The Heart Truth campaign aims to raise awareness among women about their risk for heart disease, “An astonishing 80 percent of women ages 40 to 60 have one or more risk factor for heart disease.”

If you live in the Sarasota/Bradenton area, Sarasota Memorial Hospital is hosting a Cardiac Health Fair February 16, 2012 from 7:30 a.m. until noon where you can get a free heart screening.  Registration is required; call (941) 917-7777.  The first 100 guests will receive a heart-healthy cookbook from the American Heart Association.

I worked for a dentist years ago.  He used to say that the teeth were the most important part of our body because without them we couldn’t eat.  Makes sense, yet most of us don’t like going to the dentist.  Sometimes fear keeps people away from the loud drills and spraying water.  But lately it seems that high prices could be keeping people away, and dental insurance doesn’t usually help much.  It normally doesn’t cover more than routine cleanings, maybe a filling here or there, but certainly not a filling that will match the color of your teeth. That would be way too expensive. And God forbid you need a crown or dentures; you could buy a car for less.

If your teeth are pearly jewels that sparkle every time you smile, then stick with your $10-15 a month routine dental plan.  If your not a Disney prince, then we’ve got a solution to get you back looking like one – affordably.  There are no waiting periods, no deductibles and no maximum spending limits.  It’s an individual plan fashioned after a group plan.  When you need major work done, call us at (888) 919-9876 or click this link: Dental Plan

You have to stay with the plan for six-months at $39.95 a month, but as long as you don’t have a temporary crown or denture in your mouth at the time of enrollment, the plan will cover whatever procedure you need immediately with no waiting period.  Copays are required with the exception of cleanings, xrays and fillings.  Here’s an example of your potential savings on dentures:

Now I can’t account for how accurate it is, it almost seems a little low, but this dental cost calculator allows you to input your city and needed dental service, and it will give you the average cost.  Dentures – both upper and lower – were over $2,800 in my home city of Sarasota, Florida.  With this dental plan, the copay for complete upper and lower dentures is $650.  Now add six-months of premium and the $55 enrollment fee, and the price is still less than half of the average cost: $944.70.  The plan is open to anyone over the age of 18.  Under 18 is eligible to enroll with a parent or guardian.

Here’s the link one more time: Dental Plan and one more story from my days at the dental office: Paula, the dentist’s fun-loving assistant, once talked one of their patients into allowing her to design him a set of festive dentures for Halloween.  They were made out of brown, orange and yellow candy corns, and until the day I die, I will never lose that image from my brain…a 75 year-old man wearing a candy corn denture – what a good sport!

Still, we have to weigh out the two different types of insurance.   Your family’s future financial life may depend on life insurance but not their actual physical lives.  Our bodies, our health, that we rely on health insurance to protect.  The discrepancies don’t negate each other.  The president’s remarks inspired me to do a little more research on the subject.  Ten states currently have bans on gender rating within the individual market - Maine, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington.

Kentucky tried a gender ban in the nineties, but it was a disaster.  Insurance carriers ended up leaving the state only to return when the ban was lifted.  The argument to oppose a federal ban can be seen in the microcosm of Kentucky’s experiment.  Raising rates on low-risk individuals (young men) caused that group of insureds to drop their plans.

What will happen in 2014, I don’t know.  What I do know is that the new plans introduced by federal and state government are not banded by gender.  They are banded by age.  If you want to move on to the issue of age discrimination, give AARP a call.   For more information on government-funded insurance programs, call us at (888) 919-9876.

Our agency offers several guaranteed issue policies, and we’re also authorized to provide assistance to those individuals looking to get coverage through the state-run program.  The state program is not brand new, but I was hesitant to blog about it until I had more hands-on experience with it.  Now I’ve been through the process with a few clients, and they’re happy with their coverage, so I’m happy to blog about it.

My first worry was long government hold times, but it’s easy to get someone on the phone.  I’ve had worse experiences with private companies.  Then I thought maybe the applications would take forever to process, but that’s not the case either.  If you submit your application before the 15th of the month, the effective date is the first of the following month.  If you submit your application after the 15th, the effective date is the first of the next month.

Please, please call me if you are uninsured – pre-existing condition or not – being uninsured is dangerous, and I can take all of the hassle out of the process for you.  I, personally, am the agent in the office who deals with difficult cases, so call and ask for me, Lesley.  (888) 919-9876      

If you’re already covered by health insurance, go get what you’re paying for.  Put your zip code into this government tool, and it will generate a list of locations where flu shots are available:   http://www.flu.gov/

 (888) 919-9876 ~ suncoasthealthadvisors@gmail.com ~ (941) 954-2255

If you’re concerned for yourself, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) offers the following recommendations for screenings:

• Anyone with a body mass index over 25, regardless of age, who has additional risk factors, such as high blood pressure, a sedentary lifestyle, a history of polycystic ovary syndrome, having delivered a baby who weighed more than 9 pounds, a history of diabetes in pregnancy, high cholesterol levels, a history of heart disease, or having a close relative with diabetes.
• Anyone over the age of 45 is advised to receive an initial blood sugar screening, and then, if the results are normal, to be screened every three years thereafter.

There’s also a Diabetes Risk Test on the ADA website.  It’s a good starting point.

Recommendation source: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes/DS01121/DSECTION=tests-and-diagnosis

Still, I was more aware this week, and that’s something.  The awareness was triggered by reading a publication about lowering sodium found on Diabetes HealthSense.  Here is the publication’s directive, “Choose two or three things you will do to eat less salt and sodium.”

• Make homemade soups with less salt.
• Check food labels when you shop.
• Buy foods marked “low sodium,” “reduced sodium,” “sodium free,” or
  “no salt added.”
• Season your foods with spices instead of seasoned salt and bouillon cubes.
• Take the salt shaker off your table.
• Eat fruits like mango and orange without adding any salt.

I’m pretty good in a lot of these areas.  I make my own soup, buy reduced-sodium products, often cook with herbs and spices, don’t keep the salt shaker on the table, and never add salt to my fruit.  Am I the only one who finds this last one strange?  I’ve heard of salt on a tomato but never salt on an orange.  Please comment if you salt your fruit…I’m curious.

The only item on the list I don’t always practice is reading labels.  Oblivion is bliss, and if I really like something, sometimes I just don’t want to read the label.  But change is not always fun or super-tasty, so it was time to do some unpleasant reading.  I started with my all-time favorite quick dinner fix – McCormick 20-minute marinades.  I have one word: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

The first ingredient is salt.  That’s the downside; the upside is that I can work with the other ingredients and make a lower-sodium version.  It won’t be a 20-minute fix but with a little preparation the night before, it can work.  Take out the maltodextrin, whatever that is, and I usually have the other ingredients on hand - garlic, peppercorns, onion, and Worcestershire sauce.  And the last ingredient, I have in the low-sodium version.

The correlation between sodium and diabetes is high blood pressure.  High blood pressure lead to complications.  This is a quick, one-minute overview on the subject from Joslin Diabetes Center.

Although short-term plans will not normally cover pre-existing conditions, they also won’t normally exclude you from the plan because of them.  A traditional long-term health policy will put an applicant through the underwriting process, but like a group plan, a short-term policy will not.

Short-term health insurance plans are usually more affordable than COBRA at its best, and most of the government’s 65% COBRA subsidies expired August 31, 2011.  Call me, Lesley, at (888) 919-9876 to look into your short-term options, or get a quote and apply online right now by following the UnitedHealthOne link below.

Walking can help prevent diabetes because it constitutes moderate exercise.  Moderate exercise leads to weight loss, and being overweight is a risk factor for diabetes.  But according to Prevention magazine, there’s a further link to diabetes and walking,

Besides helping you get rid of extra pounds, it actually increases the number of insulin receptors on your cells. Insulin helps blood sugar move into cells, where it needs to go. Otherwise, it just sloshes around in your bloodstream, gumming up the blood vessel walls.  If you’ve already been diagnosed with diabetes, regular walking can help control the progression of the disease. People who take insulin may be able to reduce the amount of medication they need, as physical activity enables their body to use insulin more efficiently.

The article’s recommendation is to walk for at least 30 minutes three times a week.  That will enhance your body’s use of insulin.  I definitely met the 90-minute challenge this week, but next week I’ll try to sweat more.  The article cited a study that found, “…women who worked up a sweat more than once a week reduced their risk of developing diabetes by 30 percent.”

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32861635/ns/health-diabetes/t/walking-may-aid-fight-against-diabetes/