Feb. 22, 2012, Los Angeles — Health Nuts Media announces the completion of Understanding Diabetes, a seven-part animated video series designed to educate children and their parents about diabetes diagnosis and management. This series adds to the growing library of digital health literacy content Health Nuts Media has made available to hospitals and private practice physicians for their pediatric patients.

Watch the videos at: “Understanding Diabetes”

“Our goal at Health Nuts Media is to create much-needed health education that is not only informative, but fun,” says Health Nuts Media CEO, Tim Jones. “We were surprised that there were so few diabetes resources geared toward kids, despite the growing prevalence of diabetes among children.” (more…)

“You are not alone.” We use that phrase a lot around here at Health Nuts Media. And, if you have type 2 diabetes, it is very, very true.

When it comes to kids, it used to be that people only thought of type 1 diabetes. (That’s how it got the name, which some folks still use, “juvenile-onset diabetes”.) But, unfortunately, that old idea just isn’t true anymore. (more…)

A possible cure for type 1 diabetes? Even years after being diagnosed with the disease? Wow! That could be huge.

Well, that’s the potential based upon the just-published research findings of Professor Bart Roep of the Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported on Tuesday, February 21, that Professor Roep had discovered (more…)

Bronchitis, what some people call a “chest cold”, is rarely a serious illness in kids. In fact, most of the time, it is a self-limited illness caused by a virus or exposure to cigarette smoke – or a combination of the two. (“Self-limited” means your body takes care of fighting off the virus without any need for help from medicines like antibiotics.)

Bronchitis comes in two “flavors”: acute and chronic. The chronic kind is when it goes on and on or keeps coming back. It usually occurs more in adults, especially smokers, or in those who have other airway/lung problems, such as asthma, cystic fibrosis, immune deficiencies, etc. (more…)

Hack, cough, hack…sputter…cough, hack, hack.

“Yo, Hal. What’s the deal with all the phlegm, gem?” asked Sal. “You sound like you wanna hock up a lung.”

“I know,” coughed Hal. “I have bronchitis.”

Hal pulled another tissue from the box, blew his nose, and sank back into the couch, looking like the he’d been run over by a semi, run through the washing machine, and then pounded with a baseball bat all in one day. “Man, I am beat up and blue,” he sighed.

“So, how do you know it’s bronchitis, bro?” queried Sal “I mean, you ain’t been to Doc Yan. How’s come you say it’s bronchitis? Maybe you just have a chest cold.”

“Cough…That’s what bronchitis is, goofbone,” said Hal. “Acute bronchitis is usually caused by a cold-type virus that gives you all these chest symptoms, like I have.” (more…)

Literacy: “An individual’s ability to read, write and speak…, and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one’s goals, and develop one’s knowledge and potential.”
- National Literacy Act of 1991

Health Literacy: “The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health (more…)

Last Friday, January 27th, the insurance company WellPoint released a statement saying that they were going to “revamp primary care pay” as noted in the Miami Herald. They said they were planning on reimbursing primary care doctors better for services that typically aren’t covered very well, such as preparing care plans, counseling people about ways to stay healthy, and spending time with people to help them achieve and maintain better health outcomes. (more…)

Everybody knows that the Internet is just bursting with information. It seems you can find just about anything these days. But, when it comes to health information, there’s a whole bunch of really bad information all jumbled up with the good stuff. It can be really hard to know what to believe and what is just plain, old quackery. (Kids, remember: just because it’s on the Web doesn’t mean it’s true!)

In fact, we had this exact issue brought to us by a group of high school kids who were looking on the Internet for some asthma information for a class project. (more…)