using entertainment and new media.

Learn how to address the health literacy challenge

Did you know that there is a “Global Handwashing Day”? Yep. Sure is. Countries around the world hold events to promote good handwashing on October 15th during this global “keep it clean” day. Heck, it even has its own web site: globalhandwashingday.org.

I have long said that medicine has done two really great things in its long history against which all else pale by comparison. The first was the “discovery” that handwashing and clean water made a difference (with the subsequent discovery of germ theory to explain why cleanliness mattered). The second was the introduction of vaccines. Nothing else in medicine comes anywhere close to having the global impact of these two for helping prevent illness and early death.

To those in well-developed countries, Global Handwashing Day may seem like something that is more important for poor, impoverished nations with sanitation problems and a poorly health literate populace. And that’s true; it is important for them. But it’s just as important, and maybe even more (more…)

Hal could not believe his eyes: his good friend, Gene, just walked away.

Also known as “Bean Gene” for his love of lima beans and his ability to release after a good bean meal (if you get the odorous drift), Gene seemed unaware of Hal’s bug-eyed stare as he walked out the bathroom door.

“Hold the horse up, Hapless,” called Hal.

Gene stopped the restroom door just as it was about to close and stuck his head back in. “Huh? You mean me, man?” he asked.

Hal was still looking sort of bewildered, but his face began to change into more of a scowl. “Yeah, I mean you, boy,” he growled.

“Wassamatta U, Bullwinkle?” Gene asked Hal. (more…)