How to Check-In on Your Health
Many people say that health is wealth– and this is because, really, many people do not know how important and crucial their health is until a certain part of their body is suffering– at which point they realize that they took their health for granted. However, just like checking your bank statements to verify where your money is being spent, there are several easy ways that you can keep an eye on your health yourself. If you are really concerned, and there might be something seriously wrong with you, a visit to a hospital or clinic might be necessary, but otherwise, there are a few things that you can do right at home if all you need is a simple check. In fact, you’d be surprised at just what you can find out about yourself with just a few simple tests.
Check Your Temperature
One of the easiest ways to simply check on your general health is to take your own temperature. All you need is a digital thermometer, which can be found at nearly any pharmacy, and place it under your tongue for a few moments until it beeps to get a reading. From there, you have an accurate gauge at how ‘hard’ your body is working– the higher the body temperature, the more energy that the body is using.
This could be due to a variety of reasons, including illness or exercise, and the baseline temperature for the majority of people is around 98.6. Any temperature over or under that number (even by a few tenths of a degree) can be cause for concern. If you’d prefer not to put one in your mouth, they make thermometers for the ears, as well as digital forehead scanners– whatever method you’d prefer, it is important to try and invest in a good thermometer, so that you can get as accurate a reading as possible.

Blood Pressure
If someone was to ask you what your blood pressure was today, would you be able to even give them a ballpark estimate? While many people do not know exactly what it is, even fewer recognize just how important this metric of bodily function is. High blood pressure, also medically known as hypertension, is one of the leading causes of heart disease– it can be caused from eating lots of salty foods, smoking, or drinking. Additionally, it can also depend on a variety of other internal factors including age, race, family history, and your amount of exercise.
A blood pressure that is too high can lead to many major health problems aside from heart disease. It can also cause heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, and can affect the health of the brain as well. A good investment to check blood pressure is a blood pressure cuff– they make electronic ones, which are a bit more expensive, and old-fashioned ones that you blow up yourself by squeezing. In any case, it is important to know that a healthy blood pressure reading is around 120/80– anything higher would be a cause for concern, and a reason to consult with a medical professional.

Checking Your Pulse
Checking your pulse, or heart rate, is a simple test that doesn’t require any special equipment. In fact, it is something that people have been doing much the same way for centuries! It is very important to know your resting heart rate, as those with a higher average resting heart rate tend to be more at risk for heart disease than those with a lower heart rate (this is simply because the heart works more), and heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States of America.
So, how do you check your pulse? All you need to do is take your index and middle finger and place them on your neck by your Adam’s apple. Then, count your heartbeat for a full 60 seconds, and you’re done! Congratulations, you’ve successfully discovered your resting heart rate. The average pulse is somewhere between 70-100 beats per minute, or bpm. If it is lower than that, it means that you are in good shape, and if it is higher, it means you are not. It costs absolutely nothing to check your pulse and get a rough estimate of the health of your heart.

Alternatively, as technology continues its relentless march forward, you can use your smartphone or smartwatch to get a quick read of your pulse. Certain devices, such as Galaxy phones and the iWatch come with a built-in heartbeat sensor that can also monitor stress levels.
How to Measure your Waist
All you need for this is a tape measure, or to look at your pants size. The size of your waist is positively correlated with your weight. To measure it with a tape measure (as, depending on the fit of your pants, it may be the most accurate measure) all you need to do is take the end of the tape measure and bring it around your waist. Tighten it, and you should be able to measure the circumference of the waist. Healthy men are expected to have a waste smaller than 40 in, while women should have a waist lower than 35.
There is no problem with accepting your weight the way it is, but part of accepting it means accepting the fact that being overweight makes you more susceptible for a wide range of health risks.

Check for Lumps
This is extremely important, and should be done regularly throughout your life. If you are a woman, you should be regularly checking your breasts for any lumps. This should be done in front of a mirror, as it can often provide a better view. To do this, all you need to do is work your way from the armpits to the nipple and check for any bruises, lumps, or discoloration– in short, anything that looks like it might not belong there. It can be done in as little as five minutes, but it is extremely important and one of the cornerstones to good health. If you find anything that is unusual, the earlier you catch it before it becomes a problem, the better. If you are a man, it is important to examine the testicles in a similar way. Feel around the sack and put a little pressure on the testes to feel for anything unusual. It may feel awkward, but it is far better to be safe than sorry with such a thing.

How Skin Plays into Health
The sun is something that everyone experiences every single day– at least, we should hope so, but this is not always a good thing. It’s warm, comforting rays can actually make human beings more susceptible to skin cancer. It’s important to put sunscreen on, at least 50 SPF before leaving the house every day. If you want to check your skin at home, you can, but there’s a few simple things that you have to keep in mind. Stand Stand in front of a mirror and examine every part of your body. You might want to have someone there to help you in examining your back– you want to look for warning signs that are known as the “ABCDE” Signs.
A is for asymmetrical shape, B is for irregular borders, C is for abnormal color, D is for diameter, and E is for evolving. If a mole is larger than a pencil in diameter, has a weird color, is not an even circle, or changes appearance over time, you should head over to a dermatologist as soon as possible.
These are just a few of the things that you can do at home to check up on your health. It is important to check your health regularly so that you can catch any strange developments early on– Invest in some equipment like thermometers and blood pressure monitors– they don’t have to break the bank, but they do have to be accurate. This is one way that you can keep an eye on your health, to hopefully catch any problems you might have before it’s too late to do so.
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7 PRP Treatments That Are Popular Right Now
The time it takes to draw a patient’s blood, add a little citrate, and use a centrifugal machine with a PRP kit is only 15-20 minutes. This is the amount of time needed to create Platelet-Rich Plasma, or PRP. This can then be used for many purposes, using speeding up a patients recovery.
PRP is by far the best healing agent that has growth factors and platelets to help with the healing process, which is also completely free and natural to obtain.
What are The Advantages Of Using PRP Correctly?
It is easy to create PRP simpy by placing blood in a centrifuge, but it can have very little, if any, platelets, and would otherwise be useless. However, with the right equipment, you can make PRP with up to 7x the amount of platelets. This can be amplified by using fat tissue and collagen fibers to create a PRP matrix.
7 Popular PRP Treatments
- Facial Treatments
Many skin centers are thriving due to being one of the first to adopt PRP therapies. With the lack of side effects or down time, it became incredibly popular. These treatments include wrinkle reduction, skin rejuvenation, dark circle and bag erasure, rosacea treatment, and even lip augmentation.
One popular and generic treatment option includes combining PRP and a treatment known as microneedling. When this is applied, it’s effects are similar to Botox, or facelifts, for far less cost and side effects.
- Hair Loss
PRP growth factors can be beneficial when it comes to reversing non-genetic early stage hair loss. Despite there being a huge market for this, almost no practitioners actually utilize it. Many clients have seen promise after hair thinning, and many have seen beard regrowth over time.
- Arthritis and Cartilage
Arthritis treatments alone cost patients 6.4 billion dollars in 2013 for the US alone, with projections of up to 9 billion by the end of the decade. However, unlike the other treatments, PRP is seen as the only treatment that can not just reduce symptoms, but also regrow the cartilage. One of the most popular examples would be treatments for Temporomandibulaar Joint Osteoarthritis.
- Anti-aging Properties
When it comes to the anti-aging market, there are a endless number of treatments and procures available. Yet, none of them even stand close to the effectiveness of PRP therapy. PRP combined with Microneedling can ve highly effective for strech marks, acne scars, breast augmentation, and even skin conditions like Lichen Sclerosus.
- Pain Relief and Musculoskeletal Healing
There are a ton of treatments in this category, with many of them being incredibly more effective than leading treatments. These include healing Rotator Cuffs, Tennis Elbow, Achilles Tendonitis, Patellar Tendonitis, Back Pain, Hip and Pelvic problems, Degenerative Disc Disease, Golfer’s Elbow, Labaral Tear, Brusitis, neck pain, avascular Necrosis, and even pain related to nerve regeneration.
Almost all of these treatment, as opposed to those in other categories on this list, also use ultrasound guidance when injecting the PRP directly into the affected tissue. This can allow patients to see fantastic results in as little as 2 weeks.
- Fertility
Ovarian Rejuvination is where PRP is injected directly into a woman’s ovaries. This is meant to help reverse menopause and help lower fertility issues. This treatment can even be used for sexual regeneration. Although similar, this treatment is not the same as other treatments where PRO is injected into the vagina, and is supposed to treat looseness, dryness, low sex drive, and incontinence.
- COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
Allergies, asthma, and COPD are among the growing list of things that PRP is being used as a treatment for. For this to work, the PRP is mixed with a saline solution, and then, using a nebulizer, is inhaled, and helps to regenerate the lung tissue.
Although it can take up to 2 months for patients to see the effects, many are seeing improvements. Almost 1 million people suffer from COPD a year, so anything that can help treat the condition is beneficial.
The Future
PRP has been trending rather well in the recent years, and seems to be here for the long term. Not only it is a fully natural remedy, but it is one that works better than most or all traditional treatments. Many like it due to the fact that there are few side effects, it only takes a short amount of time, and there is no recovery period.
PRP has been adopted by thousands of clinics and practices throughout the US and the world. The demand for these treatments have been increasing almost faster than practices are choosing to provide them. Many patients are even willing to travel long distances just to receive these treatments.
So are you providing PRP treatments yet?

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Why Should you Include PRP In Your Medical Practice?
According to many physicians, PRP (Platelet-Rich Plasma) has been a lifesaver for their practice, while others claimed that it helped them become passionate about medicine again. This is because not only is it 100% from the body of the patient themselves, but it is also natural and comes with pretty much no side effects. It can also be used to treat a plethora of medical ailments, to the point where no other treatment options come close.
Although the above are all fantastic and solid reasons for offering PRP therapies, there are also a couple other reasons as well.
For instance, it is extremely simple compared to other treatment options. For about 1000$ as an initial investment, you can get started with offering PRP. The equipment is relatively cheap, and it pays for itself over a relatively short amount of time.
It also is not just a passing trend, as it has been going popular for a long time and shows no signs of slowing down. The market for PRP therapies is expected to reach almost 500 million dollars within the next 10 years, or an annual growth rate of 12.5% since 2015.
Patient satisfaction is another reason. In certain situations, the satisfaction rate for patients have been as high as 95%. This shocks many of the patients, who believe, although justifiably, that they cannot reverse or halt their condition without side effects, down time, and invasive surgeries.
The time for you to start including PRP into your practice is now, while the supply is low but the demand is booming. There is still a lot more promise when it comes to PRP as well, including combining PRP with other treatments to increase efficacy. Since no standard has yet to be established, you may be starting these standards yourself.
It is vital that we get more doctors to utilize PRP therapy so that they can be a pioneer in this field. PRP can turn medicine on its head, and missing out should not be a smart option.
The best part about it, is that PRP can be utilized in almost every field and specialty, from sports medicine, to pain management, skin rejuvenation, hair care, and even urology. Most of the physicians who utilize this treatment also saw higher patient retention rates as well.
So is there a legitimate reason to not add PRP to your practice?

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How To Choose A Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Kit
Despite being rather simple, PRP extraction has been shrouded with debate on the reliability of the methods for the past decade. We are going to help clear up the debate by providing information on choosing the best PRP kit.
Using a kit is in itself vital to the creation of PRP. While it is possible to draw blood into a test tube and put it through a centrifuge and claim it is PRP, it’s otherwise ineffective. This is what is known as “bloody PRP,” and it might hold 1.5x the amount of blood platelets if you’re lucky, but it will also contain a ton of red and white blood cells. Because of this, this ineffective form of PRP can potentially cause flare ups after injection.
However, if you use a kit, that concentration of platelets can be as high as 5-7 times the baseline.
What Makes A PRP Kit Good?
This concentration of 5-7 times is vital for PRP to work, and kits allow you to choose whether or not you want to keep in the red and white blood cells, or whether you don’t. Each one would work on different ailments. However, some commercial kits may not deliver what you may want in your PRP, so it is good to know the difference between the kits.
- Gel Separators
Gel separators is pretty much just a test tube with some gel on the bottom. This gel is able to separate the blood from the platelets due to osmosis. The main issue is that when the test tube goes through the centrifuge, most of the platelets will also be caught by the gel as well. This will wind up with 1.5 times concentration of platelets at most, but it does take out the white and red blood cells as well, so that’s a plus.
- Buffy Coat
The kits that allow you to see a buffy coat are most likely to give you concentrations of 5-7 times. A buffy coat is a thin layer that is formed between the blood and the plasma after being in a centrifuge. This is mainly just platelets and white blood cells, with plasma on top, and packed blood underneath.
After this, you have to be able to separate the bufy coat from the red blood cells without contamination. This will help you to get PRP with less than 10% red blood cells.
- Buffy Coat with a Double Spin
The third and final type utilize a buffy coat which is devoid of red blood cells. This is the best kit on the market, because what you do is after separating the PRP from the red blood cells, you spin it again to further get rid of the red blood cells and to concentrate the platelets even more. After this, all that is needed to do is to separate the buffy coat, and this is PRP.
The Biosafe Kit
Although there are many kits that create PRP, the Biosafe kit has to be the best on the market. This is because it give you full control over the end product. Using this machine, you wind up with 10cc of usable product, which you can then double spin for that 5-7 times concentration. You can also choose whether or not you want some red blood cells in the finished product as well.
What is Leukocyte-poor PRP?
Leukocytes are otherwise known as White Blood Cells, and some researchers believe that they can be detrimental to PRP therapy. While there is no consensus as of yet, it is believed by many that these blood cells may trigger an inflammatory response, and even prevent growth factors from creating new cells.
However, some researchers believe that white blood cells are vital to a beneficial response. They believe that without these cells, you will be left with a lot of scar tissue at the site of healing. This Leukocyte-rich PRP also tends to have much more growth factors as well.
If you want to try leukocyte-poor PRP, you will need a Leukocyte Reduction filter, also known as an LR filter. These filters use electrostatic attraction to separate the white blood cells from the rest of the PRP. Although some filters can get clogged, a CIF-LR filter will be able to prevent that and filter out 99.99% of white blood cells.
There Is Plenty Of Evidence To Back This Up
Many people are highly skeptical about PRP, and are willing to ignore it without tons of randomized double-blind studies. Ignoring that some of the things that they do in their practice is also not proven in this manner. Many refuse to even look at the evidence, including the long line of evidence since the 1970’s, ranging over 6000 scientific studies.
The best evidence is how much clients will pay for this despite not being covered by insurance. This shows without any doubt that something about this treatment must be working. As long as there are clients, Adimarket will be there to provide the equipment for practices.

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