Category Archives: News

Don’t hold your breath!

Take a deep breath Every day, on online health and fitness sites, on TV and in popular magazines, media is informing us that the food we eat is affecting our health. In our doctors’ offices, diet becomes an issue as … Continue reading

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One of many barriers for canaries.

This an example of how difficult it is for people with invisible disabilities to receive accommodations that are rightfully theirs. Last week in Mclean’s Magazine It took months of mediation between a student with invisible disabilities, York University and the … Continue reading

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Love is in the air – and what else?

Millions of couples get engaged on Valentine’s day. Five years ago, my son proposed. This year, my wife and I were invited to two weddings.  Love is certainly in the air. When couples enter into a committed relationship, the next … Continue reading

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What we aren’t learning from Zika

The Zika virus is a top story in the news and with good reason. It can cause microcephaly in newborn babies whose mothers are bitten by an infected Aedes mosquito in the first trimester of pregnancy. These babies have smaller than … Continue reading

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Where does your lipstick go?

  Have you ever wondered where your perfume goes when it wears off?  Or where your lipstick ends up when it’s time to reapply it again? Some of our man-made products eventually break down completely, but many can be found … Continue reading

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Diet and Detox

Doctors and scientists have known for a very long time that the weight people lose on crash diets will come back when the diet is over. As for ‘detoxing’, short term ‘detox’ diets claim to eliminate toxins from the body, promote health and assist with weight loss. But do they work? Continue reading

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2015 – A Retrospective

It’s the end of 2015, a time to celebrate the promise of the coming year but also a time to reflect on the 12 months that have just passed. It was an incredibly exciting year for me professionally. As a physician who advocated for my patients for so many years, I no longer feel that I am paddling upstream against the hardline, medically conservative current that has discredited environmental medicine for decades. The patient groups that I work with have realistic hope for improved care in the near future. Continue reading

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Happy and Healthy Holidays

Holiday time is for giving and receiving presents, social gatherings and parties, and family get-togethers. But to the 12,000 canaries with multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) in my environmental medicine practice this season also means that there are more barriers to overcome in order to participate in life’s events because this is also a time for increased chemical exposures. If you’re a canary you can feel it. If you aren’t, you can’t. What are the canaries warning us about? Continue reading

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Linking MCS and Autism

I’m in my 60s now, ten years into my second marriage, and my wife and I have six children between us. We are at a stage in life when our children are having babies and our friends and relatives of the same age are also becoming grandparents. When we hear the exciting news – that we’re expecting a new grandchild – the combined feeling of joy and excitement is hard to describe, which helps to suppress the unspeakable worry; that the baby might be born with less than good health. And we have good reason for concern, because developmental disorders now affect one in six children. Continue reading

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May 12th is Awareness Day

In the early 80s, my practice in family medicine evolved into a practice in environmental medicine. I was seeing more patients with chronic fatigue and in order understand what each patient was feeling, I had to learn what questions to ask to get an accurate description of what they meant by fatigue. At that time, fatigue was already being described as the most common, yet least understood and most neglected symptom in medicine. Continue reading

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