The king of all energy drinks, Red Bull, originates from Thailand, where it was sold under the Thai name 'Krating Daeng' (literally "Red Bull" in English). In 1987, Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz with Thai-based TC Pharmaceutical (a Blendax licensee) led by Chaleo Yoovidhya, founded Red Bull GmbH and introduced a new formula of the energy drink to the rest of the world. The Austrian formula has taken almost half of the US market for energy drinks, and up to 80% of the market in some other countries. Today there are over 200 energy drinks in a billion-dollar energy drink industry.

How healthy are energy drinks for us? Is it all just marketing-hype, or is there some truth to the “helps to temporarily restore mental alertness and physical stamina during periods of fatigue or drowsiness”. Is it really a boost for when you are tired? How safe is it to mix energy drinks with alcohol? Should you really be drinking energy drinks after you’ve exercised? Has anyone put these drinks to the test?

Are you asking these questions too? Here are some great resources that answer these and more.

1. MedicineNet

Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD/LD answers the vital questions about energy drinks – what they contain, what drinking large quantities of energy drinks will do to your body, whether energy drinks will really give you the boost you want, if they are good to drink during exercise and why you shouldn’t be mixing energy drinks with alcohol.

excerpt of MedicineNet article

2. LifeScript

A contributed article by E E Kane on LifeScript provides an interesting insight and chronology to the energy drinks industry, as well as information on the drinks’ side-effects and dangers.

excerpt of article on LifeScript

3. Associated Press

And finally, Associated Press pitted expert nutritionists against a panel of taste-testers in this run-down of popular energy drinks. A bit of fun info-tainment.

excerpt of Associated Press article

Now that Summer has kicked into high gear, it’s time to slap on the sunscreen. So, what’s the Internet got to offer consumers like myself that don’t know too much about sunscreen products and what to look for on the labels.

Surprising to me (as I expected to find a couple of sites only), there are lots of great sites that deal with sunscreen safety. Here are my picks.

1. The Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database

Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database

This site is packed full of information, research and product reviews. It’s very well presented and easy to navigate the sections. It’s the one site I found that has reviewed a large range (952 name-brand sunscreens to be exact) of suncare products and provided recommendations.

Skin Deep Product Recommendations

Now you can check if the sunscreens in your bathroom cupboard are recommended or should be heading for the bin.

Let’s say you are looking for sunscreens for high hazard that are effective, you have 233 recommended products. Here’s an example of one of the display pages:

Skin Deep Product Results

2. Your Total Health

Your Total Health

Next, Your Total Health has compiled a very logical information site, taking you through sun care information and recommendations, information about sunscreen and, my favourite part – choosing the right sunscreen for you, which is detailed, yet to the point, as well as applying sunscreens.

Choosing sunscreen on Your Total Health

The site also has a skin basics quiz that I recommend you take. It taught me how little I know about my skin…

Skin Basics Quiz on Your Total Health

3. EverydayHealth

Our partner site, EverydayHealth has dedicated an entire section to “UV Safety Month” and has included some excellent articles of interest in this section.

EverydayHealth UV Safety Month

For a bit of light edu-tainment, EverydayHealth has also put together “12 Celeb Tips to Year-Round Sun Smarts”.

Celebrity Tips to Sun Smarts

And my final pick, is this free tool to calculate your safe sun tanning time. It really shows you how little time it takes for your skin to burn.

Sundicator

It’s that time of year again – time to roll out the barbecue for family and friends, and to light up the sky with fireworks. Given the big day is tomorrow, we thought we’d put together a resource page of how to have a safe 4th of July.

Barbecue Safety

Firing up the Barbecue is a given for the Holiday. Here are a couple of articles that highlight safety tips for safe grilling:

Wickedlocal.com
New York State

Wickedlocal.com barbecue safety tips

Healthy Recipes

On the topic of eating, here are some healthy recipes for meals you can easily throw together:

Our partner site, EverydayHealth, has a whole page on grilled meals.
And what barbecue is not accompanied by salads. Check out this site of only salad recipes.

Easysaladrecipes.com

Fireworks Safety

We’ve all heard the safety drill on fireworks, but it’s always good to remind ourselves. Here’s a good source.

Trivia

And finally, impress your friends with some 4th of July trivia. Check out the US Census Bureau web site.

US Census Bureau - 4th of July trivia

School is nearly out and with that comes free time to enjoy the great outdoors. This week I thought I’d scour the web for some of the best resources for those nasty little critters that want a piece of us. Most bug bites are just a nuisance, others can lead to more serious conditions. So here are some excellent sources on what bugs to look out for, how to avoid being bitten, what to do if you have a bite and when to resort to medical help.

1. Kids Health

Kids Health bug bites homepage

Kids Health provides a summary overview for each insect and a “what to do about:” section in bullet points. Its instructions sheets are very well presented, containing information on prevention, how to deal with the insect bites and where the bugs live.

Kids Health instruction sheet

2. eMedicineHealth.com (a WebMD company)

eMedicineHealth.com is an excellent source for a more in-depth look at bugs and bug bites. Its bug bites page provides links to everything you’d want to know about the little nuisances … and more.

eMedicineHealth bug bites homepage

And if you want to get close and personal, eMedicineHealth provides a link to a slideshow of the most common bugs. It’s worth a browse through:

eMedicineHealth bugs slideshow

3. About.com

Last but not least, about.com has a good page on bug bites. Unlike eMedicineNet.com where the sub-heading are provided on a homepage, the about.com information is listed on pages, so you have to click through until you reach the information you are looking for. The information is, however, well put together – I read it in its entirety.

About.com bug bites homepage

This just leaves me to say – enjoy your summer vacations and don’t let the bugs bite.

In this week’s behind the scenes post, I thought we’d give you a look behind the scenes of our merchant network.

As a quick background, HealthPricer represents trusted merchants offering prescription and OTC drugs, contact lenses, supplements and beauty products. Below are some of the merchants represented:

Selection of merchants represented by HealthPricer

Our network of merchants gain exposure to highly targeted consumers – currently hundreds of thousands every month that visit HealthPricer and our syndicated service, MarketPlace, available at the following leading online health sites:

QualityHealth.com with 3 million unique visitors per month
HealthCentral.com with 7 million unique visitors per month
Healthline.com with 4.8 million unique visitors per month
RightHealth.com with 9.9 million unique visitors per month
everydayHealth.com with 5.6 million unique visitors per month

HealthPricer’s merchant program is based on a Cost Per Action (CPA) transaction model. Basically, HealthPricer is paid a commission for orders generated through HealthPricer and MarketPlace. We prefer this model as it encourages merchants to display their entire inventories of products, rather than just popular products in a Pay Per Click (PPC) model.

As part of this process, we provide an end-to-end tracking process – a short snippet code and a 90-day cookie to capture any visitors that return to buy products at a later time.

Merchants in the HealthPricer merchant network can track the progress of their conversions through a secure web-based interface into HealthPricer’s reporting system.

HealthPricer Merchant Center Homepage

The HealthPricer Merchant Center allows each individual merchant to monitor overall performance, product referrals and HealthPricer top product referrals. In the below screen shots we are using an online pharmacy merchant as an example.

HealthPricer Merchant Center Performance Report

The merchant center provides real-time referral and order tracking. Each merchant has access to their own unique referrals, orders, conversion rates, total order values as well as those of the department leader.

HealthPricer Merchant Center Product Referral Report

The product referral page provides detailed conversions based on individual products the merchant offers.

HealthPricer Merchant Center Top Products

The top product referrals provide merchants an insight to the overall products that sell the best for a specific time period – this gives them insight that can help them adjust offerings to raise their own conversions.

HealthPricer Merchant Center Resource Page

And finally, the HealthPricer Merchant Center provides a resource page of information pertinent to each department partner.