Storing medical information is tricky business. If you don't have faith in the government's My Health Record (a reasonable position to have), there are a variety of ways to store your secure data while letting others access it in case of emergencies.

The My Health Record opt-out period begins this week, and you have until October 15 to pull your records out of the scheme. But should you? Here are some compelling reasons to keep your records where they are.

We need smaller eyedroppers, stat. As ProPublica has reported, eyedrops are so large that they contain more liquid than can possibly fit into your eye. Fortunately, an adaptor may be on the way that won't waste half of your pricey glaucoma medication.

Post-flight blood clots can catch even seasoned travellers by surprise, as travel writer Lindsey Campbell recently found out. She stretches before flights and moves around as much as she can - but after landing, she dismissed her calf pain as probably an injury from hiking.

Coin cell or "button" batteries are small, shiny, and feel tingly on the tongue. If you're a toddler, that puts them into the category of "belongs in my mouth". But a swallowed button battery can begin burning a hole through a kid's oesophagus in hours, causing pain, severe injury, and sometimes complications leading to death.

Dear Lifehacker, In the past, I've assumed most doctors are charlatans, and only visited them in matter of dire emergency (needing a sick note for work, week-long flu, etc.). I am now reaching a point in my life where my body and mind are getting older and I am reconsidering past decisions.

While you technically can flush your old pills or throw them out, the The Pharmacy Guild of Australia strongly advises against it. That and there's enough nasty stuff going into sewage that it's best to keep medicine out of there if you can.

There are actually several types of bacteria that can cause necrotising fasciitis, which is the more accurate name for this condition. "Necrotising" means that the cells in your body's flesh are dying off; "fasciitis" means the result is inflammation of some connective tissues known as fascia.

For some, sipping cocktails does more than just get you tipsy - it turns your skin beet red. There's an old trick to prevent the skin from flushing that involves taking antihistamine medication, but it isn't a good idea. Here's why.

If you have a baby, and if something is wrong with that baby (something always seems wrong), somebody will suggest that you take your baby to a chiropractor. Perhaps you will hear this recommendation even when nothing is wrong. Friends, do not take your baby to the chiropractor.

That sneeze in the elevator. The snot somebody wiped on that handrail an hour ago. Your coworker who won't stay home, breathing right next to you. Cold and flu viruses are everywhere. And if you're coming down with something, you're spreading them too.

LDL used to be the "bad cholesterol" and HDL the "good cholesterol." That's the tidy story I learned in my grad school lipids class 13 years ago, but the science has evolved since then. High HDL is no longer automatically good, for example. Let's take a look at what your cholesterol numbers really mean.

Every year at the end of March and early in April, the 11 million Australians who have private health insurance receive notification that premiums are increasing.

Premiums will increase by an average of 3.95% from April 1 and will vary with the insurer and the product. The increase is lower than previous years but still higher than any wage growth, leaving consumers wondering if they should give it up or downgrade to save money.

When the doctors on The Doctors recommend a certain treatment or diet or supplement, you figure there's probably some truth to their recommendation, right? But a survey of their advice, along with The Dr Oz Show's, finds that most of it is probably not worth heeding.

We've been through a lot this year, from politics wearing on our mental health to wellness purveyors trying to sell us stuff we don't need. Here are some of our best health how-tos, explainers, and mythbusters of 2017.

If you were to look in your kitchen or bathroom cabinet, the chances are you’d find some unused medicine. Maybe you recovered from surgery more quickly than you expected, and didn’t take all the strong painkillers your doctor prescribed. Or perhaps you took a medicine so long ago that it’s expired, the cardboard packaging is disintegrating, and you can’t be certain what it was for in the first place. What now?

Every now and again, Lifehacker asks a medical professional the health questions that you wish an expert would answer but you can't quite bring yourself to ask. Today, we're helping out a reader who has a very personal and intimate butt question.

Every now and again, Lifehacker asks a medical professional to explain the weird things that our bodies do. Or could do. Or might do

In this way, your thirst for weird bodily function knowledge is sated - without besmirching your search history. Let's get started.

Do epidurals prolong labour? Read the recent headlines and you'd think we finally answered that question once and for all - with epidurals turning out to have no effect. But the study actually asked what happens if you already have an epidural, and turn it off as you're pushing out the baby.