Being a medical writer has a lot of allure, particularly if you are having a flexible work schedule, competitive salary package, and assured growth as a professional. However, having these advantages doesn’t insulate you from some of the hazards that you may face as a medical writer. Medical writing, being a sedentary job, requires sitting behind a desk for long hours, which over a period of time can take a toll on your health.

The Risks

• Metabolic Diseases 
  Medical writers spend their maximum awake time sitting and working. Sedentary lifestyle and reduced physical activity contribute to the excessive body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels, which are major risk factors for certain diseases like obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.

• Cardiovascular Diseases
  The sedentary lifestyle attributes to abnormal cholesterol level which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases like atherosclerosis, stroke, angina, and heart attack. It is found that the risk of heart disease is increased by 50 per cent in a sedentary worker (who sits for 11 hours or more a day) even if exercise is performed regularly.

• Posture Problems
  Due to the nature of work, a medical writer usually works in a ‘static posture’ throughout the day that results in a faulty ergonomics. Rotator cuff disease, chronic pain in the neck, shoulder, back or hand, ruptured disks, and pulled or strained muscles/ligaments are the few disorders that might occur due to static posture. Several studies have reported that there is an increased risk of physical injuries if a worker maintains a static posture throughout working hours.

• Bone and Joint Disorders
  Spending daily 8 hours or more working on a desktop/laptop without any significant movement of the joints and muscles of limbs may result in loss of muscle mass, loss of muscular flexibility, carpal tunnel syndrome, and hand/wrist tendinitis.

• Eye Problems
  Prolonged working on a desktop or laptop and gazing the screen for hours expose eyes to undue effects of brightness of the screen that later results in eye strain, temporary blurred vision, headaches, and migraines.

• Psychological Problems
  In today’s competitive world, analogous to any other professional, medical writers also experience several psychological problems like stress, anxiety, exhaustion, depression, and disordered sleep.

The Remedies

Overall, being more physically active is the basic remedy to reduce the chances of all the potential health problems that are associated with the sedentary nature of the work of a medical writer. It is recommended that a sedentary worker (e.g. a medical writer) should spend a minimum of 10 minutes in moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise to improve circulation of blood and burn calories. Additionally, there are a few health tips which a medical writer should follow:

• Take regular breaks during the working hours. After every couple of hours, stand up from the desk and move around.
• After every 30 minutes of desktop work, do basic stretching exercises at your desk. This will help in maintaining flexibility of the muscles.
• Avoid getting locked into a static posture. Change your posture frequently by adjusting the angles of your hips, knees, ankles, and elbows while sitting.
• Be more active: take stairs instead of the lift, prefer public transport or cycle to work.
• Eat smart. Avoid binging and unhealthy eating habits.
• Keep your body well hydrated by drinking enough amount of water.
• Don’t eat while you work. Ensure you eat lunch away from your desk.
• Adjust the brightness of the screen of your laptop/desktop. Don’t gaze the screen fora long Take regular breaks to relax your eyes.
• Ensure that you spend at least an hour each week in outdoor sport or leisure activity of your choice.
• Don’t work hard, work smart.Plan well before you start to work, divide all major tasks into sub-tasks and organise your work schedule. This will help to reduce the chances of having stress and anxiety.
• Don’t be a workaholic! Make sure you spend a reasonable amount of time with your family and friends, which is important for your mental and emotional well being.

Being sedentary is the root-cause of most of the health problems. Making appropriate lifestyle changes in your daily work schedule may reduce your risk of having these health problems. As a medical communication company, we at Turacoz Healthcare Solutions always encourage our medical writers and everyone to exercise daily and lead a physically active, healthy life.

As the cool showers of monsoon bring relief after the torrid summers, the warm humid weather also brings numerous skin problems in trail. Some common skin problems which may cause trouble in this season are:

• Heat rash: Heat rash is a red pimply eruption caused by sweating that leads to choking or blockage of skin pores.
• Eczema: It is aterm applied to variety of skin conditions that result from inflammation of the skindue to external and genetic factors.
• Acne:It is a common skin problem during the rainy season, mainly for youngsters. Itresults from bacterial overgrowth on the face, especially due to exposure to a lot of rainwater.
• Ringworm and folliculitis: These are bacterial or fungal infections that result from excessive sweating, dehydration, photo-toxic effects of the sun, and humidity.
• Nail infection: Infections can occur due to long nailsthat attract muck, and can make nailsdiscolored, brittle and dull.
• Athlete’s foot:It is an itchy painful infection on the feet with well defined, scaly patches caused by common fungi called Candida. The toe nails may get discolored or brittle.

Tips to Keep Your Skin Healthy

Some easy skin-care tipscan protect your skin from having bacterial and fungal itches during the rainy season:

• Control sweat: The ideal way to avoid skin problems is to keep it clean and avoid excessive perspiration. Take regular and more frequent baths. Use anti-bacterial soaps, talcum powder and face wash to keep yourself clean.
• Quick-wash after rain-wash: Children are highly prone to fungal infections during the monsoons. An immediate bath after playing in the rain and application of an anti-bacterial soap is important. Avoid using public toilets, where due to lower hygiene you are exposed to infections.
• Natural skin-care: Use anti-fungal cream or powder for nail-itches. Calamine lotion is a good option to ease skin-itching. Natural and home-made remedies such as aloe-vera, rosewater and milk can keep your skin fresh.Apply moisturizers to keep your skin hydrated.
• Check what you wear: Wearcomfortablyloose cotton and linen clothing. Wear slippers and flip-flops as they allow your feet to breathe. Avoid wearing plastic shoes, leather or canvas ones. Wash your feet regularly, and apply anti-fungal powder in shoes and socks.Wear washed cotton socks daily and keep feet clean and dry. One must never stay in wet socks for long hours.
• Watch your diet: Since the chances of infection increases during the rainy seasons, increase vitamin Cintake as it is an effective immunity-booster.Keep yourself well-hydrated with at least 6 to 8 glasses of water daily. Add the juice of a lemon to a glass of warm water and have it first in the morning. Fresh fruits, salads, sprouts, whole grains and curd must be included in daily diet.
• Skin care for diabetics: People with diabetic diseases are more prone to skin infections. They must go for a check-up when symptoms like skin rashes or redness appear lest they leave scars and turn untreatable.

Several skin ailments are the result of our ignorance and a care-free attitude towards monsoon—borne microbial infections. These infections may grow into serious problems, if not nipped in the bud. Turacoz Healthcare Solutions wants to share some basic skin-care tips this season. So stay healthy, keep your skin monsoon-proof and enjoy the rains.

Disturbed sleep and strained red eyes seem to take a back seat as we stand face-to-face with a much more alarming side-effect of the endless smartphone usage, scientifically termed as ‘transient smartphone blindness’. Cradling your smartphone and gazing at it late at night or early in the morning, while lying in bed, leads to this unusual phenomenon of temporary vision loss.

The problem: A recent report published in the New England Journal of Medicine¹ outlined the case studies of two women who suffered from impaired vision for months after regularly using their smartphones in the dark.

• The first case was of a 22-year-old woman with right eye vision loss at night.
• The second case was of a 40-year-old woman with recurrent monocular visual impairment on waking, lasting up to 15 minutes.

Investigation of both the cases revealed that these patients used smartphone for quite some time in the dark with just one eye while lying in bed and that the symptoms were always in the eye opposite to the side on which the patient was lying.

The Cause: Lying on one’s side while using the smartphone in the dark leads to differential bleaching of the retinal pigments, making the viewer eye light adapted while the other eye, being closed or covered by a pillow, becomes adapted to dark.² The eye staring at the bright screen is always the one to be temporarily blind when the smartphone is put down because it takes time for the phone eye to catch up with the dark adapted eye.

The Fix: Till now the long-term effect of this strange condition is not documented but viewing screens binocularly i.e. with both eyes, is a quick and simple solution recommended by ophthalmologists.

The global smartphone user-base is exponentially increasing each day with more people going to bed with their phones which puts them at a higher risk of transient smartphone blindness. Luckily enough, the condition is temporary and probably more distracting than dangerous.

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions is a medical writing organization which provides assistance in publication of research articles and clinical research documents. We consider it our corporate social responsibility to raise awareness about transient smartphone blindness. The best vision is insight!

References:

1. Alim-Marvasti A, Bi W, Mahroo OA, Barbur JL, Plant GT. Transient Smartphone “Blindness”. N Engl J Med. 2016;374(25):2502-4.
2. BEC CREW. Science alert. 2016. Available at: http://www.sciencealert.com/smartphone-users-experience-temporary-blindnss-after-looking-at-their-screens-in-bed. Accessed on: 2^nd Aug 2016.