Medical Research
(by Donna Mirabile)
I have reading medical research for a very long time. I have armed myself with information in an effort to understand health conditions like obesity, diabetes, PCOS and CFIDS that I and others in my family suffer from. In case you want to do medical research yourself, here are some good sites:
PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed The searcher can see the abstracts for free. Obviously, the results are written for those in the medical profession, but the conclusion listed in the abstracts is usually easy to undesrstand.
MedPage Today http://www.medpagetoday.com/index.cfm is a very user-friendly site. They provide news briefs and teaching briefs for medical professionals and others who want to be kept up-to-date on the latest medical research. There are several different areas from which to choose to look for information. You can also sign up for a daily newsletter that lets you know what progress has been made in your areas of medical interest. For example, if you were interested in knowing more about what research has been done re: treating heart disease, you can sign up for the newsletter and note your interest in that subject. You can also use the search feature to search for specific key words.
MedLine Plus http://medlineplus.gov/ is another good medical information resource. They have over 700 topics on conditions, diseases and wellness, a medical encyclopedia, medical dictionary, current health news, directories, a local resource directory and other resources, as well as a search engine for the site. Medline is another service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.