People active in sports, construction, or other high-energy activity can experience various forms of soft tissue damage. Soft tissue damage occurs along the muscles, ligaments, and tendons, and these injuries can cause pain, swelling, bruising, and other forms of damage. But deciding if you should see urgent care can be challenging when the pain becomes unbearable. This article will provide you with symptoms to watch out for and help you learn when to go to urgent care for a soft tissue injury. 

What Types of Soft Tissue Injuries Are There?

Sudden, hazardous impacts on the muscles, tendons, and ligaments typically cause soft tissue injuries. They can also be caused by excessive use of the soft tissues over time and most commonly occur during sports events. There are many different types of soft tissue injuries, including: 

• Contusions: Contusions are bruises that occur to the soft tissues from blunt force. Pain, swelling, and discoloration occur due to bleeding inside the tissues. 
• Sprains: Sprains are partial tears to the ligaments. The ligaments can get injured from sudden twists and wrenches to the affected area and typically occur along the ankles, wrists, and knees. 
• Strains: Strains are muscles or tendons that have been overused or overstretched. The muscles or tendons will feel sore, sensitive to sudden movements, and tight, and typically require rest to ensure healing. 
• Tendonitis: Tendonitis is an inflammatory condition in the tendon from overuse and repetitive motion. Elbows, wrists, knees, ankles, and other areas where tendons are found tend to experience this condition, usually caused by sports movements. 
• Bursitis: The bursa is a fluid-filled sac between the bones, muscles, and tendons; these areas can also get inflamed and are usually caused by overuse or direct trauma to the joint. 

When Will I Need To Go To Urgent Care For A Soft Tissue Injury? 

These conditions will usually require R.E.S.T, using ice compressions and elevating the area to help the injury heal within the first few days. However, urgent care is highly needed if a week has passed and the injury hasn’t shown any progress in healing or has worsened. Some symptoms to look out for when dealing with soft tissue injuries include: 

• Persistent pain or pain that radiates down the arms and legs
• The affected joint pops or cracks along the injury site or if the site is moved post-injury.
• Experience difficulties walking, sitting, or getting out of bed due to the injury.
• Numbness or tingling around the joint area or injury site
• Inability to move or bend the injury site due to throbbing, persistent pain
• All painful symptoms persist and cannot be relieved with over-the-counter pain relievers or other medications. 

If these symptoms occur, schedule an appointment with urgent care as soon as possible. When you visit an urgent care clinic, they can provide specialists for complex injury treatments, offer prescription-level pain medications, and help soothe pain while your injury heals. By visiting your local urgent care, they can diagnose your injury and recommend the best route to recovery.

In the past decade, there’s been a growing trend of seeking IV Vitamin Treatments as a health treatment. These infusions have become so prominent that a range of special IV clinics has opened to make them available. These clinics are popularly referred to as ‘drip bars’ and are the topic of some controversies. More recently, these services have started being offered as a “concierge service,” where the provider will come to your home to administer these infusions. These services can run as much as $300 for a treatment lasting 30 to 60 minutes. With rates like these, it’s essential to ask whether they’re safe or benefit the recipient.

The Rise of IV Infusions In Spa Trends

The origin of the IV infusion can be found in the 1960s with Dr. John Myers. These treatments were developed with the hope that they’d aid those with asthma, migraines, and fibromyalgia. A specific type of cocktail was developed by Myers and underwent extensive scientific study after years of being administered. Unfortunately, these studies revealed there was no notable benefit in those patients who were receiving it. As a result, this cocktail would slowly be phased out. Recently, however, there’s been a notable resurgence in infusion therapy.

Unfortunately, the power of hype and trendy internet fads is the driving force behind this. No new information has been brought forward that shows the earlier studies were faulty or challenged their findings. Instead, it was a collection of Hollywood debutantes with no medical training or authority who began hyping their so-called effectiveness. Chrissy Teigen and Gwyneth Paltrow are notable advocates of these “treatments” for boosting energy, curing hangovers, and reversing signs of the aging process. The less reputable clinics offering these services will repeat these claims, adding that they can ease heart disease, fight cancer, manage diabetes, and countless other dangerous claims.

Experts quote the following facts to debunk the effectiveness of these treatments:

• Vitamin C – This nutrient has long been proven effective at preventing colds. However, this is misleading at best. It is known that those taking it often recover more quickly, but there’s no proven prophylactic effect. Despite the body of evidence showing otherwise, these clinics claim it will keep you from getting sick.
• Vitamin B3 and NAD+ – The claims they make about this being able to reverse brain aging and treat Alzheimer’s are misleading. These two vitamins help prevent the onset of these conditions. However, there is no evidence showing that they can do anything to reverse them once they’ve begun. A simple infusion isn’t enough to address the problems associated with aging.

Vitamin Infusions Can Actually Cause Harm

One thing you won’t hear from these clinics is the potential risks of receiving vitamin infusions. While our bodies need vitamins and minerals to remain healthy, it’s possible to receive too much. Vitamin toxicity is a genuine danger for those receiving infusions regularly. As some vitamins get stored in the muscles, liver, and fat, they can quickly go above safe levels over multiple treatments. You would be better served by eating healthy, seeing your physician regularly, and getting plenty of exercise.

Maintaining routine heart checkups matters – regular screenings for heart health should begin at 20 years old and be performed every two to four years. That’s because even the healthiest of individuals can face heart problems later in life, and it’s often due to how delicate our hearts are to age and disease. In cases where abnormal symptoms arise, it’s important to learn when to see urgent care to determine whether you’re facing life-threatening effects or have a condition that needs treatment. 

Why You Should Keep An Eye On Your Heart Health

Even in the healthiest individuals, however, heart issues can arise. In some cases, these heart issues can be life-threatening. One of the most prominent symptoms that indicate poor heart health are chest pain and heart palpitations. While chest pain and heart palpitations don’t initially indicate heart problems, other conditions such as rib joint inflammation, panic attacks, lung diseases, and esophageal spasms can easily cause pain throughout the chest. In these scenarios where you don’t know whether or not it’s you’re heart, going to urgent care can help determine what’s causing it and provide you with the help you need. 

Other symptoms often associated with heart health problems include:

• The heart is beating too quickly
• The heart is beating too strongly
• The heart is irregularly
• The heartbeat is skipping and rapidly fluttering
• The heart feels like it is flipping and flopping in the chest

While some instances of heart palpitations and chest pain may appear obvious, other cases may not resolve on their own if they go untreated. Symptoms such as fainting, chest discomfort, shortness of breath, fever, and dizziness can also indicate serious heart health issues that require surgical or therapeutic treatment to handle. However, other conditions, such as strenuous physical activity, hormone changes, stimulants, and emotional triggers, can easily lead to physical symptoms. Hence, it’s important to see urgent care if you are unsure. 

When Should You Visit Urgent Care For Heart Health

Regardless of whether you have a heart problem or experiencing signs such as chest pain, you should seek medical attention immediately. When you take the time to visit urgent care, you can receive a quick diagnosis for your condition, especially if you feel that you are experiencing a non-emergency scenario. All urgent care professionals can easily connect their patients with heart health specialists and surgeons to help assist with long-term problems associated with heart health. 

One way to determine if you should visit urgent care is by noticing how your symptoms formed. If your chest pain has been treated before in the past and you don’t experience the symptoms of heart attacks, strokes, and other emergency conditions, then it’s best to visit an urgent care for immediate treatment. However, if the chest pain, heart palpitations, and other symptoms worsen, then it’s important to go to the emergency room right away for treatment. Your experts will be knowledgeable and experienced in the diagnosis and treatment of even the most complex heart conditions and will be able to help you feel better. 

If you’ve been feeling constant stress, then you’re not alone. At least 2 in 3 adults say that they’ve experienced increased stress over the course of the pandemic, with nearly half of adults reporting that their stress levels have taken a physical and emotional toll, resulting in a high increase in burnout. Burnout is what happens when you are physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted from the excessive and prolonged stress you experience from the constant demands of everyday life. When burnout happens, it’s important to find ways of recovering and managing your stress, as it can affect almost every part of your life, including your home, relationships, work, and social life. Here’s what we have to say about burnout and how to handle it.

Burnout: The Signs and Symptoms of Chronic Stress

Both chronic stress and burnout are gradual processes. If you are living your life with high levels of stress, then your well-being is at risk. Chronic stress causes significant damage to your emotional and mental health by narrowing your ability to think clearly, function efficiently, and enjoy life on a regular basis. When chronic stress becomes unmanageable for long periods, then burnout develops. Burnout is the red flag, indicating that something is wrong and needs to be fixed to prevent a major breakdown.

Burnout affects everyone in different ways but presents very common symptoms that affect people in varying degrees. These symptoms include:

• Physical: Physical symptoms include frequent headaches, muscle pains, constant feeling of tiredness, frequent illnesses, changes in appetite, and sleep problems.
• Emotional: Emotional symptoms create feelings of self-doubt, helplessness, detachment from everyday life, feelings of loneliness, cynical thinking, and a complete loss of motivation.
• Behavioral: In behaviors, burnout causes withdrawal from responsibilities, skipping work, procrastinating, drug and alcohol reliance, and complete isolation from others.

All of these symptoms can affect anyone, but burnout is a highly prevalent problem among those in high-risk, heavily demanding careers such as medical nurses, emergency responders, construction workers, and financial institutions. The fine line between chronic stress and burnout comes from the feeling of not being in control over your circumstances and, in many ways, can feel like drowning.

Ways to Deal With Burnout From Chronic Stress

In urgent care, many people can experience health problems, including frequent illnesses and eventual chronic diseases, from the onset of burnout. It’s important to address these stress problems early before they become overwhelming and impossible to manage. To help with this, some tips we can offer to manage burnout include:

• Reaching Out to Others: Reaching out to others can help relieve stress, open up about burdens, and find ways to make life more positive. This includes being around loved ones, positive-minded people, and other social groups.
• Practicing Mindfulness: By changing the way you look at the world, you can reduce the amount of burnout and stress felt each day, including meditations, taking time off, and finding value in everyday tasks.
• Reevaluating Priorities: Setting boundaries, taking breaks from technology, and nourishing yourself with activities you enjoy can help you relieve stress and give you ways to remove signs of burnout.

If you feel you’re at risk of workplace burnout and need help, then your local urgent care practice can provide you with the resources you need to build resistance to stress and adversity and find treatments for chronic stress. 

Would you recognize you were experiencing trouble with your heart? Most know that if your arm is hurting, you’re having trouble breathing, and your chest hurts, those aren’t good signs. There are other signs of heart issues that aren’t as well-known. Many of these warning signs can appear in places other than your chest. This makes it hard to identify that your body is trying to tell you that your heart is in trouble.

Poorly Understood Heart Attack Signs

The less typical signs of heart disease are more common in those who have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, are overweight or are above the age of 60. The more risk factors apply to you, the more concerned you should be about watching for signs of heart trouble. If you are demonstrating any of the following indicators, your heart may be trying to warn you:

• Chest Discomfort – This is one of the most common signs of problems with the heart. You may feel this as pressure, pain, or tightness. This sign can appear as part of a heart attack but may appear with a blocked artery. The feeling will be persistent, often lasting for more than a few minutes. It can appear when you’re physically active or at rest. If you experience a brief stab of pain, it probably doesn’t involve your heart. It’s still smart to have it checked out, however. In cases where the symptom doesn’t pass in a few minutes, call 911.
• Nausea, Heartburn, Stomach Pain, Indigestion – When some individuals are experiencing a heart attack, they may have these symptoms. Some people will even vomit when a heart attack happens. These symptoms are more frequently seen in women than men. This symptom can be associated with many health conditions, but it’s worth paying attention to if you’re at risk for a heart attack.
• Pain Spreading To The Arm – This is another well-known symptom. If you feel pain in your chest that then begins to spread down the left side of the body, it’s likely a heart attack.
• Dizziness or Lightheadedness – You may experience a loss of balance or feel faint when hit by a heart attack. However, call a doctor immediately if you feel unsteady while experiencing chest pain or trouble breathing. This is often the result of your blood pressure dropping due to your heart’s inability to pump properly.
• Throat Or Jaw Pain – Throat or jaw pain isn’t a sign on its own. However, pain that starts at the heart and then radiates up into the jaw or pain is a definite warning sign. Play it safe and call 911.
• Rapid Exhaustion – A lack of exercise can make a lot of activities more daunting than they would be otherwise. However, if the experience is sudden, it’s important to have it checked out. Being able to climb the stairs fine one day and being out of breath the next is a reason for concern.

Numerous other signs point to a potential heart attack, but these are the more prominent and easily identified.

Contact Your Physician For More Information

Get a consultation with your physician if you have multiple risk factors associated with heart disease and cardiac problems. You must start taking steps to address your heart concerns immediately. They’ll help you get your health on track and take steps to protect your heart against disease.

For people who love summer, it’s a great season for picnics, camping events, and summer vacations. As more people begin traveling and spending time outdoors, spiders, mosquitos, and wasps are just a few of the insects known to bite and sting. Bug bites are common during the summer, and it’s important to know which bites should be ignored and which ones require a trip to urgent care for treatment. Various bites and stings can be potentially life-threatening if not cared for immediately, and learning how to detect bites can help make sure that you’re treated. 

Bite and Sting Symptoms You Should Never Ignore 

In many cases, insect bites, mosquitos, and beetles can cause irritations to the skin, but most of the time are known to be harmless. In rarer situations, bites from common insects can become a lot worse than intended, often because these bites can pass pathogens and viruses into the bloodstream and skin. When this occurs, there are some symptoms that you should watch out for, including: 

• Rashes and Swelling: Areas surrounding the bite may swell and develop rashes, indicating the presence of venom, which can narrow down the possible source to arachnids such as spiders. Rashes can indicate allergic reactions, and if bitten by ticks, it could indicate Lyme disease. 
• Fever and Chills: Fevers and chills are the body’s attempt to fight off the insect bite, even if the bite is from an insect that’s considered non-harmful to most people. In these cases, it could indicate the signs of an allergic reaction, and seeking out urgent care can allow your physicians to prescribe medications and check for symptoms. 
• Insect Bite Infections: Excessive scratching can cause the open wound to open up, and if other pathogens and bacteria get into the wound, it could lead to an infection. Signs of a skin infection include sores, redness, and pus oozing from the wound. Seeking out urgent care can help treat the infection with antibiotic medication. 
• Bite Extensions: One important symptom to pay attention to with bug bites is extensions in the bite mark. These extensions look like long dragging lines across the skin, causing raised infections along the areas. When this occurs, it could be an infectious disease called impetigo, which requires immediate medical attention. 

When To Seek Out Urgent Care For Bites

Other symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, and fatigue require emergency medical attention, especially if potentially bitten by spiders such as brown recluses, stung by hornets or wasps, and bitten by ticks. If any redness, swelling, or hardening around the skin bite worsens over the next 24 to 72 hours, seeking out urgent care as soon as possible can help diagnose your insect bite and treat it. Paying attention to insect bites during the summer can help save your life, and while reactions to insect bites are rare, if you feel worried about your symptoms, stop by your local urgent care provider for information about summertime safety and bugs bite care. 

Telehealth has become a vitally important part of today’s healthcare, and for urgent care practice, patients can highly benefit from telehealth services as they can provide meaningful, responsive interactions in urgent care scenarios. Telehealth has been rising over the last ten years, as the integration of telehealth services has nearly doubled in growth, and about 75% of today’s hospitals in the United States now use telehealth services as part of today’s standard of care. Over time, more practices will be able to integrate these systems into their models of treatment, and for patients, it provides them with the security they need to address medical problems and find treatments. But what exactly is telehealth all about? Here’s how it’s changing everything.

How Does Telehealth Work in Today’s Healthcare

Telehealth refers to telecommunication and electronic technologies we use every day to provide healthcare services at a distance. A sub-branch of this, called telemedicine, works by delivering medical treatments from a distance, such as a physician interacting with a patient at a different location. Telehealth, however, covers a broader range of services, incorporating aspects of low-risk urgent care, medication management, chronic condition monitoring, and health coaching sessions.

Because of today’s technology, patients can now access their health services through chat, voice calls, phone, email, patient portals, and even monitoring devices. All of these methods provide different forms of communication, allowing physicians to monitor their patient’s health, communicate with patients at different times, and review information for health conditions.

How Can Telehealth Be Used In Urgent Care

In urgent care, telehealth services can provide patients in urgent situations with the resources they need in a timely manner. Telehealth can be argued as being more crucial in certain situations due to its reliable forms of communication. But in regards to what types of visits can be used, how physicians can treat patients and other means of urgent care services, patients can experience multiple benefits, including:

• Eliminates Unneeded ER Visits: For patients faced with urgent but not emergency situations such as severe allergies, coughing fits, and other conditions, patients can determine with their urgent care physicians what their conditions are and what treatments they need removing the need for ER visits.
• Reduces Illness Exposure: Patients faced with illnesses or chronic immune deficiencies can reduce the risk of illness exposure from others by opting into telehealth visits with their physicians. In urgent scenarios, physicians can provide recommendations and referrals to specialists.
• Improved Timeliness of Care: Telehealth appointments also work to improve the quality of care, providing a quick and easy way to receive treatment in a timely manner.
• Lifesaving Consultations: Patients under significant stress related to their symptoms can find lifesaving resources and, if necessary, be recommended to ER services for further treatment.

Telehealth comes with many benefits for urgent care. If you need urgent care and are unable to find the time or resources for an in-person appointment, reach out to your local urgent care practice to find out about treatment options, specialists in your area, and ways your urgent care physician can help promote better health. 

If you’ve ever had a UTI or urinary tract infection, you’re familiar with the impossible and uncomfortable it can be. This bacterial infection causes a burning sensation when sufferers urinate while giving them a persistent need to urinate. When you feel the symptoms of this condition coming on, you may think it’s time to schedule a doctor’s appointment. However, the longer you wait, the more severe the infection. It will take longer for you to overcome it and finally get relief. Find out why a trip to Urgent Care may be the right move by learning more about UTIs.

Facts About UTIs And Why To Use Urgent Care

• Women Get UTIs More Often By Men – UTIs are nearly 10x more likely to happen to women than men. The shortness of the urethra in women increases the likelihood that bacteria will be able to make it to the bladder. Once there, they begin to multiply. 20% of all women will have a UTI during their lifetime. Those who contract one are more likely to contract another later.
• UTIs Aren’t Always Caused By Sex – Getting a UTI after sex is a well-known phenomenon, with 80% of premenopausal women with UTIs reporting sexual activity in the last 24 hours. However, it’s not the only cause. UTIs tend to occur more often with a new partner.
• Genital Irritation Doesn’t Always Mean a UTI – The symptoms of a UTI are common to many concerns. Foul-smelling urine, pain while peeing, and pain and pressure in the lower abdomen can indicate a number of concerns. In elderly patients, confusion is one of the more common symptoms. However, it can also point to a yeast infection, bacterial vaginosis, or an STI.
• Urgent Care Can Treat UTIs – Your OB/GYN or PCP can be excellent resources following a trip to Urgent Care. Stopping in at your local UC clinic ensures that your condition is addressed promptly. Following up with your PCP or OB/GYN is a good way of discussing its occurrence and changing things to prevent more in the future.
• UTI Pain Can Be Mitigated With Home Remedies – Antibiotics are an important first step in helping overcome a UTI. However, you can take steps to prevent them in the future. This includes increasing your intake of fluids, especially water. Warmth can help ease the pain associated with urinating and topical pain, including the Irritation you may be experiencing.

Our Urgent Care Team Is Ready To Help You Tonight!

Aside from prevention, the best thing you can do for a UTI is to get treatment as promptly as possible. Acting quickly will ensure you catch it when it can most easily be treated and limit how long you suffer with them. Visiting your local urgent care will immediately lead you to relief from UTI symptoms. After that, it’s time to follow up with your primary care team to ensure that you can prevent a recurrence in the future.

The advance in digital technology has had a profound impact on our world. How we interact with our loved ones, form friendships, do business, and even receive medical care has felt its touch. While there is reasonable caution about the potential risks of integrating our physical and virtual selves, the benefits are unquestionable. One area that demonstrates this soundly is that of medical wearable devices. These innovations have made it possible to track patient conditions more thoroughly and get better diagnostic data than ever before. This data, in turn, results in more effective care and faster outcomes for all involved.

How Patients And Doctors Benefit From Wearables

Testing and monitoring patient health is part of the diagnostic process that requires a hospital stay. Even in cases where this wasn’t necessary, there would be inconvenient visits to the office. These visits often involved stress tests in determining if triggering a patient’s reported symptoms was possible. This was an inefficient and often ineffective method of collecting this information. It was difficult to provide a proper diagnosis without the ability to trigger the patient’s symptoms. Further, even with a diagnosis, it could be difficult to determine a proper treatment with the data provided.

Wearable Medical Devices allow this information to be collected more naturally. As patients go about their day, the device reports back to the doctor. By remotely monitoring the heart rate, blood pressure, and other biometrics, the doctor gets an image as it occurs during the patient’s day. This allows the doctor to see the flare-ups of their condition as the patient experiences them and understand the circumstances surrounding it. The result is a better ability to diagnose and prescribe treatment for the condition. Some forms of wearable medical devices include:

• VivaLNK Continuous Temperature Sensor Patch – This device tracks the patient’s body temperature as they go about their day. It can deliver ongoing feedback for as long as the patient wears it. This is an effective tool for doctors working with patients with conditions such as fibromyalgia. The data from this device has led to a deeper understanding of the condition and better treatment for sufferers.
• Mojo Lenses – These lenses are an incredible innovation that brings data directly and discretely to the patient. While wearing the lenses, the patient has a HUD (Head’s Up Display) that provides information about their heart rate, blood pressure, and other conditions. It can also provide important information to the patient that allows them to navigate better. The applications of this device are only just beginning to be explored.

Some devices aren’t designed to report information back to the doctor. One example is Immunotouch. Scientists created this innovative device during the COVID-19 pandemic to remind patients not to touch their faces. The device would notify them anytime they reached for their face. This reminder helped to prevent them from contracting the COVID-19 infection.

Your Physician Can Provide Wearable Device Options

Speak to your physician to determine what types of wearable medical devices may be appropriate for your health conditions.