Category Archives: Health and wellness

To wrap up the Movember efforts here’s a shot:  You do have to click on it, due to some wonky madness regarding the size of embedded photos that I just don’t feel like fussing with right now.

The Mo-Bro’s are Abraham, Jon, Tom, some doofus, Paul and Marc, if one goes clockwise from 12:00.  You do remember what clockwise is?

Meanwhile, our various supporters, who have been very kind as well as generous have enabled Team ITS-Mo to raise $255 for Prostate Cancer Canada, as part of Movember. 

If you want to donate to us, you can still uncork the wallet, with our appreciation.  Go to http://ca.movember.com/mospace/73424  You can join luminaries like Karen Lewy, Kim St. Denis, Janet Hockey and Robin Bradbury who feel that the topical application of money is a good way to support Men’s Health. 

And we did all without shaving. 

Thank you.

Now that we’ve all had a good laugh at my moustache, we’ll come back to a bit of learnin’ regarding Men’s Health, which is the real reason Movember exists and I’m growing a Mo.

Get squeamish guys, we’re talking prostate.  Yep.  That bit-bigger-than-a-walnut sized gland below your bladder and North-North-West of your asshole. 

It’s a fascinating little fellow and here’s what it does.  Your prostate secretes a slightly alkaline fluid that is about 25 to 30 percent of your semen.  Not the sperm themselves, that’s a nut job, pun intended, but the seminal vesicles pass up from the nuts to the prostate and mix together to pass down your penis when you pop your cookies from watching “The Golden Girls” reruns.  That Rue McClanahan…what a Minx!  Oh crap, that was out loud wasn’t it?

The reason the prostatic fluid is slightly alkaline is to give your sperm a fighting chance in the Great Swim of Life.  The vagina is acidic, so a bit of alkali lets the lads live longer, eventually leading to fertilization, yadda, yadda, yadda, right up to “Yes Dad, it’s a really nice Home and we’ll come to visit you every weekend.  We promise.”

The Creator did great, nay, fabulous work when He did Women, but Jeeze Louise, Male Parts were not His best:  The design is merely functional, like sex organs designed by Ikea.  It’s part of a system, but you can’t make sense of the instructions and the illustrations are cartoon sketches.  Women however, ahh, now that’s a Herman Miller Aero chair.

There are enough maladies that can befall the prostate that entire medical careers have been built on them.  It’s a very poor design, almost as bad as the knee, but at least the knee will stop working or swell up if you injure it.  The prostate just sits there like a walnut, asking itself “Am I Coming or am I Going?”

There are two ways to check the prostate and you need both.  The first is what is called a Prostate Specific Antigen test, which is a blood test, taken from blood from your arm.  The lab rats look for an increased level of Prostate antigen, a chemical that indicates a fine, healthy, happy, prostate or an unhappy prostate depending on the change between tests. 

Around the age of 40 to 45, men should have a PSA test yearly.  Some docs say 50, other say 40, but what you want to do is start early enough that you know what your PSA level is over a few years.  Mine’s normal, like 0.01, and has been since I was 40, which indicates no issues with increased antigen production, which would indicate something wrong if the number changes. The PSA test is an early warning, nothing more.

Up until last year, you had to pay separately for a PSA when you had your usual blood work done.  It was $15 most years.  I consider it money well spent.  Now most health care covers it, so ask for it.  If the numbers change, see a doctor right away.  A change in the PSA is an early warning that something is not right.  It hurts as much as having your blood taken hurts.  Instead of four vials, they’ll take five.  No biggie.

There are issues with the PSA test, both false positives and false negatives.  There are also issues with, in the female department, PAP tests, again false positives and false negatives.  In either case, having a baseline is part of early detection.  It isn’t a diagnosis, it just flags something for more investigation. 

The other way to check the prostate is a digital exam.  That’s right digit, as in finger, not zeros and ones digital.  Your doctor will insert a gloved and well-lubricated finger in your asshole and palpate your prostate with a digit to check for inflammation, something swollen or out of whack. 

If you have a swollen prostate you will scream like a little girl.  The sensation of having the prostate digitally examined is no worse that taking a five-pound dump after a night of bad Mexican food.  It’s no fun, but it’s over soon enough and feels much better when finished. 

A good, caring doc will have you lie on one side and have you bring one knee up to your chest.  An army-trained doctor will have you bend over the examining table and say “Hang on to your hat!”  I’ve had both and the knee up is much better.

Yes you might spring a Hollywood half-loaf totally without intention.  Pressure on the prostate can trigger a drop or two of urine, or a mild, momentary erection, no worse than a morning piss-hard and no more useful either.  The prostate is covered with the very same pelvic floor muscles that contract when you have an orgasm and cause you to ejaculate by giving the prostate a good hard squeeze.  It’s perfectly normal as the systems are all interrelated.  Or, absolutely nothing will happen:  It varies from human to human.

Odds are 50-50 you’ll fart too.  I asked and my doc and she said she’s been farted at so many times doing prostate exams that it’s now beyond disgusting and merely funny.  No, it is not appropriate to load up on jalapeno nachos, cabbage soup, beer and beans the night before your prostate exam. 

In either case, a digital prostate exam does not make you suddenly want to sing show tunes, or find the beauty in old Judy Garland movies.  Sorry guys, it doesn’t.  It’s not a comfortable sensation for many men, but it is insanely important to have done.  The prostate doesn’t give many clues that it is unwell and a PSA in combination with a digital exam is the best way to determine your prostate health.

To sum up.  Your prostate helps keep your participation in the fornicative and procreative arts alive.  It doesn’t kick up a fuss when it is unwell, so there are no symptoms to speak of.  A PSA blood test in combination with a digital examination is the best way to find out if things are in good order. 

As we all know, early detection means a much better chance at survival and the prostate is notorious for not kicking up a fuss until it’s almost too late.

If you want to learn more, www.movember.com has links to Prostate Cancer Canada and several dozen other very good resources.

Here’s the long-awaited update on the Mo.  It could be worse…

The team members are Mo-Brothers Jonathan Dyck, Marc Gendron, Paul Barrett and myself.  As Team ITS-Mo we have raised $105 for Prostate Cancer Canada.

You could donate, even if you don’t have a prostate.  Nice Mo-Sistas include Marylou Scott-Smith, Karen Lewy and Kim Roger-St.Denis. 

If you would like to donate, then http://ca.movember.com/mospace/73424 will get you to our page on http://www.ca.movember.com 

I got the H1N1 flu shot earlier this week.  Why?  Well, I’m a Type 2 Diabetic, so according to our protocol, I’m up near the head of the line in people who really, really should get the vaccine.  I’m fairly confident in the entire vaccine process and have a modicum of faith in the due diligence done by the government and the medical communities in creating as good a vaccine as humans can create.

Yes, the vaccine has an adjuvant and yes, it also contains thiomersal (which is also spelled thimerosal) which is a necessary antiseptic and anti-fungal in multi-dose vaccine preparations.  Until only recently, contact lens solutions also contained thiomersal.  Plus, I like tuna, especially fresh tuna, which also contains mercury, the controversial ingredient in thiomersal. 

We all know that mercury is not good in people, either ingested, or injected, but thiomersal is at an excruciatingly small parts per billion, so it’s a risk, but a controlled risk, like all vaccines are when you strip out the hysteria.  Also, I’m not a child, I’m not pregnant and I have no plans to become pregnant, so at worst, it’s bad, but not as bad as smokin’ drinkin’ and all the drug-suckin’ I did back in the day.

The lineup to get the wristband was just over one hour.  Volunteers kept us moving and made sure we knew how things were progressing.  In Ottawa the deal works like this:  You self identify as being in a priority group, then get a single-use paper wristband (think hospital kind of wristband) to put on.  You go away until later in the day and come back at the time they have told you to show up.  I got tagged at 9 am and was told my likely time was 5 pm.  At 5, we showed up with our paperwork (about five pages we had to fill out, essentially a “how ya doin’?” kind of questionnaire) and two minutes later was seated in front of a nurse who jabbed us.  Deed done.

There are always going to be horror stories about people waiting for hours in a blizzard on the side of a hill, next to a smelter, waiting to be told there’s none left so piss off and come back tomorrow. 

There will also be stories of some innocent who gets the H1N1 injection, then unexplainably goes on a five-day tequila bender, winding up in Cape Breton wearing a cowboy hat, no pants and has a shirt pocket full of Turkish money.  Then a video will turn up on YouTube and some lawyer will sue everyone on behalf of the innocent, who will feel much better with the topical application of $20 million dollars.

Realistically, I’m taking a controlled risk.  The same hold true for the prescription for Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) that the employer was gracious enough to make available and pay for, via our health plan.  Yes, the employer had a doc on site to answer all of our questions not just about Tamiflu, but the H1N1 influenza and vaccines in general.  The doc took as long as we wanted and before actually writing each individual prescription made sure we had as much time as we wanted to ask any further questions one on one.  There was no pressure in any way shape or form. 

Which, in summary, is again a controlled risk.  If I do get the H1N1 flu, I have at least a half a shot at reducing the effects of it and a half a shot at not winding up in hospital on a ventilator waiting to die.

Is the whole mass-vaccination system perfect?  Oh hell no. 

Is it our best effort with the best possible motivations of protecting the vast majority of people?  Yes, it is. 

That’s about all we can hope for.  Reasonably prudent and best efforts.

Yes, I really am growing a moustache for Movember, the month formerly known as November, to raise money for Men’s Health, specifically Prostate Cancer Canada.  If you want to donate, the ITS-Mo team is at http://ca.movember.com/mospace/73424. 

The reason I’m farming some foliage is simple, 1 in 6 men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime.  Most men don’t even want to consider talking with their doctors about it, let alone be checked for the variety of Men’s health issues.  Unfortunately it will quite possibly kill them.

So a little money can go a long way.  Over the next couple of weeks, I might even tell you some of the easy, simple and non-invasive ways you, or your man, can take charge of their own health.

For the time being, this is what a three-day growth looks like.

It will fill in as we go through Movember, but right now, the Mo is a little sparse.  For the slightly suspicious of you, yes, Movember does have a Canadian Charitable Tax number and is a legit charity, otherwise I wouldn’t be involved.  If you do choose to donate, your receipt does show the charitable donation tax number and I thank you for your time and money.

Davey said I could write some more, as he’s still goin like the Battery Bunny on that course he’s writing.  You know, this is hard this bloggery stuff, as you got to think some and do some hunting out the facts.

Like this swine flu.  Everyone’s all up on their back legs that Mexican pigs are going to kill us all with a flu that’ll make your gonads drop off and your eyes turn to cinders just before you wake up at the pearly gates and say what th’ hell was that?

First off, you can’t get it from pigs, even Mexican pigs, so’s its still OK to eat the bacon, or the roasts, or the chops.  It’s called a swine flu as that’s one of the places it came from.  Apparently, she’s also a bit of bird flu and just your normal, garden variety, human flu. 

Flu, yessiree, she’s flu, but the swine part, is like calling all cars Martha’s Arse, as it’s got a big trunk what bounces open from time to time.  It’s still just a car and your car ain’t the same as my car.

Now, as for how you get the Mexican flu?  Well, I looked her up, as Davey said I had to.

When somebody sneezes on you, there’s a bunch of microscopic snots and wet spots what come flying out.  That’s where the little flu bugs live.  On the snots and wet spots. Not that kind of wet spot.  These are microscopic small wet spots what you need a microscope for to see’em.

The bugs can live outside your body for a while and that’s how they get from one person to the other.  They need a way into your body and here’s how they do it.  You know when you got one of them dry air February boogers back in there, that feels like you’ve got a half a tablespoon of pearl barley up your nose? 

Well, as soon as you go diggin, the flu bugs what you might have on your finger decide “Jeeze that’s a fine booger vault, I’ll go live there”, then they jump off while you’re up to the second knuckle.  Or, if you rub your eyes.  Or eatin a sandwich.  That’s all she takes.  One little bug and only one time, in just one place in.

Once inside, the little bugger starts multiplying like Evangelicals without condoms.  Soon you got the shits, the shakes, the pukes and the snots.  That would be the flu.  Any flu.  Swine, Bird, Fish, Sofa, 24 bottle, 40 ounce, five day, ten day, don’t matter.  The flu.

The scary damn part is all the things what live on your hands.  Now do some thinking.  How many door handles, elevator buttons, excalator hand rails, titless tellers and other things do you touch every day? 

It’s a jeezly big number and then add up all the other people what touched them just before you and just after.  Another jeezly big number, but with a capital J.  Jeezly big. 

Up the line here, it’s not as much as a problem, but in the city now, think of just the excalators in the Subway.  Everybody holds onto them and I’s willing to bet there’s some prick what’s just cleaned his cat’s litter box then gone to work and not so much as spit on his hands.  On that excalator is the bugs from his cats arse goin round and round just waitng for someone to glom onto.  Well, the same’s true for the flu bugs. 

Next time you’re out shopping or going to work on the transit, pull your head out of your arse for a moment and look around.  Folks coughing and sneezin and not so much as a hanky or kleenex in front of their pie and snot holes, spraying crap everywhere. 

All it takes is one prick with the swine flu is to sneeze one off at the Danforth station and he’s gone and thrown a zillion bugs all over the place, right next to a couple of hundred other folks on the Subway.

Davey told me something a while back.  There’s an international airport in Toronto, what gets flights from all over the world.  In twenty-four hours, maybe less, he could be in Bangkok, havin sharkfin soup, then be back in Toronto the next day, having been walking around half-way round the world, then right back to his place in Mississauga, exposed to every goddam bug you could imagine.  All it’d take is money and time and not a lot of skill, except being bored stupid long enough to take the airplanes.

Now, if I’da gone to Bangkok, it wouldn’t be for no soup.  And it wouldn’t be just for a day.  I think what he’s trying to say is that we’re awful close to everyone else these days and there’s not much we can do about it, except look out for ourselves first.

You know your mom told you to wash up after using the shitter.  There was a reason she told you that.  It was to get them invisible bugs off your skin.  Soap and water.  It ain’t complicated.  Soap and water.  Even I get it.

Second, them Nurse Nancy masks?  Ain’t worth a shit.  The flu bugs are smaller than Harper’s brain and some piece of cloth won’t stop much but the big chunks.  And the bugs can still get in through your eyes, as the tear ducts are all connected up to your sinuses and a moist like a nose hole.  The Swine Flu don’t care.  Swallow’em, breathe’em, rub’em.  Don’t matter. 

There are masks what are designed for stopping the flu bugs, but they gotta fit perfectly every time and they’re not cheap.  Like $10-$12 a go and if they’re off of place just a bit, whoops!  In comes the Swine Flu, and that’s assuming there’s none on your hands, what’s been on the excalator on the Subway with fourteen thousand of your closest friends this morning.

So’s it looks to me like about the only way you can not get any bugs is to wrap yourself in drycleaner plastic for the next forty days and live in the basement, under a tarp.

Instead of that, how bout this:

If you’re gonna sneeze or cough, cover your goddam face with a hanky, or a kleenex or cough into your arm.  Something.  Anythng.  Don’t just let’er wail all over everyone.  Ain’t polite and ain’t healthy neither.  I don’t want your snots and wet spots, thanks.

Two:  Wash your goddam hands with soap and water a lot.  They say it takes a full fifteen seconds to wash your hands right.  Just slucing off the piss drops isn’t good enough.  Soap’em up and rinse them off.  Your hands I mean.

Three:  Don’t be licking door handles, unless you know where’s the door handle’s been and who’se been touching it in the last couple of weeks.

Four:  If you’ve got the flu, stay the hell home.  If you sneeze on me, you’re going to find out what bugs I’ve got on my right hand, as I’m gonna punch you one in the mouth, ya inconsiderate arsehole.

Five:  Beer is always around 5 percent alcohol, which is plenty to kill the flu bugs, if your pour beer on your hands.  That’s a terrible waste of good beer.  Too bad you can’t kill the flu bugs by drinkin the beer, as I could get behind that kind of medicine.

Six:  I got nothing here, so’s I guess I’m done.  Thanks for reading.  Now go wash your hands.      

This is the right time in November to do some calculating.  You see, calculations are things that give you information that you can use.  Why I remember these things is a mystery, but I remember them. 

For example, in the post on Cell Phones and Driving, I quoted a velocity constant:  44 feet per second is the same as 30 miles per hour.  Using that constant, you can figure out how fast you can walk, or how far your car can travel in ten seconds at 60 miles per hour by doing simple math and some eyeball measurements.

Three-Four-Five is a right-angled triangle constant.  If the shortest side of a right angled triangle is 3 feet (or inches, or kilometres) and the second longest side is 4 feet, then the longest side (the hypotenuse) will always be exactly 5 feet.  The angle where the 3 and 4 meet is always a perfect 90 degree angle.  That’s great for laying out a fence, a deck, a garden or a soccer pitch, as you always get perfect 90 degree corners.

Then there is the Rule of Forty.  Forty weeks is the gestation of the Human and you can see that in action around this time of the year.  Humans naturally don’t take exactly 40 weeks to gestate: 39 to 41 weeks is the average. To be precise, November 21st is exactly 40 weeks from February 14th.   

The question you get to answer with this useless piece of knowledge is:  Did your parents celebrate Valentine’s Day in a, um, errr, "traditional" manner. 

If you birthday is between next week and the end of the month, give or take, the answer is probably, well, Yes.  And you are the proof.   

Isn’t math wonderful?  Happy Birthday!

Following up on the Listeria outbreak in Maple Leaf Foods, the CEO of Maple Leaf, Michael McCain, said that the source was most likely found.  In a Friday evening news conference, he revealed that the two slicing machines are the most likely source.  If you’ve seen any of the video of the sanitization of the Maple Leaf production lines, these things are the size of a small car with an equal number of parts. 

As part of the cleanup, Maple Leaf, the companies hired to sanitize the line, as well as government inspectors completely disassembled the two machines.  The existing protocol for cleaning, which Maple Leaf normally exceeded several times over, never called for a complete teardown.  The assumption probably made by the manufacturer, was that manufacturing guck could never get that deep into the machines.  Apparently it did and is the ‘most likely’ cause of the Listeria outbreak.

Today the deaths attributed to the Maple Leaf Food plant 97-B Listeria outbreak is at 13 confirmed, with 38 cases of suspected Listeriosis also linked to the plant.  A $20 million dollar recall is part of the equation, as well as a sharp stick to the eye Maple Leaf Foods reputation.

However, in looking at the whole situation, who is to blame?  Nobody really.  Maple Leaf did their due diligence, several times over and above the Federal standards.  When it was found that the North York Maple Leaf Foods plant was the possible source of the outbreak, they shut it down immediately and started to recall anything from the plant by being very public about the outbreak. 

There was no hushing things up, or mealy-mouthing PR platitudes.  Michael McCain, the CEO went to the front of the line and took responsibility for it, then did more than one would expect a big corporation to do to find the source of the problem.  And fix it.

Yes, Maple Leaf Foods has a vested interest in making sure things are fixed as their reputation is a significant part of their corporate financial value.  But they also recognized the human side of the equation, the trust that the consumer places in their products.

Will the Maple Leaf Food outbreak become a textbook case for the PR and Marketing classes?  Quite possibly, as Maple Leaf Foods acted responsibly, honestly and with complete transparency, as soon as facts were available.  They kept the consumer in the loop and also apologized for something going wrong, which is unheard of, but seems sincere.

Should you buy products from Maple Leaf ever again?  That is truly the $20 million question. 

My answer is yes, if only because Maple Leaf was straight with me as a consumer.  The actual problem was something that nobody could have predicted.

A couple of weeks ago Maple Leaf Foods recalled a number of deli meat products that were distributed across Canada.  The list is here, and it is extensive.  The suspected contaminant was the Listeria bacterium, which could cause the usual headache, nausea, diarrhoea, and possibly death in the old, very young, or those with compromised immune systems.  So far, eleven deaths have been attributed to the Maple Leaf Foods Listeria outbreak.

Listeria and the symptoms it produces, Listeriosis, are extraordinarily common in the population.  Listeria bacteria are as normal as belly button lint and the vast majority of us humans can shake it off without even knowing we’ve got it.   In the US, the incidence is 2 to 3 people per million population, or in simple terms, more people break their wrists playing tennis than come down with Listeriosis.

What the outbreak has identified is a big problem with the massive consolidation of industrialized food production in Canada.  The specific production plant, 97B, in North York, produced deli meat of various kinds for dozens of companies.  Originally the outbreak was thought to only affect deli products produced for the institutional market, meaning hospitals, nursing homes, cafeterias and restaurants who buy a couple of hundred pounds of corned beef or shaved ham at a clip.  Then the recall expanded dramatically, as investigators found that more products were potentially at risk for contamination. 

Here’s the catch:  Listeria bacteria and the illness can show up as long as 70 days after ingestion.  Which means anything that was processed on the particular line at North York in the past 70 days is suspect.  To be safe, inspectors are going back more than 70 days to find the source and treating anything produced on the line as contaminated.  Then, anything that has come in contact with potentially contaminated meat is also suspect and so on down the line. 

The very common presence of Listeria in our food supply is also a problem.  You can’t easily tell what contamination is merely the usual level of the bacteria, or the specific Maple Leaf-97B bacteria without time consuming DNA testing.  Common-sense says that anything that tests positive for Listeria should be thrown out, which is what is being done.

Where things go strange is with the media and the scare-mongering associated with the outbreak.  Maple Leaf Food, to their credit, immediately shut down the plant, disassembled and disinfected everything, including the ceiling and the kitchen sink, with an extensive protocol of chemistry, scrubbing, steam cleaning, washdowns and then inspections by third-party folks.  I suspect that Plant 97B is cleaner and more sanitary than your own kitchen and bathroom right now.

Also to the credit of Maple Leaf Foods, their CEO Michael McCain didn’t bob and weave around things:  He took the blame straight on and said he was sorry that his company did or didn’t do something that has affected the quality of their products and has apologized for the error.  He’s also allowed the media to come in and watch the sanitization process and to answer any questions, including the dumb and mean-spirited questions that reporters can come up with.  Some learned folks are saying that the Maple Leaf Food outbreak and response is the new case study for how to manage bad news by a corporation, the last case study being the Tylenol poisoning 20 years ago.

Now to the real issue.  One would think that Maple Leaf Foods only produces Maple Leaf products.  This is not accurate.  Like any very large company, Maple Leaf produces other label products.  The list on the Maple Leaf website includes Artisan Collection (A&P brand) Best Value, Bittner’s, Boston Pizza, Burns, Campfire, Compliments, Coorsh, Country Morning, Equality, Harmonie, Hickory Farms, Hygrade, Kirkland, Maple Leaf Consumer Foods, Mayfair, McDonald’s, Mitchell’s, Mr, Sub, NoName, Olympic, Overlander, Parma, Pizza Nova, Safeway, Schneiders, Shopsy’s, Swift, The Butcher’s Cut, Tim Horton’s, Western Family and Westfair brands.

Simply put, Maple Leaf produces more than half the brands that exist across Canada.  Which explains why the recall and reaction has been so big.  There are benefits to big companies, like the economies of scale and the ability to do the testing beyond the accepted standard as a cost of doing business.  To their credit, Maple Leaf Foods tests several times more than the Federal standard, just to make sure everything is fine, as they have a self-interest is producing a safe, quality product.

Where there is a downside to ‘big’ is the effects of one small problem spread very rapidly to many potential points of risk.  One employee not washing their hands can literally destroy thousands of pounds of product in a matter of minutes.

To keep the outbreak in perspective, consider this:  Eleven deaths directly attributable to the Listeriosis outbreak from Maple Leaf.  Another 33 confirmed cases of probable infection.  Let’s double it and make it all the ‘fault’ of Maple Leaf.  That would be 88 all together, worst case. 

Number of deaths from automobile crashes across the US in 2007: 43,000, or 828 a week.  Using the 10 percent rule for US vs. Canadian figures, 82 deaths in Canada a week from cars. 

I’m not hearing anyone demanding they ban cars, or driving, or setting up a class-action lawsuit against GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai for wanton neglect in allowing their cars to actually move and potentially kill several dozen people a week. 

Perspective is important.