SRxA’s Word on Health: 2012 in review

As we wait for the ball to drop on 2013, we’ve been reviewing our own performance over the last year.

Here’s an excerpt from our Annual Report:

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. SRxA’s Word on Health was viewed more than  173,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 3 years for that many people to see it.  In other words, this blog had more visitors than a small European country !

In 2012, we posted 162 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 474 posts.  Not bad, considering we’re less than 3 years old!

The busiest day this year was December 6th with 1,850 views.

While the majority of our visitors were from the US (with Canada and the UK not far behind) …our little  blog was viewed by people from 196 countries. That’s ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX!!!

Wow!

So, whether you’re from Afghanistan or Zimbabwe, or anywhere in-between, thank you for reading, for following, for your support. None of this would be possible without you.

See you in 2013.  Happy New Year!

 

Ever Heard of a “Fun” Explanation of Health Care Reform?

While explanations of the implications of president Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) are painfully boring for most Americans, a surprisingly comprehensive and entertaining video, aims to change all that.  The non-partisan, non-profit research organization, Kaiser Family Foundation, produced this delightful video narrated by NPR’s senior news analyst, Cokie Roberts.

We know that many industry and healthcare-insider readers can likely recite pages of the Act, but maybe this video will help convince your family and friends to become involved in the discussion.

We can always go back to boring them again tomorrow!

Left, Left, Left Right Left….

While the military may march to this beat, according to a new study perhaps it should be left, left, left, right…Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) .

Not quite as catchy, but according to a recent study published in Pediatrics, children who are ambidextrous may be more likely to have learning, speech and mental health problems. Of the 8000 children studied, about 1% were ambidextrous, and of these about 30% had scholastic problems.

The children were studied at ages 7 and 8 and then again at 15 and 16. “When they were 16, the children who were mix-handed were more likely to have inattention problems and all the symptoms related to ADHD” said lead researcher Alina Rodriguez, a visiting researcher and professor of psychology at Imperial College London.

However, she was quick to point out that it wasn’t the fact a child was ambidextrous that caused scholastic problems or ADHD, but rather that mix-handedness is a reflection of the brain’s circuitry and that mixed handed individuals brains are wired differently from those who are dominant handed. “The fact that their brain is functioning in a different way may be good or bad,” continued Rodriguez.  People like Da Vinci, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Paul McCartney were reported to be mix-handed.

So far, no one’s suggesting that kids be forced to use one hand or the other – the treatment some lefties, including your very own Word on Health blogger, once endured before the rest of society got enlightened. For now, it’s just one more thing about which easily unnerved parents can fret.