Sodium Chloride and the Human Body

Sodium Chloride is a naturally occurring chemical element in many foods needed for the proper functioning of the body. Normal table salt is a mixture of Sodium Chloride and chlorine and consuming it is not necessarily a bad thing, the problem for most Americans is that they consume more than they actually need. According to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the average person should be consuming less than 2.4 grams of Sodium Chloride per day, which equates to 2,400 milligrams.

Some important facts about Sodium Chloride and its relation to the human body:

The kidneys are responsible for controlling the amount of Sodium Chloride in the body and it is necessary for the proper functioning of the nerves and muscles. Sodium Chloride helps regulate the balance of fluid in our body and when consumed in excess the kidneys cannot process it. This leads to a build-up of Sodium Chloride within the blood, which can cause a host of medical issues including high blood pressure.

8 ways to reduce Sodium Chloride intake in your daily diet:

• Watch The Sodium Chloride In Your Vegetables

Whether the vegetables you buy are fresh, frozen or canned, it is important to check if any extra salt has been added. If possible, look specifically for produce items that feature a “no salt added” label or any other label along those lines.

• Drain And Rinse Canned Foods

Certain canned foods like Vienna sausage or tuna may contain excess Sodium Chloride from the liquid they are packaged in. Before using or consuming these and other similar products, make sure you drain the fluids completely before serving. You can even lightly rinse these canned foods to remove any residual Sodium Chloride.

• Be Careful When Consuming ‘Quick’ Foods

Quick foods include microwavable snacks and meals, canned soups and other ready-to-eat foods that require little to no preparation. Unlike a home cooked meal where you can control the amount of Sodium Chloride used in preparation, these foods often contain excessive Sodium Chloride. Avoid these types of foods if possible, or opt for lighter versions that have less Sodium Chloride.

• Read The Nutrition Labels Properly

Always read the nutrition labels properly, and make sure you are noting the serving size indicated in the nutritional information. Make sure you know how to properly read nutrition labels as certain foods are known for containing nearly an entire day’s worth of Sodium Chloride in one serving.

• Start Using A Variety Of Herbs And Spices

Salt and salt-based seasoning is one of the main reasons why people consume too much Sodium Chloride each day. While it is a simple and affordable way of making a meal tastier, it is not very healthy. Look into other herbs and spices you can use to give your meals more flavor, and shop specifically for salt-free seasoning.

• Try To Avoid Canned Or Processed Meats

When shopping for meats, fish, or poultry, the fresh variety is always the preferred choice when trying to reduce your Sodium Chloride intake. The processed and canned varieties tend to include excessive Sodium Chloride. Coupled with the salt that people tend to use while cooking, the Sodium Chloride content of the dish is nearly doubled.

• Look For Labels That Indicate ‘Reduced-Sodium Chloride’

When shopping for snacks or food items, look for any reduced-Sodium Chloride options. Key words and labels to scan on the packaging include:
*Low Sodium Chloride
*Reduced-Sodium Chloride
*Light
*Light Sodium Chloride
*Unsalted
Make sure you also read the nutritional information on the packaging to determine the amount of Sodium Chloride you are consuming per serving

• Sodium Chloride Does Not Mean ‘Salty’

People often consider salty as being synonymous with Sodium Chloride. However, there are certain foods, sauces, drinks and other consumables that contain Sodium Chloride and lack the salty taste. For example, a chocolate chip cookie may taste sweet, but can also have high Sodium Chloride content without being salty at all. Another example is the Sodium Chloride content in ketchup. Just be mindful that there could be Sodium Chloride in just about anything you consume, even if it lacks a salty taste.
‘Healthy Heart’

It is important to take the necessary steps to prevent yourself from having a heart attack; especially if you are at risk. Simple changes to your diet and activity level, managing other medical conditions and taking your prescribed medications are all good ways to be ‘Healthy Heart’

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Types of Insomnia

• Temporary insomnia
• Persistent insomnia

Temporary Insomnia:

Most cases of insomnia are caused due to temporary or stress related issues, including:
• Jet lag
• Physical discomfort
• Working in different shifts (working late or early shifts can disrupt your circadian rhythm, the body’s internal clock)
• Stressful life situations
• Recreational drug use
• Cigarette Smoking
• Caffeine intake prior to your bedtime
• Alcohol intoxication or withdrawal
• Eating too much food late in the evening

Persistent Insomnia:

Chronic medical or psychiatric conditions are often the underlying causes of persistent insomnia, and poor sleep habits are also known to significantly contribute to this disorder. An irregular sleep schedule, using the bedroom for other purposes, eating or exercising right before your bedtime, sleeping in a brightly light or noisy room and working in bed are all known to disrupt sleep, including:
• Breathing problems (e.g. asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
• Congestive heart failure
• Obesity
• Acid reflux
• Hyperthyroidism
• Urinary problems (e.g. urinary incontinence)
• Parkinson’s disease
• Dementia

Psychiatric conditions associated with insomnia, include:
• Depression
• Psychosis
• Mania
• Anxiety
• Post-traumatic stress disorder

Sleep related disorders than can cause insomnia, include:
• Sleep apnea
• Sleep walking
• Restless leg syndrome
• Circadian sleep disturbance

Symptoms:
Insomnia typically results in waking up feeling fatigued and lacking energy. It affects the ability to perform daily activities and it is the most obvious symptom of insomnia. Other symptoms include:
• Difficulty in falling asleep
• Waking up suddenly in night or early in the morning
• Not feeling well rested after a night’s sleep
• Daytime fatigue, sleepiness or tension headaches
• Poor attention and concentration
• Increasing errors and mistakes

Treatment for Insomnia
Improvements in lifestyle with regular exercise, good diet and sleep hygiene are essential to sleeping better.
Overcoming any habits negatively affecting your sleep is a must for a goodnight’s sleep.

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The other type of this sleep disorder is known as central sleep apneas. This sleep disorder is characterized by the brain which fails to give the signal to the muscles to breath. Research shows that at least 80% of people who have sleep apnea symptoms do not know that they have it. Sleep apnea is mostly noticed by people who are around the person. Here are some amazing facts that you probably need to know about sleep apnea treatment, its diagnosis and symptoms.

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From the hearing aids released in the 80s to the surge in innovation in wearable technology that started in the late 2000s (and which we are still experiencing now), it’s safe to say that this type of technology is ushering in an age of renaissance in healthcare that is unprecedented and would be nothing short of revolutionary. Want to gain a quick overview of how wearable technology is taking the healthcare systems of countries worldwide to the next level? Then you should really take the time to read the infographic we’ve prepared below.

It provides an apt summary of how wearables are impacting the said field, complemented by an outline of their various proven benefits, a list of the most popular devices that a lot of people patronize, and a sketch of its growth since its conception and eventual rise in popularity. What’s certain is that there’s a lot to look forward to in wearable tech as a primary agent of development in healthcare as a whole.

happy new year 2019 – This is the first celebration or festival of the year. So, I hope all are preparing yourself for the big day. Have a great day and year ahead.

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Part of the reason why it’s so effective is that it focuses on being an extended treatment plan for patients. There is no magic pill when it comes to rejuvenating the heart, after all, and most of time, successful treatments requires not only the full commitment of the healthcare provider but the patient as well. This is especially true if you have already suffered from a major cardiovascular crisis (such as a heart attack) or are already showing symptoms of heart failure. Such cases require extensive, uninterrupted care that would guarantee the complete recovery of the patient.

Cardiac rehabilitation is driven by information as well, it realizes the indispensable role of knowledge of the nature of one’s heart condition. This way, the patient would always be able to stick to ways that would allow you to recover seamlessly and quickly from a high-risk heart ailment or procedure. The benefits of cardiac rehab are numerous, to say the least, making it a truly important treatment plan that a lot of heart disease patients should consider going into.

In the infographic we have provided below, you would get pretty much all the information you need regarding cardiac rehabilitation as a whole. It outlines with sure brevity all the pertinent answers to the questions you may have about the said treatment. By investing a few minutes of your time, you would surely be able to know more about cardiac rehab and know whether you are compatible with this kind of treatment.

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Recently, researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, UT, discovered a link between administration of blood thinners used to treat AF and dementia, another common condition affecting a significant part of the senior population in America.

The study, which was based on more than 76,230 AF patients with no prior history of dementia, indicated that dementia rates increased with the delay in starting anticoagulation treatment for AF with an antiplatelet or Warfarin. The results of the study were presented at Heart Rhythm 2017, the Heart Rhythm Society’s 38th Annual Scientific Sessions, in Chicago on May 12, 2017.

“Our results reinforce the importance of starting anticoagulation treatment as early as possible after a patient is diagnosed with atrial fibrillation,” said Jared Bunch, MD, director of heart rhythm research at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute and medical director for heart rhythm services for the Intermountain Healthcare system in Salt Lake City. “We saw for the first time that waiting even just 30 days to initiate anticoagulation treatment can increase a patient’s long-term risk of developing dementia.”

The research revealed that a delay of just 30 days in administering the treatment in patients with a low risk of stroke increased their chances of developing dementia by 30%. For patients at a high risk of stroke, a delay of 30 days increased their chances of developing dementia by 136%. The study, thus, reinforces the importance of treating patients diagnosed with AF without any delay to prevent the associated risk of mental decline.

AF affects a large population across the world. By leading a healthy lifestyle, patients can greatly reduce their risk of heart disease. However, once diagnosed, simply altering your lifestyle is not the solution. Apart from adopting a healthy lifestyle, it is crucial to treat AF in a timely manner with proper medication to not only reduce the risk of a stroke but also eliminate the increased risk of developing dementia with delay in treatment as indicated by the aforementioned research.

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Revenue cycle management or RCM in healthcare utilizes billing software to manage different aspects of the revenue cycle such as patient records, claim management, payment and revenue generation. In short, RCM helps to keep track of the financial health of a healthcare institute. Apart from that, RCM also improves operational efficiency by integrating the healthcare data of patients with administrative details such as personal details of patients and information about their insurance providers.

In a nutshell, RCM allows hospitals to follow up on patient bills, and keep track of insurance claims to make sure payments are collected in a timely manner and denied claims are followed upon, saving a substantial amount of money for the hospital.

Reviewing Operational Data – It is possible to increase profits by measuring your RCM and determining the key performance indicators (KPI) for your business. Most hospitals have systems in place to capture several kinds of financial data. However, to boost profitability, hospitals must filter this data to zero down key performance indicators that can be tracked and measured against historical data to form the basis for operational improvement.

Three main KPIs that hospitals must develop to improve profitability are Accounts Receivable, Bad Debt and Claims.

Tracking Claims – Claim management KPIs to improve claim management can save hospitals a lot of time and money. Hospitals should aim for a high clean claim rate that indicates that a hospital is being paid faster without many errors. This can be achieved by capturing correct information at the outset to prevent silly mistakes. Thus, hospitals must ensure high efficiency in patient registration and appointment scheduling for improved claim management. The hospitals must also monitor their claim denial rate, using number of claims denied in a set period as a KPI. By investigating the reasons behind these denials, overall efficiency in claim management process can be affected.

Tracking Patient Access to Accounting Metrics – In order to improve denial rates, hospitals need to go back to the starting point to improve the process of capturing patient data and insurance data. To improve profitability, hospitals must develop patient access KPIs that would include pre-registration and insurance verification rates. By spending a few minutes extra during pre-registration, hospitals can save hours in verifying information and resubmitting claims later.

To develop patient access KPIs, hospitals may want to consider measuring rates for pre-registration and insurance verification. Insurance verification, a few days before the appointment, can help boost revenues in a big way as it allows the patients sufficient time to make self-payment arrangements in case the insurance cover is not valid. Thus, hospitals must try to maintain a high pre-registration rate and aim to verify insurance for most of the registered patients.

Point of service payments must also be looked into, as more patients than ever before are self-paying for their treatment. It is important to develop KPIs to measure point-of-service collection rates to ensure that the staff is collecting patient payments before they turn into bad debt.

Apart from ensuring that data is captured accurately at the pre-registration state, in order to improve RCM, management must set realistic revenue cycle goals on an annual basis, against which the performance of importance metrics can be measured. In addition to setting goals, the management must also have a bigger picture in mind it would like to achieve by meeting the set KPIs.

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What is cardiac monitoring?

Cardiac event monitoring or cardiac arrhythmia service employs a heart monitor to observe your heart in order to discover any arrhythmia or any other heart condition that may be present. Thus, cardiac event monitoring services helps to constantly monitor the activity of your heart and determine your heart’s health at any point in time, greatly mitigating the risk of heart disease.

In order to reduce the expenses and cater to the increasing number of cardiovascular patients, remote cardiac monitoring provides a convenient way for patients to be observed for longer periods of time without staying in the hospital. Thus, many cardiac specialists choose to collaborate with a remote cardiac event monitoring service centre that constantly monitors the patients and reports the data, analyzed by trained staff, to the doctors. Your doctor can monitor this information to detect any abnormality or risk of heart disease. Two main benefits include cost effectiveness and event monitoring by trained staff that can recognize cases of arrhythmia even if the patient is unaware. Several different types of portable devices can be used for cardiac monitoring and cardiac arrhythmia service, including the following:

Holter Monitor – A Holter monitor is one of the most convenient and effective methods to continually monitor your heart’s activity. A small portable device, it can be easily worn underneath your clothes for as long as required without interfering with your routine activities. The monitor stores the data that can be evaluated when the patient returns the monitor at the doctor’s clinic after the prescribed time. The data can now be analyzed and interpreted to diagnose any abnormal heart condition or rhythm during the period.

Mobile Cardiac Telemetry (MCT) – MCT is ideal for patients suffering from frequent symptoms and can be employed for short-term cardiac monitoring for up to 30 days. Essentially, MCT employs a small portable device that continually records data. On detecting an anomaly, the device sends the data for the event to the monitoring centre where the data is interpreted by trained staff. This technique provides constant monitoring and immediately notifies the concerned doctor in case any abnormality is detected.

Event Recorder – Cardiac Event Recorders are recommended for patients with infrequent symptoms. The main purpose of the device is to record and store the heart rate and rhythm during an event. A cardiac event recorder works only when turned on by the patient.

Insertable Cardiac Monitor – An insertable cardiac monitor is very useful in cases of unexplained fainting. It is a tiny insertable device that continuously monitors and records heart rhythms automatically. Doctors, by observing your heart rhythm before, during or after a fainting spell, can identify whether the fainting is due to arrhythmia or some other cardiac problem.

Indeed, lifestyle changes and proper medication are important to mitigate heart disease. However, with great technology at hand, several cardiac event monitoring services can be employed to mitigate the risk of heart disease by identifying irregular cardiac activity in time. Your doctor can guide you to the right cardiac monitoring service for your condition.

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The Evolution of Sleep Study Scoring

Before the advent of digital technology, sleep study scoring was a ‘paper and pen’ game. Then, researchers or sleep physicians would manually track all essential information and write it on paper for later examination. The heap of papers with patients’ sleeping recording would then be mailed to a sleep technologist who would study, draw inferences and send his finding back to the patient / his doctor, via snail mail. Needless to say, it was a long process with a higher margin for error.

Today, thanks to the digital technology, all the necessary sleep data is automatically tracked and stored, and can easily be shared with the sleep technologist in a matter of seconds. Presently, patients with suspected sleep disorder can undergo Polysomnograph. Under Polysomnograph, patients visit a sleep centre where their sleeping patterns are studied in a lab environment. Although, digital technology has made it possible for sleep centres to record and share sleep data in a more accurate and faster manner, Polysomnograph tests are yet to fully optimize the boon of digital technology.

As sleep study centres face problems of scheduling, lack of health professionals and rising operational costs, outsourcing sleep study scoring is becoming immensely popular and successful. Outsourced agencies are now helping sleep centres perform off-site sleep studies, often from the home of the patient under HST (Home Sleep Test), a less detailed version of sleep study to test presence or exclusion of sleep apnea.

Outsourcing, together with digital technology, is shaping a brighter future for sleep study scoring. In coming years, wearable technology, AI and IoT will make it possible for patients to easily track their sleep patterns and automatically send the findings to their doctor / sleep technologist through intelligent mobile apps.

How Outsourcing Sleep Study Scoring Works?

Sleep study scoring services employ qualified techs who work with patients from remote locations to score their sleep data in facility approved conditions and protocols. The trained techs focus fully on collecting even the minutest of details and share the sleep data to the sleep technologist through a centralized system that allows all parties involved in the sleep study including the patient. Since the data is transferred via HIPPA compliant software and hardware, patients’ privacy is fully protected.

The Way Forward

With as many as 40 million people undiagnosed of sleep disorders in US alone, there is a huge requirement for qualified sleep study scoring professionals who could help sleep centres with a convenient and cost-effective alternative to sleep study scoring.

As more and more people around the globe are getting affected by the ill-effects of sleep disorders in their daily lives, there is a dire need for leveraging digital technology and offering a convenient and affordable sleep study scoring solution to patients from far corners of the world. Outsourcing sleep study scoring is just the right step in that direction.

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Quick Diagnostics:

The use of mobile devices can allow for instant, real-time communication with a doctor, helping patients and their families distinguish between emergency and non-emergency cases in an instant.

Patients need not travel long distances to receive crucial tests. They can simply go to a nearby telediagnostic clinic, which can give them instant access to a much-needed MRI, CT Scan or Ultrasound.

This is crucial as, in emergency situations, one’s survival often relies upon how fast the medical team zeroes in on the problem distinguishing between an ischemic stroke and a hemorrhagic stroke, for instance, can be the single factor that saves a person’s life.

Internet-linked diagnostic tools can be linked to analytic software, which can distinguish deviations from normal in the blink of an eye. What’s more, in cases where automated analysis is not possible, a specialist can immediately begin work on the diagnosis. The patient need not wait for the specialist to wake up in the middle of the night and drive to the hospital for this. The doctor doesn’t even need to have a picture archiving or communication system at home. All she needs is internet and access to a mobile device.

Monitoring At-Risk Patients:

Emergency admissions are far more common in patients who have known health conditions. One advantage of this is that, often, there will be hidden signs of the problem long before the patient actually experiences symptoms.

Mobile diagnostic tools can now be used to detect heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure and temperature at regular intervals, ensuring that any changes will not go unnoticed. As well, modern pacemakers and even glucose monitoring tests can now stream data live to the doctor’s own mobile device. Any arrhythmias or glycemic problems will therefore send her device into alert. The doctor can, therefore, estimate which patients are likely to have an adverse event, and recommend intervention or a diagnostic check well before an emergency.

Accidents Happen:

But even in those who do not have a history of chronic illness, accidents can be a problem. Mobile services tailored for such emergencies can help trained bystanders give first aid, as well as keep the incoming paramedics updated on the patients’ status before they arrive at the scene. Because they already have a detailed initial assessment, they can prepare for an immediate medical intervention shortly upon arrival.

This could significantly reduce the number of fatalities in workplaces that contain hazards or in places where road accidents are common.

Developing Tech:

The contributions of mobility to the health care system, at present, is just barely scratching the surface of all the possibilities. As physicians and programmers alike continue to refine and develop Internet of Things technology, fast and quality will become increasingly

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