Going overseas for surgical treatment can be overwhelming for anybody. After all, it’s not like going to a hospital down the road where you have been to before and know all the doctors and nurses. To be successful in your pursuit of low-cost high quality medical treatment, there is a step by step process that you must follow to gain confidence in your decision, get the right care and save money.

STEP 1: FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THE TREND OF MEDICAL TOURISM

Find out why everybody is raving about it and why they are willing to travel half the world for it. Learn from the experience of others. Read news and articles on the subject. Check out the frequently asked questions that medical tourists have at https://www.healthbase.com/hb/pages/medical-tourism-faq.jsp.

STEP 2: RESEARCH ON THE MEDICAL PROCEDURE

Find out all you can about the medical procedure in question – problems it solves, follow-up care needed, physical therapy required, etc. This will help you clear 3 doubts: is the procedure right for your condition; are you the right candidate for the procedure; and should you go abroad for it.

STEP 3: FIND OUT IF MEDICAL TOURISM IS WHAT YOU WANT

Medical tourism is not always a good choice for non-emergency medical treatments. Sometimes transportation costs may outweigh the possible savings achievable by going abroad. In some cases, the time required for the surgery abroad may be too much for you to spare. Or, the surgery you need may not be available abroad with a reputable health care provider.

STEP 4: LEARN ABOUT MEDICAL TOURISM DESTINATIONS

Some countries have the reputation for top-quality cardiac surgery while others for world-class orthopedics and yet others for cosmetic procedures. So make your selection wisely. Sometimes distance can also play an important role in your decision-making, like in the case of small dental jobs. You should also prepare yourself for culture differences.

STEP 5: LEARN ABOUT INTERNATIONAL FACILITIES AND SURGEONS

When researching on any health care provider try to find answers to the following:

Does the hospital or clinic employ the latest equipments and technology? Do they have expertise in the medical procedure you are seeking? What accreditations and awards do they have? Are the surgeons qualified enough? Where did they receive their education and training?

Answering these questions will give you a fair idea of the standard of quality of the provider.

STEP 6: ARRANGE ALL YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS

You will need them at the time of pre-consultation with your overseas surgeon as well as when you go abroad for surgery. Depending upon the condition you are treating, medical records you may need are: X-Rays, X-Ray reports, MRI’s, health histories, photographs, immunization record, prescriptions, etc..

STEP 7: REQUEST AND COMPARE QUOTES

Costs of health care vary from country to country and provider to provider. So request for quotes and compare them. Your selection of a particular provider and country should be based not just on low cost but also on quality as well as distance.

STEP 8: CHECK WITH YOUR INSURANCE FOR COVERAGE

With the numerous benefits that medical tourism offers, today some insurance companies have medical tourism plans. So, if you are covered under an overseas medical treatment plan, your insurer might cover your medical tourism expenses in full or in part. So check with your health insurance company for coverage details.

STEP 9: ACQUIRE YOUR PASSPORT AND VISA

If you and/or your travel companion (if any) do not have a passport, you will need to acquire it. Check with the foreign country’s embassy if a visa is required for entry and apply for it accordingly.

STEP 10: PLAN YOUR ITINERARY

When planning your itinerary, allow ample time for recovery. Be prepared to stay longer/shorter than expected. If you have travel or tourism on mind, allow time for that as well.

STEP 11: BOOK TICKETS AND ROOMS

Book tickets for yourself and your companion. After your surgery, you can choose to relax at a resort or in a hotel or go traveling in the foreign country. So if possible, make arrangements beforehand.

STEP 12: APPLY FOR TRAVEL INSURANCE PLAN

Consider purchasing one of the short-term health and emergency assistance policies designed for travelers. Travel insurance gives medical tourists coverage for unforeseen problems, from a canceled flight to a serious illness.

STEP 13: APPLY FOR MEDICAL FINANCE LOAN

If you do not have enough money for your medical treatment overseas, you may consider applying for medical loan or dental loan. Loan processing companies provide patient payment plans for plastic surgery, dental procedures, bariatric procedures, dermatology treatments, hospital, etc.

STEP 14: PREPARE YOUR HOME FOR RECOVERY

In certain cases, you may need to prepare your home for recovery. For example, if you are seeking affordable hip resurfacing surgery abroad, you may want to rearrange furniture in your house in advance before you leave to aid during the recovery stages.

STEP 15: PACK YOUR BAGS AND TAKE THE TRIP

Ensure that you have packed comfortable clothing. Bring some local currency, travelers checks, and one or two major credit cards. Keep important contact information handy. Bring all the required medical records. Remember to carry all your medical reports as well as any medicines in your carry-on luggage. Finally, take your well-planned medical trip and return home happy and healthy!

The above step by step medical tourism guide will help you with most aspects of medical tourism. To make your medical travel easy you may want to use a medical tourism provider to help you with all the logistics of medical tourism. Medical tourism providers like Healthbase (http://www.healthbase.com) connect you with the hospital of your choice while providing many other related valuable services.

You can learn more about the growing trend of medical tourism, international healthcare facilities and surgeons, and the details of the medical tourism process by logging on to http://www.healthbase.com. Healthbase.com is a medical tourism facilitator committed to providing low-cost high quality medical travel services to the global medical consumer.



By: Healthbase

About the Author:

Jada

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Angela Stokes shares on finding or building a support group and steps you can take today to start down the road to better health.

Renegade Water Secrets with Angela Stokes, raw foodist, teacher and expert on raw food weight loss.

Kevin: You mentioned that finding a support group was important. Your family, you say, was filled with obesity and not a healthy group of people that you could probably find support from. Where did you go to find the support?

Angela: In the very beginning the main thing that kept me going was going to potlucks. There was potlucks about once a month and that really made all the difference to me. Because, as I said, I was out in the countryside in Iceland and I really felt isolated and just kind of crazy at times and I then would go to these potlucks and there would be all these people there and all this amazing, vibrant food. I would see people’s different creations and just that sense of community and it’s not just me. That really nice feeling of there’s other people who are on this path. And then of course everything’s just been growing on the Internet so much in the last years with raw food. So I started to get more and more into that and these days we have such wonderful communities online like giveittomeraw.com eat.rawfood.com and so that’s what I really encourage people to get into. If you can, meeting people face to face in your communities or if there aren’t any potlucks in your area create one. Just put some little signs up around your area saying, “Is anyone interested in eating more healthily” or you could even say “in eating raw food” or “eating vegan” or whatever it is. Or start a reading group around health books and develop it from there. You don’t have to feel isolated or alone. This message really is spreading. That’s what excites me, is to think about how it’s just going to keep on expanding. At the moment the infrastructure isn’t there so much in society for it to feel particularly easy to be a raw foodist a lot of the time. But it’s coming. It’s going to be so exciting in the coming years, I think, to see what unfolds.

Kevin: Let’s get into a question that I like from one of our listeners who’s on the line now, she basically asks what’s the best way to get started into raw foods without shocking the system?

Angela: Yeah, I recommend for people to start out eating at least 50 percent raw and preferably at least 50 percent of that to be fresh, raw stuff. So not all dehydrated and packaged raw foods but a lot of fresh stuff. And just take it from there and start building up the percentage of raw that you can handle. And maybe at some point you become 100 percent raw and maybe you don’t. Like this person says in the question, it’s really important to not shock the system. From what I’ve seen over and over again with people, so many people find out about raw food and they want to go 100 percent and they jump in the deep end and then they go into this huge detox and you never see them again. They jump completely off the wagon and that’s it. And I feel really sad when I see that kind of thing. I would much rather see people just slowly, slowly build new habits into their lives. This to me is a lifestyle. It’s not about going on some diet you’re going to go off again at some point. That’s not the mentality around it from my perspective.

So yeah, slowly build in, working with the foods that you already know you like. Everybody has some kind of raw foods they already know they like. Maybe it’s plums or maybe it’s celery, whatever. And this is actually one of the steps that I guide people to do in “RAW EMOTIONS” is to make a list of the foods that you already know that you like and have that visible in your house. Have it up, like on your fridge so when you go shopping or when you’re ordering online or whatever it is, you have this thing and you can keep adding to it as you try new things, as your taste buds adjust. And keep trying new things. Every week maybe try one or two new foods. And just slowly, slowly keep incorporating new things so that you don’t get this sense of restriction and deprivation. Which that’s so common that you’ll hear people when they go raw saying, “Oh, I can’t eat bread anymore.” Or, “I’m not allowed to eat this.” To me that’s just not really coming from a space of empowerment or a space where you’re really enjoying what you’re doing. It just seems to come from a weakened perspective. And so slowly build it up and make sure that you’re doing what you can to help the body as it detoxes. Because that’s really what this is all about. It’s really about coming into alignment with nature.

It’s like pressing the reset button in your body. It’s like pressing the release button. “Okay, I packed in heaven knows how many pounds and pounds of toxic stuff for years and now we’re going to let go of it.” And your body’s just going to go for it. Like I said earlier, the body just rushes towards optimal health and it will just be dumping stuff out of your cells like crazy. So do what you can to help with that process. Do colon cleansing, do skin brushing, keep your lymphs moving, do exercise, anything. Tongue scraping, netipot, whatever you can to help keep the detox process going. And be kind to yourself. Be gentle to yourself. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing in the beginning. Take it slowly.

Kevin: Some people might not know what skin brushing is. Can you just explain what that is?

Angela: Sure. You take a dry bristle brush, a special one that you can buy in health food shops and stuff, they’re really inexpensive, maybe ten dollars, and you go over your entire body with this dry brush, like before bathing or before you step in the shower or whatever. And that sounds kind of crazy when you’re not used to it but once you start doing it you might find that you just fall in love with dry skin brushing. It’s a wonderful way of removing dead skin cells from the surface of your skin. You know, the skin is our biggest organ and there’s such an opportunity for detoxing through our skin. But a lot of people just don’t really seize the opportunity. People where clothes all the time, tight clothes and they put deodorant on and body lotions and they really don’t give the body and the skin that much space to breathe. So when you do the dry skin brushing it’s like you’re removing all these dead layers of skin, you’re giving the muscles a nice workout, you’re moving the lymph as well and it’s just all around a very beneficial habit to do daily with your body. And it’s so cheap. Ten dollars investment in a brush and you’ve got it for like twenty years or something. So I highly recommend dry skin brushing.

Kevin: So what would you suggest for someone right now, listening to this call, enjoyed everything that you have said, what would you suggest is their first step to just either getting the weight loss or getting the raw food results that they’re really looking for?

Angela: I would definitely say if you still have processed or cooked food items in your house that you don’t feel great about, and it’s within your boundaries to get them out of your house, then go for it. Just get those things out of your personal space and start to get that list together of the things that you really enjoy. Start connecting to other people, build your momentum around this lifestyle so that it just becomes more embedded in your day to day things that you do. So that it just becomes habitual.

We’ve had so many years of living and eating this other way, and we’ve got all those patterns behind us to move out of now, just try and do what you can to every day just check in with what’s happening with you with raw foods in some way, whether it’s that you open a raw food book or go onto a raw food website for inspiration. Reach out to others, you’re not alone.

And I always say, I really feel like if I can do this than anyone can. Six years ago I was 300 pounds and had no interest in health whatsoever. And I’m still here. I wouldn’t be here still, six years later, if there wasn’t a good reason for it. So my health, my happiness, everything in my life was completely transformed from doing this. And there’s no reason why other people can’t experience that same kind of shifts if they just choose to do so and stay on that track.

Kevin: That’s great advice.



By: Kevin Gianni

About the Author:

Jane