While relaxing is one way to relieve stress, perhaps you can do more to keep fit and healthy between doctor visits. Preventative care can increase self awareness, health literacy and help to avert emergency health care visits.

The following list provides twenty-five preventative health tips that your doctor may not mention during your visit. The links are divided into categories, and the tips are listed alphabetically beneath each category. This method shows our readers that we do not prefer one tip over another.

Overall Health Matters

1. Anger Management: While anger is a normal human emotion, an overabundance of anger or poor anger management can result in abuse, poor health, injuries and even death.
2. Aspirin Therapy: Studies indicate that if 90 percent of all men over 40 and women over 50 took a daily low-dose aspirin, it could save up to 45,000 lives per year. Ask your doctor if you’re in the majority, as daily aspirin for some people can create serious side effects.
3. Fertility Help: In some cases, you may prevent infertility by watching your weight, limiting drug and alcohol use and – for men – staying away from tight pants or underwear.
4. Floss, Floss, Floss: And, visit your dentist regularly. Poor dental health can lead to gingivitis, which can lead to periodontitis, which can lead to bone degeneration, tooth loss and heart problems.
5. Flu Watch: The single best way to avoid flu is to get vaccinated each year, but good health habits also can help stop the spread of germs and prevent respiratory illnesses.
6. Health Risk Factors: One in three American adults between the ages of 20 through 74 are overweight. What are the health risks for overweight people? This link is great for anyone to use, as you can learn more about your family history – including heart disease – to discover conditions you may have inherited.
7. Healthy Hearts: Being “in love” might make you feel good, but your heart deserves far more care. Reduce stress, limit alcohol intake, maintain a low blood pressure and more and your heart will love you back.
8. HIV Measures: HIV – unlike flu – has no vaccine to prevent it, and there currently is no cure for AIDS. Prevention includes foresight, self-discipline and education.
9. Joint Health: Arthritis Today educates readers on how to be good to your joints. Ignoring joint health can lead to looking and feeling older. Additionally, joint pain can be symptomatic of other problems.
10. Look Before You Flush: The color of your urine or stool can tell you much about your health. Daily checks can help you discover if you are digesting your food correctly or if you have food allergies or other digestive problems. Also, ask your doctor about colorectal screening for colon cancer.
11. PERF Your Life: Reader’s Digest offered sixteen ways to monitor your health between checkups, and PERF was among those tips. Think “Produce, Exercise, Relaxation and Fiber,” or the amount of fruits and vegetable you ate that day, whether you were active, whether you got at least fifteen minutes of time for yourself and whether you ate enough fiber for the day. That is a healthy day.
12. Sleep Issues: You may need help with this one, unless you wake yourself with your snoring. Sleep apnea, which is more common in overweight individuals, might indicate a blocked airway. Left untreated, sleep apnea can cause high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease, memory problems, weight gain, impotency and headaches.
13. Tetanus Update: Children may receive tetanus shots as part of their early vaccine routine. Updates should occur every ten years, and this shot often includes diphtheria boosters. Thanks to these shots, the incidence of diphtheria has dropped to three cases per year, as compared to the 1920s with an average of 100,000-200,000 cases per year with 13,000-15,000 deaths.
14. You Are What You Eat: If you work out, eating right is important to fuel your body for exercise and to help heal your body after working out. If you don’t work out, your issues are more complex.

Men

15. Prostate Problems: Help your doctor detect early signs of prostate cancer with a self-exam. Also, if you’re older, ask your doctor about PSA (Prostrate Specific Antigen), a blood test for the early detection of possible prostrate cancer in men.
16. You’re in Charge: American men are at higher risk than women for heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, suicide, kidney disease and Alzheimer’s – in that order. Learn which screenings, diagnostic tests and immunizations are right for you to prevent the onset of a life-threatening condition or disease.

Women

17. Cancer Check: Pap smears (beginning at age 18) and breast exams (beginning at puberty) are essential for early diagnosis for female cancers. You can learn how to conduct your own breast exam to stay on top of any developments between doctor appointments.
18. Menopause Monitoring: Hot flashes, depression, decisions about hormone therapy and more plague women who enter menopause. Post-menopausal issues include cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer and osteoporosis-associated fractures. Learn more so you can improve your quality of life.
19. Pre- and Postnatal Care: While your obstetrician and doctor may provide guidelines for your pregnancy, it is up to you to do all you can do for your health and the health of your baby.

Your Immediate Environment

20. Be Prepared: This motto is useful when you live in an area prone to natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. Prepare, plan and stay informed with this link for Ready America.
21. Household Hazardous Waste: This link provides information about hazards in many households and how to use them and dispose of them safely.
22. Smoke Detectors Save Lives: Make sure your smoke detector works, or install one if you don’t have one so you and your family can increase your chances of surviving a home fire.
23. Tap Into Prevention: What’s in the water that comes out of your tap? Every community water supplier must provide an annual report to its customers. Use this information to begin your investigation.
24. Ventilate Your Home: Fresh air is essential when you have fuel-burning appliances, as air helps to eliminate a buildup of dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide and radon.
25. Your Car Damages Lungs [PDF]: When the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 brought about a reduction in auto use by 22.5 percent, asthma admissions to ERs and hospitals also decreased by 41.6 percent. How can you limit the impact of your driving?

The following top fifty blogs, categorized by research, medical education, industry insiders, government health policy and high-tech matters, provide a wide-ranging resource for readers who want to learn more about medicine. The links in those categories are listed alphabetically to show readers that we do not value one resource over another.

Research Sites

1. Dr. Shock: Dr. Walter van den Broek shares his insights into research in the treatment and neuroscience of depression.
2. Duke Research: This blog focuses on the happenings at Duke University’s research community.
3. Institute for Women’s Health Research: Although sometimes on the light side, this blog is on the forefront in breaking research news about women’s healthcare.
4. MolBio Research Highlights: A grad student in Chile presents one of the handiest sites around — a format for others to find papers, Web sites, tools and news about molecular biology.
5. NIOSH Science Blog: Bookmark this site if you want to stay updated on science and medical information relayed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
6. Open Medicine: This site’s goal is to facilitate global dissemination of health research and to promote dialogue and collaboration on health issues for a deeper understanding of health and health care.
7. Science-Based Medicine: This site explores the issues and contrversies in the relationship between science and medicine.
8. Speaking of Medicine: PLoS Medicine is an innovative and influential venue for research and comment on the major challenges to human health worldwide.
9. The Lancet Global Health Network: This blog reviews and discusses public research articles published in The Lancet. These articles are aimed at changing medical practice and adding informed analysis and opinion to scientific and policy debates.

Medical Education

10. Aetiology: Join this assistant professor of epidemiology who focuses on the intersection of animal-human pathogens.
11. BMJ Blogs: BMJ Group, a medical publisher, offers a plethora of blogs geared to educate readers on a variety of health issues.
12. Clinical Cases and Images: Learn about health news of the day through video, blog entries, articles and social media.
13. KevinMD: Dr. Kevin Pho’s blog is a popular venue for learning about breaking medical news.
14. Life Sciences Blog: Dr. Konstantinos Vougas, a molecular biologist, presents this blog for those who want to keep track of the rapidly evolving field of biosciences.
15. Literature, Arts and Medicine Blog: This blog is an extension of the NYU School of Medicine medical humanities web site and the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database.
16. Medical News Today: The front page headlines represent just the tip of the iceberg in this site. You can customize this site to see the news and opinions that interest you first before you delve deeper.
17. Pulmonary Roundtable: Case studies, images, theories and facts abound in this blog about pulmonary disease and treatment.
18. Real Medicine Foundation: Learn a different approach to medical practice through a hands-on long-term response to community medical needs.
19. ScienceDaily: This link leads to the “Health and Medicine” portion of this site, but other topics may interest you as well. You may not get to those other portions, though, as the health section is filled with enough information to keep anyone busy for weeks.
20. Synapse Blog: If you want to know about topics that concern the University of Nevada School of Medicine, then log into this blog to find out.
21. Think Anatomy: Although more of a visual directory than a blog, this site is convenient, as it brings the best of all anatomy sites across the Web together into one space.

Industry Insiders

22. Bad Science: Read every expose that Ben Goldacre has written over the years and join in on the discussion.
23. DB’s Medical Rants: Dr. Robert M. Centor provides his insights on medicine and the health care system in this personal blog.
24. Doctor David’s Blog: This is a personal blog for a pediatric oncologist. Learn more about this topic as well as cancer research, treatments and news.
25. WhiteCoat’s Call Room: Learn more about lawsuits, practices, frustrations and triumphs in the emergency department from this white coat perspective produced by Emergency Physicians Monthly.
26. GruntDoc: An inside look into emergency medicine from a doctor who once served with the USMC infantry.
27. Medical Education Futures Study: The MEFS blog examines the social mission of medical education during the current period of medical school expansion.
28. Medical Marginalia: Dr. IcedLatte doesn’t hesitate to share her insights from both a professional and from a patient’s perspectives. One of the best female doctor blogs on the Web for honesty, humor and instruction.
29. PookieMD’s Blog: The PookieMD blog is by and for physicians, to discuss and educate each other about the business of medicine and managing life as a physician
30. Practice Notes: This is a news and commentary blog sponsored by Physicians Practice and that focuses on practice management and healthcare policy
31. Running a Hospital: Paul Levy offers insight into the inner workings of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, as well as commentary on health care issues.
32. The Health Care Blog: Industry Insider states the worth of this site succinctly: “Learn more in ten minutes than you could reading your local paper for a week.”
33. The Happy Hospitalist: Learn more about what it’s like to work with an board-certified internist at a hospital, then visit this blog. You may learn that there’s a lighter side to medicine.
34. The White Coat Underground: Learn more about charlatan deception in the medical world from an insider through this blog.
35. WSJ Health Blog: A journalist’s take on the health care industry, widely read by those in the medical profession.

Government Health Policy

36. FDA Law Blog: Learn more about the laws and regulations governing drugs, medical devices, foods, dietary supplements, and cosmetics from one of the largest dedicated food and drug law firms in the country.
37. FDA Transparency Blog: The Food and Drug Administration opened this blog in 2009 to facilitate communication with U.S. citizens.
38. Health Policy Blog: The Mayo Clinic offers this blog and forum as a venue for discussion about crucial health reform issues and policies.
39. Kaiser Health News: KHN is a nonprofit news organization committed to in-depth coverage of health care policy and politics.
40. Med Law Blog: Learn more about how law and policy shape your career in medicine in topics such as compliance, credentialing and much more.
41. Medical Humanities Blog: This blog’s author is a healthy policy and ethics fellow in the Chronic Disease Prevention & Control Center at Baylor College of Medicine. He also is an attorney, and his dissertation is on the under-treatment of pain in the U.S.
42. Policy and Medicine: Tom Sullivan is a recognized authority in the changing medical education environment and economy.

High Tech Matters

43. eHealth: John Sharp, an IT Manager for a major medical center in Northeast Ohio, focuses on eHealth and health IT.
44. Federal Telemedicine News: Bloch consulting Group provides news briefs and information from Federal agencies on legislation, grants of interest and government activities on telemedicine, telehealth and the health IT community.
45. Health Tech Review: Better known as Gooznews, this link leads to the other half of that well-known journalistic health review.
46. Healthcare & Technology: A technology-turned-nurse, Deborah Leyva focuses on all aspects of healthcare and technology issues.
47. Healthcare IT News: This Jesse H. Neal Award-winning site includes coverage on new technologies, strategies and tactics as well as statutory and regulatory issues.
48. Med 2.0: This blog explores emerging tech and new media trends in science, medicine and pharma.
49. MedGadget: The ultimate high-tech candy shop for medical personnel who want to learn about emerging technologies specifically designed for the medical field, compiled by a group of MDs and biomed engineers.
50. The Palmdoc Chronicles: A great take on mobile medical apps as well as other high-tech medical issues.