Confused, Lost and Frustrated By the Ever Changing Medical Recommendations?

If you are lost, confused, bewildered and even stumped about many medical guidelines and recommendations - you are NOT alone!

Every day you can find a story on the news, in a newspaper, or some health alert contradicting what you knew to be true the day before! From whether or not you should take an aspirin every day to at what age you should start getting mammograms and how often you should repeat them thereafter - the list goes on and on!

You will hear that coffee is good for you and here are the health benefits and tomorrow you will find a story that tells you why you should NOT drink coffee and all of the negative health effects it can have. So what is a person to do?

Well, you shouldn't just give up paying attention or listening like so many people do. You should first find the source of your information. Credible studies and stories will come out of well respected health organizations. They are generally ones you can rely on. Often news will be reported based on one study that comes from somewhere - which was funded by an independent group for a specific reason. Many people don't realize this. Studies are done for all sorts of reasons, by many different researchers and scientists, sometimes with a certain goal in mind and many often funded by a specific group, company or organization. For instance, a certain "coffee grower's association" might decide that they want to fund a study to prove the health benefits of coffee. Now that is the clear goal here. The study will be run to focus on that and hopefully come up with information to confirm same. The positive information will then be published and released because THAT was why the study was being conducted in the first place. Of course, the positive results are beneficial for this specific organization. However, when this news gets reported on TV, radio, internet and more, often nothing other than the end results are what we hear. Coffee is good for preventing liver cancer and can help you stay younger longer - or whatever the claim is. You won't usually hear WHO funded the study and why it was done or what the goal of the study was. You will rarely ever hear the negative results that came out of the study as well.

THIS is what you need to keep in mind when you hear the latest and greatest report on what food, beverage, medication, medical procedure is GOOD for you or BAD for you.

Research the news. DIG and find out who ran the study and more about it. See if MORE than one study has been done to come up with this conclusion as well. Consider ALL of this BEFORE you start doing something or stop doing something because of it's "so called" health benefits or negative health effects.

Do what you feel is best for you. Make healthy and smart choices. Discuss choices with your doctors, pharmacists, nutritionists, etc. If doing, or not doing something, is the right choice for you and your health, then that is what makes sense. Again, just try to keep yourself informed and ask for advice from medical professionals whenever necessary.

The conflicting reports and information won't stop, but the confusion and overwhelming approach to it all can.