In the early days of my closed head injury (traumatic or acquired brain injury), I heard many times the mantra that you only heal or heal the most in the first two years — whatever healing happens in those years is it for the rest of your life. In the June 2010 issue of the…
Category: Health
Writings on health and nutrition, the health care system, doctors and therapists, heck, anything to do with health.
Tax Relief in Canada for Those With Disabilities
You’re an adult, you’re tripping along, living life, working hard, and then the universe sends you splat, and suddenly you’re seeing doctors, suffering, in pain, not working, and watching your bank account slide into the red. While you may be receiving good help for what ails you, you’re probably not getting good help for what…
The Continuing Medical Insanity of Brain Injury
You know, it’s a good thing I grew up in a medical family, learnt how to do research and search through libraries from a young age on, studied hormones from age 11 until, I think, 22 (through sex ed, biology, sciences), and took a one-year physiology course at the University of Toronto, else I may…
Cross Country Shames Canada, Reveals Discriminating Attitudes Remain
When I was studying psychology, back in the last century, in the less-enlightened-than-now era, we talked about not labelling patients and not calling patients patients but clients. The idea was that because of assumptions over the ages, we didn’t want to further marginalize people through diagnostic labels, didn’t want to give people a reason to…
The Three-Month Type 2 Diabetes Followup
Back in September I wrote about my Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis and my early impressions with The GI Diet, and then I forgot all about reading the diet book every week and went on to more fun things like writing my novel and blogging about NaNoWriMo. But today I met with my GP to go…
The Core of The GI Diet by Gallop: The Glycemic Index
Aside from my rebellious first impressions of The GI Diet by Rick Gallop, I have to admit that this book does one thing very well: makes the glycemic index intelligible and practical. Dr David Jenkins* at the University of Toronto developed the glycemic index as a way to measure how a particular food affects glucose…
First Impressions of The GI Diet by Rick Gallop
It’s been almost 4 weeks since I started The GI Diet by Rick Gallop after my Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis. Before my brain injury I had been following a low-glycemic index (GI) diet; but not being able to cook for many years and the other changes wrought by the injury resulted in me having strayed…
What Does it Take for a Person to Change Their Diet?
The Toronto Star today calls the Canadian diet a “dog’s breakfast.” Citing toxic foods and a sedentary lifestyle as the causes of obesity, it looks into how one Québec doctor, Dr. Jean-Pierre Després, is developing a program to counter this trend. I saw two problems with his work: all male — why in the 21st…
Type 2 Diabetes Plays Gotcha
I haven’t blogged about myself in much depth because for years my lawyer banned me from blogging about even the most trivial personal item. I did graze the line when I ranted about raccoons, but I think that was forgivable. No one can withstand a raccoon rant. But today, I turn a new, quivery leaf,…