Tag: health

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To prick or not to prick, that is the question

Image via Flickr.
Image via Flickr.

Employees must wash hands.

Workers must wear protective gear.

Health-care workers… well, if you don’t feel like getting your flu shot, don’t sweat it.

One of these things is not like the other. Any professional who works in any field has a set of social rules. These rules can be for the well-being of the workers themselves or, in some cases, for those benefiting from their services. If you found out that the guy who put your burger together hadn’t washed his hands before handling your food, I don’t think it would look nearly as appetizing as it did before.

If we demand these rules of professionalism from those who handle our food, then why shouldn’t we demand the same from those who we trust with our health? An estimated 55 to 65 per cent of health-care workers don’t get their seasonal flu vaccinations; so there’s a good chance that next time you go get your vaccine, the person administering it isn’t protected.

Since the fear of a widespread pandemic has been hanging over our heads for the past few years, doctors have been telling us to wash our hands, avoid touching our faces, cough or sneeze into our elbow… the list goes on and on. And on that list is the advice to go get our annual shots.

The influenza virus can be deadly. For young adults our immune systems are strong enough to fight it off without really taking the spring out of our step. Sure, it isn’t fun, but it usually isn’t a death sentence. It is for the elderly, the very young and the sick that the flu can be problematic. Coincidentally, these are usually the people who come into contact most frequently with health-care workers. So if the people who are supposed to help protect your health are unintentionally harming it, steps should be taken to prevent that.

Just because someone doesn’t display the symptoms of the flu doesn’t mean that they can’t pass it on if they’re infected. According to the Center for Disease Control, you can become contagious up to a day before showing symptoms. In normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be a big deal. However, to people who are already working in an environment where the patients have a low immune system or are recovering from some other illness or surgery, the flu is the last thing that they need.

If the flu shot is as effective as doctors are trying to make us believe, then it stands to reason that they should be the first to get it; and if it isn’t as effective as they want us to believe, then they should still get it to lower the chances of contaminating others.

According to the Canadian Lung Organization, up to 8,000 Canadians die of the flu every year. For a virus regarded as ‘seasonal’, that’s a pretty high death toll.

Influenza is dangerous. It can kill. If by taking cautionary measures we can lower the death toll, even by just 100, then it would be 100 less families grieving. If this means that health-care workers have to get vaccinated as well, then so be it. Although I do not endorse that doctors and nurses who refuse to be pricked be banned from hospitals or forcefully injected, at least get them to wear masks at all times. As much as health workers have the right to decide what they do with their bodies, patients deserve to be treated in a safe, flu-free environment.

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Student Life

While the mind’s away, your thoughts will play

Graphic Phil Waheed

When he was faced with a particularly vexing problem, Albert Einstein had a simple method for coming up with a solution: he would pick up his violin and improvise melodies. Soon enough he’d experience the elusive “eureka” moment, put down his instrument and resume his work.

Though this may seem like the eccentric approach of an unconventional mind, it is actually grounded in science. A new study from the University of California in Santa Barbara claims that it’s actually in your best interests to indulge in the occasional bout of mental meandering. Researchers at the university asked participants to perform an “unusual use task” in which they had to come up with as many uses for an object as they could, and then split them into four groups.

Graphic Phil Waheed

The first group then performed a demanding task, the second an undemanding task, the third took a break and the fourth immediately repeated the “unusual use task.”

What the study showed was that only those who completed the undemanding task showed significant improvement the second time around. The study concluded that “engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving” and the implications of this could be substantial.

“The discovery that under the appropriate circumstances mind-wandering can foster creative processes could eventually lead to the development of programs and techniques that facilitate creative incubation in professional and pedagogical domains,” said Benjamin Baird, co-author of the study.

He mentioned programs like Google’s ‘20 per cent time’ and 3M’s ‘15 per cent program’, which allow employees to pursue special projects on company time, as evidence that the business world has lost no time in taking advantage of this fact.

They are programs that allow their employees to take a portion of their paid time to decompress and let their imagination and creative thoughts take over. He thinks that further research like his could provide “the foundation for programs like this to become part of the structure of competitive businesses and other institutions in a society increasingly driven by innovative ideas.”

In her article Rest Is Not Idleness: Implications of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education, University of Southern California professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang argues that the “time off” our brains take also enables us to make sense of our past as well as prepare for the future.

“Rest isn’t idleness, we are doing something, we’re making meaning out of our experiences, rehashing and formulating them into coherent narratives that we can then make into personal memories we can learn from and move forward with.”

She also suggests that this down time allows our brain to appreciate and imagine hypothetical and future scenarios that allow us to try on sets of events before they happen and get a sense of what the possibilities are for the future.

“We know that these kinds of future oriented mindsets and the ability to imagine hypothetical events in the future is critical for success, especially academic success.”

Though Einstein played the violin in search of answers, keep in mind that Nero fiddled while Rome burned; before you go flitting off into flights of fancy, be aware that your daydreaming is a double-edged sword.

According to one study from researchers at the University of North Carolina, daydreaming can actually be detrimental to whatever task you find yourself escaping from. Allowing the mind to wander “tends to lead to poorer performance on whatever ongoing activities we’re partaking in,” said professor Michael Kane, the author of the study. “In part this seems to be because we do less processing of the external world while mind wandering, and we are less likely to over-ride automatic, ‘auto-pilot’ responses while engaged in task-unrelated thoughts.”

So in short, do feel free to let your mind wander, just make sure that it doesn’t go too far.

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Student Life

Side effects not included

Graphic Phil Waheed

Some of the most common and inescapable symptoms one gets when down with a cold or flu include coughing, sneezing, sore throat, itching, body ache and fatigue, fever and good old nasal congestion.

Graphic Phil Waheed

The fact of the matter is, once a virus is caught the only thing that is sure to eliminate it is time. However, there are many ways in which a person can prevent and relieve irritating symptoms.

Commercial ads for big medicine companies such as Nyquil, Robitussin and Advil publicize the idea that just one pill or dose will make a person look and feel completely back to normal. However, medicines don’t always do the trick.

More and more people today are looking to natural remedies such as herbs when relieving themselves of cold and flu symptoms as opposed to popping pills every couple of hours.

“Herbs help us feel better because they treat the symptoms as well as the root of the problem, unlike many pharmaceuticals which mask the symptoms,” said Monica Giacomin, a herbalist and native skills professor at Marianopolis College.

“Using herbs as preventative medicine is an even better solution for maintaining optimum health and energy long-term,” she said.

Some tonic herbs she suggests to try when sick are burdock, garlic, stinging nettle, holy basil, medicinal mushrooms, and seaweed.

For those constantly on the go even through sickness, try a cup of tea instead of a morning coffee. Available at David’s Tea, Cold 911 (without caffeine) and Gail’s Cold Remedy (with caffeine) have mint and are said to release pressure in the nose and soothe the throat.

Once you’ve had your tea for the day and are on your way home, check out some recommended at-home remedies.

Take a hot steam shower. Not only does the hot water feel good, it relieves symptoms of chest congestion and the steam opens your airways, allowing you to breathe easier.

A Neti Pot literally flushes the nose of mucus, bacteria and viruses using a saline solution. Here’s what you have to do to make your own nasal spray at home. Boil eight ounces of water and then allow the water to cool to room temperature. Pour the water into a sterilized jar or Neti Pot. Add 1 / 4 teaspoon of salt and 1 / 2 teaspoon of baking soda to the water and you’re ready to go.

You can also try sucking on some Zinc Lozenges. Just like vitamins, they can be consumed after a meal and are said to boost the immune system’s virus-fighting power.

Lastly, try a spoonful of honey or lemon in your tea. It’s a classic for a reason. It tastes great and  is said to help relieve coughing.

So, next time you think to grab a bottle of something from the medicine cabinet, try some of these natural remedies instead. You might be better off!

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Student Life

A womb with a view

Image courtesy of Flickr.
Image courtesy of Flickr.

Ever since Sigmund Freud introduced the concept of a person’s childhood shaping their adult selves, the notion of our formative years conditioning our adult lives has seen a rise in popularity. There have been many heated debates over nature versus nurture, as well as the foundations of personality, popping up in Lamaze classes and parenting circles.

But what if we could go back even further than that? What if someone told you that your time spent in the womb was just as important as the years spent crawling on all fours? That is precisely what some scientists working in a field, known as developmental origins of health and disease or fetal origins, are claiming. They’ve provided evidence for the idea that everything from your mother’s diet to her state of mind while pregnant can ultimately shape who you become later on in life.

The genesis of the fetal origin movement came when David Barker, a British physician and professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Southampton, noted two decades ago the correlation between a high rate of heart disease and living in poorer neighbourhoods. This surprised him, as heart disease was purportedly an ailment of the upper, more sedentary class.

After some research into the matter, he found a link between small birth size and heart disease. From this he drew the conclusion that the mother’s lack of proper nutrition during pregnancy would cause the fetus’ to redirect nutrients to the brain in favor of less vital areas. This meant that when those children reached middle age, their hearts were more likely to be noticeably weaker than average.

This idea, known as the Barker Hypothesis, has slowly begun gaining traction within the scientific community since its inception 20 years ago. Now, others are having similar findings in their own fields of research, such as the pair of studies done at Harvard Medical School. The first links a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy to her child’s risk of being overweight by age three, and the second finds that this correlation extends even further into adolescence.

Additionally, research comparing children born to obese mothers and their siblings born after the mother had gastric bypass surgery, has shown that those delivered after the surgery were 52 per cent less prone to obesity than their pre-surgery brothers and sisters.

Fetal origin research has also yielded discoveries in the domain of mental health. One study, using 30 years of case records from the Chinese province of Anhui, found that those born during the country’s Great Leap Forward, a failed economic and social campaign from 1958 to 1961, that resulted in a severe famine. Studies showed that the children born during this period were twice as likely to suffer from schizophrenia.

Another study found similar results for Israeli children who were in their second month of gestation during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War in June 1967.

“This research is very important because as we identify risk factors for child maladjustment – like an adverse prenatal environment – we can more easily work to alleviate this risk,” said Sara Colalillo, a McGill psychology graduate currently working on her masters in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia.

“For example, educating and training families to provide a warm, supportive environment in the months and years after birth can mitigate the risk of a suboptimal fetal environment.”

Colalillo worked at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal studying how the early environment, including the in-utero environment, can have lasting effects on different aspects of development and health across the lifespan.

She said there is still much more to be learned when it comes to what makes us who we are.

“Human development is extremely complex, and the fetal environment is a fundamental part of the process. But of course, it is not the only part, and there are countless factors that serve to influence our health and competence throughout our lifetime,” said Colalillo. “Still, we have so much to learn from this important little window of time in our lives!”

Categories
Arts

ARTiculate: Survival lit for university living

 The ‘freshman fifteen’ is the colloquial term for the unfortunately common occurrence of weight gain during your first year at university. It is usually caused by academic and social stress, increase in the consumption of alcohol and the sudden freedom of being able to eat whatever, whenever, without parental intervention. And yes, it can happen to you.

But never fear, literature is here! The following are several books to help you cope with stress, eating healthy, staying healthy and finding time to exercise during a busy school day.

1. I’m freaking out! Nobody can escape stress, especially when papers are due, exams are looming and your hangover has kept you in bed until noon. Nonetheless stress is manageable and if you’re looking for tips and tricks to keep you from pulling your hair out, then Stress Management For Dummies by Allen Elkin is your go-to guide. Touted as being “better than a psychiatrist” by reviewers on Amazon.com, this book is full of tips and techniques for deflating your stress. It’s also light on the wallet; Chapters Indigo is currently offering the trade paperback for $3.99 on their website.

2. Food is everywhere and lots and lots to drink! Montreal is brimming with great places to eat and drink and many are open all night long. So how do you fill your stomach without filling out your waistline? I recommend David Zinczenko’s best selling book Eat This, Not That! 2013: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution. “It’s like a cookbook, grocery list, and takeout menu drawer rolled into one book,” say Amazon.com reviewers. Packed full of nutritional information and tips for making food choices, this book is an essential guide to eating with pleasure, without the weight gain.

3. But I have no time to exercise! School, work, study, social life, sleep, there’s just so much to do and so little time. How in the world do you expect me to go to the gym with all this going on? Well, do you have 15 minutes? Quick Fit by Richard Bradley provides fifteen minute, no-sweat workouts that you can fit in anywhere, anytime. “The simple instructions, clear illustrations, motivational plan and convincing testaments from DOT (Department of Transportation) personnel who have adopted the routine should inspire readers, whether they be habitually sluggish or simply sorely pressed for time,” wrote Publishers Weekly in their 2003 online review.*

4. Funny but true, it’s all in the poo! There is nothing more crippling to your academic year than being sick. However, there is doctorless way to check up on your health and its sitting in your toilet (hopefully). Did you know that the shape, texture, color, size and the way your poo floats can tell you a lot about the state of your health? It’s true and if you want to know what your poo can do for you, you’ll need the ultimate guide. What’s Your Poo Telling You by Anish Sheth and Josh Richman. Lisa Susan on Goodreads.com says; “This book was quite interesting and unusual! While it was humorous, it also has a serious side that tells the reader exactly why your stool looks the way it does. It contains numerous interesting stool trivia. Once you’ve read this book you, too, will be looking at your poo in a whole new way for the rest of your life.”

Categories
Student Life

Get Sweaty and Get Social

Concordia grad David Sciacca co-founded Training Mobs in 2011.
Concordia grad David Sciacca co-founded Training Mobs in 2011.

While lifting weights at the gym to a personalized playlist may be the ideal workout for some, others need a little change in pace and scenery – a feeling David Sciacca and Jonas Caruana understand all too well.

What started as a long distance friendship eventually grew into a shared apartment and a business plan. With a mutual passion for fitness, Sciacca, 30, and Caruana, 29, launched Training Mobs in January 2011, a fitness community website that lists and promotes great local group workouts.

“We really wanted to bring back the social aspect of fitness,” said Sciacca. “Make it easy for people to go to whatever workout they want and not have to be members there.”

Aside from being extremely practical for the fitness community, Training Mobs gives that extra nudge of encouragement to its members, a sense of inspiration that Sciacca and Caruana were searching for themselves not too long ago.

After graduating in finance from Concordia University, Sciacca worked three-and-a-half years in investment banking, a job he had no desire to keep.

“I realized very quickly that I wasn’t doing something I was in love with and I got tired of that,” he said. “To be completely honest, I had no idea what I wanted to do.”

His epiphany led him to Costa Rica where he extended an invitation to his Australian friend, Caruana, who shared the same dismay for his management job. The two had met seven years ago during a university exchange program in Budapest.

“We were surfing and we started complaining about how hard it was to find a great workout wherever we were and how hard it was to coordinate workouts with friends while we were working,” said Sciacca. “We thought maybe there was something out there that would help fix this. When we looked into it and didn’t find anything, that’s when we said, ‘Well this doesn’t make sense.’ So we created Training Mobs from that.”

Committed to finding great workouts for their members, Sciacca and Caruana reach out to independent studios and gyms that offer more intimate experiences bigger gyms sometimes fail to provide. Apart from the free exposure, Training Mobs allows smaller autonomous gyms to connect with their target audience all the while offering a variety of workouts to their members.

“People who have opened an independent gym tend to do it out of passion because everyone knows that opening a studio is probably not the fastest way to get brilliantly rich,” said Sciacca. “When you’re doing something you love, you’re more committed to it – you build a community around you and people enjoy that kind of experience.”

Everyday, Training Mobs offers a fresh list of diverse social fitness classes at a discount rate, from circuit training on Mount Royal to hot yoga in the West Island. No matter the time, location or workout preference, anybody can sign up for a workout on a whim.

While Training Mobs continues to spread across Canada and the United States, Sciacca and Caruana are creating new ways to connect their studio and gym partners with their members. One in particular that is gaining some attention is the MobPass.

“We think the MobPass has potential to change the way people think about fitness,” said Sciacca. “We believe in group fitness because it’s more fun and there’s that social accountability.”

With a monthly purchase of $9.95, the MobPass offers access to every Training Mob gym, studio and trainer at a ten-class-pass rate. Suitable for travelers or anyone with a hectic schedule and an interest in trying new workouts, Sciacca describes the MobPass as being a universal gym membership to all the best independent studios from Montreal to Toronto to San Francisco.

“Why are we preventing people from getting access to these small studios that are specialized by restricting them to one type of workout?” he said. “There’s got be people out there that like variety, that would appreciate flexibility.”

Aside from expanding their fitness community and spreading the word, Sciacca and Caruana are constantly trying to keep an open conversation with their partners and members. They share a blog with their members and encourage people to post videos and messages of their great workouts, and to show newcomers that working out doesn’t have to be intimidating.

“This is a community of real people that are going out and getting active,” said Sciacca. “Training Mobs belongs to the community and we always wanted it to be that way. If you had a great workout experience and want to tell the world about it, let us know and we’ll be happy to shoot it out to the world.”

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Student Life

Don’t let the weather rain on your parade

Graphic by Alessandra McGovern
Graphic by Alessandra McGovern

Cranking the clock one hour forward this past Sunday is a familiar ritual filled with mixed emotions.
While it does mark that spring is around the corner, what you lose in one hour of beloved sleep, you gain in an hour of precious daylight. This fact is one of the many strategies you can put in your arsenal of tricks to help make seasonal affective disorder disappear.
According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, SAD is a category of clinical depression thought to be triggered by the shortened days between late autumn until spring, resulting in less absorption of daylight. Even though SAD was officially coined as a disorder in the early 1980s, the general public living in northern climates unofficially refer to SAD as the “winter blues.”
However, using SAD and winter blues interchangeably is apparently a misnomer according to CMHA; while it is estimated that two to three per cent of Canadians are affected by SAD, up to 15 per cent of Canucks sing the winter blues, which is a milder form of SAD. Does the medical term “disorder” affect people’s interpretation of this condition or is SAD just a medical theory conspiracy?
Ahmed Abusneneh, 27, a third-year math student, doesn’t think the SAD label adds up to the sum of its parts. “I don’t believe in names, but I think it exists,” Abusneneh said. “We’re meant to live in the daytime, not at nighttime; nighttime is to sleep. So, if we have more time to sleep than to be active, then for sure as a human, you’re going to be depressed if you’re not strong.”
The opposite holds true for fourth-year honours sociology and Judaic studies student Sofia Danna when it comes to linking less sleep to depression. “I don’t necessarily get depressed, but I do know that I feel, when I’m up too late, I just get more negative and if it’s really late, I can still just be brooding,” said Danna. “So, that’s why I feel that maybe if I don’t have seasonal affective disorder, I think that I benefit from getting more sunlight and going outside.”
So what causes us to become hibernating humans during the winter? Heidi Wiedemann, a Montreal psychologist in private practice, explains that we need to see the light.
“The fact that we get that much less daylight has a very depressive effect on a lot of people, and it is like a domino effect; less light, so people go out less often, they exercise less often and all those things combined really change how people’s brains are working, they become more lethargic.” Wiedemann continues to describe how “what you seek, you will find” attitude plays a role in those affected by SAD.
“If you’re joyful and optimistic and feeling up, your brain is primed to look for things in your environment that are cheery, that are positive, that are uplifting,” Wiedemann said. “And the opposite is also true that, if you find yourself in a bit of a slump or the weather changes and you have less light and you’re becoming more lethargic, your brain is then primed to pick up all those things that will also fit that, so it will look for less positive things as reinforcement.”
Picking up on SAD symptoms may not always be as obvious; typically, the symptoms range from anxiety, appetite changes, difficulty concentrating, irritability, tendency to oversleep, reduced energy and increased fatigue. Research has also shown that SAD usually starts the age of 20 and is more prevalent in women than men. While these symptoms can overlap with those of other forms of depression, it is possible to distinguish them.
“The main differentiating factor between depression and SAD would be that with depression, usually there is something that triggers it, like an event or a loss of some sort […] a break-up, losing something of value and there are also certain thinking patterns that just make the depression deeper,” said Anna Cegielka, a West Island psychotherapist who specialises in cognitive behaviour. “With seasonal affective disorder, it just kind of happens out of the blue, all of a sudden for seemingly no good reason, people just start feeling down and lacking energy.”
Feeling the heat of spring fever is tempting when we look at the calendar that says winter will be over in a few weeks; however, the veteran Montrealer knows not to count one’s spring eggs before they hatch, as that surprise last gasp of winter seems to take our breath away come late March or early April. Whether you’ve hit a low note in singing the winter blues, or you’ve reached your breaking point, there are practical, affordable and effective solutions to help you see the light at the end of the SAD tunnel.
“It’s being mindful and aware of yourself, of your moods, your feelings, energy levels and observing and being aware from day to day how things fluctuate,” said Cegielka, suggesting effective mindfulness activities such as meditation, Tai Chi and yoga. “For some individuals, getting full-spectrum light bulbs (special light bulbs that do not filter out UV) provide somewhat of a simulation of daylight.”
Cegielka also mentioned that special lamps, similarly to light therapy, deliver a bigger dose of lighting that may be more helpful for those with increased SAD symptoms.
As for Wiedemann, she provided a three-step approach in addition to increased light to march through March a happy camper.
“My first thing would be take [exercise] outside and get as much sunlight and as much daylight on you as you can; even in my private practice I really shy away from medications,” Wiedemann explained. “There’s too much lately about how all the medications cause changes in the brain that keep you then perpetually stuck in a loop of needing when in fact, [if] you listen to those top three things, take care of yourself nutritionally, that you exercise, and that you get outside into the daylight, […] that’s much more effective than medication.”
Besides filling up on healthy foods with vitamins C, D and omega 3, or dusting off those trainers in the back of your closet (while keeping those winter boots on standby), the most simple and effective strategy you have within yourself is the power to make a positive change.

Categories
Student Life

Scares, stigmas and STIs

VICTORIA — STIs, or sexually transmitted infections, have been a feared and stigmatized topic since biblical times. In contemporary times, we see a prominent stigma surrounding these infections. People are often labelled as “dirty” or “overly promiscuous” due to their affiliation with STIs. These people find themselves affected by a stigma that suggests all STIs are unmanageable problems that cause a person to be tainted for life. Though stigmas have been helped along by popular culture and old literature (for example, every Shakespeare comedy written), it is often taboos that prevent communication about STIs.
Jennifer Gibson, Island Sexual Health educator, teaches the importance of communication in curbing the spread of STIs as well as the stigmas behind them.
“In my experience as a sexual health educator, when sexually transmitted infections are being passed between partners, it often is because of the lack of communication that’s happened and it’s not [the intention] to harm someone; it’s that they haven’t been able to talk about it or they have no idea they actually have it,” says Gibson.
According to Gibson, the age-old preconceived notion that promiscuity is the recipe for disease isn’t necessarily true.
“People think that people who have multiple sexual partners have [an increased likelihood] of having a sexually transmitted infection than people who don’t. Theoretically, they have more opportunity for exposure, but they may not [actually] be getting exposed to sexually transmitted infections,” she explains.
One might say that the obvious way to avoid the spread of STIs is by frequent testing. Gibson recommends that people get checked at least once every three to six months or before every new partner depending on your frequency. However, getting checked isn’t always foolproof.
“Not all clinics offer the same standard testing. Often people go in for testing but they may not be told — or they may not ask — what they’ve been tested for. They then make assumptions that they’ve been tested for everything, when in fact it’s generally just those five that constitute a full STI screen [chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis, syphilis and HIV].”
In some cases, according to Gibson, clinics might not even test for all of these; leaving syphilis out, for example. As uncommon as syphilis might be in comparison with say, chlamydia, lack of testing for the infection does reveal a basic flaw in the system.
Even the evolution of the naming of these infections, from “sexually transmitted diseases” to “sexually transmitted infections” as they are now called, shows a basic reason of why they are so widespread.
“We now refer to them as STIs because it refers to things that are asymptomatic,” says Gibson.
This means that just because everything seems in working order does not necessarily mean that they are. Many STIs can go undetected without testing. This does not mean the infections are untreatable, however.
“I think that’s where your stigma comes in. It’s that idea that they are these long-term major issues for people’s health, which they can be, but they also can be very manageable if people are given proper care and testing,” says Gibson.
Yet while something like chlamydia is easier to treat than a headache, the stigma persists. However, by getting checked often, asking questions and staying informed about your sexual health, as Gibson teaches, the spread of STIs and the stigma that goes along with them will begin to subside.
As Gibson puts it, “the more we [get checked] the less opportunity for stigma is there because really it shouldn’t be any different than taking care of any other part of your body.”

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News

Needle exchange program cut from Heads and Hands

This sharps container, used for the disposal of needles, is part of the Heads and Hands street worker's kit.

Head and Hands, a clinic and social services organization for youth aged 18-25, has scrapped its Streetwork needle exchange program in Notre-Dame-de-Grace, potentially leaving hundreds of users in the west end without clean needles and other forms of support.

Juniper Belshaw, fundraising and development co-ordinator, said that the organization was told by Montreal’s Directeur de santé publique last August that the $75,000 required to fund the two programs had been slashed from their budget. Other organizations also lost their funding in the round of budget cuts, said Belshaw.

A spokesperson from public health confirmed the cuts, saying they were ultimately made for budget reasons, though the results are unfortunate.

By Aug. 19, Streetwork closed down, leaving the two street workers out of a job and potentially hundreds of people without their services, which includes referrals to counselling and other services.

“I like to think of these street workers as these harm reduction fairies,” said Belshaw. “At Head and Hands, we work with a harm reduction approach, which has a lot to do with meeting people where they’re at. […] If someone is having sex, we want to talk about how to have safer sex. If someone’s using drugs, we want to say, ‘Hey, here’s some information about how to smoke more safely, how to inject more safely.’”

The workers distributed 360 needles, 64 crack pipes and over 6,700 condoms between March and July of this year, and touched base with nearly 700 new contacts.

Ironically, while Head and Hands has had to cut its needle exchange program, it has gone public just over a week after it was announced that a provincial pilot project will see the launch of two safe injection sites. Health minister Yves Bolduc said he had consulted and will work with needle exchange services Cactus and Point de Repères to set up safe injection sites in Montreal and Quebec City.

Both needle exchange programs and safe injection sites are based on the “harm reduction” model, which attempts to reduce the harmful risks of drug consumption without requiring users to abstain. With needle exchange programs like Head and Hands’, street workers are mobile, visiting clients at their apartments, metros, parks and the street. Whereas safe injection sites are stationary, and users can safely shoot up and receive medical attention and other resources, without the fear of being arrested for violating drug laws.

Groups have been anticipating the announcement of more safe injection sites across the country since the Supreme Court of Canada granted on Oct. 1 an exemption to allow InSite, a Vancouver safe injection site, to remain open in spite of federal drug laws. The ruling has left the possibility for safe injection sites to pop up without problem in the rest of the country.

Speaking in an interview less than a week before Bolduc’s announcement, Marianne Tonnelier, director-general of Cactus, said that her organization was looking to set up a safe injection site before the end of the year and was working on a request for an exemption.

Dr. Julie Bruneau, a researcher in drug addiction at Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, was one of those who welcomed the announcement of the sites.

“We need an array of services for those who are hard to reach. This is one of the many services that can help with that,” she said.

A survey a few years ago estimated the number of drug users on the Island of Montreal at between 10,000 and 15,000 people. But, said Bruneau, each city is different when it comes to drug use patterns. Montreal, unlike Vancouver, does not have a concentrated group of drug users in one place. It may be that there will be more than one safe injection site in Montreal, potentially helping the users who received support from Streetwork out in the western part of the island, she suggested.

But Belshaw still hopes to begin another needle exchange program, this time by seeking out diverse sources of funding instead of relying on one government source. There has almost always been a form of the service in the 40 years that Head and Hands has been operating, she said.

“I think what we’re really focusing on right now is the impact this has on our clients, and the way that we can bring this service back,” said Belshaw.

Categories
Student Life

Navigating health information online

Graphic by Phil Waheed

Graphic by Phil Waheed

Sore throat? Headache? Swollen glands? The discovery of whatever is making you feel sick is only a click away on the Internet. With the web being well up-to-date with all sorts of medical information, it is easy for people to try and diagnose themselves. The real question: is it safe?

Concordia student Mia Di Carlo was under a lot of stress and experiencing heart palpitations when she turned to the Internet to find some answers.

“On some websites it said that it’s normal when you’re anxious. Then another website was saying that [palpitations] are deadly and need to be checked out by a doctor. So I was definitely uncertain and it was not reassuring,” says Di Carlo.

Rather than finding answers and relief, she found herself becoming even more stressed than before. Her heart palpitations got worse. Using the Internet to determine what is making you feel ill is only natural when so much information is at our fingertips. There are all sorts of web pages that not only help diagnose your symptoms, but can also help advise you on how to treat them.

 

Going online for answers

While there are very good and legitimate websites that are excellent resources, there are also some that are not as reliable. Many viruses have similar symptoms but very different treatments, making self-diagnosis a problem when it comes to more serious things. For example, the symptoms of mononucleosis and strep throat are pretty much the same. Even the way they are contracted is the same. The real difference is how they are treated, proving that it is very important to get a professional to examine you and look at your symptoms.

“The Internet is part of our life now. However, diagnosing oneself is never a good idea,” says Donna Cooper, a nurse at Concordia Health Services.

Though the web can be an excellent resource, Cooper advises people who are concerned about their health to go and talk to a health professional.

“Often people will come up with a diagnosis that’s really not even close to what’s wrong with them,” she explains.

Owen Moran, a health promotion specialist at Concordia, says that it is inevitable that people will turn to technology when it comes to their health.

“I believe that many people like to know what is going on with their health and they like to be proactive at it, so they seek out the information they need to understand what is going on,” he says.

He believes that people use the Internet for self-diagnosis for several reasons. The first is that the Internet is familiar to them and, just like people use it for booking plane tickets and communicating, getting health information is just an extension of that.  The Internet is also close, convenient and has a wide range of knowledge that is more than one physician might have.

 

Questions to ask yourself

According to an article written by Moran on the Concordia Health Services website, if students want to use online health resources, they need to be cautious and know what sort of website is reliable.  The article provides some questions that you should ask yourself about the website you are using such as:

– Who is responsible for this website?

– What is the purpose of the site?

– Where does the information come from?

– What is the quality of the information?

– Is the site up-to-date?

– Does the site respect your privacy?

 

It is important to find the answers to some of these questions in order to make sure that you are receiving proper information and also to make sure that the site does not have a slant. Some pharmaceutical companies that put up health websites only give their own products as means of treatment. They can omit better methods or products that can help, which can also be dangerous. Before ever settling for what you read on a website, it is always best for you to consult a doctor, no matter how small your concern may be.

 

Health related websites

In their October 2010 newsletter, Health Services listed a number of reliable websites. Here are three recommended sites from their list:

1. MedicineNet, www.medicinenet.com is an American site offering information on diseases and conditions, symptoms and medications and a medical term dictionary.

2. Public Health Agency of Canada, www.phac-aspc.gc.ca, provides information on a variety of subjects including infectious and chronic diseases as well as a travel health section.

3. Go Ask Alice, www.goaskalice.columbia.edu, administered by Columbia University’s Health Services, the site provides answers to hundreds of questions asked by college students on alcohol, drugs, fitness, nutrition, sexuality, emotional health and more.

 

Regardless of what you find online, if symptoms are serious or if they persist individuals should see a physician to make sure they get the proper treatment.

 

Visit www-health.concordia.ca to see clinic hours or to get more information

 

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