This evening we at infoMedMD launched two new medical symptoms to our list of infoMeds.  These two infoMeds are:  Poor Contact Lens Vision and Double Vision.

All of these infoMeds are free for your use.  Also any of our infoMeds can be embedded into your website or blog.  Just contact us for details.

Another recently published infoMed related to heart attacks is the Hypertension infoMed.  infoMedMD, a medical symptoms checker, publishes infoMeds which provides you with personalized medical information on your medical symptoms.  

The description for the hypertension infoMed reads as follows:

High blood pressure (hypertension) is under treated resulting in numerous strokes and heart attacks. Do you have hypertension (high blood pressure)? Are you afraid you have hypertension? If you are being treated, is your hypertension under control? What do the various numbers mean. If you know your blood pressure, this INFOMED will tell you if you fit the medical diagnosis of high blood pressure. Furthermore, this INFOMED will give you the information to understand this problem. Also, it will give you the information you need to prevent strokes and heart attacks.

A new day brings another infoMed, a medical symptoms checker!  Today we just published the Heart Attack Symptoms infoMed.  The description for this infoMed is as follows:

If you or a loved one is having chest pain now, get off the computer and call an ambulance. Time is of the essence. Clot dissolving drugs can limit heart damage if given within 3 hours. In fact, some ambulance crews carry these drugs and will administer them if they are certain of the diagnosis. But if recent symptoms you’re having make you suspect you have heart disease, this INFOMED can help you.

We at infoMedMD are continuously adding new medical symptoms to our database.  

Some of the most recent medical symptoms include:

• Pregnancy Symptoms
• Nosebleeds
• Vasectomy

At infoMedMD we continue to add new infoMeds every week and with our acceleration we’ve decided to waive the fee for all of our medical symptoms.  This means that after registering with infoMedMD you now have free access to all of our current infoMeds. Over time we hope to have approximately 200 infoMeds with the vast majority of them remaining free – some of the more advanced medical symptoms will have a small charge.

To register for free access to the medical symptoms just click on the phrase medical conditions. 

We also appreciate all the positive feedback from our current subscribers and welcome anyone who likes infoMedMD to link directly to us.  Please feel free to copy and past the following code into your website.

<a href=”http://www.infomedmd.com” TITLE=”Medical Symptoms”>Medical Symptoms</a>

infoMedMD over the weekend launched embeddable infoMeds that websites can offer their visitors for free. With a simple line of code websites can provide their visitors any of the listed infoMeds for free.  Results are sent directly to the user via email – no registration or payment needed.

Probably the best explanation of our new service can be seen via the 2 infoMeds embedded on TOKiBiz - Eye Problem Screening and Screening Tests.

To receive your custom code for any of the infoMeds listed please contact infoMedMD.

infoMedMD is now officially live and online!!  We’re excited to bring this exciting healthcare application to you.

InfoMedMD is an intelligent healthcare application which through a series of questions (infoMeds) provides you with personalized medical information specific to you and your symptoms.

To start, browse our list of medical symptoms, complete our screening test and answer the eye problem screening.

If you have any questions, or if you would like a custom infoMed, please contact us.

Even though Americans are more health conscience than ever, the incidence of obesity is skyrocketing. Over the past decade, the average weight of those in their 30s increased by 4 pounds and for those in their 40s, the increase was 9 pounds. This has been attributed to several factors: sedentary life styles, decreased smoking, stress and the economy.

Helping the public to lose weight has become a multi-billion dollar industry and some clever marketers are suckering people to spend their hard-earned money on weight loss scams that substitute gimmicks for will power. The public is inundated with diet books, magical protein formulas, pills, Rube Goldberg exercise machines and weight loss clubs. Yet, more people are waddling around than ever before. This is because many weight loss programs start with the big lie: You can eat whatever you want and lose weight.

In actuality, for the vast majority of human beings, the only way to lose weight is to walk around hungry. The human body is a machine. It needs fuel to function. Cars don’t run without gas. Humans don’t run without food. When the car is our of gas, the gas gauge tells you so. when the human body is not ingesting enough food to function without metabolizing existing fat an muscle, it sends a signal to the hypothalamus of the brain. This signal is called hunger.

Humans evolved fighting the elements and each other with one quest in mind – avoid dying of starvation. It was only in the past 100 years – a quick tick of the evolutionary clock – that a significant percentage of human beings began to eat three meals a day. Our ancestors were wandering tribes whoe starved for days until an accurate spear throw took down an animal. It is this evolutionary history that is programmed into our brain’s ingrams, not the behavior patterns of a society where $5.00 can buy you a package of oreos and a quart of milk.

Not only is it difficult to lose weight, but keeping weight off is also a challenge. A study at Rockefeller University demonstrated why. The researchers quantified the energy expended by individuals who had dieted and lost 10% of their body weight. The results showed that the dieters had a decrease in body expenditure, even when accounting for the loss in body mass.

Perhaps an example will make this clearer. Let’s say a woman requires 2,000 calories a day to maintain her weight. She goes on a diet and loses 10% of her weight. It would follow that she should be able to maintain her new weight by eating 1,800 calories a day (10% less than 2,000 calories); but, this is not the case. She has to eat in the range of 1,650 calories or else she will regain the weight she lost. This is why so many people keep gaining and losing the same 15 pounds.

Thus, the human body is not only programmed to avoid weight loss, but to return to its previous weight after an episode of weight loss. Why is this? Again, let’s go back to our primordial ancestors wandering the plains in search of food. If the spear chuckers went into a slump, there were no 7-11s around to pick up a bag of Doritos. To prevent the tribe from starving, evolution developed a mechanism that allowed the human body to utilize the little food available with greater efficiency – starvation metabolism.

Many weight loss programs correctly emphasize the importance of exercise, but again, discipline is crucial too. More exercise simply increases one’s appetite, just like driving a car a further distance requires more gas. This is why lumberjacks eat more than accountants. Muhammad Ali is right:  The best exercise is the push away from the table.

Clever marketers have been successful at selling the populous overpriced, unpalatable low-fat foods. Dietetic cheese, bread, beer and ice cream proliferate on the supermarket shelves. there are even low fat donuts! Many of my patients have told me that you can’t add fat to your body if you eat low fat food. This simply isn’t true! The human body merely converts excess calories into fat. Gobbling a dozen low fat donuts is a great way to force yourself to buy a new wardrobe.

As fewer workers make their living by manual labor, weight control is paramount to the country’s collective health. Some physicians are advocting treating obestiy as a chronic disease similar to hypertension and diabetes. Leveling with our citizens by informing them that weight control requires discipline and occasional hunger pains would be a good start.

- Dr. Joseph Bentivegna

Earlier this week infoMedMD was featured in Mass High Tech, a local Boston, Cambridge technology newspaper. In addition to highlighting some of the features of infoMedMD the article dives into the emerging online heatlh care sector, of which Boston/Cambridge has a number of major players.

There’s Sermo (a community by physicians for physicians), Praxeon (evidence based medicine), PatientsLikeMe (patients helping patients), myDailyApple (health news and search), DoubleCheckMD (prescription side effects) and more local companies discussed in the article.

infoMedMD takes a different approach then all of the firms listed above and in the online health care sector. Think of infoMedMD as an advanced (and intelligent) symptom checker that integrates services for both the patient side and the professional side of health care. Most of the current Health 2.0 applications focus on one or the other but we at infoMedMD feel our product fits perfectly for both groups.

Set to launch in July 2008, infoMedMD can be found online at: www.infoMedMD.com

The Mass High Tech article can be found online by clicking health info.

InfoMedMD is an intelligent health care application which through a series of questions (infoMeds) provides you with personalized medical information specific to you and your symptoms.

Set to launch in July 2008 InfoMedMD integrates the medical expertise of Dr. Joseph Bentivegna with web technology to provide you with immediate medical information about your symptoms. infoMedMD answers your medical questions with health information that serves to educate and inform you before visiting a doctor.