Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

5 Tips for Staying Healthy Over the Holidays

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It’s the holiday season! When you’re traveling, it’s important not to forget about your family’s health in the midst of all the packing and planning. Nothing can ruin a holiday expedition faster than a poorly-timed bout with sickness – and the cold weather and travel that come along with the season significantly increase the risk of someone in the family coming down with something.

Luckily, there are several easy things you can do to help your family stay healthy during these extra-special holiday vacations:

  • BRING ALONG THE BASICS – Put together a travel bag with the things you need to keep the family healthy. Include things like aspirin and ibuprofen, any medications your family members take regularly, anti-diarrhea and motion sickness medication, and sunscreen (if you’re lucky enough to be heading somewhere without the cold weather). Also, don’t forget to pack anti-bacterial hand-wipes and hand-cleaners. Planes, trains and automobiles are all hotbeds for germs.

BetterDoctor-travel-medicine-kit

  •  STAY ACTIVE – Getting up off the couch and getting the blood flowing is a great way to wake up your immune system – and it’s also a great way to cancel out those extra reindeer-shaped cookies or second helping of auntie’s famous pumpkin pie. Carve out some time during the day for the whole family to get up and get active. Go for a walk around the neighborhood, play a game of football in the backyard, or bundle up the clan for a day of skiing or skating.

BetterDoctor-stay-active-during-holidays

  • GET A FLU SHOT – The holiday season corresponds with the flu season. If you and your family are traveling, chances are you’ll be in the midst of big crowds at some point. That means there are greater odds of coming down with the flu; cut down those odds by getting a flu shot before you travel. You don’t want your holidays ruined by this nasty virus.

Flu-shots

  • REST AND DE-STRESS – It’s easy to get to the tear-your-hair-out point when you’re surrounded by family for hours and hours, and stay up late baking with Grandma or gabbing with Dad. Make sure to take some time for yourself in the midst of the holiday craziness. Take a nice long walk, or slip into the basement to grab an hour to look through some old family pictures (and marvel at those bad haircuts). Be sure to grab a good chunk of sleep every night, too. After all, you’re on vacation!

Sleep is the best meditation- Dalai Lama

  • DON’T OVEREAT – Remember auntie’s pumpkin pie or those reindeer-shaped cookies? They’re delicious, and they should be consumed – but in moderation, of course. Your body will thank you once the holidays are over.

reindeer-cookies

That’s it! Just follow these five simple steps, and you’ll be certain to have a happy and healthy holiday season!

5 ways to make healthcare more transparent

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Dr. Marty Makary wrote an interesting article on WSJ titled “How to Stop Hospitals From Killing Us“. He offered 5 simple ways to make health care safer and more transparent.

1. Hospital Online Dashboards

There is still little visibility on care outcome on hospital or doctor level. Dr. Makary believes that consumers should have access to a full hospital dashboard with hard and comparable performance metrics. Some of the recommended data points include annual volume by surgery type, patient satisfaction scores, rates of infections, readmission and errors.

As an informal exercise throughout my career, I’ve asked patients how they decided to come to the hospital where I was working. Among their answers: “Because you’re close to home”; “You guys treated my dad when he died”; “I figured it must be good because you have a helicopter.” You wouldn’t believe the number of patients who have told me that the deciding factor for them was parking.

2. Better teamwork in care teams

Hospital work environments can be hierarchical and sometimes nurse practitioner or interns have no confidence to stop an error even if they noticed it beforehand. Studies show that hospitals with best teamwork scores offer better care.

3. Oversight by cameras

Dr. Makary offers a simple yet powerful method to enforce best practices by mounting cameras in operation rooms. This has been proven to dramatically increase the quality of care.

4. Open Notes

Most of information is lost during the doctor’s appointment because the patient tends to be sick and scared, and often has little understanding of the condition. Dr. Makary suggest that doctors should dictate the medical record while patient listens so the patient can correct possible errors. It would be even better if doctor could share the medical records with patient and the patient could update and modify the record online.

5. No more gagging

Transparency is improving and more data is coming public. Yet there is still a halo of secrecy and fear of legal actions against a whistleblowers. Some hospitals make patients sign a gag-order promising never to say anything negative about the doctor or hospital.

Transparency can also help to restore the public’s trust. Many Americans feel that medicine has become an increasingly secretive, even arrogant, industry. With more transparency—and the accountability that it brings—we can address the cost crisis, deliver safer care and improve how we are seen by the communities we serve. To do no harm going forward, we must be able to learn from the harm we have already done.

Good healthy gifts for Christmas

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You still have 10 days to find the great Christmas gifts for you loved ones. Why not to make it something healthy this year. Here’s a short list of our 6 favorite ideas.

1. Home delivered fresh organic vegetables and fruits

Farm Fresh To You is a our Bay Area favorite who delivers to homes and offices. They offer a great selection local produce boxes from fruit to organic eggs. Subscription is a nice gift idea because every box is a surprise as you’ll never know what the latest box will contain. You can google to find your local alternative.

2. Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale

Withings scale is only for the bravest gift givers. This is not your standard bathroom scale, but a Wi-Fi connected one. The scale comes with suite of software that let’s you track the whole family on the web, mobile or iPad. Withings has been able to turn weight measurement into a fun and enjoyable activity.

3. Annual Pass for National Parks

Annual Pass for National Parks is a great way to offer an experience that many of us haven’t done since childhood. We would love to go to Yosemite, Yellowstone or Grand Canyon, but never seem to find the time.

4. Gym Membership

Gym membership is always a great gift and a good way to start the new year. Just keep in mind that there are more gyms than the 24 Hour Fitness. One of our favorites is the SF Planet Granite where you can climb and have a view to Golden Gate Bridge.

5. Xbox 360 with Kinect

Kinect upgraded Xbox 360 last year and now the new software update has made the Xbox even better. It’s no longer just a gaming device but the best media center for your living room. What’s healthy about this? Once you try Kinect you can’t go back to passive gaming where you only move your thumbs.

6. Bicycle

Bicycles come in different shapes and sizes. You can go from high performance road bike to hipster friendly single speed, but the choice for average Jenny would be Public Bikes. Public is a new SF based brand building classic old school bicycles that are simple to maintain and fun to ride.