Best Time For A Coffee Break? There’s An App For That

From the 16 February 2012 Medical News Today article

Caffeinated drinks such as coffee and soda are the pick-me-ups of choice for many people, but too much caffeine can cause nervousness and sleep problems.

Caffeine Zone software app developed by Penn State researchers, can help people determine when caffeine may give them a mental boost and when it could hurt their sleep patterns. The software takes information on caffeine use and integrates it with information on the effects of caffeine to produce a graph of how the caffeine will affect the users over time. …

…The app is available on iTunes for free with advertisements and for purchase without ads. It only works on Apple devices – the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Penn State

 

For information on how to select health apps (with links to select health apps), please visit my Health Apps Web page

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• Best time for a coffee break? There’s an app for that (eurekalert.org)
• Best time for a coffee break? There’s an app for that (esciencenews.com)
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Organic Food Can [Note "Can"] Have High Concentrations Of Arsenic – the Case of Rice Syrup

rice syrup from Belgium. in a plastic jar.

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• Arsenic found in infant formula, cereal bars (cbsnews.com)
• Arsenic and Infant Formula, What you should know. (mommybrainreports.com)
• Rice-Sweetened Baby Formula May Contain Arsenic (nlm.nih.gov)
• Rice products may be source of high arsenic levels: Study (vancouversun.com)
• Organic, baby foods high in arsenic content – Zee News (zeenews.india.com)

Question the price of drugs and medical procedures (Suggestions for Additional Resources Most Welcome!)

This image depicts the total health care services expenditure per capita, in U.S. dollars PPP-adjusted, for the nations of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States with the years 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2007 compared.

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• HHS ensures consumers get better value for their health insurance dollar (nvrdc.wordpress.com)
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Why we need truth in labeling of medical conditions

From the Restless Legs Foundation

The author has a point here, labels do affect how we relate to people in everyday life.  For example differently abled creates different images than crippled.

From the 18 February 2012 posting at Kevin MD by TONI BERNHARD, JD

Labels matter. We quickly form judgments based on them. If we hear someone called lazy, the label “lazy person” attaches in our mind even though we may not have even met the person. The same is true for labels given to various medical conditions. If the label for an illness uses language such as “fatigue,” we abstract from our experience and think we know what it’s like to suffer from it.

Some medical disorders have been named after the researcher who discovered or described them in the medical literature (Alzheimer’s). Others are named after a famous patient (Lou Gerig’s disease). The result: instant legitimacy.

The trend, however, is to name illnesses and pain conditions by describing their primary signs or symptoms. There may be sound reasons for this trend, but it can lead to inaccurate labeling of people and to unnecessary suffering by those who’ve been diagnosed with the disorder or disease.

 [The author goes on to describe the inaccuracies of the label "restless legs syndrome"]

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What's your walk score?

Reblogged from urbaninitiative:

Go to www.walkscore.com and enter your address. How does your neighborhood do? My New Bedford neighborhood gets a 55:  "somewhat walkable," which is based on the proximity of my house to restaurants, groceries, coffee, bars, libraries, parks, etc.

So sure, this is a fun tool to use--particularly if you're house-hunting--but why does it matter? According to a study by CEOs for Cities…

Read more… 259 more words

So, how's your neighborhood doing? Mine has a rating of about 46, much higher than I expected. A strip mall is close, but I don't really consider it a destination....