8 Makeup Tips That Nobody Told You About

1. Repurposed Plastic Spoon

Use a plastic spoon to easily apply mascara on your bottom lashes without getting any on the skin under your eyes. It also helps you to accomplish a much thicker coat.

2. Blush For Your Face Type

In order to apply blush where it will be most flattering on you, first determine your face shape. Blush not only adds color, but also contours and defines your cheek bones. The way you apply your blush can accentuate your best features and also soften those that are perhaps too prominent.

3. Scotch Tape Eye Stencil

This unconventional beauty aid will help guide you when applying eye liner and shadows, especially if you’re going for a more daring look such as the “cat eye”. It will also help you achieve an even and balanced look for both eyes.

4. Disguising Under Eye Bags

Most of us tend to just sweep a layer of concealer to the entire under eye area, but to really conceal bags, it’s best to highlight the crease and then apply a darker shade to the actual puffy area.

5. Eye Highlights

The placement of highlights is very important when trying to create naturally beautiful eye makeup. Your lighter colors (whites, creams, and pearls) should be applied in the inner corners, the middle of the eye, and just under your brow bone. Apply your lightest colors first, and then move on to your darker shades.

6. How To Fix Clumpy Mascara

Let’s face it, this happens to every tube of mascara over time. The problem is it dries out and then starts to form unattractive lumps. To help prevent this, don’t pump your mascara trying to get more on your wand; you’re basically pumping air into the tube causing it to dry out even faster.

Although mascara should be replaced every 3 to 4 months, I use to replace mine much sooner just because it dries out so fast and creates undesirable results. But, there’s an easy fix for that! Add a drop or two of Visine (or any brand of eye drops) into the tube, and then rub the wand around inside. The Visine softens the mascara liquid, making it apply as if it were a brand new tube!

7. Lipstick Ready

Use a baby toothbrush to exfoliate your lips. To really get the job done, you can make a homemade lip exfoliate with sugar and coconut oil, or easier but not as effective, cover your lips in lip balm or petroleum jelly before scrubbing.

8. Make The Best Of Your Eye Shape

As important as your color choices are, the placement of your shadows and liners is just as critical; you can create just about any illusion that you want. With careful placement, you can make your eyes appear wider, closer set, more prominent, deeper set, etc. Determine what shape of eyes you have, and then accentuate them accordingly.

HEALTH BENEFITS

With health care reform, fully insured small group and individual health plans on and off the Exchange/Marketplace must cover essential health benefits beginning January 1, 2014. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that its aim is to balance comprehensiveness, affordability and state flexibility in the development of Essential Health Benefits (EHB).

To support fulfilling this aim, HHS instructed each state to select an existing health plan as a "benchmark" to establish the services and items included in the Essential Health Benefits package for 2014 and 2015. States chose from one of four health insurance plan options as a benchmark:

• the largest plan based on enrollment in any of the three largest small group products in the state
• any one of the three largest state employee health plans
• any one of the three largest federal employee health plan options
• the largest HMO plan offered in the state’s commercial market

The default for states that chose not to set a benchmark is the small group plan with the largest enrollment in the state. For 2016 and beyond, HHS will reassess the proposed benchmark process. 

Please note that the states define “small group.” Currently, groups with up to 50 employees are classified as small group. In 2014, some states may raise the limit to 100. In 2016, the standard for small group will be the national definition of 1-100 employees.

Essential health benefits under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will include the following general categories:

• Ambulatory patient services
• Emergency services
• Hospitalization
• Maternity and newborn care
• Mental health and substance abuse disorder services (including behavioral health treatment)
• Prescription drugs
• Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
• Laboratory services
• Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management
• Pediatric services, including oral and vision care

10 health care benefits covered in the Health Insurance

What’s covered in the Health Insurance Marketplace

These essential health benefits include at least the following items and services:

1. Outpatient care the kind you get without being admitted to a hospital
2. Trips to the emergency room
3. Treatment in the hospital for inpatient care
4. Care before and after your baby is born
5. Mental health and substance use disorder services: This includes behavioral health treatment, counseling, and psychotherapy
6. Your prescription drugs
7. Services and devices to help you recover if you are injured, or have a disability or chronic condition. This includes physical and occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, psychiatric rehabilitation, and more.
8. Your lab tests
9. Preventive services including counseling, screenings, and vaccines to keep you healthy and care for managing a chronic disease.
10. Pediatric services: This includes dental care and vision care for kids

Specific health care benefits may vary by state. Even within the same state, there can be small differences between health insurance plans. When you fill out your application and compare plans, you’ll see the specific health care benefits each plan offers.

Get the flu vaccine, reduce your risk of death

Last year was a lousy year for the flu vaccine. Hospitalizations for flu hit a nine-year high, and the vaccine prevented flu in only 23% of all recipients, compared with 50% to 60% of recipients in prior years.

Why does the flu vaccine work well in some winters and not others? The flu vaccine primes the immune system to attack two proteins on the surface of the influenza A virus, hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). Different flu strains have different combinations of these proteins — for example, the strains targeted by recent flu vaccines are H3N2 and H1N1.

Unfortunately, the influenza virus is microbiology’s answer to Miley Cyrus: it can change enough in just one year to become completely unrecognizable. The H and N proteins are genetic chameleons that undergo constant transformation. This process is called antigenic drift, and it regularly flummoxes vaccine makers, public health experts, and your immune system.

Developing the new flu vaccines

Most flu vaccine in the United States is made from chicken eggs, using production methods that date back to 1945. This cumbersome technique requires 6-8 months of lead time to produce enough vaccine for the upcoming flu season. Every February, the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) make their best guess as to which flu strains should be covered by next winter’s vaccine, based on a review of circulating flu viruses from over 100 countries. But a lot can change in 8 months, especially with influenza. This past year, the “drifted” H3N2 influenza strain didn’t match up with the vaccine strain, explaining the vaccine’s poor performance.

Can researchers build a better flu vaccine? They probably already have. The FDA has approved two alternatives to traditional egg-based vaccines. One of these, Flucelvax, uses influenza virus grown in kidney cells that were originally obtained from a single cocker spaniel in 1958. The other one, FluBlok, is made by tricking insect cells into pumping out large amounts of hemagglutinin, which is then purified and used in the vaccine. These methods might sound outlandish, but they seem to be safe and effective.

These newer vaccines have several advantages:

They are safe for patients with egg allergies. Because most flu vaccine is made from eggs, many people with egg allergies can’t receive the traditional flu shot.

They don’t require a massive supply of chicken eggs, and could still be made even if a bird flu epidemic wiped out chicken flocks.

They need less manufacturing time than egg-based vaccines, meaning vaccine production could be ramped up quickly in case of a flu pandemic. This also might give the FDA more time to make their decision on which flu strains should go into the vaccine, reducing the risk of a vaccine–flu mismatch like last year’s.

Scientists are also working on a universal flu vaccine, one that might not need to be changed every year. This vaccine takes advantage of the fact that the H protein has two parts: a head region, which is the part that changes rapidly, and a stem region, which stays more or less the same. Small studies of vaccines using chunks of the stem have shown promising results in animals. Trials of these vaccines are just beginning in humans.

How the flu vaccine reduces your risk

The CDC recommends that all American adults get a flu vaccine every year. Even though the current vaccine is not perfect, there are many good reasons for you to get it. The vaccine does reduce your chance of getting the flu, especially when it matches up well with dominant flu strains.

The benefits of flu vaccine are particularly impressive in older adults. If you are 65 or older, it One reason for this lowered risk is that getting the flu increases your risk of developing bacterial pneumonia, which is responsible for many hospitalizations and deaths. But this is not the only reason.

Inflammation is bad for your body, and increases your risk of heart attack or stroke. If you’ve ever had full-blown flu, and you remember how feverish, achy, and miserable you felt, you know that influenza is great at filling your body with inflammation. So, as you might expect, another benefit of the flu vaccine is that

Most adults, including me, receive the flu shot made from chicken eggs. If you have an egg allergy, you should get Flucelvak or FluBlok instead. If you are between ages 2 and 49, you are eligible for the intranasal vaccine, which is inhaled rather than injected. Because this vaccine contains live virus, it should be avoided if you are pregnant, have a weak immune system, or are around other people with weak immune systems. The intranasal vaccine may also cause wheezing, so you should avoid it if you are asthmatic.