The summer  of 2009 is fast approaching and with that, the demand for air conditioners.  Portable air conditioners (mobile air conditioners) have become increasingly popular over the last 10 years. While most people spend their time in only 1 or 2 rooms of a home, the costs associated with cooling the entire house can be prohibitive. Not all air conditioners are listed  by consumer research .  However, that does not mean that the other’s  are not quality, simply that they are not  discussed.

Portable air conditioners come in different energy capacities. A 7,500 BTU portable air conditioner can comfortably cool a room up to 200 sq ft.  while a  13,000 BTU  air conditioner will cool over 400 sq. ft.  All portable air conditioners I reviewed include a window kit which simplifies the setup, allowing the air conditioner to be used almost immediately upon delivery.

It makes little sense to cool an entire home  with central air when you can cool 1 or 2 rooms with a portable room air conditioner or room air cooler.  Most portable air conditioners, like those manufactured by Soleus Air or Sunpentown, have wheels which  allow them to be transported from one room to the other.  Mobile air conditioners are great for  home offices or for senior citizens who  are on a tight budget.

In addition to cooling your room down to 61 degrees,  portable air conditioners also dehumidify the air at the same time.  Some units are capable or removing up to 65 pints (8 gallons) of water per day from the air. You may be able to  use your portable air conditioner during the winter, if you purchase one that has a built in heater.

The Soleus Air- LX-140 is a 14,000 BTU remote controlled air conditioner which has a dehumidifier and built in heater -all in 1 unit. This unit retails for $799 but we found it priced at a discount for $589 at www.eHealthSupplies.com, with free shipping.  Let expensive units , such as the Sunpentown WA-7500 (7500 BTU) can cool up to 200 sq. ft for less than  $375. In all,  eHealthSupplies.com has 31 different unit to choose from.  If you have any questions, their live customer support person can help you choose which portable air conditioner is best for you. Good Luck!

I have received a list of medicines that will be going generic during the first quarter of 2009. This is great news at a time when so many are on a limited budget.  Remember to always ask your physician for generic alternatives.  At this point in time, almost every class of medicine out there has generic equivalents, including blood pressure medicines.  Places like Wal-mart and Target offer the medicines  for as cheap as $4 per month or $10 for 3 months.

1.  Topamax (topiramate)  : Seizure  medicine and migraine prevention/

2. Prandin (repaglinide): diabetes medicine

3. CellCept (mycophenolate mofetil): Organ transplants

4. Prevacid (lansprazole): acid reducing medicine

5. Pulmicort Respules (budesonide): asthma medicine

6. Flomax (tamsulosin): prostate medicine

HOW I SEE IT!

I think defensive medicine is the key here. A doctor does not want to get sued for missing a diagnosis, especially in a child.   The results could be catastrophic.

First,  the average doctor  coming out of residency has almost $200,000 in student loans. No joke!   In order to pay that back, they will have to make payments of $2000-2500/month for 10 years or $1200/month for 30 years.

Since student loans are so high, most new doctors are going into specialites where they will make more money  instead of primary care; like pediatrics, family medicine and internal medicine. 

The result? 

Fewer family doctors and pediatricians.  The brave new  primary care doctors  pay 20%-25% of their monthly take home (After giving 35%  to taxes)  in student loans and another 10% in malpractice insurance. 

In then end, they take home 30 cents on the dollar.  Imagine making $10 per hour and taking home $3? Most new doctors do just that.  

Next month, Medicare is planning on reimbursing doctors from 11-20%   LESS for the work they do. Unfortunately,  many doctors are then pressured to see more patients per hour just to make ends meet. 

The result, they will do more CT scans of the head, abdomen and just about anywhere else since it is quicker and easier  than spending longer periods of time with  patients getting a detailed history. Contrary to belief, most doctors would love to spend 30 minutes or more with each patient if possible. They just would be able to pay their bills if they did.  

Patients are the real victims here. In addition to this, patients are paying more money for health insurance each year for less services. 

Meanwhile, most health insurance company stock prices are up 200-300% over the last 8 years.

The healthcare system is broken and until there is malpractice reform and health insurance reform- patients are actually going to be putting their own lives at risk. Patients and Doctors both  need to speak up!  Health Insurance CEOs make up to $51 million dollars/year while you stuggle to pay your $10 copay.

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Computed tomography (CT or CAT) scans help doctors detect everything from cancer to kidney stones. But some physicians are raising concerns about the safety of such procedures — most notably, an increase in cancer risk. A CT scan packs a mega-dose of radiation — as much as 500 times that of a conventional X-ray. If your doctor orders a CT scan for you or your child, should you think twice?

Absolutely, say researchers behind two recent studies that sound the alarm about the increased cancer risk associated with multiple CT scans. In the first study of its kind, physicians at hospitals in Florida and Washington, D.C., evaluated the medical-imaging records of 1,243 randomly selected patients to calculate just how much radiation each patient had sustained in the past five years. Although CT scans were the biggest source of radiation, other offenders included X-rays and mammograms. The results of the study, presented in May at the annual conference of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, were disturbing: the average patient had received 45 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation. (The typical chest X-ray dispatches 0.02 mSv of radiation.) And 12% of patients had gotten more than twice that amount — 100 mSv or more. “Our focus is to bring awareness to the fact that people are getting large doses of radiation and it’s not innocuous,” says Timothy Bullard, the study’s lead author and chief medical officer at Orlando Regional Medical Center. “We want people to use the technology appropriately.”

“Appropriate” is the key word — especially since a review study published last November in the New England Journal of Medicine determined that as many as one-third of all CT scans performed in the United States are unnecessary. The authors take issue with the “perhaps 20 million adults and, crucially, more than 1 million children per year in the United States [who] are being irradiated unnecessarily.” Part of the problem, the authors say, is that patients are being prescribed multiple, unneeded CT scans, a predicament that could be avoided with better communication between physicians. “Having the same CT scan twice is ridiculous,” says David Brenner, the review’s lead author and director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center. “There is no excuse.” In one of the review’s highlighted studies, among patients undergoing CT scans, 30% were on their third scan, 7% had five or more, and 4% had more than nine. Also to blame: doctors increasingly practicing defensive medicine. “There is an underlying philosophy that you’re at fault if you miss anything,” says Bullard. “The goal is to be perfect every time.” Plus, he notes, CT scans have no immediate negative side effects. “They are quick, painless, and send patients away with the sense of satisfaction that everything’s been done.”

Exactly how much radiation is too much? Because CT scans came into vogue in the 1980s and radiation-induced cancer takes roughly 20 years to develop, long-term studies of CT scans and cancer are still under way. But scientists are already anticipating future health implications. Indeed, researchers found a population of 25,000 Japanese post-atomic-bomb survivors who were exposed to roughly the same amount of radiation as two CT scans. Based in part on those studies, the Food and Drug Administration estimates that an adult’s lifetime risk of developing radiation-induced cancer from a CT scan is roughly 1 in 2,000. Worse, the risk for children is even higher.

Compared with adults, children are more sensitive to radiation because they have longer life expectancies and because their cells divide more rapidly, making their DNA more vulnerable to damage. A child’s risk of developing a fatal cancer from one CT scan is as high as 1 in 500. Although newer machines can be adjusted to deliver up to 50% less radiation for children and small adults, a 2001 study published in the American Journal of Radiation showed that radiologic technologists (RT) rarely make those adjustments. “Changing technical factors is very easy. It just requires a little thought and a few extra seconds,” says Michele Scoglietti, a spokesperson for the American Society of Radiologic Technologists. “But I think there are many RTs who are either not trained to vary the technique, don’t know how, are in a hurry or are just lazy.”

When doctors first ordered a CT scan for Jen Houck’s six-month-old daughter in 2003, the new mom was more worried about the risks of anesthesia (used to keep children from squirming in the machine) than of radiation exposure. In 2006 and 2007, her daughter, now 5, had two additional CT scans, 6 months apart, for what doctors initially thought was a growth abnormality. They’ve since determined the child was perfectly healthy. “All that, just to find out her head is bigger than normal,” says the 27-year-old mother of two in Boone, North Carolina. In hindsight, Houck wishes she had done things a bit differently. “I would have asked more questions about the necessity for a third scan so soon after the second.” She also says no one mentioned the option of a low-dose scan, and she has no idea how much radiation her daughter received. “I wish I’d known to ask the question.”

So what should you ask, if a doctor recommends a CT scan for you or your child? Brenner suggests the following: is a CT scan really necessary? Might a test that doesn’t involve radiation, such as an ultrasound or MRI, do the job? In some cases, a CT scan is absolutely required — for example, for diagnosing severe head trauma or internal injuries, for acute abdominal pain, or to diagnose an existing cancer. If your doctor schedules you for a scan, call ahead to see if you can bring a flash drive. That way you can take an electronic copy of your CT scan to go, and may be able to avoid another scan later, should you move or change doctors. (A hard copy of the scan is bulkier, but may also be an option.) If your child needs a CT scan, ask the technologist to put the machine on pediatric-appropriate settings. For more information on kids and CT scan safety, visit the http://www.pedrad.org/associations/5364/ig/.

• Find this article at:
• http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1818520,00.html

By Thomas Frank
USA TODAY

BALTIMORE — Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation’s busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York’s Kennedy airport.

Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.

“It’s the wave of the future,” said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.

Schear said the scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation’s 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening. “We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging,” Schear said.

The TSA effort could encourage scanners’ use in rail stations, arenas and office buildings, the American Civil Liberties Union said. “This may well set a precedent that others will follow,” said Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU technology project.

Scanners are used in a few courthouses, jails and U.S. embassies, as well as overseas border crossings, military checkpoints and some foreign airports such as Amsterdam’s Schiphol.

The scanners bounce harmless “millimeter waves” off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body. Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger.

The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers’ faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person’s gender. “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back,” Schear said.

The scanners aim to strengthen airport security by spotting plastic and ceramic weapons and explosives that evade metal detectors and are the biggest threat to aviation. Government audits have found that screeners miss a large number of weapons, bombs and bomb parts such as wires and timers that agents sneak through checkpoints.

“I’m delighted by this development,” said Clark Kent Ervin, the former Homeland Security inspector general whose reports urged the use of body scanners. “This really is the ultimate answer to increasing screeners’ ability to spot concealed weapons.”

The scanners do a good job seeing under clothing but cannot see through plastic or rubber materials that resemble skin, said Peter Siegel, a senior scientist at the California Institute of Technology.

“You probably could find very common materials that you could wrap around you that would effectively obscure things,” Siegel said.

Passengers who went through a scanner at the Baltimore airport last week were intrigued, reassured and occasionally wary. The process took about 30 seconds on average.

Stepping into the 9-foot-tall glass booth, Eileen Reardon of Baltimore looked startled when an electronic glass door slid around the outside of the machine to create the image of her body. “Some of this stuff seems a little crazy,” Reardon said, “but in this day and age, you have to go along with it.”

Scott Shafer of Phoenix didn’t mind a screener looking at him underneath his shorts and polo shirt from a nearby room. The door is kept shut and blocked with floor screens. “I don’t know that person back there. I’ll never seem them,” Shafer said. “Everything personal is taken out of the equation.”

Steinhardt of the ACLU said passengers would be alarmed if they saw the image of their body. “It all seems very clinical and non-threatening — you go through this portal and don’t have any idea what’s at the other end,” he said.

Passengers scanned in Baltimore said they did not know what the scanner did and were not told why they were directed into the booth.

Magazine-size signs are posted around the checkpoint explaining the scanners, but passengers said they did not notice them.

Darin Scott of Miami was annoyed by the process.

“If you don’t ask questions, they don’t tell you anything,” Scott said. When he asked a screener technical questions about the scanner, “he could not answer,” Scott said.

TSA spokeswoman Sterling Payne said the agency is studying passenger reaction and could “get more creative” about informing passengers. “If passengers have questions,” she said, “they need to ask the questions.”

Passengers can decline to go through a scanner, but they will face a pat-down.

Schear, the Baltimore security director, said only 4% of passengers decline.

In Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where scanners have been tested since last year as an alternative to pat-downs, 90% of passengers choose to be scanned, the TSA says.

“Most passengers don’t think it’s any big deal,” Schear said. “They think it’s a piece of security they’re willing to do.”

Surprisingly  the alternative to these medications are newly patented devices with the same “generic medicine” inside them. The result is patients will have to pay more money for the basic asthma rescue medicine, albuterol.  My personal opinion is that this has more to do with money and little to do with a hole in the ozone layer.

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Ozone-Depleting Inhalers Being Phased Out

FRIDAY, May 30 (HealthDay News) — Asthma inhalers that contain the drug albuterol to relax the airways also contain chemicals that harm the ozone layer. And these inhalers won’t be available after this year, so U.S. health officials are urging patients to switch to alternative inhalers now.

Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, are widely used to propel inhaled drugs into the lungs. However, products containing CFCs are being phased out, because the chemicals damage the Earth’s protective ozone layer. CFC inhalers are being replaced by inhalers powered by HFAs, or hydrofluoroalkanes, which are ozone-friendly.

The change to HFA-powered inhalers has been in the works for several years, but the FDA issued an advisory on Friday, urging patients still using CFC inhalers to switch now. Inhalers containing CFCs will not be available after Dec. 31.

FDA officials said people with respiratory problems, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, may need some time to acclimate to HFA-based inhalers.

“There are 52 million prescriptions written for albuterol inhalers each year in the United States,” Dr. Badrul Chowdhury, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Division of Pulmonary and Allergy Products, said during a teleconference. Albuterol is used to treat shortness of breath in people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, he noted.

Chowdhury said that approximately 65 percent of inhaler users have already switched to HFA inhalers.

“These new handlers may taste and feel different than the current CFC inhalers,” he said. “In addition, HFA inhalers may feel softer than CFC inhalers.”

Also, patients using HFA inhalers will have to prime and clean them to prevent the buildup of albuterol in the inhalers’ nozzle. This buildup could block the medicine from reaching the lungs, Chowdhury said.

Each HFA inhaler has a different priming mechanism and cleaning and drying instructions. So, users should carefully read the instructions before using the inhaler. And HFA inhalers may cost more, because there’s no generic HFA inhaler available yet, Chowdhury said.

Three HFA-propelled albuterol inhalers have been approved by the FDA: Proair HFA Inhalation Aerosol; Proventil HFA Inhalation Aerosol; and Ventolin HFA Inhalation Aerosol. Also, an HFA-propelled inhaler containing levalbuterol, a medicine similar to albuterol, is available as Xopenex HFA Inhalation Aerosol, the agency said.

Dr. Ira Finegold, chief of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City, doesn’t see much difference in the effectiveness of the two types of inhalers. “The end result — if you need it, does it open up your lungs? Yes, it does,” he said.

However, the changeover will involve some patient education, he said. “The old medication, CFC albuterol, was really a very nice product, because the propellant got in your body and came out of your body — it wasn’t absorbed. And remarkably, it is a cleaning agent, so the device was self-cleaning.”

The new HFA propellant is safe in the body but can clog the inhaler, Feingold said. “So, after use, these inhalers need to be rinsed out or they are not going to work correctly,” he said.

“In addition,” Feingold added, “each of the four new inhalers on the market is different in the number of times you have to prime it. There is also a little difference in feel and taste.”

The discontinuation of CFC-propelled inhalers is the result of the U.S. Clean Air Act and an international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Under provisions of this treaty, the United States agreed to stop the production and importation of substances that damage the ozone layer, including CFCs, according to the FDA.

More information

For more on inhalers, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

SOURCES: May 30, 2008, teleconference with Badrul Chowdhury, M.D., Ph.D., director, Division of Pulmonary and Allergy Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Ira Finegold, M.D., chief, Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Department of Medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York City

Being involved in a  health related business, I understand the importance of being able to keep customer information organized and getting appointments scheduled  with easy to use appointment scheduling software.  I came across a company that will   provide strategic marketing, ecommerce options and easy scheduling- that company is MindBody Solutions.

Mind body is specifically designed for Dance Studios, Health Clubs, Martial Arts, Personal Trainers, Pilates Studios, Retail  and Yoga Studios. If you are involved in one of these lines of business, then you should really consider this type of  web based program.

The strategic marketing section allows you to maximize your business and give your customers what they want.  It will help you upsell any products you may have.  In addition, you will be able to send your customes emails, newsletters and surveys.

Mindbody also provides Hair Salon Management Software  and Spa Management Software that will allow salon and spa owners to  more efficiently run their business.   The cost of this software can start at only $65 per month for small businesses, easily paying for iteself in no time.

A big benefit of the software is that clients are able to purchase  classes, pay for visits or buy products you may sell.   This service will allow your clients  to schedule and pay for their services online making the front desks’ less busy. This is a win win for all parties involved. To learn more about this web based software, visit : http://www.mindbodyonline.com/

Food prices soaring worldwide

Wheat and Bread Prices Triple in last year… Remember, this is what cows and livestock eat, so prices should rise for hamburgers too. In addition, Gold hit $1000 /oz and the dollar is at an all time low vs. the Euro. What does this mean?  You dollar is worth less so you will need to spend more of them to buy the same things. This is called inflation. Pay of your debt and store up your nuts as we may  headed for a “cold winter”.

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High Wheat Prices Raise Grocery Costs
Saturday March 15, 4:46 am ET
By Betsy Blaney, Associated Press Writer

Sticker Shock at the Grocery: Soaring Wheat Prices Mean More Expensive Food in Every Aisle