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As a Canadian, I find it distressing to see and hear misinformation about our health care system in the American health care debate.

I am not American, and certainly how Americans decide to change or not change their health care system is not my business. But when the Canadian Health Care System is dragged into the current American debate, and denigrated and lied about in order to scare Americans, I feel a need to defend our system, and to get the facts out on how the Canadian system works. For example, Louie Gohmert, a Republican congressman from Texas said “I know enough about Canadian care, and I know this bureaucratic, socialized piece of crap they have up there. One in five have to die because they went to socialized medicine.” That is crazy nonsense! And Republican Paul Broun of Georgia said on July 10, “Life is precious. Some would say, ‘Well, she’s 85 years of age; we should just let her die.’ And that’s exactly what’s going on in Canada and Great Britain today. They don’t have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently.” Does he really think we let people die?? That’s offensive, not to mention untrue! And as for that TV commercial about the Canadian Shona Holmes who claims she had brain cancer – well it turns out she did not have brain cancer, but a benign cyst, and she chose to go to the States to get it removed immediately. I’m in no way suggesting that the Canadian system is perfect, but neither is the American one which leaves 50 million people with no insurance at all. Most Canadians would not trade our system for the American one, and poll after poll suggests we Canadians are happier with our system than Americans are with theirs.

Bob Rae, a Canadian politician, suggested that when it comes to the goals of health care, “The questions are simple.

• 1) Should anyone be denied health care because of their income, disability, or illness? (No.)
• 2) Should patients be able to choose their doctors, and advocate for speedy, effective treatment? (Yes.)
• 3) Should insurers, taxpayers, and premium payers be worried about how to control costs as an ageing society combines with great technological advance to produce an expensive mix? (Yes.)”

My impression is it is goal number 1 that Americans want to fix through health care reform, and it is this goal that the Canadian system addresses very well. In Canada, everyone that needs a hip replacement will eventually get one, even if they have to wait for it. In America, if you have no health insurance and you need a hip replacement, you won't get one at all. You can't go to an emergency room of any hospital and demand a hip replacement – it simply won’t happen, so you are left to suffer. I would think that people not getting care would be a real drag on the economy, as they would be unable to be as productive at work, or perhaps unable to work at all.

Goal number 2 American propaganda suggests does not happen in Canada. According to what I've seen coming out of the States recently, we have no choice of doctors nor treatments, and our care is not at all speedy. This is false. So, let's break it down. With respect to choice of doctors, as far as I can tell, Canadians have far more choice than Americans do. I can go to any doctor I want in Canada, as long as they have room on their appointment schedule. Normally if I want to see a specialist, I need to get a referral from my general practitioner, the GP can then recommend someone, but I can also request to see whomever I want. If I want to see a doctor on the other side of the country I can do that, as with a universal insurance provider, I am not limited by Provincial boundaries. My understanding of the American system is that one is limited to the doctors covered by whatever insurance plan one is on, which is dependant largely upon one’s employer. So, if the insurance plan covers only three cardiologists, then you only have a choice of three. And many insurance plans don’t cross State lines. To me, that doesn’t seem like very much choice at all. A single-payer insurance plan allows for more choice, not less.

"Rationed care" is another term that is being thrown around with respect to the Canadian system. I'm not too sure what exactly that means, but to me it implies a lack of treatment choice, perhaps? I don’t know how many choices one needs, but if you are diagnosed with a disease, say breast cancer, you get a choice of treatment options in Canada too, along with the pros and cons of each treatment, and then the patient can decide which option feels right. So, mastectomy, lumpectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, biological therapy are all available. If the patient suggests that they want to treat their breast cancer by drinking five litres of soy milk a day and wants the government to fund that, well the answer will be no. But I doubt American insurance companies would cover such a treatment either. The point is that all the kinds of treatments that one would expect to be available for a particular health condition are available and covered.

The last part of goal 2 deals with speedy treatment. Everyone has heard about the wait-time problems in Canada, and that is the one issue that dogs the Canadian system when it comes to NON-life-threatening health issues, like knee replacements, hip replacements etc. However, if the issue IS life-threatening, the care is very fast and very good. A friend went in for an angiogram, and it was discovered that the coronary (heart) arteries were pretty much completely blocked. He had a triple by-pass surgery that same day, and was kept in the hospital for almost two weeks until the physicians felt he was okay to go home. That seems like pretty good care to me! Another friend was tested, diagnosed with breast cancer, decided upon her course of treatment, and had her surgery all within three weeks. I think that is pretty good too. I have more stories like that, but you get the idea. With respect to wait times for imaging diagnosis, if something is deemed urgent, the patient get in quickly. Also, even though Canadians wring their hands about it, the fact of the matter is that there is private care in Canada too. So, if you want that MRI and are willing to pay for it, you can get it today.

Goal 3 is probably the most challenging one to deal with for any system, and will only get more challenging with our aging population. I think that all governments can best address this by looking at the prevention side. There is much governments can do to improve the quality of the food we eat, such banning trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup from the food supply, not allowing “imitation” foods, which tend to be far worse for us than the food they are trying to imitate, and by finding a way to make fresh produce less expensive than fast-food meals. By helping people become healthier, perhaps we can slow the flood of people that develop health problems and need care.

Another argument I hear all the time is that a government-run system by definition must be less efficient and more wasteful than a privately run system. In Canada, because so much of the government’s budget goes to health care, it is in their best interest to make the system as efficient as possible. Governments are accountable to their electorate, and health care is ALWAYS a top issue, so if people are unhappy they vote the government out. I don’t believe that insurance policy holders in the States can vote out the people that run their insurance companies every 2 to 4 years if they don’t like the care they are receiving – and they are completely at the mercy of what the insurance companies decide with respect to coverage. It is not in Canada where we regularly hear stories about people being denied care due to various insurance loop-holes. Canadians simply don’t have to worry about receiving a huge medical bill, unless they travel to the States. And when there is profit involved as in private care, prices must be higher for the company to make money, and I would think it is at least possible that corners might be cut to boost the bottom line. In a non-profit system, that goes away.

The Canadian system is by no means perfect. The biggest problems are doctor shortages, especially in rural communities, and wait-times for non-life-threatening health issues, which can be quite long. But all in all, most Canadians are pretty happy with the system, and would not exchange it for the system that currently exists in the States. Hopefully our American neighbours will focus on achieving the above goals with their health care reform, and not get bogged down in politics and fear mongering. And please, if you are going to discuss the Canadian Health Care System, get your facts straight.

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We know salmon is one of the healthiest fish out there – chock full of omega 3 fatty acids, but if we keep eating them now, will there be any left for our kids to eat when they grow up?

I just got back from the farmer's market, one of my favourite weekend activities. I love the variety of produce that one simply can't find in the grocery store – last week after my farmer's market excursion, I made a "purple meal" with purple potatoes, purple beets, purple kale, purple cabbage and purple tomatoes along with some beef tenderloin. I didn't find the purple carrots or purple broccoli last week, but if I had found them, they would have been part of the meal too. What fun! And the food is so fresh and tasty compared to the grocery store produce which is picked weeks early for shipping and then frequently ripened with chemicals when the time is right.

Well today, my last purchase was two wild coho salmon fillets, caught in the deep ocean off the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands in northern British Columbia. I haven’t bought salmon in a while, because I find myself feeling guilty every time I think about it. All over the news have been reports about how the sockeye salmon run this year was expected to be fantastic, but very few salmon came back to spawn. None of the salmon runs are as good as they used to be, and year after year the trend seems to be worse and worse. I asked the people at the booth at the market today if we should really be buying salmon at all. She told me that that was a difficult question to answer – she said that their fish is caught in a sustainable way, no where near the mouths of rivers, but it was obvious that she was very worried about the future of this fabulous fish, and was wrestling with the same question. The cod fishery collapsed on the east coast of Canada 17 years ago and still has not recovered. If we don’t stop eating salmon now, can we expect the same thing on the west coast? In the States last year, the West Coast Salmon Fishery was considered a failure and labelled a Federal disaster. In Canada, the sockeye fishery is closed completely this year due to the near total collapse on the Fraser River, the most important salmon estuary in BC. Nine to 11 million fish that were expected to return this year did not show up.

One might make the argument that this is a reason to eat farmed salmon rather than wild, but the problem with that theory is that the farmed salmon industry is heavily implicated in the decline of the wild salmon stocks, as the fish farms are on the rivers where the wild salmon spawn, and the wild salmon smolts (baby fish) as they swim by the fish farms on their way to the ocean get covered in sea lice, which weakens and kills them. The government still has not forced the farmed salmon industry to use closed containers on land, to prevent the diseased fish from contaminating the wild salmon. I think that what we choose to purchase is a political act. We are either choosing to sustain the planet and its living organisms or we are not, and the fastest way to change methods of food production is to refuse to purchase food that comes from unsustainable, planet damaging, unhealthy practises. Consumers are usually way ahead of governments, and it is up to consumers to force change at the check-out stand. So, please don't eat farmed salmon!

Salmon need cold water to survive, and the ocean and rivers are warming, which is probably also playing a big roll in the declining stocks. And of course, chemical spills into important salmon rivers, such as what happened to the Cheakamus River in 2005 killing every living thing, doesn’t help. The experts say it will take more than 50 years for the fish to come back in the same numbers as before the spill. And of course, no fish means no eagles and other predators that rely on the salmon for food too, and so on up the food chain we go.

So, what do you think? Did I make the right decision this morning when I bought my salmon? I’m not too sure, but I will try not to feel guilty about my decision as I can't change it now. Instead, I do feel grateful that I can enjoy it at this time, and I will revere it as the precious item it is. I may not be eating salmon for a while, and if on occasion I do decide to treat myself, I'll make sure I buy it from someone like the person at the market today, who only catches the fish out in the deep ocean waters. Hopefully between closing fisheries, moving to closed-container fish farming, restoring the habitat in salmon streams, and doing what we can to slow global warming, one day the salmon will come back in abundance, and I'll feel good about enjoying salmon regularly again.

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Kidney stones occur more commonly in the summer, so stay hydrated to avoid one of the most painful conditions there is.

Well, with the heat wave we’ve been enjoying over the past week, I’ve found myself pondering how to stay comfortably cool, keep the apartment cool enough to be able to sleep, get my vitamin D dosage without burning to a crisp, and focusing on staying hydrated enough.

Dehydration creates a number of problems in the body, including increasing blood pressure, accelerating osteoarthritis (the wearing down of joints), and increasing the risk of kidney stones.

Kidney stones tend to develop more frequently in the summer months, and as anyone that has had one will tell you they are something you don't want to get as they are excruciatingly painful.

The south-eastern States, hot for most of the year, are referred to as the “kidney stone belt”, and the Middle East has about double the rate of kidney stones than North America, mostly due to inadequate water intake which is especially needed in hot weather.

Staying well hydrated is fundamentally important to health, and most tend not to drink enough water even when the weather is cool. Because we sweat more when we are hot, we need even more water to replace what we are losing.

If you’ve suffered from kidney stones in the past you are at risk of getting them again, so staying well hydrated is a very important preventative measure, as water reduces the concentration of the minerals that might crystallize into stones.

One often hears the saying “drink plenty of fluids” when it is hot, but some fluids will make the body’s internal environment worse, making one more prone to kidney stones. Soda pop is a fluid that not only dehydrates making one more prone to kidney stones, but also contains phosphates, which is linked to higher kidney stone recurrence.

Dark soft drinks like coke, tend to contain oxalates, which further increase one's susceptibility to kidney stones. Any caffeinated beverage is dehydrating, so for every cup of a caffeinated beverage you drink, do drink another glass of filtered water.

Sugary drinks tend to mess with calcium and magnesium absorption, once again increasing one's risk for kidney stones. With kids drinking so much in the way of sugary drinks and soda pop now, children as young as 5 are being afflicted with kidney stones.

The healthy fluid of choice is water – add a twist of lemon or lime if that will help you drink enough of it.

How much water should one drink? According to Dr. Batmanghelidj who wrote the book Your Body's Many Cries For Water, take one's bodyweight in pounds, divide by two, and that is the number of ounces one should drink each day.

When it is hot, probably not a bad idea to drink a little more to make up for sweat losses. If you are exercising in the heat (not the best idea – exercise in the early morning or evening rather than during peak heat times) you may want to weigh yourself before your exercise and again afterwards, and replace the water weight lost during the exercise.

One can tell if one is well hydrated if the colour of the urine is clear to very light yellow. If your urine is bright yellow, drink up! (Some vitamin supplements will turn the urine an almost fluorescent yellow colour, which would make it impossible to judge hydration levels.)

There have been media reports about people dying from drinking too much water, usually during or after an athletic event. The problem is caused by diluting the electrolytes to the point they can't do their job.

So the water we drink needs to be adequately mineralized – add a pinch of Pascalite Clay or unrefined, air dried Celtic Sea Salt, to any water that has been distilled or filtered by reverse osmosis as all the minerals have been removed by these processes.

Drinking mineral-rich water will ensure that our electrolytes won't become too diluted.

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