"It's hard to stop a train; it's hard to drop pounds and keep it off. We have to tackle overweight and obesity head on. Let's do more to prevent it from happening rather than dropping it off. If fixing a problem is not easy, then we must prevent it from happening, simple as that." -Dr. Jian Zhang Exercising on vacation...see all the excitement on my face A recent study found that more people who are overweight or obese have stopped trying to lose weight. The study surveyed ad

Have you ever heard that it only takes 21 days to form a habit? In school, I was taught 6 weeks (42 days) was what you need to form a habit. The truth is that on average it takes more like 66 days (a little over two months) to form a habit. In fact, the research showed that for some people it took up to 254 days (about eight and a half months). That means for the average person it can take 66 days of exercising, 66 days of eating veggies, 66 days of drinking water, before th

"Many parents are making dosing errors when giving medicine to their children" Pop Quiz: What's the best tool to use to dispense liquid medicine to your child? A. Spoon B. Measuring cup C. Syringe D. Just eyeball it and pray Hopefully you chose C for your answer, now let's get into why. Researchers have found that oral syringes are the gold standard for delivering medicine to a sick child in order to reduce the chance of making a dosing error. In a study, parents who used mea

"Communicating clearly helps people feel more involved in their health care and increases the chances of following through on their treatment plans. All patients appreciate receiving information that is clear and easy to act on." -Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit If you have ever taken a first aid class then you have probably heard of OSHA's Universal Precautions guidelines which require healthcare professionals to assume that any bodily fluid may be infected wit

"As clinicians, what we say does not matter unless our patients are able to understand the information we give them well enough to use it to

Welcome and Happy Health Literacy Month! Health Literacy Month was founded by Helen Osbourne, M.Ed., OTR/L to bring awareness to the issue o