Follow These Medical Professional Tips to Avoid Dreadful Fates
The daily decisions that most affect your health are not the ones you make at the grocery store, say choosing between organic and regular apples. These are important things like getting vaccinated and wearing your seat belt.
On Twitter, Registered Nurse Angela Simpson asked people who specialize in the medical field to share what they thought everyone knew. Here are a few:
Wash Your Hands and Give Vaccines
These are simple things that have come up over and over again. Vaccines can prevent serious illness and its complications; Getting these vaccines on time will ensure that young children are protected as soon as possible. Vaccines do have risks, but those risks are negligible compared to the benefits.
Hand washing stops the spread of all kinds of illnesses, from colds and flu to … well, pretty much everything .
Never ignore a wound on your leg.
A foot wound can be a foot ulcer , which often develops in people with diabetes. This may not hurt much, as people prone to foot ulcers also have a reduced ability to feel pain in their limbs. According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, 14 to 24 percent of foot ulcers result in amputation.
Pay your kid to rake your walk if you have heart disease
Strenuous exercise can increase your risk of heart attack ( STEMI is a type of heart attack), so if you know you have heart problems, talk to your doctor about what is appropriate and remember that clearing snow is definitely considered exercise. … If you don’t have enough money, look for the “Snow Angel” program in your city, or simply call your neighbors and play the “I have a heart disease” card.
Put on your seat belt and your helmet
Seat belts halve the number of road traffic injuries and deaths . Bicycle and motorcycle helmets also significantly reduce injuries and deaths. People working in ambulances and emergency departments see what happens when you don’t.
Beware of assuming someone is drunk
Many serious illnesses, including stroke , can look like someone is drunk on the surface: slurred speech, problems with limb movement, incomplete wakefulness and ignorance of the world. Several other causes that can cause symptoms similar to binge-drinking include: head trauma, dangerously low blood sugar, the effects of drug poisoning, hypothermia. Basically, a lot of trouble happens to your brain. If unsure, seek emergency help.
Trust your intuition when it comes to a child.
New parents have a lot to worry about, and yes, it’s easy to be intimidated by what turns out to be normal. But trust your intuition if something seems really wrong. You know when your child is in severe pain, when he is not acting like himself, when some part of his tiny adorable body looks or feels differently than usual.
Keep your gun away from home and don’t be an asshole
Among the pathologist’s advice: Don’t bring a gun if you have depressed or anxious teens in your home. (Suicide by firearms is tragically common among teenagers.) And don’t be an asshole. This is, as we say, a hack.