Surf for your health

Search for "health," and you'll come up with thousands of Web sites. The AARP pares them to 100 good ones with diverse topics, from diet and exercise to household pests.

By STEPHEN NOHLGREN, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 27, 2000

Individual facts, such as a list of airline flights from Tampa to Albuquerque, often are just a keystroke away.

Well connected Thinking about making the jump to cyberspace? Read about how some bay area seniors are enjoying their time online, e-mailing family and friends, shopping, checking investments and generally enriching their lives.

But try to search a topic -- say, the benefits of diet supplements -- and you never know what you will get. The possibilities seem endless. One Web site or article leads to another, and another, and another, until you wonder whether a thousand different surfing routes would yield a thousand different results.

So last month's issue of the AARP Bulletin was welcome indeed. It contains a list of 100 good Web sites related to health.

The list is heavy on government and academic sites and also mainline interest groups such as the American Heart Association and the National Osteoporosis Foundation. And goodness knows, 100 Web sites won't begin to capture all of what the Web can offer about health.

But the list provides a good starting place, and it has been vetted by a reputable organization.

A weeklong look at everyday life with the Internet. Stories

There are listings for online drugstores, including the AARP's pharmacy service, and sites for support groups, hospice care, women's health and minority group health. Six Web sites help you explore alternative medicine.

Even a casual perusal of the sites shows a wide diversity of topics, from help in picking a nursing home to ways to keep pesky ants from infesting your food.

Back issues of the Bulletin are available through the AARP's Web site, so you can go directly to the 100 Web site list by plugging this into your computer: http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/may00/health.html.

If you prefer a more leisurely stroll that will introduce you to other AARP Web offerings, go first to http://www.aarp.org, the AARP's home page. From there, you can click on the Bulletin icon or explore other features.

The Bulletin screen contains a link to "Previous features." When you click on that, you get a list of past Bulletins and their major stories. The May 2000 issue has "Going Online . . . for Health," which takes you to the 100 Web site list.

Here is what turned up recently after a few hours of surfing the list:

The first stop was the American Dietetic Association (http://www.eatright.org). Its home page had a "Tip of the Day," which turned out to be the formula for finding your body mass index, a calculation of weight and height that tells whether you are overweight.

Other Web sites let you plug in your weight and height. But this one makes you do the math: Your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared. As it happens, a 6-foot, 202-pounder ends up with a body mass of 27 or so, which is slightly overweight by American Dietetic standards. But who's really counting?

The University of California at Berkeley has a wellness Web site (http://www.berkeleywellness.com) that contains a guide to diet supplements. The feature this time: selenium.

Several encouraging studies suggest that selenium may help prevent some cancers, Berkeley says, but it's too early to rush out and gobble down pills. High doses may be toxic. Bottom line: Eat lots of fish and grains and some nuts, particularly Brazil nuts. If you do take the supplement, hold it to 200 micrograms a day or less.

The National Food Safety Database, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Florida's Food Research Institute (http://www.foodsafety.ufl.edu) takes you to "consumer-related food safety resources," which takes you to "household pests" and a detailed description of ant life.

Item: The sole function of the male ant is to fertilize a "female reproductive." After that, the male dies.

When you find the critters in your kitchen, the safety database advises, follow the trail of ants back to their nest, usually outside, where you can kill them with a variety of lethal agents listed on the Web site.

The National Institute on Aging and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration offer a 100-page exercise guide (http://www.nih.gov/nia/health/general/ general.htm). A table of contents leads you to Chapter 4: exercises you can do at home, including animated instructions for a "chair stand," in which a cartoon figure slumping in a straight-backed chair repeatedly stands up without using his arms.

A link back to "strength exercises" gives useful instructions about lifting weights: Take 3 seconds for one lift, and 3 seconds lowering it. If you can't do eight in a row, use less weight; if you can do more than 15, use more weight.

"Healthfinder" (http://www.healthfinder.gov) is a gateway Web site with links "for all U.S. government information" (whew!). Major topics on the home page are bundled under little green apple leafs. One led to "News: the latest" and a discourse about walking that should have pleased people with more time than energy.

It suggested that the duration of one's walk is more important than the pace in reducing the risk of heart disease.

The American Medical Association's site (http://www.ama-assn.org/consumer.htm) offered a tip to grandparents under the category of "specific conditions" and a request for information about sudden infant death syndrome: When you put babies down to sleep, leave them on their backs, not their stomachs.

CBSHealthWatch (http://www.cbshealthwatch.com) contains daily stories and a "quick search" box that lets you check for past articles on topics of your choice. A search of "laser surgery" turns up the predictable bad eyesight stories, but also an account of a new technique for angina surgery, involving a catheter that uses a laser to punch little holes inside the heart.

"Best Hospitals" (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/health/ hosptl/tophosp.htm) was too intriguing to pass up. It came from a 1999 article in U.S. News & World Report that listed what the magazine thought were the top 188 hospitals in the country. In the Tampa Bay area, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center (No. 34 for cancer) and Regional Medical Center in Hudson (50th in cardiology and heart surgery) were the only hospitals to make the list.

A great site is the federal government's http://www.medicare.gov. It contains all sorts of information on the Medicare program.

For instance, the "Medicare Health Care Compare" category on the home page leads to an in-depth comparison of Medicare HMOs in your area, including premiums. One feature allows you to designate quality indicators, such as how many women on a plan are given mammograms every two years, or how many heart attack patients get beta blockers to prevent a second attack. The database tells how each plan performs.

Anyone who needs a nursing home should browse the "nursing home compare" category on the home page. It will give you details of each home's last inspection, the ratio of staff to patients and a snapshot of how sick the residents are.

In Pinellas County, for example, the site lists five of 88 homes that passed their last inspection without any deficiencies: Bon Secours Maria Manor, College Harbor, Columbia Largo Medical Center skilled nursing unit, North Rehab Center and Wrights Nursing Home.

Certainly, dry data is not the best way to pick a nursing home. Visiting frequently and at all hours will serve you better.

But as with so much other information available on the Internet, finding a good Web site is great way to do your homework.

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