Bana Jobe

If you have the option of buying a high-deductible health plan (HDHP), should you take it? Nearly 4 in 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 do, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But there are trade-offs.

Tech-enabled health apps can help employees increase their physical activity, improve their eating habits, mind their mental health and so much more — which can in turn improve workplace productivity and inform future benefits packages. But which health and fitness apps should you encourage employees to use?

With a better office setup, workers enjoy improved comfort, motivation and well-being, according to the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors. And you might imagine how that impacts employers too: fewer absences, a more productive workforce and happier employees overall. By following a few ergonomics in the workplace tips, any office — big or small — can make that happen, including yours.

The FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring system gives runners such as marathoner Amy McKinnon freedom from finger sticks, mile after mile.

A heart failure diagnosis can be a life-changing event, often leading to a long road that — in the best-case scenario for those with advanced stages of the disease — ends with a donor heart. But what happens to heart failure patients in dire need of a new heart who spend potentially years on the transplant list?

You might just think of your spine as the stack of bones that keeps you upright or hurts when you slump, but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of everything that the spinal column does for the human body.

It used to be that people didn’t talk about the goings-on of their guts. Maladies like diarrhea, stomach cramps and rectal bleeding were stigmatized and kept hush-hush — but these are symptoms of Crohn’s disease, so hiding them in many cases unfortunately concealed a very real, very common problem.

A whopping 8 in 10 internet users go online for health questions. With nearly 53 percent of physician practices running a Facebook page, much of that digital traffic ends up on social media in some form. But is that really a bad thing?

It came as little surprise when the federal government launched the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRPP). As a part of the Affordable Care Act, the program penalizes providers for readmissions of six diagnoses — heart failure among them. Four of the other five all link back in some way to heart failure, too: heart attack, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and coronary artery bypass graft. But have those penalties worked?

Brown, green, yellow, tan — babies and kiddos can often produce a rainbow of different colors of poop in their underthings. But which colors are normal and which are cause for concern?

If you’ve ever needed health coverage in a pinch — but shied away from short-term health insurance plans because they didn’t last long enough — you might want to take another look at your options. As of October 2, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services now allows short-term plans to last up to 364 days in many states, with the option to renew those plans for up to three years thereafter. Here’s what you need to know.

Even with regulatory changes and a new wave of research-enabling technology, cancer researchers still face a mighty quintet of challenges when it comes to getting their research to the market.

Breasts are fluctuating things. They change during puberty, menstrual cycles, pregnancy and menopause. But even outside of those windows, breast changes happen as we get older. We may not notice them at first, but they do.

If you can’t guzzle as much milk as you used to, you may be wondering: Why am I lactose intolerant? Know that you’re not alone: Nearly seven in 10 people develop some degree of lactose intolerance as they get older, according to the National Institutes of Health.
That intolerance can lead to uncomfortable symptoms — such as stomach aches, bloating, diarrhea, nausea, belly rumbling, constipation and gas — that can happen within an hour of eating or drinking dairy products.

Worried about needing fast money in a health care pinch? A supplemental plan like fixed indemnity insurance might be for you. Also known as hospital indemnity plans, these policies pay out cold hard cash for unexpected injuries or illnesses.