February 7th falls on a Sunday this year and marks National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.  This is a very important day for all Americans regardless of race to keep in mind, as people may not be aware that HIV/AIDS disproportionately strikes African-Americans of all ages in this country.

The statistics are quite staggering.  According to the CDC’s National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day page, an estimated 1.1 million people live with HIV infection, and 46% of those are African-American.  Yet blacks only represent 12% of the United States population.

The National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day official page offers more sobering facts.  For example, “Blacks accounted for 51% of the 42,655 (including children) new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in 34 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting.”  This is definitely not a crisis on the wane, and there is a lot to be done.

Extremely important for all, but especially the black community, is to make sure you are HIV negative by getting tested regularly.  This can have a huge impact on the problem.  It’s one of the reasons a main strategy employed on this day is a massive HIV testing push.  If people can get in the habit of testing themselves annually or bi-annually, some of the stigma of testing will vanish, and healthier communities and individuals will result.

If you are hesitant to go to a community clinic for any reason, you can always get tested by ordering a home HIV test kit online.  The test is strictly anonymous and you are only identified by a code that comes with your kit and that you use to receive your results by phone.  The kits we sell are FDA Approved blood tests, so there should be no concern over the “does this really work” line of questioning – they are also 99.9% accurate, as reliable as those used by doctors and hospitals.

The home AIDS test allows you to test yourself at any time, in any place.  We hope you will make February 7th your day to test in order to raise awareness of one of the most devastating HIV/AIDS crises in the country.

Vicodin is a trademarked pain reliever, popular and fairly well-known in America. Its component parts are hydrocodone and paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) [interesting fact: acetaminophen increases the effect of the hydrocodone. You might think it would be the other way around, since acetaminophen is best known to us as Tylenol, but that is not the case]. Anyway, Vicodin is not your average pain-reliever; unlike ibuprofen, which is an unscheduled drug, Vicodin is a Schedule III drug, meaning it could cause moderate or low physical dependence, or a high psychological dependence if abused.

We knew this already – but did you know that the FDA voted this past summer to recommend that Vicodin should be eliminated? The advisory panel that made this decision also singled out Percocet (a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen). As the CNN article on the subject notes, these are just recommendations from an advisory panel – but typically, the FDA follows them.

It’s certainly a controversial matter considering how much press prescription drugs in general, and Vicodin in particular, have received in the past few years.  The FDA made its recommendation based on the risk of overdose and severe liver injury, but they could have as easily made the recommendation based on drug abuse, as 9.7% of 12th graders said they tried Vicodin in 2008 (see the National Institute on Drug Abuse for more).  Prescription drugs have become the new face of illicit drug use, and the string of tragic high-profile deaths drove that home last year.

So it is up to all of us to raise awareness about how a drug that can be so helpful can be misused to get high with disastrous effects:  addiction, drug trafficking, and overdose deaths.  You can fortunately test for many prescription painkillers in one swoop with a Vicodin Test / OxyContin Test.  Vicodin and OxyContin have hydocodone and oxycodone as the basis of their structure, respectively, and since both are opioids very similar in structure they can both be found with 98% accuracy in the same test.  Definitely something to know when you are thinking about prescription drugs like Vicodin – a drug dangerous enough to almost be considered illegal.

Today is the second day of Women’s Heart Week, which is a week solely dedicated to raising awareness about women’s heart health issues.  I personally, no matter how many times I learn this fact, never say the right answer when asked “What is the number one killer of women?”  We may think of breast cancer, or lung disease, but the actual answer is heart disease.

There are a number of ways to raise awareness this week.  The Illinois Department of Public Health, for example, is asking people to wear red on Friday (Chicago Tribune).  This is an extension of what the American Heart Association has started, a year-long “Go Red for Women” campaign that draws attention to the issue in many different ways – head over to their site for a look.  The goal of the movement according to the site is a “25% reduction in coronary heart disease and stroke risk by the year 2010″ and the ending of the misconception that heart disease is a “men’s disease,” a perception all the more unfortunate because women actually make up more of heart disease deaths than men at 53%.

A big part of maintaining or improving your heart health is watching your diet, quitting smoking, and managing your risk factors.  Home Health Testing helps you do this by offering two types of home cholesterol test.  Cholesterol is a huge risk factor for heart disease.  Doing cholesterol testing at home is designed to make tracking your cholesterol levels easy.  Your excuses not to (don’t want to make a doctor’s appointment, can’t take time off work, too expensive) don’t really stand up to scrutiny when home testing is available.  You can track either your total cholesterol or choose a test that gives you a full lipid panel reading (total cholesterol, HDL, LDL & triglycerides).

This is the week to raise awareness and encourage people to take their heart health seriously!  For more information check out the Women’s Heart Foundation or the Women’s Heart Foundation’s cholesterol page.

Below, a video review of last year’s Go Red for Women efforts:

You may be used to the idea of police conducting drug testing, and alcohol testing as well.  But did you ever think about the fact that police are drug tested too?  As in many other professions, especially those that are safety related (and police work certainly is that), police departments can test their workers.

This news article (ABC News: Police To Be Drug Tested Under New Laws) from ABC News, an Australian outlet, details the initiative to bring drug testing into standard police HR procedures.  It might surprise you that such procedures were not standard operating protocol to begin with.  After all, police have to operate cars at high speed and sometimes negotiate very careful situations.  It seems like a logical fit, but an argument can also be made that the police deserve our trust.

In any case, South Australia is intended to introduce mandatory testing for officers – and testing could be blood, urine, or hair.  I think this says at least two things, one about the hair drug test – it must be pretty accurate if it’s going to be used in such an official capacity!  And it is indeed very accurate.  Secondly, about the South Australian police – if they use hair, you know they care, because that type of testing offers an up to 90 day drug use history.  So that way you know the people on the job are not habitual drug users.  Urine drug testing can tell you if they are high at the moment, which is good, but hair drug testing allows you to find out if your employee is stable enough – can and did they go without drug use for a long period?  Is this person really drug free, or are they just clean for this test?

These are questions you can ask yourself in your own home as well.  There are a number of options when it comes to the hair follicle drug test.  But they all give you the unique power to ask and answer these types of questions.

So what do you think – should police be drug tested?  More or less frequently than other professions?  Or should they be exempt?  Drug testing is as always interesting and thought-provoking.

The Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAAPA) has put out an article on tobacco dependency, which they write is now considered a “chronic disease.”  This is a great advance in that it tells the world to get serious about quitting smoking – it is a disease and addiction like any other, no matter how legal it may be.  Their article is a guide to intervening in tobacco addiction, especially interesting to the average person because it is from a clinician’s perspective.  And believe me, they are very tough about quitting!

Their keys to quitting include keeping tabs on every tobacco user that enters the office and adding “tobacco use” to the vital signs of a healthcare chart.  Tobacco use is to be incorporated into most health advice, and assessments are to be made at every visit – is so and so willing to quit?  It is also really important that quitting be seen as a group effort, as opposed to an individual struggle.  To quote from the article:

Assist Aid the patient’s efforts to quit by providing counseling and pharmacotherapy. Clinicians should guide the patient’s preparations for quitting, such as have the patient set a quit date; have the patient tell family, friends, and coworkers about the quit attempt and request support; tell the patient to anticipate challenges, including nicotine withdrawal symptoms; and have the patient remove tobacco products from the environment. The use of effective medications should be recommended to those patients  who may need them. Appropriate medications can reduce withdrawal symptoms and increase chances of quitting success.

We believe that among the many uses of our tobacco test, creating an evaluative environment is one of them.  The test can be used or not used by the person trying to quit, or family and friends around them – but its presence in the home is a way of keeping someone honest.  As the article states, smoking is a chronic disease, and there are many cases in which one might want to give it their all to get someone they know to quit smoking.

The article has all sorts of great considerations that can help you shape a serious effort to be a tobacco quitter or be someone who helps someone who is quitting.  With help, focus, concentration, and nicotine tests, people can quit smoking.  It’s one area in which you definitely, definitely want to be a quitter!

It is almost the end of Thyroid Awareness Month, so we have a video to wrap up the reasons to test your thyroid for you.  It’s only 1:45 long so it’s well worth the look!  Brought to you by icyou.com and the Medical University of South Carolina:

The take-away quote for us? Well, there are two. “[The thyroid hormone] is required by every tissue, every cell, every organ to function properly” and “Thyroid disease is extremely common, especially in women.”  ”27 million Americans have some type of thyroid disease and about half don’t know it.”  We had to include that one too.

So if after this video you are curious about finding out your level of thyroid hormone, know that you can do so conveniently with a home thyroid test.  Ours features accurate results from a CLIA certified laboratory that uses the same processes as any standard reference laboratory in the country.  The kit comes with well-written instructions on how to take your own blood sample and the results are mailed to you by the lab in the form of a report.  You can then share that report with a health provider and figure out what to do next.  It’s a quick and easy way to find out if you are one of the 13 million Americans who does not know they have a thyroid disorder.

HIV Testing is an important thing, for the individual and society as a whole.  Why say this?  Because of this sobering finding for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on HIV awareness:

Early diagnosis of HIV infection can delay progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and reduce transmission of HIV to others. Nonetheless, in 2006, an estimated 232,700 persons, 21% of those living with HIV infection in the United States, were not aware of their HIV infection status.

There are many options available, including any of our home AIDS tests.  But there is one thing you should definitely be aware of…

Make sure your test is FDA APPROVED!!!

We say this because there are other tests available online, some using saliva instead of blood, that are marketed as home HIV tests.  But these tests are not FDA Approved.  When you are looking for a test as important as an HIV test, it is necessary to know that the FDA has approved it and that you are in good hands.  Home Health Testing ONLY sells FDA Approved home HIV kits.  All of our AIDS tests come with telephone support for your results questions too.

So keep that in mind – make sure your test is FDA Approved!  Home Health Testing makes sure that all of our products in the Home HIV test category certainly are.

Republican lawmakers in Kansas have come up with a proposal to screen welfare recipients for drug use.  There are a few proposals on the table, and they are not exactly new.  The Kansas House of Representatives passed a similar bill last year but the Senate of the state did not.  The lawmakers in charge of reviving such proposals are in the Senate.

One proposal would require drug testing all welfare recipients – around 44,000 people.  Another bill suggests people would only be tested if there was “reasonable cause” to believe they were using drugs.

It is perhaps a controversial issue, and the Springfield News Leader presents various perspectives in their article.  Do you agree that it would help people get jobs?  Is it an effective way of improving the quality of life among those on welfare?

A home drug test, administered by yourself or someone close to you, can be an effective way of ending drug abuse.  But is what is done at home necessarily appropriate on a federal scale?

There are lots of questions about drug testing, but no question that when used correctly it can even save lives – in situations like catching someone who has stumbled back into addiction with a hair drug test, or finding that someone is high on the job with a saliva drug test.  And these are just a few examples.

Everyone knows that smoking is extremely harmful for one’s health and the government has done a lot to create awareness of the various problems that smoking can cause. The issue is not with creating awareness about the negative effects of smoking but actually quitting. The New Year is an excellent time to see how this is true because there are thousands of smokers who resolve to quit smoking only to find that they are itching to hold a cigarette in their hands after a few hours of the resolution. A nicotine test, among other methods, is a great way to give up the habit for good.

If you try and ask advice of smokers who have successfully quit smoking for good, you shall find that there are as many suggestions as smokers. While you can review each one of these methods, you will have to check out the one that works best for you. Make sure that you continuously use tobacco testing at home so that you can be aware of the presence of nicotine in your body. Awareness of the pervasiveness of nicotine in your body with these nicotine tests may actually shake you out of your inertia.

Such testing can be done at home very easily. All that you need is a small sample of urine. The tobacco test checks out the level of cotinine in the urine. This is a by-product of nicotine that is processed in your body and excreted through the urine. This is why the nicotine test is also called the cotinine test at times.

Some of the methods that you can adopt to quit smoking have been listed below. These can be used as standalone options or in combination to ensure that you are able to successfully quit the habit. While you work with these methods, use the tobacco test as well.

- Just quit – Some people believe that a slow reduction in the number of cigarettes is not an option but that a cold turkey method should be adopted.

- Reduction over time – This is a method that can help if you have specific times when you reach out for a cigarette and want to slowly eliminate those rituals as days pass. Use a nicotine test when you finally have not smoked for a few days. This can be a great motivator because you can see how your body is actually getting cleansed – you will see after 2 to 4 days that you actually test negative for nicotine!

- Quit with a friend – This is another method that works because it creates a sense of competition and/or cooperation.

There are other methods like nicotine patches, nicotine chewing gums, nicotine lozenges and nicotine inhalers that you can use. Whichever choice you make, everyone wishes you the best of luck in quitting smoking!  As a company that specializes in the home drug test, we know of a lot of drugs out there, and nicotine certainly is hard to quit!  That’s why we have a test designed along those lines to help you with that legal but addictive substance.

- Anne Hamilton

Home Health Testing strives to provide the most information about the tests we sell and what they test for.  On our main site we took a look at why hair drug tests can’t be cheated (you can read the full article at the link).  Basically we want everyone to know that our hair drug tests test what’s inside the hair – what you can’t get to with advertised shampoos and conditioners.  Sometimes the problem with drug tests is not that they aren’t accurate (they are) but that they can be faked.  With urine drug testing, people spike samples (or try to anyway) all the time.  It’s silly, but there you go.  Urine tests are certainly worth it for the range of drugs they can test (up to 12 at one time!), their value (the cheapest of all tests), and their decent detection time (a link to our chart).  Saliva drug testing is also a useful tool, because someone can take the test standing in front of you – it doesn’t have the same privacy issues as a urine-based test.

So don’t be daunted by all the “pass a drug test” sites that are out there!  Check out our article on hair follicle testing and learn more!