Week 7 Consumer Health Resources: Health Source Consumer Edition and MedlinePlus

Week 7 Consumer Health Resources: Health Source Consumer Edition and MedlinePlus

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Discovery Exercise: Create a blog posting discussing the following questions and other observations you have about Health Source – Consumer Edition. All resources can be accessed via this alphabetical list. 
 1.In Health Source – Consumer Edition, click on the Publications link at the top of the page and explore the types of magazines and journals indexed in the database. 


 I was surprised that the Ladies Home Journal was one of the periodicals listed in the Health Source.

I looked up Athletic Training, which my daughter is majoring in at UMPI. I was intrigued at the number of specific articles on Athletic Training. One title I checked out an article on EXERCISE Programming for Previously Inactive Middle-Aged ADULTS. The article gave some great strengthen tips.

One thing I like about the Marvel system is how you can select an article and save it in a file for reading later. I also find reading the abstracts of the articles very helpful and after reading several abstracts I would decide to read the full article based on the information given in the abstract.

2. Search for a disease or condition, such as diabetes. I chose to research Lyme disease. I am amazed at the number of articles. There are hundreds of them. I found this was easy to get lost in the reading of the articles. I read several current articles about Lyme disease and its treament. I never realized it was a bacterial infection by Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterium spread by deer ticks. I was interested in Lyme disease due to the fact that in our neighborhood there have been a couple of cases of Lyme meningitis diagnosed in neighborhood children.

I also found out the Lyme disease is the most common insect infection in the Untied States.

3. Pick one of the articles you found and read through the full text. I read several articles on Lyme disease. I found many of the articles fairly easy to read. A couple of the articles had medical jargon that I did use a dictionary to find out what it was about.

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Discovery Exercise: 
1. Go to Medline Plus (http://www.medlineplus.gov)
2. Look at a few of the links on the main page. What’s in the news column on the right side? The top searches on Medline plus are: high blood pressure and any of the drugs used to treat high blood pressure, heart disease and high cholesterol are among the top searches.           


3. Click on tab “Drugs and Supplements” and search for a medication you take or you have seen ads about recently such as Prilosec or Cymbalta. Note the kind of information available. 


I looked up Vitamin C and it’s effects on colds. I found out it does not protect against the common cold but may help once you get the cold if I was low in vitamin C to start with. Vitamin C may help with the absorption of iron. Perhaps if I ate more things with iron I may be healthier and not get a cold to begin with. The type of information available seems to be the general “google “ search information.

4. Click on “Health Topics” and search for the same disease or condition you looked at in Health Source. How does the information in Medline Plus differ from that in Health Source? 


The information differed as it was not as medical or stated any medical research. It was information I had read before and was mostly from the CDC and the government.  It did talk about the neurological complications of Lyme disease in both the medical and veterinary field.

5. Look at the list of videos available by clicking on “Videos and Cool Tools” tab. The videos are well done. These would be great for people with a low reading level or just wanted to get the information without reading.