Week 7: Consumer Health Resources

Health Source, Consumer Edition:  Wow!  There are a lot of magazines included in this resource.  I am intrigued that I see a magazine dealing with LSD in the first few resources.  I'm sure it's for true medical reasons, but the inner middle schooler is tee-hee-hee-ing over drugs.  (And AHA News probably isn't about the band, either.)  No resources start with Q, in case you were wondering.  I picked fibromyalgia as my disease, since my best friend suffers from it.  I was able to sort the results by date, but they looked like they were mainly about drugs.  I scanned a report on fibromyalgia by RelayHealth.  I could understand everything in the article as a layperson.

MedlinePlus: I don't like MedlinePlus as much as Mayo Clinic personally, but that's not the point of this exercise. :)  The right-hand column of MedinePlus has health news.  Current topics include that flu season is hitting early this year (and hard), most teens with mental illnesses are not on medication, and a study finds a pattern in brain injuries and contact sports.  Popular searches on the left side today include diabetes, hypertension, acetaminophen, aspirin and Vitamin D. To practice the drug search, I looked up Lexapo, or escitalopram.  You can find out why the drug is prescribed, how it should be taken, side effects, any special precautions or dietary restrictions, what you should do if you forget a dose and what to do if there is an emergency overdose.  Fibromyalgia information is organized in a way that I would find easier to show to a patron.  I have to say, I think Medline Plus has undergone a website redo since I last used it, because it's much easier to use now.  I watched a short video on allergies.  It gave a short overview of what causes allergies.  I'm not sure how useful it was, but maybe if I had just been diagnosed, I would find it more helpful.