Do you know your Doctor?

What you are about to read may cause the necessary level of paranoia needed in order to take the essential steps towards knowing more about your family physician. Few have the gall to ask their doctor questions pertaining to their past that could eventually affect the future. Most doctors possess the charm or at least the medical degrees that seem to speak for themselves. A recent case that highlights this discussion identifies why the public should be concerned about family physicians’ lives in and out of the clinic. It begins in Manitoba, takes a criminal turn in California, and ends up back in the Prairie provinces.

The year was 1995, and a Manitoba Medical University graduate named George Korol found himself far from the sort of honest, hard-working life that most Manitobans have come to lead. He achieved his status as a doctor on Aug. 10, 1979; Read more

Barbara Parisotto: Taking you in a Healthy Direction

With a new year comes a new resolution. And while some of us might resolve to exercise more, take up a new hobby or become more organized, the one vow that we all have in common is to adopt healthier eating habits.

After a long, indulgent season of turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, we should venture into spring with lighter hearts and thinner waistlines. “Spring marks a new beginning,” says Barbara Parisotto, registered dietitian. “It’s a great time to cleanse our bodies of toxins and that starts with improving how we eat.”

Of course, with the tempting confections and deep-fried delights that call our name on the drive home, down the aisles of the grocery store, and even from our own pantry doors, this feat is not always easy. If you need that little push to get started, Read more

Angry? Listen Up!

You wake up with a guttural groan and smack your alarm clock into submission. Round 1 ends in a knockout. The shower blasts you with cold water, inspiring a ghastly shriek filled with indignation. But just before you tell the shower head where to go, you hear one heck of a descriptive curse word echoing from the bedroom: your wife just stubbed her toe. That bedpost had it coming for a long time.

The drive to work begins innocently enough, until the driver in the car ahead of you suddenly decides he is going to turn left at the last second, leaving you trapped and helpless at the intersection. Oooh, this guy’s really asking for it! Then you turn on the radio for consolation only to be walloped with five straight minutes of commercials. On every station! Read more

Chancing Concussions

Pockets of hockey dads huddle and conspire while drinking their warm, morning coffees within Phil White Arena in Toronto. You can hear whispers of advocacy, feel an atmosphere of community and guess that each group is thinking the same thing: Why did we have to do this?

“I don’t think the Greater Toronto Hockey League [GTHL] cares about concussion injuries,” says Neil Clifford, one of five directors running the new Toronto Non-Contact Hockey League (TNCHL). He also coaches his son’s team, one of the league’s three teams made up of 11-and-12 year-olds. Behind the bench, he keeps warm by hiding under a tightly pulled blue Chevy Re-Evolution cap, his jacket’s high collar cutting across his crimson cheeks. Read more

The Bowen Technique: You Don’t Have to Bend Over Backwards to Relieve Pain

Amber Korobkina was a successful computer software trainer in her 20s, when a debilitating back injury altered her life. “I had lifted something that weighed way too much and I blew the discs in my lower back. I sat down because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time, but then I realized that I couldn’t stand up again,” says Korobkina, whose kids were two and five at the time.

After trying almost everything, medical professionals told Korobkina that her only other option was spinal surgery. “I was awaiting the surgery when a friend told me to try the Bowen Technique, which at the time was something I had never heard of. I figured I had nothing to lose,” says Korobkina, who felt immediate results after just one Bowen session. She was even able to dance the night away at a Christmas party – something she never thought would be possible. “I started going for more treatments and Bowen Read more

Hot Yoga: Feel the Heat

Besides giving you long, lean muscles and a toned body, hot yoga is bursting with healthy benefits to transform your figure and your life. The intricate positions that are used in yoga improve flexibility and posture, while the sweating produced in this tension relieving exercise releases toxins. If that’s not enough, its smooth, fluid movements massage your organs and lubricate your joints, aiding in digestion and preventing arthritis. When you add all of this to the serenity of a clear, focused mind – not to mention that unmistakable post-yoga glow – there’s simply no better way to discover a leaner, more youthful you. www.hotyogawellness.com

Parental Alienation: The Innocent Eyes of a Custody Storm

Stories of parental alienation in child custody disputes that leave one parent in the dark and an innocent child with irreversible repercussions may sound like faraway scenarios from shows like 20/20 and Dateline, but according to renowned psychologist Amy J. L. Baker, these tragic tales hold real-life truths. “When I interviewed 40 adults who gave up one parent in order to please the other, they talked about very profound negative effects,” says the author of Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind. “It’s a form of emotional abuse to manipulate a child to reject a parent who does not deserve to be rejected,” says Baker. There’s no question in my mind,” she adds.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) was coined in the 1980s by psychiatrist Richard A. Gardner, and is now under consideration for the next revision of The Diagnostic Statistical Read more

Let go with Moksha Yoga

The Holidays can be a stressful time of year, for many reasons, so an invigorating but relaxing hot yoga class can be just the thing to smooth out some of that anxiety and tension. What many people don’t realize is that hot yoga is also an excellent full-body workout that improves posture, tones muscles and builds immunity.

The recent popularity of yoga may make it seem like simply the latest in a long line of passing trends. However, this combination of discipline for the mind, body and spirit has been around for thousands of years. That is a lot longer than spinning classes or the South Beach Diet, so the ancient combination of meditation and physical exercise must be doing something right. Of the many varieties of yoga, the one that is heating up in Toronto is Read more

Injections, Ejections: The H1N1 Enigma

Over the last couple of months, hello-kisses and pleasantries of ‘how are you?’ and ‘can you believe this weather’ have been replaced by distant smiles and rhetoric fringed with panic and utter confusion. All this – while worshiped Purell dispensers of a palpable deity status not seen since SARS’s heyday, oust Holy Water at religious gatherings.

Since health officials declared in October the ‘Second Wave’ of a pandemic that was first reported in Mexico this past spring – the 2009 flu pandemic, a.k.a. swine flu and politically appropriate, H1N1 influenza virus – the hottest topic these days is whether to sink or swim with the biggest mass vaccination program that has sloshed and frothed onto Canadian shores. Read more

Paramount Fight Club

“The first rule about Fight Club, is that you don’t talk about Fight Club,” says Brad Pitt’s character Tyler Durden in Chuck Palahniuk’s critically acclaimed novel-turned-film. But Sameh Kablawi breaks that rule, with his unique gym for men and women, who battle the same theme in the movie: people fighting with themselves psychologically.“This is not a gym that promotes pit-fighting like in the movie,” says Kablawi, owner and founder of Paramount Fight Club. “Whether your fight is to lose weight, develop more muscle or compete at a high level, bring it to us and we’ll help you find yourself at the finish line, looking back at everyone in second place,” says Kablawi.

At Paramount Fight Club, the word fight means many things. It involves kicking bad eating habits to the curb and fighting self-esteem issues. It means joining world-class Read more

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