When people think of staying healthy, they usually think about exercising and taking vitamins and going to the doctor for a check up whenever possible. What most people do not realize is that superior health and fitness can be achieved simply by paying a few dollars and getting a massage.Therapeutic massages have always been looked at as a method to make patients feel good and loosen up their bodies. Although this is true in many aspects, getting a massage can cause great improvement in the overall health and well-being of users. For example, getting a massage relaxes the body and often alleviates a lot of pain and discomfort that one may be feeling from every day strain or if someone is recovering from a recent illness or surgery. It can also relieve a lot of stress if someone has been having a rough time at work or home.A person who gets a therapeutic massage also experiences better health and fitness through function improvement with circulatory, muscular, skeletal, nervous, and also lymphatic systems. Depending on what specific health issues the patient has, there is also a Swedish massage that is good for muscle cramps, headaches, and also back stress. Pressure Point Therapy is also another method of massaging that helps with some injuries, insomnia, anxiety, headaches and muscle tension, and also circulation problems. Sports massages for athletes also help with relaxing muscle groups used for different sports.A licensed masseuse can help with the conditions mentioned above, as well as arthritis, asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, digestive disorders, myofascial pain, limited range of motion, allergies, depression, sinusitis, and TMJ.As can be seen, massages help with overall health a lot more than people realize. Not only are they relaxing and very nice to get, they promote better health throughout your body and are a big part of better health and fitness. These days, people who go to get massages are looked at as just wanting to get relaxed and relieve stress, but what critics do not realize is that in some ways, massages are better than actually going to the doctor’s office and paying way more than what is needed for treatment.

Health reform refers to the changes in health administration, health planning and, health research that places significant emphasis on local health challenges aimed at improving health administration, health planning and healthcare. They will combine to produce an efficient model of healthcare delivery capable of increasing patient physical, medical and psychological safety. Health reform should be driven by empirical data, best practice and evidence based practice. A variety of health statistics; such as mortality, manpower needs, technology functioning and patient satisfaction; should be analyzed and employed in strengthening health systems.In Trinidad and Tobago the current system of healthcare is highly centralized. The Ministry of Health maintains operational oversight of five regional health authorities. These are the North West Regional, North Central Regional, Eastern Regional, South West Regional and Tobago Regional. South West, North West and North Central are the largest regions; each catering for the healthcare needs of more than three hundred thousand people.A significant reform should be the specialization of the Ministry of Health in fewer functions aimed to improve healthcare efficiency. For example, it can concentrate on data compilation and analysis. It should be staffed with expert health researchers tasked with analyzing changes in epidemiology, and trends in morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, the Ministry of Health should have the power to instruct regional authorities to make systemic and resource changes based on the statistics collected and analyzed. Regional bodies should be mandated to provide health based statistics to the Ministry of Health quarterly. The Ministry of Health must maintain general oversight of regional authorities. It should produce annual reports based on self- monitoring and evaluation of the systems, performances and challenges in each region. Financial statements and audits should be submitted annually to the Ministry of Health and factors accounting for variance should be justified. Recommendations should be made for improvements and incidences of white-collar crime prosecuted.One major reform that should be implemented is granting absolute autonomy to regional health authorities for the delivery of healthcare. They should be able to generate their own funds by charging fees for their services. This would eliminate dependency on the state or Ministry of Finance for funding. Each regional health authority should be able to invest in the stock market or undertake other income generating measures it deems feasible. Its funds should be spent in accordance with the health needs of the population it serves. Regional authorities should be responsible for primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare. In addition, they should be given oversight of private hospitals and health facilities in their geographic regions. Private facilities should be subject to price controls to avoid exorbitant charges and should be required to pay at least ten percent of their annual profit to the regional authority.In addition, regional authorities should have the power to ensure that all health institutions and providers adhere to national accreditation standards. The Ministry of Health should be charged with responsibility for developing national accreditation standards in all aspects of the operations of health institutions. These should include hospitals, pharmacies, private practice. Also conventional and alternative medicines should be subject to accreditation standards. Everything and every health based institution should be subject to accreditation standards comparable with those of more developed countries such as Canada and the United States.It is palpable that the boundaries of each regional authority be redefined so that they are of almost equal population size. At this time South West Regional is responsible for slightly over one half million people. Therefore given its limited resources, it cannot be expected to perform with greatest efficiency. Given the fact that the better health facilities are situated in urban centers, this would be a challenge that must be overcome judiciously. To accommodate this reform, regional authorities should induce joint public and private partnerships in the provision of healthcare centers in rural and other districts less accessible to major hospitals and health centers.To make the health system efficient, a centralized electronic health record system should be developed and implemented. This would ensure that patients could access care in any region. Thus it would make it easy to access health records from any healthcare facility owned and administered within any regional authority. It is expected that the Ministry of Health should take a leading role in this enterprise. Records of patients in private hospitals should be accessible to regional authorities given that they may be moved to a public hospital if the care they require cannot be attained there. Sometimes for financial reasons such as exorbitant cost, patients may be moved to a public hospital.Employment policies should enable the free movement of skills and expertise across regions. In some instances, highly specialized surgeons and caregivers should be made available to patients in other regions on a needs basis. In other words, one region can pay another for the services of its skilled human or physical resources demanded.Regional bodies can collaborate in health planning. They can develop their strategic, business and budget plans cooperatively. Afterwards they can tweak their plans to fit their population needs. The main advantages of centralized planning will be greater transparency, accountability and inter-operational functionality. Inter-planning can reduce competition between regions and ensure that scare resources are used efficiently. In effect, the Ministry of Health can compare operational effectiveness and best practice across all regions and provide opportunities to strength operational or institutional efficiency.The health system should be reformed so that it is able to provide high quality care for patients. Patients should be well-educated to take advantage of a competent, highly organized and skillfully administered healthcare system. Finally reform must involve all stakeholders; government, private practitioners and citizenry. A convergent bottom up and top down model should be adopted so that there is universal buy-in to health reform capable of contributing to economic and social development of the country’s human capital.

Charcot’s foot is one of the many problems which might occur in those with diabetes mellitus. The higher blood sugar levels that stem from all forms of diabetes have an affect on numerous body systems including the eyesight, renal system as well as nerves. In long standing cases, particularly if there has been an unsatisfactory control of the blood sugar levels, you can find problems with the nerves supplying the feet. This will make the feet in danger of issues as if something fails, you don’t know it has gone wrong as you can not really feel it due to the harm to the nerves. This might be something as simple as standing on a rusty nail and that getting contaminated and you are not aware that you’ve stood on the nail. Should it be a blister or ingrown toenail which gets infected and you do not know that it is present on the foot unless you have a look. This is why foot care can be so necessary for those with diabetes and why it will be provided a great deal of emphasis. A Charcot foot is the destruction occurring to the bones and joints if you have an injury and you do not know that the injury has happened.

A way of looking at it could be to consider this way: pretend that you sprain your ankle horribly and you also are not aware that you have simply because you do not experience the pain from it. You then carry on and walk around on it. Picture all of the additional harm which you do by walking about on it. The earliest you may possibly discover that there may be something wrong happens when you take a seat and look at the feet and you observe that one is a great deal more swollen compared to the other foot. This is exactly what occurs in individuals with diabetes who develop a Charcot’s foot. There may be some destruction, such as a sprained ankle or maybe a progressive failure of the arch of the foot and as no pain is sensed they carry on and walk around on it. It should be apparent simply how much more injury that gets done to the original injury prior to the problem is finally observed because of the swelling. At times there is not much swelling, but the Charcot’s foot is picked up from the difference in temperature between the two feet as a result of inflammation related process in the damaged foot that generates more warmth.

The development of a Charcot foot really needs to be dealt with as a bit of an urgent situation since the further it advances the much more serious it’s going to be and the more challenging it can be to handle. The individual definitely needs to quit all weightbearing without delay or at least obtain a walking support so that the damage is protected. For the not too major instances and those conditions which were serious and have improved a really supportive orthotic in the footwear is required to support the feet and the injuries. Sometimes surgical procedures are required to straighten the subluxed and dislocated bones. By far the most critical situations can end up with the foot and/or leg required to be amputated as the trauma has been doing an excessive amount of impairment.