Enjoy Your Health

So you want to exercise but you just don’t feel that you have the time?  I say, “Fit it in whenever, and wherever you can!”  While you’re cooking you can strengthen and tone your calfs by doing calf lifts.  Begin standing with your feet shoulder width apart.  As you lift up on to the balls of your feet tighten your buttocks.  Repeat for 10-20 reps.  On the second set bring your feet all the way together.  As you raise up onto the balls of your feet sqeeze your inner thigh muscles and your buttocks.  Repeat for 10-20 reps.  For set three stay on the balls of your feet and pluse with your feet shoulder width for ten and ten pulses feet together.  While you pulse continue to tighten your buttocks.

Prenatal yoga is a wonderful way to connect with your baby.  Try this simple breathing exercise for deeper connection:  Sit comfortably and place one hand on your belly and the other on your heart center.  Focus on sending love and compassion from your heart to your baby.  Notice your babies movement.  Become aware of the love you feel for your baby.

Social networking, once the domain of teenagers, is attracting physicians who want to connect with other people online for reasons from professional contact to dating.

Although Internet interactions can be freewheeling, certain rules of etiquette apply. As with most technology, early adopters tend to set the standards, and latecomers learn to adapt. So "netiquette" does vary, depending on the type of site -- general versus physician-specific, personal versus professional.

And there are a plethora of sites. Social networking no longer involves just a handful of general sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, but includes a network of sites specific to health care, physicians and even specialties.

The first step to social networking, experts say, is to decide what audiences you want to connect with, choose the most appropriate site for each purpose, and set clear boundaries between each one. But even if you opt for purely social networking, a stranger there potentially can become your employer, patient or colleague, and an etiquette blunder could be career-killing.

"There's no way people aren't going to Google a new contact," said Rusty Weston, chief blogger of the networking site My Global Career. "You have to be careful."

A recent survey conducted by Erika S. Fishman, director of research and client services for Manhattan Research, a marketing and research firm for health care and pharmaceutical companies, found nearly half of all physicians feel it is important to have a professional presence online.

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Direct-to-consumer marketing isn't only about enticing patients to ask for a specific prescription drug. It's also about pitching patients to ask their doctors how that prescription will be conveyed.

This patient-centered pitch on electronic prescribing is being made by SureScripts, the nation's largest provider of electronic prescribing services, joined by nearly all of the nation's largest pharmacy chains.

The hope is that patients who are educated about the benefits of e-prescribing will start to demand that their physicians use the technology.

SureScripts chief marketing officer and lead campaign organizer Tammy Lewis said the main objective is to let patients know that more than 70% of pharmacies have e-prescribing connectivity, and show how e-prescribing might benefit them.

Part of the campaign involves signage at more than 26,000 pharmacies saying, "ePrescriptions filled here." Other signs will direct consumers to a Web site where they can learn about the benefits of e-prescribing, find a doctor who has the technology, and print information to bring to physicians who don't (www.learnabouteprescriptions.com).

The printed materials include information about a Web site where physicians can assess their e-prescribing needs and learn about available systems. Five physician organizations and the Medical Group Management Assn started that site (www.getrxconnected.com).

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Kaiser Permanente and Health Net have agreed to offer coverage to hundreds of individuals whose policies the insurers had rescinded and to pay medical bills from before and after the rescissions.

The agreements between the state's Dept. of Managed Health Care and the insurers are the latest development in a crackdown on what authorities have called illegal policy rescissions.

"While it's obviously terrific for those particular patients, that this had to be done reflects that there is a pattern and practice of behavior from those big insurance companies, and it hurts people who need health care," said California Medical Assn. President Richard Frankenstein, MD, a pulmonologist from Garden Grove.

Dept. of Managed Health Care Director Cindy Ehnes said she expected the state's two largest insurers of individuals, Blue Cross of California and Blue Shield of California, to follow Kaiser and Health Net by agreeing to offer coverage to as many as 4,000 former members.

At a May 15 news conference announcing agreements with Kaiser and Health Net, Ehnes said doctors or hospitals who provided free or uncompensated care to the people regaining coverage have a right to collect from the health plans, but doctors and hospitals may have to go to the patient to ask for payment.

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