Working To Improve My Health

As you age, your body naturally becomes a little weaker, and your skin slowly sags. It's just part of life. However, when you smoke, you accelerate the aging process, making yourself look and feel older than you actually are. If you are a smoker, put down that cigarette and take a look at these five ways smoking makes you older before your time. Smoking Causes Wrinkles One way smoking makes you look older is that it ages your skin, and it does this in several ways.

Getting used to wearing contacts can take some time. It is not abnormal to have a little trouble getting them in, experience a bit of eye dryness, and feel like you need to take them out after a few hours during the first few weeks with contacts. It's important to know, however, what's normal and what's not when it comes to difficulties during your first few weeks of contact wear. Specifically, if you experience any of these symptoms or issues, you should take out your contacts and head back to the eye doctor (or give them a call, at least).

If you've recently been diagnosed with basal or squamous cell carcinoma, you may be terrified after having heard the words "skin cancer" leave your doctor's mouth. Fortunately, both these types of skin cancer have extremely high cure rates—only about 2,000 of the more than 2.2 million people diagnosed with one of these skin cancers each year will succumb to it, and many of these deaths are due to outside complicating factors (like old age or other illness).

As your loved one is being prepared to be discharged from a hospital or rehabilitation center, the doctor may explain to you that your loved one needs at-home healthcare. Typically a nurse will stop by your loved one's home and give him the care he needs, including medications, checking his wounds, and providing physical therapy. However, in addition to this, the doctor may recommend a supportive in-home caregiver. When this occurs, you may wonder how an in-home caregiver differs from at-home healthcare.

If you have watery, irritated eyes, you may think that you have allergies or an eye infection. However, when you visit a doctor, they may inform you that what you are experiencing is actually a blocked tear duct. Unfortunately, this is not something most people are familiar with, which can leave you with many questions. Here are a few of the questions that you may ask if a doctor tells you that you have a blocked tear duct.

Many types of arthritis can cause degeneration of the knees. However, when both knees are significantly affected, this can complicate your options for a knee replacement. There are options to have both knees replaced simultaneously or improve pain and functionality in one knee, while having the other knee replaced. Simultaneous Replacement If you were relatively active before you started experiencing significant problems with both knees and have good upper-body strength and endurance, you may want to ask your doctor if there is the option to have both knees replaced simultaneously.

Caring for a loved one with a terminal illness can be an emotional and confusing experience. You may find yourself involved with a palliative care team, a group of caregivers who seek to treat the whole patient rather than just the illness. Palliative care differs from traditional hospice in that doctors and other team members approach patient treatment from a variety of perspectives. One of these includes spiritual care.  Defining Spiritual Care

Are you the parent of a teenager? If so and you haven't had a talk about HIV testing with them, now is the time. Research shows that 46 percent of all high school-aged adolescents are sexually active and in 2013 alone, 406 kids between the ages of 13 and 19 were newly-diagnosed with HIV in the United States. Even if you only have a few minutes you can spend with your teen tonight, sit them down and let them know the below four things.