Are you real or fake?

I have become a member of an online magazine which is about healthy life styles and health promotion. I really can’t remember how or when I became a member but I really don’t care since all I receive is e-articles about nutrients everyday.

I was reading this article about probiotics and their benefits in food. The article was pretty interesting and the suggestions seemed logical and “sciency” as some may say. I usually check the author and his/her bio to check for the article’s credibility. But when I went to the actual website I couldn’t find anything about the author of the article. Underneath the article, there was a section where people could ask their questions and the author of the article would answer them right next to it. Some of the questions were quiet simple and straight forward. However some were quite tricky and needed professional opinions. As I was checking the answers I realized some of these answers did not seem quite right. So I started googling the answers and I referred to my text books and lecture notes. I noticed that a couple of those answers were wrong but apparently no one had noticed them. So I wrote s note in the same page and corrected his answers. The next day when I checked the page again, I saw my post was deleted!

My concern is not that my post was deleted from that page. I am concern that how internet has made it accessible for everyone to share their information, right or wrong, show it as actual professional opinion and many people don’t really care who has made those statements. They search for something on internet and some may go for the first thing that pops on their page. People need to learn to question health care professionals’ credibility and make a right decision when it comes to accepting professionals suggestions from others. Now I know, the next time before I start reading an article I will search or author’s credibility first!

Please speak in MY language!

The idea of communication has never appeared to me as a problem or a real concern. Since I can remember I have always been able to talk to people and communicate with them. However, since I have started working in a community center in downtown Toronto, I have come to this realization that sometimes communication can be quite challenging and not as easy as it may sound. We may speak in a same language but our level of understanding or even our personal interpretation can be quite different.

I remember a couple of months ago, a young single mother came to health community center that I work and asked for some advice regarding her health and diet. Based on my trainings, I started asking about her regular eating patterns, her medical history, etc. after a while I realized that she consumes too much sodium in her diet and she may be in a high risk of high blood pressure. I didn’t use the term hypertension because from this experience I know now using some terms may not be appropriate for everybody. I started telling her about the side effects of consuming high level of sodium and hypertension and I thought I was giving her great information and felt pretty good about it. A few minutes later after I was done lecturing her, I asked her if she had any question. She simply said no, thanked me and left. Later that day, my supervisor came to see me and told me the young lady that was here earlier told her she didn’t understand a word I was telling her and she felt well… according to herself a bit stupid. Well ironically I felt pretty stupid myself. How could I imagine that she had good health backgrounds and made her feel that way? After that day I realized when it comes to health communication, we as health care professionals need to be extra careful and make sure our patients understand what we actually talk about.

Living in a city like Toronto where a large number of people come from varieties of backgrounds and cultures, has taught me a few things about people’s behavior, their expectations and understanding. This is even more apparent when we go to different parts of the city such as china town, little India, little Italy or Danford area. In order to communicate effectively with all these groups of people we need to be familiar with different communities. And I can tell you that it’s not an easy thing to do. I have a friend which comes from an Asian background. Obesity has never been an issue in her family. On the other hand my Italian friend considers eating and food as a major part of her life. When I think of it, it makes me wonder if one is really capable of getting to know and understand all these different backgrounds and cultures and if yes what methods or ways can be used?

Teenagers need education too!

As I was sitting in a doctor’s office and was turning over the pages of a magazine impatiently, I came across an article which was about the link between children’s obesity and later adulthood medical problems such as cardiovascular diseases and hypertension. I remembered one of the seminars we had a couple of weeks ago which was about the role of education in opening children’s eyes and showing them new perspectives of healthy eating and a better life style. An example was encouraging children to bring and drink water more often in school instead of juice or pop. One of the students in our class, who is a mother as well, told the class that before, eating and drinking in her child’s class was forbidden. However now there’s a new policy which let children to drink water in class freely. Another example was banning the vending machines in elementary schools. Even though it’s been over 10 years since I’ve been in elementary school, I remember that back then the school had started encouraging students to eat better and healthier. However the issue was not as big as it is today! But interestingly I clearly remember that all those healthy messages and advices stopped when I entered high school. It was as if students in high school did not need to hear and learn more about nutritious meals and healthier life style.

Later that week, I asked my cousin who is in the tenth grade if in her high school the issue of healthy eating has ever been raised and talked about. She told me only once and that was on an assembly which they had at the beginning of the year. This made me wonder about promoting health messages in our community, among one of the most vulnerable groups, teenagers. Here, in our program we learn about the importance of promoting and teaching health messages among people specially children through communities. However it seems like somehow we have lost our way and have missed a big gap: high schools. How could we forget about high school student when they are among the people who consume the largest amount of junk food? Shouldn’t we keep promoting and teaching them about healthier food choices and life styles instead of neglecting them?

I tried to remember how my eating habit back in high school was. Of course I can’t be quite accurate but I do remember that I used to eat in a way that could be improved greatly. And it wasn’t only my diet. My friends were also following a diet which now I know lacked many important nutrients. So I started telling my cousin a little bit about ways that she could improve her diet and enjoys a healthier life style. Her reaction was pretty interesting where she said she had absolutely no idea how much sodium is in her meals what are the side effects of consuming too much salt. She believes that all teenagers in high school need to be educated and informed about health messages, and maybe enforcing some rules such as drinking only water in class room or banning all the vending machines would be a great start.

Not so proud any more!

We Canadians are proud of our health care system; at least when it’s being compared to other health care systems in other countries such as United States. Why is that? Because health care system here in Canada is cheap. We can go see a doctor anytime we want, all we have to do is give the secretary our health card, and they swipe it and boom! We are covered. It doesn’t really matter if we are going for a regular check up, a surgery or blood test, pretty much everything is covered thanks to our magical card OHIP. Technically we pay for every visit to the doctor but it’s indirect. The money comes from the taxes government collects from people. But still this is a great system and so far it seems like a lovely idea to everybody. One question may come in to our mind: what about the services that we receive from the health care system? How’s the quality? Despite what Canadian government and Ontario Ministry of Health say about how great our health care system is, I think it sucks, period.

I can’t argue with the fact that the idea of having a health card such as OHIP for almost everybody in Canada is pretty good and it’s been working so far; however, it seems like the quality of services that we receive is on a downhill regardless of the fact that we are actually paying higher taxes. Much much higher! A very good example is my visits to my family doctor of over 7 years. During the past couple of years every time i go see my family doctor, despite the fact that I actually have an appointment, I am forced to wait in the waiting room for at least 1 hour before she can see me. And when finally it’s my turn she only spends 5-10 minutes with me and she is always in such a hurry that I barely have time to discuss my medical concerns with her. The whole concept of family doctors and them knowing your medical history and spending sufficient time with you is getting meaningless in Ontario. Every time after my visit I am completely unsatisfied. I have tried to change my family doctor but apparently I am not allowed since I already have one!

Another example which is seemingly many people’s concern as well is the emergency departments of hospitals. When people are admitted to emergency rooms they need to be taken care of immediately. You don not necessarily need to have a heart attack or be in a coma to be taken care of right away. However, in Ontario’s hospitals emergencies mean something else. You may be forced to refer to the emergency department but there’s a good chance that you have to wait for a couple of hours until a nurse or a doctor comes and takes you. What is their excuse? “We don’t have enough beds or we don’t have enough doctors or staffs to take care of you!” You might as well take your chance and go home and hope you get better somehow instead of waiting for hours in a room where you never know when they will come and get you.

Everybody including health care professionals is complaining about not having sufficient number of staffs in our health care systems to answer people’s needs. But the government seems to be completely unresponsive to these complains. Just a few weeks ago, a group of Ontario’s nurses rallied outside the Ontario Legislature since the Ministry of Health declared in 2010 many nurses from Ontario’s hospitals will be losing their jobs because of the cut in the budgets. This is no surprise that during the years of depression many countries such as Canada are suffering from low budgets and there will be some cuts no matter what. However, in Canada’s situation where the health care system is already suffering, cutting the budget in this area is not a good idea. By cutting the budget for Canada’s health care system we are putting people’s lives in a greater risk. Many patients are already suffering of not getting sufficient health care that they need. Having even lesser number of nurses in hospitals, make the situation even worse. Even though Canada’s Health Minister David Caplan has denied that in 2010 many Ontario nurses will lose their job due to the cuts in the budgets, there’s a good possibility that they will. Why do we want to stop investing on an area such as health care, where it’s already short in health care professional and is in a great need of help? If we are paying more taxes and the number of referees to the hospitals is on a rise, why are we bringing down the quality of the health care system? What is the point of having a health care where it has a good medical coverage but when it comes to the actual action it’s just not as good as it should be? In my opinion our health care system can not suffer more and it’s actually in a great need of improvement.

Moo Moo! Policy vs. Safety.

It’s interesting to see the reopening of the case of selling raw and unpasteurized milk by some dairy farmers of Ontario and their battle with Ontario’s ministry of health in today’s news. This argument has been going on for a couple of years, since 2006 as I can remember and each time the dairy farmers have been pleaded guilty and forbidden to sell raw milk to people. However some dairy farmers insist that raw milk is absolutely a better choice of milk and the whole concept of pasteurization has been politicized and is not necessarily concerned about people’s safety.

Health authorities believe that unpasteurized milk can contain some types of bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria which can cause lethal problems and diseases. Severe diarrhea, vomiting and fever are some of the symptoms caused by these bacteria. In august 2006, Health Canada released a statement which warned people from consuming raw or unpasteurized milk since it can make people severely sick. The law in Canada regarding selling unpasteurized milk is: no one can sell raw milk unless it has been pasteurized and has met the health standards.

However, some particular dairy farmers do not think the same way. Michael Schmid, a dairy farmer who has been fighting against Canada’s law regarding raw milk for years, believes that there is absolutely nothing wrong with raw milk and it is actually more nutritious and has better quality than pasteurized milk. “The only thing that will stop me is if we — through a constructive dialogue — actually find out that milk might be dangerous” Michael Schmid told the reporter on the day when he won the battle and was legally allowed to sell raw or unpasteurized milk to his neighborhood customers as he was selling it before.

What is interesting about this story is, despite the fact that Ontario Ministry of Health strongly believes how dangerous and unsafe unpasteurized milk is, Michael Schmid won the battle, proved his point about the benefits of unpasteurized milk and is allowed to sell his milk to his neighbors and former customers. One may doubt for a moment and thinks if the Health politicians have strong and valid proofs about how dangerous unpasteurized milk can be. How could they let a simple dairy farmer win the case? Shouldn’t we by now, be absolutely certain about the health aspects of foods such as milk, that even raising such statements such as “unpasteurized milk is better than pasteurized milk” be out of the question? And if not, if we are not certain about these facts, why do we insist on these laws? I mean we actually have this law in Canada that selling unpasteurized milk is absolutely illegal and here we have this dairy farmer in Ontario, which is legally selling raw milk to people, even if it’s only to a limited number of customers! To me this does not make any sense at all and it’s making me wonder what is really going on in our health care system.

The concept of trust comes into my mind. We tend to believe that anything the authorities tell us is the truth and behind any law or statement there is a valid proof hidden. If they say something is dangerous and something is safe we listen to them because we are certain that they have done enough experiments in that area and they are letting people know about the results. But when it comes to stories such as “is pasteurized milk really better than unpasteurized milk?” and we actually see despite the law, a simple citizen fights against the authorities, wins the case and they actually let him continue what “they” still believe is wrong makes you wonder if there’s something else beside the safety of citizens that is their concern.

I’m still not convinced that unpasteurized milk is better than pasteurized milk but the reason is not solely because I was told that pasteurized milk is better than raw milk by authorities. As far as I’m concern I personally can not trust their sayings without any investigation anymore and the concept of: the authorities work for people and are only concern about their safety, well let’s just say is losing it’s meaning to me.