HBF Health Funds

Every year thousands of people file travel insurance claims. We've put together a list of the five most common mishaps with suggestions for ways you might be able to avoid them.

Dr Duncan exercised six days a week, had a BMI of 22, low blood pressure, an excellent, and didn't smoke... so it came as a profound shock when he found himself not fighting fit as he'd thought, but fighting for his life.

Eating the right foods is vital when training for a run. So whatever your for participating in a run – wether it be training for a half marathon or taking part for a cause near and dear to your heart, it is essential that you get the right balance of nutrients before and after your run to ensure your body performs at its best and recovers well afterwards.

Follow the procedure of a hip replacement from diagnosis to recovery.

HBF has warned that the changes to the health insurance rebate expected to be announced in the budget next week will be disastrous for its 800,000 members.

Perhaps we can reach out to those who need that extra bit of care and attention. Perhaps by living a healthy life we can reduce our reliance on the health system so that less is needed to treat life-style related health problems, and more can be spent on treating sick kids and those in real need. Perhaps by each one of us taking responsibility for living our own lives as well as we can, then we can really say that we are smart people living in a very lucky country.

The headlines these days seem to focus around one particular subject - energy! There is an energy crisis; the global price of oil is rocketing and global warming is here. It seems like the world is full of energy addicts and we can’t get enough of the stuff, but in our desire for more, we appear to be ruining ourselves and destroying the planet too!

Each year tens of thousands of young women should be thinking about whether they should start having their Pap smear done. So what is this smear test, how is it done and is it really necessary now that girls are having HPV vaccinations at school?

One of my earliest experiences of poor communication was in a teaching hospital in England during my training. A student nurse had been told to “put the patient in bed eight on a commode”, as he “wasn’t allowed to walk to the toilet”. I still remember walking past the curtained bed and seeing the patient’s head appear over the top of the curtain asking for help. Peeping inside, the young nurse was supporting the precariously positioned commode, with the patient perched on it on top of the bed!

In life, we like to think we are in control and one thing that the diagnosis of cancer brings with it is the awareness that we cannot be in control all of the time! When we see high profile women diagnosed with breast cancer our hearts go out to them, and should they die from the disease, then our hearts break for the young families who have lost their beautiful mothers.