Exercise is good for you, Mr Bean, even judo class

Mr Bean attends a judo class but doesn't want to be thrown by the teacher. From Back to School Mr Bean.

Mr. Bean now has an Official YouTube Channel.

Related reading:

Minimum amount of physical activity for reduced mortality and extended life expectancy: 15 min a day or 90 min a week. Lancet, 2011.

Neighborhood Determinants of Quality of Life - street lighting, sidewalks, trees, absence of air or noise pollution

This paper analyzed quality of life in Uruguay. Differences in overall happiness can be explained by access to public goods.

Neighborhood Determinants of Quality of Life included:

- access to electricity, running water, sewage system, drainage, waste disposal system
- street lighting
- sidewalks in good condition
- trees in the street - "forest bathing" (exposure to parks and forests) may increase immunity

- absence of air or noise pollution

Don't forget that happy people are 22% less likely to develop heart disease.

Based on research, Mike Cadogan summarized happiness in just 4 ideas - repeat every morning: "I'm happy, I'm hopeful about the future, I enjoy life, and I feel I'm just as good as other people."

References:

Neighborhood Determinants of Quality of Life. Néstor Gandelman, Giorgina Piani and Zuleika Ferre. Journal of Happiness Studies, 2011.

Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

Secure web messaging between patients and doctors: Not well received

Although e-mail may be an efficient clinician-patient communication tool, standard e-mail is not adequately secure to meet Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidelines. For this reason, firewall-secured electronic messaging systems have been developed for use in health care.

The Kryptiq messaging system was implemented at an academic center and messages were monitored continuously and tracked.

In the 8 months after implementation, only 5 messages were initiated by patients in contrast to 2,363 phone calls.

Patients/families expressed strong interest in e-mailing but secure Web messaging was:

- less convenient than using the phone

- too technically cumbersome

- lacked a personal touch

- only by a handful of patients

One pediatrician on Twitter wants a simpler solution:

@Doctor_V (Bryan Vartabedian): Gimme an integrated, secure Tw like tool for doc to doc/pt comm - part of record.

Comments from Twitter:

@davisliumd: No, Kaiser's data different: Use of Health Information Technology Leads to Improved Care Quality

@yejnes: My patients like it!

References:

Secure Web Messaging in a Pediatric Chronic Care Clinic: A Slow Takeoff of "Kids' Airmail". PEDIATRICS Vol. 127 No. 2 February 2011, pp. e406-e413 (doi:10.1542/peds.2010-1086)

Medical practices using email with patients see their voicemail volume drop - email replaces inefficient phone tag. "We in health care can no longer sit back and say, "I don't do email with patients" - a doctor in WSJ, 2012.

Image source: Wikipedia, public domain.

Cirrhosis: Phil's story

From NHSChoices: Many people enjoy a drink in the pub after work without realising how social drinking can damage health. Phil didn't realise the harm his alcohol intake was doing until he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He talks about his experience and the shock he felt at being diagnosed.

Related reading:

Cirrhosis - JAMA Patient Page, 2012.

Twitter epidemics - BMJ video

BMJ medical innovations: During the swine flu pandemic, Google showed that it was able to track the spread using the searches that its users were making. In this video Dr Patty Kostkova shows her work using twitter - and how the data from that could be used to track future epidemics.

Related blog post from ScienceRoll:

"Do you remember when Google Flu Trends was announced to be able to track and predict flu outbreaks in US states based on the search queries focusing on flu symptoms? Do you remember when a study pointed out although it was interactive and neat but was not as useful as CDC national surveillance programs? Well, now Twitter is meant to fill this gap. If you ask me, it won’t."

What young doctors read

From the former BMJ Editor-in-Chief:

"I meet with young doctors all over the world, and I usually ask them what they read. I ask for a show of hands and find fairly consistently that half read the NEJM, the Lancet, a local journal, and a specialist journal, a third the BMJ, and most a local newspaper.

About half are reading a novel, and about a third have read a poem in the past week.

Almost all are on Facebook but very few on Twitter."

A lot of them also use Wikipedia as textbook replacement but they will not admit it unless asked directly.

Here, in the U.S., the majority of young doctors use UpToDate as a primary source, if the subscription is purchased by their hospital.

References:

Richard Smith: Review of “bring back browsing”. BMJ Blogs.

Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

Comments from Google+:

jennifer gunter - I read textbooks and journals! A lot of them.

Ves Dimov - Good for you. I read most of my journals in Google Reader, then post the most relevant info from them on the blogs, thus creating a searchable archive.

Arin Basu - Ves, I remember some years ago you put up a graphic about your workflow. I'd like to revisit that workflow where you showed how you integrated your RSS reading, blogging, and other readings were coordinated. If you have the link to the resource, would you mind sharing it? Or may be put up the graphic here with some notes as a picture?

Ves Dimov - Sure. That's easy to find. I'm glad you found it useful at the time. It's from 2009:
http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-deal-with-information-overload.html

Nancy Onyett, FNP-C - I am not a physician, I am a family nurse practitioner owner in private practice. I read all the articles that are updated on my feed burner, and the medical journals that come in monthly and bimonthly JAMA, NEJM, American Family Physician, Pain Medicine News, Lancet, JCEM (Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism), Maturitas.

Cholesterol numbers - Mayo Clinic video

Mayo Clinic: You've heard the warnings before — high cholesterol increases your risk of heart disease. So how often should you get your cholesterol checked, what should your numbers be, and how do you get them there?

Heart numbers to know, from Cleveland Clinic

Knowing your risk for heart disease depends on knowing and understanding some important numbers:

- Blood pressure should be less than 120/80 mm Hg

- Fasting blood sugar should be less than 100 mg/dL

- Total cholesterol less than 200 mg/dL

- LDL (bad cholesterol) less than 100 mg/dL, HDL (good) greater than 40 mg/dL

- Waist circumference should be less than 40 inches for men and less then 35 inches for women

- Body Mass Index (BMI) should be between 18.5 and 25. Calculate your BMI here: http://bit.ly/glMJE5