HealthyConcerns.com

File that under: I did not know that

So, I've never had a Flexible Spending Account, even back when I worked at a company that offered one. 

For those of you who don't know what an FSA is, here's a good article, but it's basically a way to set aside some of your income, pre-tax, to spend on health-releated expenditures throughout the year. As the article points out, though, it's a use or lose it kind of thing, and apparently a lot of folks leave money on the table! (One of the reasons I was always nervous to do it when it was available to me.

I was pointed to that article by a rep for CVS, and I was only intrigued to look because she listed a whole bunch of stuff you can purchase in a regular drugstore that are FSA-reimbursable that truly surprised me. I think if I had known that the following list was comprised of all FSA-eligible items, I might have felt differently about the FSA opportunity:

 

Cold and flu medications
Hand sanitizer
Medicine-cabinet staples like allergy medication, pain relievers, antacids, and cotton balls
First aid: First aid kits and the products that often fill them, such as bandages and antibiotic ointment
Sunscreens: Sunscreens over SPF 30 are typically included in FSA spending, just make sure it doesn’t include a self-tanner or moisturizer, which may exclude the product. 

Who knew? Not me. I buy all of the above, don't you? 

Then again, there's paperwork involved. Sigh. Trade-offs.

Health tips for geeks

It's hard for me to stick through reading one hundred of anything, but I did make it through this list: 100 Healthy Hacks for Tech and Gadget Geeks.

The tips I really need to pay attention to:

Ergonomics:
#3: Rest Your Eyes: Every 20 minutes or so, focus on an object that is at least 20 feet away.

Diet: (A bunch)
#13: Eat spinach and leafy greens
#19: More whole grains
#23: Pumpkin seed! (Yum, happy to see that tip!)
#29: Quinoa (I've been meaning to experiment with this high-protein grain)

Exercise:
Oh, let's just say I should do 'em all in this category!

Taking breaks: I don't think I'll be taking any cat naps at work any time soon, but I should:
#42: Get up once and hour
#44: Stretch

Check-ups: I'm good at doing this!

Web Tools:
#54: I already use The Daily Plate app (both online and for the iPhone), and love it...I just need to be more consistent about it.

iPhone Apps:
#70: I gotta try this one: Muscle Head and Neck System

Stress
#73: Make time for yourself

Sleep Hacks
#77: Wind down before bed
#80: Address anxiety (by writing down everything stressing you out before bed...I'm skeptical)

Boost Your Immunity
#84: Getting enough sleep is my obvious bugaboo

Daily Habits
#89: Get natural sunlight (I'm trying to do this to boost my Vitamin D)
#95: I admit it, I need to floss more!

Those are just a few of the tips that resonate with me, although lots more are on my list of way I try to be conscious of my health. For every single tip, there's a link to more info or recommendations about how to incorporate that tip into your life, so the post is a real treasure trove of info.

So, check out 100 Healthy Hacks for Tech and Gadget Geeks. and let me know what first couple of tips you're going to try?

The Quick Compose test

Cross posted at Elisa's Green Scene, since I did the same test to both blogs!

Right below this post is my first attempt to use Quick Compose. This seems to be Typepad's way of incorporating Status Updating (i.e. the kind of posting done in Twitter or Facebook) into one's blog.

There are two things that will probably keep me from using this all that regularly:

1. No titles or categories for your Quick post. It's really just the message. No headline. No ability to categorize (that I saw). So it interrupts the visual and formatting flow of your blog, providing less information that is, I think, required.

2. I may try it again, to see if you can post a hyperlink under text, but it didn't seem like it on first glance. It automatically converts any URl you enter as a hyperlink, but as per the test I did, that was a pretty long, gnarly URL. I would have preferred to put that link under text.

Now, it may encourage me to keep this blog a little more active by posting quick thoughts and links so easily.

But the bigger question, then, is this: Would that improve the quality of the blog. The beauty part of sharing ephemeral thoughts on Twitter is that they're just that: Ephemeral. Not too weighty. Fun, sure. Conversational, often. But without the conversational element, do those same thoughts hold up for a blog "post"?

Any of you using this feature? How? Why? Will you continue? What do your readers say?

Over at my personal blog, I review two current bestseller vegan cookbooks, The Conscious Cook and The Kind Diet (with bonus comparison to Skinny Bitch). Check it out: http://homepage.mac.com/elisa_camahort/iblog/C1023857155/E20091128093357/index.html (Also testing new Quick Compose feature on Typepad!)

Quick Link: Fitting in Fitness this Holiday Season

BlogHer HQ has just moved to a new location, one with a fitness room available to all building tenants at no charge. I've even brought a bag with workout clothes to the office, where it waits patiently in my file cabinet drawer. But I have yet to take the plunge back in to exercising.

Not that I was a great exerciser before, but a few months ago my one reliable walking-buddy broke her foot, which led to surgery, so even that one commitment went out the window. And I didn't replace it with anything else.

Oh sure, a few weeks ago I put fresh batteries in the Wii Fit, so I could get back on track there, but I haven't done it yet.

So, I'm hoping to get a little inspiration from BlogHer's Crabby McSlacker, as she tackles all the common excuses in "Too Busy for Fitness This Holiday Season?"

My personal challenge: I'm traveling at least 3 days of each of the next three weeks. That means cross-country flights, hotel rooms, struggling to find vegan food (although luckily I'm hitting major urban centers, which are typically more veg-friendly.)

It would be so much easier to say I'll wait until my last frequent flier mile is logged for 2009, somewhere around December 17th.

But Crabby McSlacker will have none of it.

What are your tactics for fitting in exercise during this busy, stressful time of year?

What my doctor thinks about health care reform

Had my annual exam last week. I've had the same gynecologist for about 6 years now, and every year we have a very enjoyable conversation, even as she's poking and prodding me.

This time, as is not too unexpected, we discussed health care reform.

My doctor is frustrated. She actively avoids the news and reading or hearing about how it's going.

You see, she works for Kaiser, which is the nation's largest non-profit health plan. According to her, she has it great. According to her, she makes medical decisions based only on what makes sense for her patient, and she can't imagine being in a for-profit situation (especially in private practice) where you had to worry about whether your treatment plan will make you enough money.

It's not that Kaiser doesn't make revenues, they have huge revenues. They charge premiums and co-pays like any other health plan. But they don't have a fiduciary duty to make money for shareholders who have no vested interest in the health of their patients...who, in fact, have an interest in actions that occasionally sacrifice their patients' health in order to maximize profit.

I recently have been on a kick of saying that we should return to the not-so-distant pass when there weren't for-profit health insurance companies, with their bureaucrats making the calls on whether you can be covered for various procedures.

My doctor validated that fairly gut-based line of thinking this week.

Domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. Say wha'?

Did you know that in nine states it is legal to consider domestic violence as a "pre-existing condition" and to therefore deny medical coverage of treatments related to said violence?

It's true.

For a personal take on the meaning of that, read PunditMom's story.

I thought, in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, you all should know.

Not that I feel good about knowing. I'm pretty sure I wish I didn't know that. Because I certainly wish it weren't true.

Especially when domestic violence stats still look like this:

Nearly one in every four women are beaten or raped by a partner during adulthood.1

␣ 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape.2

␣ Three women are killed by a current or former intimate partner each day in America, on average.3

␣ Over 22 percent of women and 7.4 percent of men surveyed, reported being physically assaulted by a current or former partner in their lifetime.4

␣ Approximately 2.3 million people each year in the United States are raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend. Women who were physically assaulted by an intimate partner averaged 6.9 physical assaults per year by the same partner.5

␣ Approximately 37% of women seeking injury-related treatment in hospital emergency rooms were there because of injuries inflicted by a current or former spouse/partner.6

␣ Women are at an increased risk of harm shortly after separation from an abusive partner.7

[Source: National Network to End Domestic Violence]

Check that last stat: Women are at increased risk after leaving the abuser. So if they try to extricate themselves from this "pre-existing condition", they are actually at more risk of "developing" that "condition" and needing treatment...which can be denied.

Bah! And Feh! 

Another BlogHer Conference Call with a Congressperson

Following on BlogHer's conference calls with Senator Klobuchar (D-Minn) and Representative McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash), we bring you the third call with Representative George Miller (D-Calif). It's tomorrow at 11AM Pacific. 

If you want to listen to the first two calls, the audio is available here:

Senator Klobuchar

Rep. McMorris Rodgers

We're talking to Democrats and Republicans. And these Congresspeople are completely open to having members of both or any part on the calls with them. All we ask is that the questions remain as civil as the rest of the debates on BlogHer.

We'd like to show that civil debate is possible. That there is more to political discourse online than either an echo chamber or a flame-war.

So far, so good.

Excellent first-hand comparison of US and UK health care systems

While I agree that anecdotal evidence is not sufficient to know everything there is about the health care debate, Strawberry from Potential and Expectations has gone to great lengths to make a rational comparison of her experience of the US and UK health care systems, and to share a little of her observations of the UK attitude towards healthcare, as an American expat who lived there for years. The post is entitled "This American's Experience of Britain's Healthcare System", and that title is indicative of her approach. No ideology or inflammatory rhetoric to be found.

I like the fact that she discusses how her attitude towards the UK NHS changed over time, how she began to be able to separate what were system issues and what were simply people issues, how she realized that her experience in the US was quite different between when she was a dependent on her parent's awesome health plan and when she was a consumer of her own not-quite-so-awesome plan. Finally, I like how she notes that anecdotal though her own stories may be, you can certainly compare the cost per capita of healthcare between the two countries and the results of standard measures of healthcare results between the two countries (like life expectancy). Hint: The US does not top Britain on either count. These are objective stats to go along with subjective stories.

There are over 350 comments, and while I didn't read them all, the ones I read stayed basically sane and polite. 

Some stuff I already knew (though plenty of us here don't seem to know them), but I learned some new stuff too. It's a long, thorough, well-written post, and I recommend you read it. 

I'm much nicer than some bloggers

OK, pet peeve rant ahead: I hate, hate, hate when a site comes up with some "Top 10 list", and then posts it in the most annoying time-wasting way possible. 

Top 10 lists are a little annoying to begin with. I can't abide Top 10 lists about bloggers at all. I know it's supposed to be human nature, but I don't see a need to rank bloggers. There are so many different kinds of bloggers doing so many different kinds of blogs, even within the same blogging niche. Ranking is a fool's game.

I can stand Top lists of apps or devices or other geek p0rn a little better.

I've been meaning to deeply peruse these 14 Practical Ways to Use Evernote, for example.

So when FierceHealthcare posted 15 Free Healthcare Apps for the iPhone, you know I clicked.

Too bad they followed the lead of such traditional media web sites as Fast Company or Newsweek, where they make you click to a new page to see each app.

Yes, I know it drives pageviews, which drives ad revenue.

Yes, I know it increases time spent on the site, which speaks "engagement" readers have with your sites.

But both metrics are, I think, inappropriately skewed by this method of posting. Do advertisers not even visit sites like this to see ho they're getting the traffic and stats they claim to have?

So, here are their recommended apps...go to the app store and search on them and save yourself a whole lot of clicking. I clickedm so you don't have to:

1. WebMd: I downloaded this one, since it's uber-comprehensive.

2. ePocrates Rx: Apparently this one is geared towards health professionals, so I passed.

3. EmergenKey: Designed to help you keep your own health info close at hand. Knock on wood, I don't see a huge need to have this one right now. (Although it reminds me that I don't know my on blood type.

4. Diabetes Log: Also not relevant to me, and hopefully never will be.

5. Health Cloud: Tied into Google Health, which I don't use, so I passed.

6. General Medical History: A basic history template for med students. Also no relevant.

7. Headache Diary: This is intriguing. Haven't had many headaches for a while now. (Which makes me wonder if they went away coinciding with going vegan 3 years ago?)

8. Reach MD CME: For doctors.

9. iTriage: Perfect for those who want to go the next step in Googlenosing themselves!

10. ICD-9 Lite: For medical professionals looking to get proper billing codes.

11. Swine Flu Tracker: If you are a hypochondriac, OCD, germphobe or otherwise fascinated by the Swine Flu, this is the app for you.

12. Sleep Tracker: OK, as a longtime insomniac, I did indeed download this. We'll see if I *use* it. (It's created by the makers of Tylenol, FYI.)

13. Skyscape Medical Resources: Very targeted to medical professionals.

14. Natural Cures: OK, I bit and downloaded this one. Can't hurt, right?

15. MedCalc: Also for medical professionals.

So, out of 15, I decided to download and try 3. Not a good ratio. I recognize that the site is for "healthcare executives", so I realize I'm not their target audience. Then again, the article title, "15 Free Healthcare Apps for the iPhone" sounds kind of universal. If you're a layperson like me, think of all the time I saved you :)

How many and which ones will you try?