Our first health risk assessment went online in December of 1998, so making it to 2008 is quite a thrill for us.  Through the years we have added more assessments, calculators, articles and special features to our site, as well as keeping all our existing offerings up to date with the latest science and recommendations to keep you healthy.  As we were looking at the site, one of our new team members said,

"It is almost overwhelming!" 

That struck me that if our own people who work with the site everyday find this overwhelming, are all of you that visit us once a week/month/year having a hard figuring out how the site can work for you?  I thought I would go through some of the major features of the site and give you some ideas on how the different sections can benefit you. 

Assessments
This is what got us started in the first place, making easy to use health assessments online and free.  A health assessment is a questionnaire from 10 to 60 questions depending on which one you take, that will take your responses and tell you if you are likely to have a condition or health risk.  This is not a replacement for a visit to your caregiver, but sometimes our doctors are busy and don't know all our lifestyle choices that we are making.  After you complete the questions, you recieve a report explaining your results and if there are areas where you can improve or reduce your risks.  Many risks are simply statistical, such as being killed as you walk across the street, with these types of risks, we hope that raising your awareness might help you be safe.  Other risks like heart disease and stroke, are based partly on statistics, but also based on researched algorithms (a fancy word for a math equation) where the data you enter is part of the calculation.  So if you have high blood pressure, and we can suggest that you should lower your blood pressure and give you some resources on how to do that, your risk for heart disease will go down if your blood pressure goes down to a better level.  We think that an assessment like this should be used to raise flags that you can discuss in more detail with your care provider, for instance, if your blood pressure is 115/90 we will tell you that your blood pressure is high.  While the systolic number of 115 is very good the diastolic number is above the recommended level and the point of this is to make you aware of potential problems.  Registration is required to take a health assessment, this allows us to show you your history of previously taken assessments each time you login.  You can take any or all the assessments and you can take them multiple times, we recommend taking a Health Risk Assessment in January to give you a baseline, then take it again if you have any significant changes in your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol or after you have a birthday.  The other assessments can be taken whenever you have a spare 15 to 20 minutes, these assessments can measure your risk for heart disease, risk for diabetes, general fitness, and general health.  I should also note that our assessments are for people with no known major illnesses or conditions

Calculators
Our calculators were designed to be quick, easy and fun to use.  Based on the number of magazine articles that use our calculators for reference and other sites that link to our calculator pages, I think we got it right.  The dozen calculators we have online now provide you with all kinds of good "rule of thumb" information.  Online calculators can only provide estimates based on a typical or average set of parameters, but will be accurate for 95-98% of the population.  We get a lot of email telling us how accurate our calculators are, and probably more telling us how stupid our calculators are (and the reasons why can be extremely funny).  One question we get all the time is how can I determine how many calories I should eat to lose or gain some weight, here is the process you should follow to determine that.  First, go to the daily energy expenditure calculator, this calculation shows how many calories your body would burn each day if you were in a coma (no movement at all from your muscles), write that number down, next go to the calories burned calculator, I suggest you put in a weeks worth of numbers here for all your activities, most of us don't do everything in a single day so getting a weeks worth of numbers is good and takes out the peaks and valleys.  Now take the daily energy number and multiply it by seven, then add  to that result the calories burned total(for your weeks worth of activities), and finally divide that total amount by seven (to get back down to an average day).  The result is the average number of calories you burn in a day.  If you eat more than that in calories each day, you will gain weight, and if you eat less calories than that you will lose weight (yes, that is very simplified and metabolism issues and water content can have an effect, but over time this will be true).  It takes 3500 extra calories consumed to gain a pound or 3500 less calories eaten to lose a pound.  One other calculator I want to mention that everybody uses at this time of year is our ideal weight calculator. I get a lot of email from people telling me it is way off, because if they were the recommended weight they would look really skinny, I also get a lot of email from people telling me if they were that weight they would look really fat.  Folks, this is the ideal weight where you will be the healthiest, not where you will look the best, since that seems to be totally subjective.  The key point here is get your body mass index (using our bmi calculator) between 19.5 and 25.  Above that range your heart is having to work extra to pump blood through all that mass (muscle or fat), or below and your body is in short supply of calories to keep your systems going.

Articles
We have written and collected some 40,000 articles over the last 10 years.  The vast majority of these from writers not affiliated with HealthStatus.  We have tried to categorize them and with our latest version of the website now have a search function that only searches our articles section of the database, you will find that toward the bottom of the center section of any article page or article index page.  These articles cover a lot of health issues with a lot of opinions, some are very mainstream science others get into alternative medicines and ideas.  Regardless of your feelings one way or the other, there is probably an article in our collection that will either agree or challenge your position on any health issue.

Online Videos
We have partnered with HealthiNation to bring you broadcast quality videos on major health issues.  Not only do we have a section where you can see all our videos, you will begin seeing the videos as recommended resources in our assessment and calculator results.

Medical Directory
Our comprehensive U.S. medical directory lists physicians in all 50 states, it is searchable by specialty and you can search for a doctor within a certain number of miles from your zip code.   In each listing you will find their name, address, sex, medical school and what hospital they did their residency also is a link that you can click on to see a map of where they are located.

Health Books
Our health book store is categorized and totally searchable, but since this is the Internet we are not just limited to health books, just about any book, VHS or DVD you would ever want is available through our store.

Newsletters
Our newsletters come out on a regular schedule with five or six new articles each edition.  We try and pick timely subjects 95% of our newsletter articles are written by HealthStatus staff, so we are doing the research, book reviews and writing the articles in our relaxed, non-stuffy manner.  If you are a techie, you can subscribe to our RSS feed and get notified as soon as our articles are published, or wait for our email with links and descriptions of all our articles.  With our latest software update, if you login to your account (remember it is free), then go to the newsletter section, you can comment on the various articles.  Since this is  a family friendly site, we are reviewing the comments before they get put up for everyone to see, but we are going to do our best to get things reviewed in 6-10 hours or less.  We promise to publish positive and negative comments as long as they are done in a professional and family friendly manner.  We are also including the health calendar for the current month in each edition, while this seems silly to a lot of people, it does give you an entry to talking to someone you care about to let them know you are concerned about them.  Something like, "Hey Mom, it is National Diabetes Month, have you had a screening recently?"

Other Features
Our health fair is a few pages of health related items we found interesting, novel or just worth telling about.  Think about it as a health flea market, you just never know what you might find.  Our health store is in testing now, we have struggled with this for a couple of years, but we have found a very good supplier with high quality products made from the best ingredients and manufactured in a way that minimizes nutrient loss.  We will not recommend any of our book store or health store products as part of our health assessment reports or calculator results. 

Paid Subscriptions
HealthStatus offers two paid subscription programs for additional content.  Workout @ HealthStatus is our collection of video workout classes available online 24/7.  This is great for busy people that don't have time to go to the gym, mothers and fathers with small children that can't always get to a class at a certain time, those of you who don't like the fitness center environment and those of you that feel embarrassed going to work out.  At less than $15.00/month you get over 170 different workout programs to choose from, you can play the workout right on your computer screen, or if you have Internet connected to your TV (or big screen) through a Playstation or Xbox, you can view it on your TV and workout with the instructor.  Nutrition @ HealthStatus is a personalized nutrition and diet system.  You enter all your personal details and the system will come up with meal plans, shopping lists to meet your goals.  That can be to gain weight, lose weight or just eat healthier foods.  You can tell the system how much time you are willing to spend preparing foods and any foods that you are allergic, don't like or have a religious preference not to eat, the system will adjust all the recipes accordingly.  If you follow the plan within a few days you will have more energy and heading toward your goal weight.  The Nutrition @ HealthStatus program is $45.00 for the first three months, then $9.00 for each three month period after that, compare that to a three month supply of diet pills and you will see what a bargain that is.

Advertising
HealthStatus accepts advertising from other organizations and places it throughout our site.  We do not specifically endorse any products advertised on our sites and we don't accept every advertiser that wants to put something on our site.  While we all claim to dislike advertising, it really is a tremendous educational tool, we learn about a lot of products, programs and services that make our lives easier, healthier or more comfortable.

That covers it for now; we have a lot of new features and additions in the pipeline that we will be sharing with you in the next couple of months.  Regular visits and watching for our newsletter are the easiest way to stay up to date on our additions and changes.  Please feel free to contact us either through comments or using our contact page.  I really can't express how honored we feel that you have chosen HealthStatus.com as one of your health resources, and we take the responsibility of that trust you have shown very seriously.  To your health!  Happy New Year!