Men are morons when it comes to matters of health. I didn't say it. I heard it from a radio show host this morning while trekking on my treadmill.

Seems men ignore serious medical symptoms and postpone trips to the ER when they're watching sports, according to an ER doctor who reviewed case numbers over three years at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. It all came down to this decision in the heads of men who were wrapped up in a game at the time something medical occurred: Do I need to go to the hospital now or can I finish the game first?

The lesson for all your partners of sports fans out there: When you see you man fall, faint, grab his chest, or otherwise indicate something is seriously wrong, do call 911 -- before the game nears its end.

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I last saw actress Kristen Johnston on ER -- she played the tough nurse manager Eve Peyton for a few episodes -- and I remember realizing what a large woman she is. She's six feet tall, after all. That's just plain big. But she looked a bit overweight too. Apparently, she was.

Johnston has reportedly shed 60 pounds in the past year and a half. You may say the 40-year-old Johnston looks a bit too skinny -- check out this photo and see what you think -- but here's what she has to say about it: "When actresses lose weight, people think they are anorexic. It is important to me to say that this is not the case here."

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My home treadmill has a strategic location -- right smack dab in my kids' playroom so I can work out and watch my boys play at the same time. ER actress Linda Cardellini has a strategic spot for her exercise equipment too.

"I have an elliptical machine at my house that I placed between the kitchen and the couch," Cardellini tells Good Housekeeping in the June 2008 magazine. "So I can't sit there and eat bonbons on the couch -- I've got to get up and work out."

Got a strategy for your workout routine? Feel free to tell all.

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Some readers may recall the case last year of Edith Rodriguez who was virtually ignored while dying on the floor of an emergency room in LA. It brought to light the distress some people may be overwhelmed with while visiting hospitals in seek of help. Thankfully not all medical establishments operate this way, but what are you supposed to avoid doing if faced with such a situation?

This CNN article enumerates five things not to do in the ER. For starters, don't forget to call your regular doctor in transit. If you or someone you know is in need of medical help, reach out to someone familiar. They can spur a quicker response at the emergency room. Don't call for an ambulance unless it's totally necessary. That means if you can walk, you probably don't need it. Why? Because they may ask you to wait with the other sick people when you get there -- an ambulance doesn't fast track anyone through the emergency room.

Don't sit there quietly. Be heard if nobody is helping you. Ask to talk with someone in charge if a nurse isn't providing adequate acknowledgment. This leads to another important point: Don't lie. Overly exaggerating symptoms can leave a person in worse shape than when they got there. And if all else fails, pick up a phone located in the ER and dial zero. Connect with a hospital administrator and get the ball rolling!

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A new study has found that white patients are more apt to receive expensive pain-killing narcotic drugs when a visit to the ER is made -- while minorities are less likely to get them.

Products like oxycodone and morphine were prescribed less frequently for minorities, even for cases where intense and localized pain -- like kidney stones -- was found.
The report covered 150,000 ER visits over a period of 13 years to observe its findings. Why there is such a large gap in apparently preferential treatment in the ER when it comes to race is anyone's guess. Regardless, all men (and women) are not created equal a few centuries after those words helped start this country.

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Medicaid programs may be straining the capability of main emergency rooms these days, but not in a personnel sense.

A new study says that the Medicaid patients of the U.S. may be financially straining ERs more than the 47 million of us who are uninsured in the U.S. Sounds weird, doesn't it? How can Medicaid be straining the system more than the uninsured?

The result will sound normal to medical billing specialists, I'll bet. According to the study, uninsured patients paid 35 percent of their overall emergency room bills in 2004 while Medicaid patients paid just 33 percent.

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Depending on how much you know about health care and the medical field you may or may not notice all the missteps that happen regularly on TV shows. Despite the occasional mispronunciation of a medical term by an actor, the "hollywoodizing" (yeah, I know that's not actually a word) goes much deeper. The most commonly exaggerated or misrepresented issues are:

• Organ donation
• Nurses roles
• Range of doctors' expertise
• Frequency of hospital romances

We all know that TV isn't real, and that everything is sensationalized for entertainment value. But it is sad that organ donation specifically is often portrayed negatively -- people have a hard enough time making that decision!

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The invention of the TV seems to coincide perfectly with our downfall as a healthy and active society, and most of the news you hear linking health and TV are not on "the boob tube's" side. But unless you're willing to move to the mountains, live off the earth, and become a hermit there's really no avoiding the TV altogether. We need some TV, if just to stay educated and in touch, right?

Well here's one article that agrees. In a recent study TV watching was actually shown to help healthy habits, not hinder them. Of course what you're watching matters, and the study was fairly limited in that it only tracked people watching one program: ER. But it seems that after people watched a series of ER episodes involving a teenager with high blood pressure who was advised to exercise and eat more fruits and veggies they were 65% more likely to make healthy changes to their diet. And it was also noted that after Oprah made mention of a Chinese weight loss tea the hits to the website skyrocketed.

So we know television is a powerful tool, now if we could just figure out how to use it for good! When an ER episode is followed by a Burger King commercial do they cancel each other out?

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I thought it was a known fact that cell phones were a no-no in hospitals, but everytime I go to one, I see a number of people chatting on their cell phones or texting like mad. What's the deal? Is it ok to use your cell phone in a hospital or not?

The answer is not, though there currently aren't any national guidelines concerning this issue. Wireless devices can negatively interfere with the machinery at hospitals and shouldn't be used. Devices that use Wifi, GPRS or some other method to get onto the Internet at the worst offenders, and while normal cell phones might be ok to use in some hospitals, callers should certainly avoid using them in ICU, operating or emergency units.

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Although emergency rooms are required for true emergencies, the number of ER patients without true emergencies -- but who still visit the ER for treatment -- has caused a new trends in some hospitals.

It sounds like something out of a discount store bank branch, but self-serve kiosks are making their way into some ERs. Patients can input their information and really see if what's happening to them is truly an emergency. Pretty neat -- or a waste of time?

Patients with medical concerns but without true life-threatening and immediate needs for assistance can get some advice from a small computer kiosk while helping the information systems in some hospitals rate emergencies with a better and more detailed informational record beyond a patient's spoken words.

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Thandie Newton, the actress who has appeared in Crash, Mission Impossible II, ER and many other productions, has admitted that she battled bulimia in her younger years. Newton, now 34, says her troubles began when she was 14 and training for Ballet Exams. She would eat nothing but cottage cheese, and claims this wouldn't raise suspicion in her family because her mother was in the healthcare industry and only kept healthy food in the house anyway. As she get older, abusive and personally shameful relationships further perpetuated her disorder, and she became obsessed with her weight. And she still has scars on her knuckles from making herself throw up to prove it.

Pictures of Newton over the past few years have depicted a frighteningly-thin woman, but I think she's appeared healthier over the past few years. What do you think?

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Emergency rooms, despite their name or intended purpose, do not generally have a reputation of being an "in and out" kind of place. Long waits and slow care seem to be more common than not, for all kinds of different reasons. A study recently looked into how long it takes patients to get the care they need in ER settings nationwide and ranked all 50 states in terms of who had the fastest service.

Iowa came out on top with an average ER check-in to check-out time of 2 hours 18 minutes, which is well below the national average of 3 hours 42 minutes. Nebraska, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin round out the top 5, with Arizona, Maryland, Utah, New York, and Florida bringing up the rear of the list with the longest times -- having an emergency in Florida could take almost 4 hours!

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From skateboards and inline skates to scooters and bicycles, kids love all kinds of wheels. But the latest trend, wheeled sneakers, may be more dangerous than people think. "Heeling" (named after the most popular brand of roller shoes called Heely's) is sending more and more kids to the ER everyday with scratches, bruises, and even broken bones.

Heely's are basically just convertible sneakers: walk in them like a regular shoe, or pop the wheels in the heel out and roll on them like roller skates. I think they sound like a total blast, but the problem seems to be that although the shoes come with recommendations for wearing protective gear, kids and parents alike don't seem to be taking it seriously.

Use common sense, people!

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Smoking bans are becoming quite popular in states here in the U.S. and countries around the world as well. How far should these bans go, though?

In Sydney, Australia, the Sydney council has added public venues like parks and bus stops as smoke-free zones, which is sure to set off a firestorm of controversy with smokers who are finding less and less places to light up.

Although there are many of the belief that public gathering places should be free of all smoking-related carcinogens as an endangerment to non-smokers, where can smokers turn to get that nicotine fix? It's becoming harder and harder outside of one's private domicile.

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Celebrities are notorious for being fit, trim, and beautiful. And even though they have personal chefs and caterers available to make them delicious healthy meals where-ever and whenever, they still have favorite foods and yes -- even cravings. So what are some favorite celebrity foods?

Not surprisingly, many of the snack items the fit and trim celebrities mentioned were pretty healthy. The article asked almost 20 different celebrities what foods they loved most and one of the most popular was almonds -- with Lisa Edelstein of House, Parminder Nagra of ER, and Dana Delaney of Kidnapped all mentioning them as their favorite snack item.

Other snack foods on the list included a lot of fruit, like cherries and apples, and Jennifer Love Hewitt's interesting choice of wasabi peas. But not to be completely discouraged that celebrities never indulge, there was also mention of ice cream and German chocolate cake!

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