Online Resources: Aging and Health
Information about health conditions:
medlineplus.gov/ (note Health Topics)
www.cdc.gov/diseasesconditions/
www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary
www.mayoclinic.org/patient-care-and-health-information
Pronouncing medical dictionary: www.merriam-webster.com/medical (search for the word - then to hear the pronounciation, click the small image of a loudspeaker)
"Beers List" of drugs to avoid or use with caution in older people:
American Geriatrics Society 2019 Updated AGS Beers Criteria® for Potentially Inappropriate Medication Use in Older Adults. For a quick AGS checklist for patients of 10 kinds of drugs to avoid if possible, see www.healthinaging.org/tools-and-tips/ten-medications-older-adults-should-avoid-or-use-caution. AGS made the full list hard to get, probably for several different reasons.
Credible online pharmacy for low U.S. prices for prescription drugs (when legally possible):
HealthWarehouse.com www.healthwarehouse.com/ You can pay 10 times more for the same drug at major pharmacies: see April 5, 2018 Consumer Reports article on huge differences in prices between pharmacies. CVS/Target, Rite Aid, and Walgreens were most expensive, HealthWarehouse.com was least expensive.
Drug interaction checker:
Enter your medications, including supplements and some foods that can affect meds (such as grapefruit), to check for interactions that you and your doctor should know about. reference.medscape.com/drug-interactionchecker
Health discussion right now:
What patients and others are talking about just now (social-media search). Anyone can use these, free and no account or registration needed:
(1) Twitter search. If you don't have your own Twitter account, you can use the search box in ours, www.twitter.com/AgeTreatment. To search, enter your search word(s) or phrase and click the magnifying-glass image. Hint: try searching for a specialized medical word, for example a drug name.)
(2) The old socialmention went away, but seems to have been replaced by another system that includes a free option, www.social-searcher.com/social-mention/. The free version monitors 11 sources including Facebook; the paid versions monitor many more. Use the search box to enter a medical term, drug name, or anything else you are looking for. It may take a minute before the results are ready.
Note: in either case it usually works best to leave out the hash symbol ('#') - since if you are searching for a specialized word, all uses of that word are likely to be relevant. (You often do need the '#' if you are searching for a tag used to identify a particular topic, event, discussion, or community.)
Find a doctor online:
Check the website of your insurance plan (if you are insured) to see which doctors are covered
www.yelp.com/ Set your location, then search for healthcare (for example)
www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare (Compare local hospitals using government data)
Recent medical research papers:
The U.S. National Library of Medicine provides excellent tools for searching medical-research articles. To start, visit www.pubmed.gov. Often it's best to start at the Clinical Queries section, which focuses on human experience, not lab or animal data. You can click Clinical Queries from www.pubmed.gov page, or visit it directly at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical. Use the search box there to find what you are looking for.
For example, a search for "osteoarthritis" (quotation marks not necessary) finds more than 20,000 peer-reviewed medical articles. Or a search for "anti-inflammatory" finds more than 30,000. A search for both together ("osteoarthritis anti-inflammatory" - without the quotation marks) gives links to over 6,000 research papers, starting with the most recent.
Ongoing clinical trials:
On the www.pubmed.gov page, click Clinical Trials - or visit that page directly at http://clinicaltrials.gov/. For example, for osteoarthritis there are over 500 clinical trials worldwide that it may be possible to volunteer for, over 200 in the U.S. You can search for trials that have a site near you (within a chosen distance of a nearby city).
Other:
www.epatientdave.com/ Patient involvement and empowerment
www.drweil.com/ Holistic treatment and healthy living information
www.panfoundation.org/index.php/en/ Helps pay for treatment for certain underinsured patients
ted.com/talks/jane_fonda_life's_third_act TED talk on the longevity revolution: we are living on average 34 years longer than our great grandparents, a whole new adult lifespan.
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