It's possible

“Fighting data asphyxiation is difficult but possible...”
- William Van Winkle

I’m beginning to work on a web site in hopes of both
1) notifying folks of my availability to do spiritual direction, and
2) offering a service of wellness education. My intent is to include such resources as -- a recommended book list for spiritual growth, a list of Twin Cities retreat locations, links to other spiritual formation web sites, and links to reliable sites for health and wellness information. That kind of stuff.

It’s ridiculously difficult to know where to go for reliable data on the world wide web, and it can be especially confusing to find information on health-related topics. There are so many conflicting words and sources that it can be easy to give up on understanding.

"Health educators may well face a significantly desensitized population, segments of which are immobilized by fear, indecision, and confusion."

- Angelo A. Alonzo, professor of medical sociology at Ohio State University, told to USA Today Magazine (October 1994), and cited in an online article written by free-lance writer William VanWinkle. The article includes some good to-dos for handling information overload; see http://www.gdrc.org/icts/i-overload/infoload.html. One of his statements that is easy to say, hard to do, but worth striving towards is “Overall, the maxim to live by is, ‘decrease quantity, increase quality.’”

Maybe you’ll be interested in a few of my favorite, mostly reliable sites for medical information (and I am extremely interested in any sites you’ve found helpful!):

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus - U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) health information site (general rule to keep in mind: .gov and .edu sites have mostly credible info) with decent search capabilities on various health topics, drug/supplements info, medical encyclopedia and dictionary; and more.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov - PubMed Central (PMC) is the NIH free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

http://Familydoctor.org – “Health Information for the whole family” from the American Academy of Family Physicians, this site includes some preventative health info (Smart Patient Guide, Healthy Living tidbits), and a “Search by symptom” feature with nifty flow charts; and, of course, more.

http://www.mayoclinic.com – “Tools for healthier lives” hosted by MayoClinic, has some fun health tools (calculators, self-assessments, quizzes); and yes, still more.

http://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu - “Integrating the best of complementary and conventional care for optimal health and healing” this University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing site has info on complementary therapies, and a colorful “My Health Planner” online tool; and you guessed it, very much more.
http://nccam.nih.gov/camonpubmed - CAM (Complementary & Alternative Medicine) on PubMed is a subset of NLM’s PubMed, created through the partnering of NCCAM and the National Library of Medicine (NLM); access to citations from the MEDLINE database specific to CAM.

About my web presence – I’m aiming for some sort of site to be up and running within a month (and when it is, I'll likely mention it on this blog).

Oh yah, it’s possible…