Tag: Osteoporosis

Awareness
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Be Aware – May’s Awareness Months

Who decides what months/weeks/days are health awareness dates? It’s often nonprofit or public health organizations, but sometimes states or the federal government can name an observance period. The month of May is observed as over a dozen awareness months, overlapping awareness weeks, and several awareness days. Several of our own partners are observing awareness months. ALS Awareness Month May was named ALS Awareness Month in the United States by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting the function of […]

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Awareness, Health
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National Osteoporosis Month

National Osteoporosis Month is observed every May and promoted by the National Osteoporosis Foundation.  Also known as National Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month, people are encouraged to understand the risk factors and preventative measures that affect bone health.  An estimated 10 million Americans are diagnosed with osteoporosis and another 44 million have low bone density, placing them at increased risk.   Osteoporosis causes bones to become weak and brittle so that they may break from mild stresses or falls, and occurs when the creation of new bone tissue doesn’t keep pace with the degradation of the existing bone. Osteoporosis affects […]

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Prescription Drugs
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Gender-Specific Medicine: Part 2

This week we continue to look at gender medicine- how diseases may manifest themselves differently, and how medications may affect differently- depending on whether you are male or female. An editorial in Nature in 2010 urged us to “put Gender on the Agenda,” as increasingly we are seeing from research results that there are distinct gender-based differences in disease incidence and activity, and treatment methods, especially medication. Cancer, for example, is the second leading cause of death among women and men, (Anderson, R.N., Deaths: Leading Causes for 2000. National Vital Statistics Reports. 2002, National Center for Health Statistics: Hyattsville, MD), […]

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Prescription Drugs
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Gender-Specific Medicine

“Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars.” “Women think differently than men.” These viewpoints appear to be widespread and popular, fueling spirited and on-going debate in the media and the arts, but what about healthcare and medicine? Most medical research over the years has focused on white men as subjects, and results were then extrapolated to include everyone else. From an ethical perspective, there were some humanistic reasons for this, e.g., protecting women and children from experimental research that may not have benefited them. In many cases, however, research focused on those in positions of power. This situation is slowly […]

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Welcome to the NeedyMeds Voice! We look forward to presenting you with timely, provocative pieces on healthcare reform, patient advocacy, medication and healthcare access, and other health-related news. Our goals are to educate, enlighten, and elucidate; together, we will try to make sense of the myriad and ongoing healthcare-related changes in the U.S. today.