FRIDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Whether buying a toothbrush or a new car, it's become routine for shoppers to research before buying so they know all the options and can strike the best possible bargain.

Far less often, though, do people apply those tactics to one of their most important regular purchases: a trip to the doctor's office.

But medical services ought to be tackled the same way any other purchase would be, consumer experts say.

That begins with doing a little homework before going to see a doctor.

"Understand that ordinarily appointments are not very long," said Arthur Levin, director of the nonprofit Center for Medical Consumers. "Physicians talk a lot and don't always listen. You have to organize yourself in a way that you maximize the chances that the questions you have will be heard and answered."

Write down as many details as you can about what's wrong with you, suggests Don Powell, president and chief executive of the American Institute for Preventive Medicine. And then take that sheet of paper with you to the doctor's appointment.

"What the patient tells the doctor is 70 percent responsible for a correct diagnosis," Powell said. "How you describe your symptoms is beneficial in terms of enhancing your outcome."

You should note:

• Any symptoms.
• Medicines you are taking.
• Relevant family history.
• Any recent lifestyle changes.
• Any health concerns you've had on your mind.

If you have some idea of why you're ill, you also should try doing some research on your own, using either online resources or a medical guidebook, Levin said.

"The more you know about your symptoms or your diagnosis, the more likely it will be that this will be a meaningful visit and you will be satisfied," Levin said. "The less you know, the less basis you have for evaluating what the physician is saying to you."

You also might want to call a nurse advice line to get another perspective before hopping in the car, Powell said. Many hospitals and insurance companies offer these advice lines toll-free to patients and customers.

"Patients can actually speak to a health professional before they go to the doctor or hospital," he said. "They can be triaged over the phone."

By doing this research, you might learn that your problem could be treated at home without the aid of a doctor. Or, you might learn that an expensive emergency room visit is unnecessary and that the problem can wait until a visit to your family doctor the next day.

Before heading out to the doctor, though, you should do one more thing: Write down all the questions you need answered about your illness or condition.

"Patients who write down their questions are 90 percent more likely to get them answered," Powell said. "You tend to forget things when you're in the doctor's office, and the doctor may rush you."

If your doctor prescribes a medicine, be sure to ask follow-up questions, Levin said. "Physicians often aren't terribly inclined to have a full discussion about the drug they are prescribing," he said. "You need to probe." Key questions include:

• Why are you prescribing this particular drug?
• Are there alternatives to taking this medication?
• What are the possible side effects?
• Is there a generic version that will do the same job?

And if you've been prescribed a procedure or test, ask whether there are any risks associated with it. Also ask about the chances that the test could produce a false positive, requiring further testing and treatment when you're actually healthy.

Your work hasn't finished once you've left the doctor's office, Levin said. Don't let any questions that occur to you later go unanswered, particularly before you undergo a test or procedure.

"If you leave and later remember an important question, call up the office and tell them you forgot one important thing you want to know," he said. "You don't have to reschedule an appointment just to get an answer." Some doctors will take the time to call you back or will have a nurse call you with the answer. Other doctors will communicate by e-mail.

Powell said other tips that can save patients money and improve their health include:

• Setting up a well-stocked home pharmacy. With that in place, you can treat many illnesses that don't require a doctor's attention without having to leave the house. Suggested items include antacids, antihistamines, diarrhea medicine, decongestants, throat antiseptics, pain relievers and laxatives.
• Taking advantage of free health fairs and health screenings. Valuable tests often are offered at no charge at these events. "Just make sure you share the results with your doctor," Powell said.

For more information

The U.S. Surgeon General has more on creating a personal health history.

Read more about health-care advice lines  .

FRIDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Even though anger is a negative emotion, angry people tend to pay more attention to rewards than threats, a new study finds.

Previous research has found that people with other types of negative emotions, such as fear or anxiety, tend to focus more on threat than reward. For example, they'll spend more time looking at a picture of a person holding a knife threateningly than a picture of a sexy couple.

On the other hand, people experiencing a positive emotion such as excitement are drawn to rewards, explained Brett Q. Ford, of Boston College, and colleagues.

"Emotions can vary in what they make you want to do. Fear is associated with a motivation to avoid, whereas excitement is associated with a motivation to approach. It can make you want to seek out certain things, like rewards," Ford said in an Association for Psychological Science news release.

In the study, volunteers were asked to write for 15 minutes about one of four personal memories, and were assigned to write about a time when they were angry, afraid, excited/happy, or felt little or no emotion. Depending on the emotion the participant had been assigned, a five-minute piece of music was played to reinforce the feeling.

After completing the writing task, the volunteers were asked to look at two side-by-side pictures. The investigators used a device that monitors eye movement to determine how much time the volunteers spent focusing on each picture. They found that volunteers who had been assigned to recall an angry memory spent more time looking at rewarding pictures, as did the people who recalled feeling happy and excited.

The findings suggest that visual attention may not be related to negative versus positive emotions, but instead related to how a person's emotions motivate them. For example, anger might motivate someone to approach something in an aggressive way, while happiness might cause someone to want to approach things in a social or friendly way, the study authors noted in the news release.

"Attention kicks off an entire string of events that can end up influencing behavior," the authors concluded in the news release.

The study findings were released online in advance of publication in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science.

More information

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy explains how anger affects families  .

THURSDAY, Aug. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Less than four hours of sleep on five consecutive nights may affect the brain in a way similar to that of acute total sleep deprivation, a new study suggests.

The finding, from animal research, adds to growing evidence about the negative effects that lack of sleep has on both the brain and the body, said study leader Dr. Chiara Cirelli, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

She and her colleagues studied the brain waves of rats who were kept awake 20 hours a day over five days. Specifically, they focused on slow-wave activity (SWA), which reveals an individual's need to sleep as well as the intensity of sleep that follows a period of wakefulness.

The rats' SWA measures showed that sleep restriction produced intense recovery sleep (longer and deeper sleep) following each wake cycle. The more effective the researchers were at keeping the rats awake during the 20 hours each day, the larger the rodents' sleep rebound.

"It was an indirect but powerful indication of how sleepy the animals actually were," Cirelli said in a university news release.

The study appears in the current online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cirelli noted that many people are sleep-restricted, either by necessity or by choice.

"Instead of going to bed when they are tired, like they should, people watch TV and want to have an active social life," Curelli said. "People count on catching up on their sleep on the weekends, but it may not be enough."

"Even relatively mild sleep restriction for several nights can affect an individual's ability to perform cognitive tasks," she concluded. "For instance, recent studies in humans have shown that five days with only four hours of sleep/night result in cumulative deficits in vigilance and cognition, and these deficits do not fully recover after one night of sleep, even if 10 hours in bed are allowed. Sleep restriction can also increase resistance to insulin, leading to a risk of diabetes."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about sleep and sleep disorders.

THURSDAY, Aug. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Poor hand washing habits by food handlers and the contamination of food by animal feces are among the prime reasons Americans get sickened by foodborne germs, according to a new government report.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pored over data on the nearly 1,100 reported foodborne disease outbreaks in the United States in 2007. These outbreaks resulted in more than 21,000 illnesses and 18 deaths, according to the report released Thursday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

One foodborne agent was confirmed as the cause of 497 (45 percent) of the outbreaks, while more than one foodborne agent was confirmed responsible in 12 of the outbreaks. A foodborne agent wasn't identified in more than half of the outbreaks, the CDC said.

In cases where a foodborne agent was identified, norovirus was the most common cause (39 percent), followed by salmonella (27 percent). Infected food handlers who don't wash their hands well after using the toilet are the most common cause of norovirus outbreaks.

Salmonella outbreaks are most often caused when food is contaminated with animal feces. Salmonella contamination usually involves animal-related foods such as beef, poultry, milk and eggs, but vegetables and other foods can also be contaminated, the CDC said. Thorough cooking kills salmonella.

Of the 235 outbreaks where one type of food was identified, the largest number of illnesses listed poultry (691 illnesses), beef (667 illnesses) and leafy vegetables (590 illnesses) as the cause, said the CDC team.

"Knowing more about what types of foods and foodborne agents have caused outbreaks can help guide public health and the food industry in developing measures to effectively control and prevent infections and help people stay healthy," Chris Braden, acting director of the CDC's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases, said in an agency news release.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has more about foodborne diseases.