Introduction

     You may wonder why I have written yet another health care book. After many years of general practice I came to the conclusion that it would be helpful to have an Internet based site as a resource for patients. It should explain to you in simple terms what's going on in your body and mind when illness strikes. It should show you what steps to take initially and also make you aware of potentially dangerous situations. You need to know who to see and what can be done to stay out of trouble using our present state of medical knowledge. I wrote this book to assist you in taking charge of your own life as much as possible, but realizing at the same time that we still have to face whatever medical problem comes our way. We will need appropriate medical attention as pointed out in the various chapters. At the same time you should be the informed consumer.

Throughout the text any health topic is introduced by reviewing the anatomy and the statistics and it is stressed why this topic is medically important. This way the practical application is immediately evident to you, the reader. This book is not intended to replace the services of health care professionals, but rather intends to complement their services, to guide and to educate. Newer knowledge regarding prevention of illnesses from the anti-aging branch of medicine has been incorporated seemlessly into the text. This newer knowledge has practical implications, has already revolutionized many areas of medicine in the 21st century and likely will do so at a much faster pace by the use of the Internet. I am constantly searching for the latest in medicine and this knowledge is incorporated by regularly updating the text.

I hope you will enjoy and benefit!

                                                               Ray Schilling, M.D.

Disclaimer:

This medical website is founded on evidence based medicine offering up to date medical information. The links have been chosen exclusively at the discretion of the author.

The website is financed from contributions of advertisers.

Products that are mentioned in the site are only suggestions that in the experience of the author or based on a review of evidence based medicine literature would be recommendable for a clinical condition. However, the patient is advised to discuss this and all other aspects with their health care provider.

Confidentiality of data relating to individual patients and visitors to this medical/health web site, including their identity, is respected by this web site according to the HON principles. The laws that apply are those of Canada as this is a Canadian based Internet publication.

The costs for creating and hosting this site are solely the responsibility of the author.

How to use the Net Health Book:

Access to this website is free.

As this Internet based book lives by cross referencing various chapters through links, most topics utilize two or three chapters with cross references simultaneously.

Inside links: In the beginning of each chapter tables with a multitude of links to subtopics are included. The larger tables with links often connect to information that is distributed throughout the book in several chapters (for instance "abdominal pain" and "digestive diseases"). This was necessary to improve the flow and to physically be able to load the larger chapters quickly without any appreciable delay (for medium and high speed internet connections). This way the end user has instant access to fairly detailed information without the delays that in the past often has plagued similar health sites.

Outside links are mostly used for illustrations. They have been done by the strict use of links to sites that are available to the general public.Loading such pictoral information on the site would have made the process too lengthy. The links are connecting you to informative sites where you can look at the illustration and often learn some more details about the subject dicussed. When you have browsed enough in the site of that link, you can use the back arrow to return to the page where the link originated from.

Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Frank McLeod for the technical assistance when starting this web this site. Since then Jamie Edwards from Landmark internet Development has taken on the technical maintenance role.

Ray Schilling, M.D., Kelowna / B.C./ Canada, Feb. 3, 2002

(updated Dec. 22, 2007)