Potential disadvantages of virtual health care

Among the most known telehealth services:

• patient portal: you have the possibility to keep track of your health record while being able to communicate securely with your
  doctor
• virtual doctor appointments: extremely useful for persons who do not need an in-person physical examination
• store and forward: this kind of service enables the electronic transmission of medical documents
• remote patient monitoring: it allows your doctor to monitor your health from the comfort of your home by using wearable devices
• mobile health: through mobile health applications, you can keep better track of your health.

Among the benefits of the telehealth:

• better access to medical care: especially for individuals with mobility issues or living far from a doctor
• improves care quality
• reduces care cost: you do not need to travel anymore
• increases patient's satisfaction: especially by saving time.

Staying home during the pandemic helps prevent health systems from being overloaded.
Overloading hospitals can likely be averted with protective measures like closing schools, canceling mass gatherings, working from home, self-quarantine, self-isolation, avoiding crowds. All these keep the virus from spreading fast.

Online mental health therapies may make people stick to it longer, but it’s long-term benefits are still questionable, according to a study.

This mandatory Quarantine mode, which can last for weeks or months, is making us more dependent on anything and everything online, with smartphones being the potential gateway to online mental health care.

If you feel like helping others while you are forced to stay in self-isolation, here is some good news for you: this is totally possible. By making donations to hospitals, caring for doctors' children or creating opportunities of any kind for people to gather up virtually, you can not only make the ones around you feel less stressed but also give yourself a chance to rediscover the true meaning of the community and focus on something else but your own worries.

Volunteering has mostly positive effects for both sides. Being willing to take a risk of contracting a virus or just spending your free time helping others instead of focusing on yourself can actually pay off. Furthermore, volunteering can even feel as an easy task, provided that you control how much time you spend focusing on the others. Don't go overboard and everything will be alright.

Focus on baby steps. The key to new good habits is to do the minimum and be consistent.

Do not be ambitious at the beginning. That leads to failure. Consistency is what you’re shooting for, so make the hurdle as low as possible.

Thinking about the details makes you more likely to follow through. 

Just writing down your plan also makes a big difference in effectively committing to your goals.

There are low-cost interventions that are community-based that can have a significant impact on people's health down the road.

We need to be gentle on new mothers and families and provide support to help buffer the stresses that may arise. It is something every person who's listening can do something about.

They actually change our physiology. In one study, groups of rabbits were given a high-fat diet to establish the effects on heart health.

One group of rabbits did particularly well. The researchers looked around and discovered that one particular researcher was petting the one group of rabbits while feeding them. She was giving them love and kindness.

Doctors started wearing the first surgical masks in 1897. The masks were not designed to prevent airborne disease - that is still not the case today - but to prevent doctors from coughing or sneezing droplets onto wounds during surgery.

During 1920, a plague broke out between a shared jurisdiction of China and Russia. The Chinese Imperial Court brought in a young doctor named Lien-teh Wu that determined that the plague was not spread by fleas but through the air. He expanded upon the surgery masks he'd seen in the West, and made it from gauze and cotton and added several layers of cloth to filter inhalations.

When the Spanish flu arrived in 1918, the mask was well-known among scientists and the public.

When people know what the result of taking a pill is supposed to be, they might unconsciously change their reaction to cause that result or report that result has taken place even if it hasn't.

However, studies show that a placebo doesn't trick the brain - the brain reacts differently to a drug than a placebo. A 2004 study showed that the expectation of pain relief causes the brain's relief system to activate.

Placebos are often used in clinical drug trials to determine how well a potential medicine will work.

• There are two different groups of subjects in a placebo-controlled trial - one receives the experimental drug and the other the placebo. Neither researchers nor subjects know which group is receiving the real drug or the placebo.
• Some researchers are questioning the placebo-controlled trial. Not everyone thinks a drug is ineffective if the placebo performs better.
• Other critics of the placebo-controlled trial state it's wrong to attribute all positive outcomes to the placebo because many illnesses can resolve without any treatment.
• When a patient takes a placebo and experiences adverse side effects, it's called a nocebo effect. Patients taking active drugs have also been known to have side effects that can't be directly attributed to the drug.