New York Medical Malpractice

Although no method of determining the legitimacy of an online pharmacy is fail-safe, however here are a few good suggestions from the Consumer Action Handbook:

An increasing number of consumers are replacing a trip to the pharmacy with a trip on the Internet. While there are online pharmacies that provide legitimate prescription services, there are also some questionable sites that make buying medicines online risky. Do business only with a licensed U.S. pharmacy. Check with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy to determine if the site is licensed and in good standing. Visit www.nabp.net or call 847-698-6227.

An online pharmacy should offer you access to a registered pharmacist who can answer any questions you might have about drug interactions, side effects, etc. Be wary of sites that:

• Sell drugs without a prescription
• Sell drugs not approved by the FDA
• Advertise quick cures
• Tell stories of “amazing results”

If you suspect a site is not a licensed pharmacy, report it and any complaints to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

So ultimately look for the above red flags to determine if a company is legitimate, call 847-698-6227 to double check, and report any violation to the the US FDA.

One aspect of great health care and healthy living is becoming educated. The risks of radiation exposure are hotly debated, but a recent report by CNN sheds light on this controversial issue:

Why radiation is scary

The odds of developing cancer from radiation exposure are very small, but risks do rise the more you get zapped and the younger you are when you’re radiated, according to the National Academy of Sciences. This means putting off radiating medical scans, if they’re not medically necessary, is always good for you because radiation can damage cell DNA– and that damage can lead to cancer years down the road. It’s true that your body can repair the damage or the cell may simply die. But the earlier you get radiated, the more opportunity there is for uncorrected errors to start cropping up in your DNA.

Know your radiation footprint

To understand what’s typical and how radiation adds up, remember this number: 3 mSv. (mSv stands for millisievert, the scientific unit of measurement for radiation.) That’s how much radiation, on average, a person in the United States absorbs in a year from background sources such as sunlight, soil, and radon gas that may be in our homes or offices. “If you add the man-made sources like radiation from smoke detectors or X-rays it rises to an average of about 3.6 mSv,” says Cynthia McCollough, Ph.D., a radiation-dose researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. That’s not much, but your footprint gets bigger fast if you have multiple radiation-based medical tests.

For more about weighing the risks of radiation check out “Could radiation be hurting your health?”