Community Corner

From the Kingston Whig-Standard: Words important to wellness: study; More than half of Canadians can’t understand health-care info However, Statistics Canada released an article in Education Matters: Insights on Education, Learning and Training in Canada, showing that things have improved slightly: “Literacy skills of Canadians across ...

A very interesting paper out of Norway (via, I believe, KU-UC E-Watch): Evidence-Informed Health Policy: Using Research to Make Health Systems Healthier - Report from Kunnskapssenteret (Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services) (PDF, 112pp.) Many good studies from Statistics Canada. French (note that there are a few English-only ...

A bunch of things, mostly from January and early February but some rather older – An interesting article about Pueblo, Colorado: Building Capacity for the Continuous Improvement of Health-Promoting Schools (Red Orbit) In the Lindsay Post, on the proposed opening of a CHC in the City of Kawartha Lakes: Community involvement essential The ...

Common genetic defect lowers age of first heart attack in smokers Rochester, N.Y. – December 19, 2007 – Heart attacks among cigarette smokers may have less to do with tobacco than genetics. A common defect in a gene controlling cholesterol metabolism boosts smokers’ risk of an early heart attack, according to a new study in Annals [...]

People with high triglycerides and another type of cholesterol tested but not usually evaluated as part of a person’s risk assessment have an increased risk of a certain type of stroke, according to research published in the December 26, 2007, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. (Science ...

An estimated 850,000 people are diagnosed with diabetes in Ontario – including one in nine adults in Toronto – and the numbers are growing. So, too, are the numbers of people with crippling and life-threatening complications that come with the disease: heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and amputations. Last year, the Toronto-based ...

Deep, restful sleep may be important for keeping type 2 diabetes at bay, U.S. researchers said today. They said slim, healthy young adults who were deprived of the deepest stage of sleep known as slow-wave sleep developed insulin resistance – a trait linked to type 2 diabetes – after just three nights. (Eurekalert.org) (The Star)

If it’s not easy for a retired university professor with diabetes to eat right, imagine how difficult it is for the poor. Low-income earners face an uphill battle if they want to eat healthy and fend off the ticking time bomb of diabetes, a seemingly unstoppable epidemic. The rising numbers have touched off a debate about [...]

The Metcalf Foundation launched a report, Why is it so tough to get ahead? How our tangled social programs pathologize the transition to self-reliance. The report and a PowerPoint presentation are available at the bottom of the news release. We cannot claim to have people-centred government policies. Not when an 18 year old, lone-parent refugee is ...

A few things for today — I have a large backlog of interesting stuff, but I’ll start with recent items and will work backwards in time in posts over the next week or so. As most of our office is, has been or will shortly be ill with a particularly nasty cold, Health Canada’s seasonal [...]