Those who have stepped into Medicine School could relate how privileged they felt when they entered their very first medicine class. Excited on their brand new white gowns, they learned the basics of the human body and began to understand how intricate, and complex the human body is. It’s not an array of organs, it’s not a set of chemical reactions, not an inflow and outflow of substances and their behaviors within the body. Instead, it is all of that at the same time, and when one of those components starts to fail, it causes a cascading effect that is often translated into a disease. Most of us were amazed to know that the balance between health and disease is always going up and down. We are constantly inflamed and infected, but we only become aware of that when it gets out of control.
Medicine is one of the most challenging fields of knowledge nowadays. Ironically, this very difficult type of knowledge is the most important to keep our health and sanity, and it is sometimes what makes up the dividing line between life and death. Health is not to be taken lightly, and that’s one of the reasons why it is a very demanding discipline that requires not only knowledge but also good intentions and a benevolent heart. It is medicine that saves thousands of lives every second that ticks by, and that is why doctors have become a significant authority in small towns along with the sheriff and the priest.
Talking about health is not easy, either. There are hundreds of terms, and each one of them refers to a very specific thing. For instance, vomiting blood may be confused with coughing up blood, but both of them have different clinical names and would point out to very different diseases. Skin lesions are another clear example of how apparently the same rash would have different meanings, and only a professional would be able to tell the difference.
Only a professional would be able to give his patients a guide about what to look for and how to do it. Instead of filling the patient’s minds with all of the available information about a disease, the approach clinicians take to inform their patients is providing the most straightforward and relevant information according to their condition. What we want to inform is how to recognize the disease, understand each one of the signs and symptoms associated with the disease, understanding why it happens, and identifying any warning signs that require medical assistance.
That is why we have started this informative website aiming at providing relevant medical information to the general audience. There are plenty of sites on the internet with information about health and disease, but we have noticed there’s great misinformation in forums, and many web searches would lead patients to wrong answers to their questions.
We have gathered a consistent group of professionals in various fields of medicine in order to provide accurate and up-to-date information about the various diseases we cover. Our writing and editing team is always worried about giving patients relevant information that really works in their day-to-day life, with a particular focus on prevention, and always giving importance to the physical exam, check-ups, and ongoing visits to your physician.
Another part of our team is in charge of the visual part of the web. We know how important images are to convey real meaning to the words we write. In medicine, they are especially important to make a clear picture of what happens within the body and how the disease builds up to bring up a series of signs and symptoms. Thus, our visual team is not only an expert in web design. They are also in charge of bringing the appropriate set of images to build knowledge along with the text.
All of these efforts are centered in keeping you informed about one of the most extensive fields of knowledge available today, medicine. We are not trying to build up medical education that will grant you a license to be a doctor someday. Instead, we will focus our attention into giving you the key to guarding your own health and that of your loved ones through a careful examination of the signs and symptoms relevant to each disease.
We will make our best in each article to give you an insight about human physiology to understand why and how things happen in your body, and most importantly, why are you experiencing each symptom and what to do about them.
You will realize that in most of our articles we will always advise you to search for medical assistance. As we previously mentioned, it is because we don’t want you to disregard asking your doctor about your symptoms. We don’t want you to delay your visit to the doctor after reading one of our articles. Instead, we are always trying to encourage you to search for medical assistance because sometimes things are not what we think they are, and this is especially true in medicine.
When we read about a particular set of signs and symptoms, we usually think we have all that, and we may be sick. That is a ubiquitous experience among medical students, and it happens a lot when reading medical information on the internet. It is very easy to confuse terms and be led into thinking that you’re experiencing exactly what’s being described when reading about certain diseases.
However, signs and symptoms are set in a very tight margin. Each one of them refers to something in particular. For example, you would think you have fever because you just touched your forehead with your hand and it feels hot. But it just happens that your hand was cold and when you take your temperature with a thermometer you realize there’s no trace of fever in your body. Similarly, sometimes we are led to think we are experiencing a given set of signs and symptoms, but a careful look by a professional would say otherwise.
Thus, we encourage you to take the information in this site as it is. It is not meant to diagnose, nor it is intended to give you all the tools you need to start a private practice on your own. Instead, the information in this site is written for patients to help them understand the basics of health and disease, help them detect any concerning sign and symptom, and identify whenever they need to look for medical assistance.
In HEALTHELLA, we are continually striving to give you the most appropriate information according to your medical needs, but we are also concerned of providing up-to-date information about the conditions and health problems that strike today’s society. Medicine has been going on for several years, and it is constantly changing to give patients the best solution to their medical problems. We cannot stay in the past, and we won’t.
Guidelines to detect and treat diseases are continually changing, and it is difficult to keep up with the pace, even for professionals who are already on the field. Thus, it is very common to search for information about a given disease on the internet and find data that was relevant a few years ago, until a recent position paper or guideline changed the normal threshold or the approach clinicians should give to the health problem that’s under consideration.
For instance, there has been a very recent change in the way hypertension is diagnosed and treated. The medical authorities changed the normal limits to consider that someone suffers from hypertension and what was previously considered a healthy blood pressure is now regarded as high blood pressure and should be examined by a professional. These changes were made because it would allow more people at risk to be treated and enter the follow-up protocol. However, they changed the way professionals address hypertension and left many books and web pages obsolete.
Since our medical team is composed of professionals who stay current with the latest research and trends in the medical field, we will always give you pertinent and up-to-date information. And, if there were to be any particular change to update articles and adjust them to the current medical knowledge, we will gladly do so in order to maintain a high standard of quality and pertinence in the information we provide to our patients.
However, even if we are all professionals on the field and strive to give you current information and scientific data, we know you’ve probably not entered medical school and will not understand certain terms without assistance. Therefore, our writers are devoted to maintaining a piece of highly scientific information that’s also easy to understand and adapted to be read by a general audience. Our editors will also do their best to curate any difficult terms to make them available for everyone regardless of their levels of education. That’s why we sacrifice some medical terminology that would make the articles feel dense and difficult to read in order to give you the most relevant science in the most accessible way possible.
As you have seen, in HEALTHELLA, we are devoted to providing relevant medical information about health and disease. But want to encourage a healthy lifestyle as well. In the vast majority of cases, our lifestyle and habits make up what we really are. They reduce the risk of many diseases and may be the turning point to prevent the adverse consequences and complications of certain medical conditions. In some cases, lifestyle changes are enough to control disease without any drug or therapeutic agents. Therefore, we give lifestyle changes an essential part in HEALTHELLA.
Finally, we want our readers to understand a bit of the complex world of science and medicine, and get a grasp of what doctors decide in certain cases and what’s their reasoning when taking certain decisions. Doing so will increase the awareness of our readers on how precise and methodical it is to be a doctor, and will give more value to their work in our day-to-day life.
Our mission by building up this site has been clearly stated, but it can be summarized as follows:
- We are here to provide meaningful information about health and disease leading to the prevention of various health conditions.
- We are always trying to provide accurate information that is yet easy to read and understand, even for those who have never been acquainted with medical sciences.
- We are composed of health professionals who stay current with the most recent guidelines to provide accurate and up-to-date information on the health conditions they cover.
- Our entire team is dedicated to providing the didactic tools necessary to explain health issues in an easy to understand and practical way.
- We give particular importance to lifestyle changes as an essential part of prevention, and sometimes as a therapeutic approach to disease.
- We deeply encourage to get medical assistance and do not intend to minimize the importance of a physical exam and diagnostic tests.
- We want our readers to understand the basics of health and disease and get a grasp of how fascinating and challenging medicine can be so that we value even more our health professionals and their work
