Rising Healthcare Costs Puts Spotlight on Herbal Cures

With the rising costs of healthcare, people are being forced to turn away from traditional medicine and look towards vitamins, minerals and supplements to treat conditions that are affecting their wellness and wellbeing.

 

In the States, a trip to the doctor for something as minor as the common cold can cost you an average of $740, before you take into account insurance deductions. Analysts predict that the costs of health care will continue to rise and that the Affordable Care Act reforms could actually mean that an increase in health costs of around 32 percent for all families.

 

In order to help cut costs, families are turning their attentions to natural remedies, and this is proving to be a huge boost for the alternative medicine sector.

 

Maria Grovers is a Clinical Herbalist who lives in Allenstown N.H. and she now teaches families how they can use home grown herbs to help improve their day to day wellness. She says that more people than ever before are interested in how they can use herbs to sort out their daily problems.

 

The idea of families taking their own ability to cure themselves of minor ailments is an important one, as it helps them to take care of their families in the long term without incurring insurmountable costs. Herbs have a long history of being used to cure these types of minor illnesses.

 

Some even believe that herbs are more effective than any over the counter remedies, as the over the counter remedies tend to focus on masking symptoms and can actually contribute to supressing the immune system, so whilst they make you feel better in the short run, in the long run they can actually make things worse. Herbs on the other hand are both safe and effective, and can be used on adults and children, as well as more elderly members of the family.

Categories: Costs, counter remedies, Families, herbs, long, minor, nbsp, remedies

STI Testing: The Who, What, Where, When and Why

Getting tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is an absolutely vital part of sexual health, both for the sake of your wellbeing and that of anyone you come into sexual contact with. When you have an STI, there are often no symptoms to alert you to the fact that you have been infected, meaning that you could be passing it on to others and letting your own wellness deteriorate without even realising. Therefore, you need to take control of your health by using condoms and getting tested for STIs.

 

Once you begin having sex, it’s a good idea to have regular sexual health check-ups. Whether you have multiple sexual partners or you’re starting a new relationship, you and your partner need to be tested – and recently tested – before you stop using condoms. If you have had unsafe sex, or some of the symptoms of STIs such as pain, discharge or itching in your genital area, you should consult your doctor. Most STIs are treatable but, if left untreated, you may end up experiencing some unpleasant symptoms and even long-term problems such as infertility.

 

Having a test is simple and painless, and easily available from your local GP, family planning clinic or sexual health clinic. There is no single test to detect all STIs, which means you’ll have to have a chat with your doctor about your specific symptoms. Your doctor will also want to discuss your sexual history, so be prepared to talk about that. It can be tempting to lie about or paint a rosier view of your sexual history, but you need to be completely truthful. Even if you’re embarrassed, your doctor will need to use the information from your conversation to work out the tests you should have.

 

If you have an STI such as gonorrhoea or chlamydia, a simple test will be able to pick up the STI soon after you have been infected, even if you haven’t shown any obvious signs or symptoms. However, other STIs – like HIV – won’t show a positive result as quickly and your doctor will advise you on when to be re-tested. As a general rule, the testing will involve a blood sample, urine sample, swab or just a physical examination – depending on which STI is being looked for. Lots of places provide low-cost or even free STI testing for young people, but you’ll need to ask when you make your appointment, and maybe look online for the most price-efficient option in your local area. The cost also depends on the tests required.

 

If you’re worried or embarrassed about someone else finding out about your STI test, you don’t need to be concerned. Your doctor will be legally obliged to keep information that you give him or her confidential, regardless of how old you are. The only exception would be if you are under the age of 16 and an issue of your safety arises. However, the results of STI testing are completely confidential. The results are stored in your medical files and sexual health clinics normally keep separate records to the files kept by your doctor or local hospital. That said, if you do test positive for an STI, you absolutely need to tell your recent sexual partners so that they can be tested too. One of them may have passed it on to you unknowingly, and may be doing so with other people. To help minimise the embarrassment of getting in touch with former partners, many clinics will provide you with letters or other ways to ease the process.

Categories: Costs, doctor, sexual, sexual health, sexual history, sexual partners, sti testing, STIs, Symptoms, tested, Testing

Environmental vs. Financial Wellness: Which Would You Pick?

We all want to see environmental wellness improve, but what if it comes at the cost of the world’s financial wellbeing? According to a new analysis, if the world were to adopt carbon restrictions of the magnitude mandated by the Lieberman–Warner and Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade bills or the Boxer–Sanders carbon-tax bill, global economies would suffer.

But “going green” improves financial wellness, doesn’t it? Often, but not to this scale. Adhering to the Lieberman–Warner cap-and-trade bill would actually reduce worldwide income, even after accounting for the economic benefits of moderated warming. For the remainder of the 21^st century, the costs would exceed the benefits by more than $100 trillion – and that’s only if the US took on the extreme climate policy. If we in the UK and other major developed countries were to join America implementing an equivalent policy to restrict carbon emissions, the perverse financial impact would be even worse.

As it stands, the impacts of warming, how much we have contributed to it with carbon emissions, and how much the planet will warm over the next century and beyond, is actually fairly uncertain. So if it turns out future warming is less that some believe, there is little need to address carbon emissions now. Regardless, carbon policies flunk the cost-benefit test by wide margins, and this is how policies should be evaluated; by comparing their impact relative to their costs.

So might the costs and benefits be if the world were to adopt a carbon policy with restrictions similar in size and scope to those in the Waxman–Markey legislation (an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050)? If the US alone adopt this policy, which House of Representatives passed in 2009, there would be a worldwide aggregate income loss of $109.6 trillion by 2100, and a one-year worldwide loss of $3.5 trillion in 2100, equivalent to 4.75% of US gross domestic product (GDP). There would also be adverse impacts, on net, in every year of implementation, and these same results would hold for a carbon tax. Remember, this is if the US alone cut carbon emissions by 80% – the results are even worse if more countries adopt the carbon-restricting policies.

Categories: Carbon Cutting Policy, Costs, Lieberman–Warner cap-and-trade bill

The Secret Financial Pain Of Diabetics

In countries without healthcare, such as the United States of America, it is estimated that an average person who is suffering from diabetes spends over 4,000 dollars more every year in medical expenses than those who do not suffer from the condition. This is not the end of the story when it comes to the financial picture of diabetes, however, there are also a number of non-medical costs associated with having the disease. These include the decrease in earning potential, as some diabetics are restricted in the type of work that they can do, because of their condition, and their job prospects can be affected.

Financial wellbeing is not often considered, when people are quantifying the effects of diabetes, but a recent study shows that it is almost as significant a factor as wellness-related effects, for those living with the condition long-term.

The study was published in the Health Affairs journal, and was carried out in association with Dr. Michael Richards, who works in the department of health policy and administration at Yale University. The findings were taken from a national study of adolescent health, which gathered information from around 15,000 people over a period of 14 years. This study highlighted important findings, such as the fact that those with diabetes were less likely to complete their high school career (around six percent dropped out) and were also less likely to go on and attend college after school. In addition to this, by the age of about 30, the diabetics in the survey were around 10 percent less likely to have a job, due at least in part to their reduced opportunities to gain a good education.

This, coupled with the increased medical costs of having to pay for a lifetime treatment for the debilitating condition, can mean that diabetes hits people very hard in a financial sense, and this is something for which there needs to be greater awareness.

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The Secret Financial Pain Of Diabetics

Categories: Costs, Diabetes, financial