Strong to the finish, baby!

(from my daughter, the nurse nonpareil)  Make sure you get enough magnesium in your diet.  

Apparently, a magnesium deficiency is a challenging thing to identify.  Almost all of the magnesium in your system is in your bones and organs and only trace amounts are in your blood.

And, while it's hard to identify a magnesium deficiency with a simple blood test, there are hundreds of bio-chemical processes that require magnesium to function.  Its estimated that only 25% of the adults actually get the minimum daily requirement for magnesium in their diets.

In the meantime, sodas, coffee, tea, alcohol and sugar all leech magnesium from your system.  I mean, come on!  You don't stand a chance!

Here's a fact sheet worth reading from the NIH.

As always, its best to stay away from supplements.  Your body is designed to properly deal with excess vitamins and minerals when you get them from a food source, but you mess up the machine when you start slamming pills.  

So eat your spinach.  Your white beans, your fish.  

Smart people doing smart things. For you.

Even with Enhanced 9-1-1 service, getting the location to send assistance can be a problem.

Some smart people have been working on the problem and are trying to make it as bulletproof as possible.

RapidSOS is a startup that's trying to make sure that, no matter where you call from, if you have the tiniest bit of signal, they can send the right people to assist.

Here's a short article from the Smithsonian about the effort.

 
While I'm at it, let me plug, once more, medic alert jewelry*.  The faster we can figure out what's wrong with you, the faster we can help.  

Serious underlying medical conditions?  Allergies to foods or medicines?  Those are important things for emergency personnel to know.  Do what you can to help us help you.  And stay safe out there.

 

Health Care

Is there anyone that doesn't believe that health care in our country could use some work?

We have the best medical schools in the world...we educate the entire planet's doctors...but we still pay more than any one else for our health care with poorer outcomes than any other first world nation.

AARP (of which I'm a proud and dues paying member!) had a great article in their recent newsletter about this.  They found some of the most respected people in medicine and asked them each to make one single suggestion they thought would make the most difference.

It's really worth the 15 minutes it'll take you to read it....you can find it here.