Wendy Haaf

Vertigo is more than than simple dizziness and it can be scary—but it can be treated
Joyce Pinsker was cleaning her refrigerator when she suddenly felt a spinning sensation that forced her to drop to the floor. Within a minute or so, however, the feeling had passed, so the Vancouver resident, then in her early 50s, wasn’t too concerned. But as she was about to get into bed one night soon after, she was hit with the sensation of falling off a precipice, the room seemingly spinning around her. ...

Negative stereotypes about older people— whether you believe them or they come from others—can cause real harm.
At some point, 65-year-old Donna Wilson began noticing something odd: when she was in line at, for example, the deli, the server would sometimes tend to a younger customer who hadn’t been waiting as long as Wilson had. Wilson, who’s still very much part of the full-time workforce in her job as a professor and researcher in the nursing faculty at the University of Alberta in Edmonton...

Krembil researchers are helping NASA come up with better bone strength guidelines
DR. ANGELA CHEUNG isn’t just a renowned osteoporosis researcher; you might say her expertise is out of this world. She and her team pioneered research to better understand how various factors affect bone health, which then helped NASA create guidelines for more accurately measuring bone strength in astronauts. The space agency wants to ensure the bone loss that occurs in space flight doesn’t place them at risk o...

Women tend to underestimate their risk for cardiovascular disease—hardly surprising, given that heart disease in women is underdiagnosed and undertreated
Every 20 minutes, another woman in Canada dies of cardiovascular disease. The leading cause of death in Canadian women, cardiovascular disease kills five times as many women as breast cancer. Karen Narraway and Carolyn Thomas very nearly numbered among those fatalities, but thankfully, survived to warn other women that they, too, are at risk...

Using cameras and artificial intelligence, researchers at Toronto Rehab and KITE believe they can prevent injuries caused by unintended falls

Memory loss isn’t the only aspect of dementia that’s difficult for people with the disease, and their loved ones, to deal with. According to the Alzheimer Society, those with dementia are four to five times more likely to experience falls than people without cognitive impairment. What’s more, people with dementia can have difficulty communicating how th...

Care doesn’t stop for people with congenital heart disease.

College can be stressful at the best of times, but in 2019, when Michael Bannock Jr. was midway through his studies in radio broadcasting, the aspiring sports reporter had a lot more on his mind than exams. Born with congenital heart disease, Bannock was at risk of developing complications from the life-saving operation he underwent before his first birthday. “As a teenager, I was told I was going to need another major surgery, which...

After two hip surgeries, Shary Shell can once again walk Toronto’s Beltline pain-free.

Hip replacement procedures used to involve a week-long hospital stay. Now patients can get in and out on the day of the operation.

By Wendy Haaf

It’s hard to imagine Sharyn Shell, 67, doing anything slowly. “I’ve always been active – I have ADHD, and I talk too fast and move too fast,” explains the Toronto retiree, who spent much of her career teaching children with vision loss. But not long ago, when the s...

Fighting for eldercare reform

Just two weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic – and well before residents in Canadian care homes began dying of the virus in large numbers – Dr. Samir Sinha became a magnet for criticism when he told Globe and Mail health reporter André Picard, “If my mom was in long-term care, I’d pull her out now.”

Surely, things couldn’t be that bad, some Canadian critics said. Surely, we have safeguards protecting frail seniors, they argued.

While he takes no pleasure in being ri...

When Dr. Gabriel Leung speaks, the world listens.

The dean of medicine at Hong Kong University (HKU), Leung, MD’96, made international headlines in January when he announced that, based on modelling, the number of COVID-19 cases in Wuhan were likely dramatically higher than China’s official outbreak total.

But his introduction to novel viral pathogens started back in 2003 with a call from a fellow Western alumnus.

Leung had been conducting a series of cohort studies in non-communicable diseas...

Allergists have been saying for years that newer antihistamines are safer, but old habits die hard.

Many new parents are given advice from other parents, or even doctors, to have a bottle of Benadryl for kids on hand, just in case of an allergic reaction.

But according to allergists, the medication shouldn’t be used at all to treat allergy symptoms such as itchy eyes, sneezing or hives because it—and other ‘first-generation’ antihistamines—pose unnecessary risks to your child’s health.

“These...

The FDA-approved drug, Palforzia, could radically change the lives of children with peanut allergies. However it does have its limitations.

In late January, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a pill called Palforzia, offering a dose of hope for parents of kids with food allergies.

The first treatment for food allergy to receive such recognition by a national regulatory body, Palforzia is a biologic drug manufactured from peanut, and it marks a momentous shift in the way the me...

Before you go shopping for a probiotic, here are some things to keep in mind
Based on her experience as a clinical pharmacist with a Hamilton, ON, family health team, Dragana Skokovic-Sunjic believes that most people who are taking probiotics—live organisms that, when consumed in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit—are wasting their money.
One problem, she says, is that her patients don’t think to mention any probiotic products when reviewing the list of prescription medications and ove...

The condition known as seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, can make the winter months unbearable, but it can be beaten.
Photo: iStock/kzenon.
Emmanuel Lopez, now 55, had long suspected that there might be a seasonal pattern to the persistent bouts of low mood he’d been grappling with for decades, but it wasn’t until he returned home to Toronto last winter after visiting relatives in Las Vegas that something clicked.
During the three weeks he was down south, “I felt fantastic, like my old, en...