BHealthy Blog

Summertime holds so many opportunities for fun, exercise, and fresh air, but with all those activities comes the opportunity for injury. This doesn’t mean we should avoid the fun, but we should plan ahead and be prepared in case something does go awry.

There is currently an epidemic of Zika virus in the Americas, Caribbean, and Pacific, which the World Health Organization has described as “spreading explosively.”

The flu vaccine is a treatment that can keep you from getting sick with the flu. The flu, or influenza, is a virus and therefore antibiotics will not treat a flu infection. The flu vaccine is made up of inactive, “dead” pieces of the flu virus. 

It’s that wonderful time of year again, the time of year when your children have headed back to school and you no longer have to pay outrageous daycare bills or worry about who is going to watch them next week. When getting your child ready to go back to school, it usually involves getting their backpack organized with all their new school supplies and, most importantly, making sure they are up to date on all of their immunizations.

Every year in the United States, adverse drug events result in more than 700,000 visits to emergency rooms and 120,000 hospital admissions. Many of these adverse events could have been prevented. You can help reduce the risk of harm from medications by educating yourself about proper medication use, storage, disposal, and safety.

A drug allergy occurs when your immune system mistakenly identifies a drug as a harmful substance, similar to how it attacks invading viruses or bacteria. When your immune system fights back, a series of chemical steps in the body produce an allergic reaction to the medication. The first time you take a medication, you may have no complications. However if your immune system is sensitive to the medication, it will produce antibodies.