Well, I’m no doctor but what I do know is that there are tonnes of web apps and tools that you can use to find ways to stay healthy and physically fit. We’ll look at the three main areas of health that affect us in our day to day lives which can be made easier by our web apps; sleep, nutrition and medication for when all else fails!

iSleepDiary

Any doctor will tell you that a good night’s sleep is extremely important. Sleep allows your body to perform at its optimum level whether you’re running a marathon or fighting off a nasty infection.

Basically, in iSleepDiary, you answer ten questions every day about how you slept the previous night. You can see an example in the screenshot where I was asked about how long and how well I slept and about my routines before I went to bed.

All of this is recorded over time and in a few weeks results start to appear as to whether or not you are getting enough sleep and whether you have a sleeping deficiency. This can all be printed out or simply viewed as an easy to read chart in your account.

TwoFoods

Many of us eat food that we think are healthy but in actual fact, they aren’t. This web app will show you the nutritional value in food that we eat every day and it will also compare them to one another. What’s more, it tells you the nutritional value of items without a label such as apples and fresh bread.

In the example above, we compared apple pie and spaghetti. You can see their calorie and other nutritional information displayed below the item. I found this app useful as it raised quite a few warning flags for me. It turns out that spaghetti isn’t healthy if you laze around afterwards! Who knew?

iPills

Everyone, at some point in their lives will be put on medication. It could be antibiotics, anti-depressants, birth control pills (can’t forget that one!) or something more specific to treating an illness. Normally, you’re given strict orders from your doctor to take them at a certain time each day – obviously one of the most important ways to stay healthy is to take your medicine.

iPills is an iPhone app that acts as your virtual pillbox. Instead of simply setting an alarm, your ‘pillbox’ contains all of the pills that need to be taken that day. When you take it, you simply tap the pill (which can be customized to look different to the others) and it goes into the ‘Taken’ box.

Your pills can be set up to re-occur daily, hourly etc. And because it involves almost no interaction other than tapping the pill you just, it’s easy to use and it eliminates the painstaking procedure of organizing it on your iPhone’s generic calendar.

I have selected the three apps above because they all have one thing in common; simplicity. Health issues target everyone, not just web savvy folks like ourselves. Using these apps will get you on your way to being a lean, mean fighting machine. Just remember to eat your apple-a-day!

Which apps do you use to keep yourself healthy and stay in shape?

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I guess that got me to thinking,  “If I found a pill in my kid’s bedroom, how would I go about figuring out what it is?” I suppose the easiest answer is to just ask them. But easy doesn’t make for a good article. My quest began.

I found three really interesting free sites to identify prescription drugs, and one that is free…but only to medical professionals and students. Let’s take a look at them, shall we?

Drugs.com

The layout of this site is very nice. I can figure out exactly how to do what I want. I can identify unknown drugs, find out more about them and see what they might not interact with very well.

First I hit the Pill Identifier. Ha! The first line in the text reads, “Worried about those capsules you found in your teenager’s room?” Apparently I’m not the only paranoid and invasive parent out there. Let’s see what turns up.

I’m just going to give it some random information to work with and see what happens. I gave it the parameters of maroon and round. Hmmm….3 results. Docusate sodium-senna, Marinol, and Phenazopyridine hydrochloride. 2 of the 3 came with pictures which would help me to further verify what the pill is. Let’s look at Marinol.

You can go further to find out what the drug does. Aha! Check this out. “Dronabinol is a man-made form of cannabis (marijuana is an herbal form of cannabis).” I knew the little punk was up to no good. Wait ’til he gets home from school. Oh, yes, this is a hypothetical story. Sorry about that. Got a little carried away.

There are other fine features on this site to help you answer your questions about drugs. You can go through a list of drugs from A to Z, search for drugs based on the condition they treat, and of course, there is a community which you can join to interact with other people interested in how drugs interact with their health.

RxList

RxList does pretty much the same thing as Drugs.com, but in a bit different way. In addition to the ability to identify unknown drugs and identify prescription drugs based on the condition they treat, RxList also adds informational slideshows and a pharmaceutical dictionary to help you understand some of those fifty-cent words.

Lets take a look at RxList’s pill identifier and see what more trouble I can get my hypothetical teenage son into. Odd, maroon is not a listed colour. Well, let’s try red and round. Phreaky pharmacy Batman! There are 50 results ranging from over-the-counter medicines like Acetominophen to the anti-depressant Wellbutrin. Yet, Marinol isn’t listed. Hmm. Well, we can conclude that using both of these sites is going to give us a better chance of identifying that mysterious pill.

The RxList search results don’t show pictures for each pill either. That could make narrowing it down a little more difficult as well. In order to see a picture of the drug, you have to click on it’s name, then when the drug information page comes up, you need to click on another link to see the images – if there are any.

Overall, it’s still a very good resource.

PDRHealth

The real-world book, the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR), is now online. Unfortunately, the service costs a fair bit of money to access. Fortunately, it is free to access for medical professionals and students within the United States of America.

The PDR is the defacto standard for helping doctor’s and nurses find out all they need to know about almost any drug in existence. Yes, it uses a lot of medical jargon, so it may take a while to understand if you are not so inclined. Nonetheless, if you can break the code of medicalese, there is so much to be learned from this online tome.

However, Thomson Publishing has put together a bit of a layman’s site for those that want to find out more about what they are putting in their gullets everday. It isn’t quite as extensive as RxLink or Drugs.com, but, like all good research, it is another resource to help you confirm or deny what you are learning.

It is kind of nice that they breakdown medicines into three categories though: prescription, over-the-counter, and herbal medicines. Herbals aren’t specifically identified on the previous two sites.

PDRHealth does go beyond just medicines and looks at surgery and clinical trials as well. All are apart of a well-managed health care plan, in my opinion.

Hopefully, this breakdown will help you to be more involved in managing your health care and starting conversations about drugs, both good and bad, with your family. After all, it’s just like that six-inch philosopher GIJoe said, “Knowing is half the battle!”

What medical websites do you look at?    Here’s ones that Jackson recommends.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Another factor is the hunger of people for information, knowledge and understanding. The faster, the better.

If you have ever been caught up in reading Wikipedia for hours on end, you’ll know what I mean. One page leads to the next, it never ends. For students, wikis can be an incrediby useful and compared to textbooks, they are a quick source of support and information.

Here is a list of three Wikis that may help boost your online studying:

DiRT – Digital Research Tools Wiki

DiRT contains a comprehensive collection of tools and resources that can be used by students or scholars in their research.

The focus is on humanities and social sciences. However, containing articles on brainstorming, how to communicate with colleagues, how to prepare screencasts or network with other researchers, this wiki covers tools and guidelines that may prove useful not only for researchers, but also for people with other career backgrounds and especially for students who are still exploring fields. Check it out and let us know what you think.

I’ve also written about other tools you can use for research besides wikis.

Medpedia

As the name suggests, Medpedia is a recently-launched wiki concerned with medical topics. The goal is to share “the advancing knowledge about health, medicine and the body among medical professionals and the general public.”

At this point, it contains hundreds of articles covering all types of human diseases and related medical background information. Nevertheless, the site states that you are not likely to find an article on the topic you are looking for. However, I did find everything I was looking for.

For med students, this Wiki can serve as a quick and easy way to research diseases and symptoms. Physicians and other experts are welcome to contribute to the site by editing pages or adding articles. Everyone else may suggest changes. All contributions will receive proper recognition.

If you’re a medical student and you are searching for the best websites to for medical information, check out Jackson’s article: The Best Reference Sites For Medical Students.

Textbook Revolution

Here we have a resource specifically for students or those who wish to learn new tricks.

Textbook Revolution features free educational materials on a wide variety of topics such as biology, earth sciences or world history.

The site is run by students and was founded in response to overpriced textbooks whose publishers only have profits in mind, rather than educational value.

If you know of high quality free textbooks, make an account with Textbook Revolution and share the resource. If you have used any of the listed books, provide your feedback and review them.

Aside from wikis, I’ve also listed 10 Tools For Online Learning in a previous article, check it out. Looking for a textbook? Check out TextBook Torrents: Torrent Directory for Text Books.

As a student, what is your favorite Wiki and how did you discover it? Share them with us!

Picture credits: xlucas

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Besides being a persevering medical student, I’m also addicted to the Web. And so, whenever I can get myself away from my books, I’ll be online to find more sources of study material. Here are some of the better sites for medical students I’ve managed to come up with so far:

MedicalStudent

You will find a huge repository of free online medical textbooks along with links to other helpful and informative websites regarding Continuing Medical Eduction (CME) & Board Exams, free medical journals, programs for handheld computers (Palm, Windows), professional medical organizations/societies and patient simulations. This is the “all-in-one” site for every medical student.

MedicalMatrix

Similar to MedicalStudent, this medical site is a source of links to all free (and paid) online textbooks, medical journals, CME and lots more. MedicalMatrix is more thorough and offers specific links based on specialty i.e. clicking on Gastroenterology will return links to textbooks, journals, news, practice guidelines, cases, image repositories, CME, forums and patient education regarding Gastroenterology only.

FreeBookCentre – Medical Books

This site doesn’t only provide free e-books for Medicine, it also includes books for Computer Sciences, Web Technology, Languages and Networking among many others. Their medical database is divided by specialty and comprises of textbooks, handbooks, guidelines, manuals, and journals.

Student Book World

Student Book World is actually a project which aims to catalogue and compare the prices of every book available, in order to allow their readers to find the books at the cheapest prices online. Fortunately, they also have a sizable collection of free e-books related to Medicine.

NCBI Bookshelf

The National Center for Biotechnology Information was established as a resource for molecular biology information, so this is a great source for Biomedical books related to topics like Viral Molecular Biology, Bacterial Nomenclature and Biochemistry. However, their library is slowly expanding to include books about General Medicine and Surgery such as Immunobiology, Human Molecular Genetics, Neuroscience, Parkinson’s Disease and many others. The NCBI also provides a few books in handheld (MobiPocket) format.

The Merck Manuals

The Merck Manuals for Healthcare Professionals is completely available online for free. The Manuals are basically a series of healthcare books for doctors on Diagnosis and Therapy based on disorders. There is also a version targeted at consumers for home medical reference.

eMedicine

eMedicine is undoubtedly one of the most concise, free medical references available online. Its website has been upgraded recently to feature printer-friendly pages and quicker navigation. All of their articles cover every aspect of both Internal Medicine and Surgery and are extensively peer-reviewed before publication.

The New England Journal of Medicine

The NEJM is a collection of every one of their publications since 1996 and covers almost every known disorder.

RCGP Medical Abbreviations

The Royal College of General Practitioners published an online listing of some of the main standardized abbreviations that may be used when writing patient medical records. These abbreviations come in very handy because most doctors will use them when speaking.

Online Medical Dictionaries

The two most popular medical dictionaries which are Dorlands and Stedmans can be found and referred to online so that you won’t have to clumsily flip through those pages or worse, carry them with you wherever you go.

Medical Mnemonics

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Medicine is extremely taxing and difficult to study. There are hundreds of classifications to memorize and terms to familiarize ourselves with. Mnemonics make it just a little bit easier to remember these little details. MedicalMnemonics is a database just for this. It has online, printable and handheld versions (Palm only) of the database ready at your disposal.

Medical students, I hope you find this listing helpful in your studies. It certainly has helped me along the way. I don’t think I could have survived without eMedicine and a printout of MedicalMnemonics by my side.

If there are any more medical sites for students out there that you know about, please share it with all of us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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where:

• ‘healthmaps’ – provides complete visual info map on diarrhea, such as causes, risks, tretament and etc.
• ‘broaden search’ – lets you broaden your search
• ‘narrow search’ – lets you find specific info on diarrhea (ex; only causes of diarrhea)

Another useful feature is Health Channels, which serve as one-stop resource for top articles, news, healthmaps and some other info related to a particular term. To get an idea check out health channel for heart disease here.

There is no need to register to use healthline, however if you become a member you will be able to (1)tag and save your search results and (2)write reviews of articles and rate other reviews. If you are using Firefox you can also search on Healthline right from your browser by installing this Firefox plugin

Overall, it’s a good service and definitely worth a bookmark.

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