One unbearably hot day last summer, I waited in a long, snaking queue to get on a ride at Canada’s Wonderland. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a slumping figure. I squinted toward the head of the line to see a young-ish, presumably preteen girl crumpled onto the grassy spot next to the line. She looked visibly distressed, but no one - not her friends, not anyone around her in line - seemed to be doing anything to help her.

I stood so far away that I couldn’t tell if perhaps I overestimated her condition; maybe she was just pretending, feigning a swoon to get some attention. I could see people looking at her and then looking around at one another. But still, no one approached her.

As she continued to slump there, I worried for her, figuring she was likely suffering heat exhaustion and dehydration. The line kept inching forward toward the ride, and she feebly moved forward alongside her friends. By the time I reached the head of the line, she and her friends were long gone.

For the rest of the day, though, I felt a gnawing guilt that I hadn’t tried to help her, offer my water … or something. More than that, I wondered why no one else - out of all the hundreds of people in that line - had stepped forward to at least check on her condition.

After that experience, I was *still* really surprised when I read a shocking stat about folks in Toronto … [Read more →]

I just read about a research study in which the link between scent and memory was examined. It got me thinking about which scents I could recall from childhood.

Two powerful scent memories immediately and effortlessly waft into my “memory’s nose” - one, the scent of “Chloe”, the perfume my mom wore when I was little, and two, the strong odor of fish that I first smelled when I walked into a market in the town where I grew up.

On the one hand, the perfume memory is a more positive one because of its personal link to my mother. On the other hand, while the fishy smell was unpleasing to my nose the first time I caught wind of it, I don’t have any particularly bad feelings connected to it. Still, I remember both scents with equal power.

When I call up that “Chloe” scent, my memory fills with the powdery, soft scent and how I’d get a noseful of it whenever I hugged my mom or played dress-up in her nurse’s scrubs. And that first fishy scent floods my senses in complex and intricate detail. When I remember it, I am instantly that 6-year-old walking timidly through her first fish market, trying to be nice and fight the urge to scrunch up my face, wince, or plug my nose.

Researchers in Israel showed test subjects certain objects and associated those objects with either a pleasant or an unpleasant scent. When asked to recall the objects a week later, those objects associated with the “bad” smells were more easily remembered. Their hopes are to use this information to help people “to better forget early and powerful memories, such as trauma.

Can you recall the first scent that made a strong impression on you? One that, even now years later, you can call up like the smell’s origin were right under your nose? I just remembered another - the way my hands would smell after climbing on and hanging from the metal monkey bars on my school’s playground.

Please share your scent memories in the comments!

In Toronto people waited in line seven hours or more for the H1N1 flu shot. The sudden death of 13 year old Evan Frustaglio, a healthy teen until he contracted the virus, naturally raised the fear level not only in this city but across the country. Add to this the fact that the vaccine is not being supplied to Canadian cities fast enough to meet the sudden demand and you had a scene rife for panic.

I went to check out the queue in a suburb of Toronto when public panic was at its worst and found that the line was short. My satisfaction was short-lived. Apparently once you got inside the building you had a 3 to 4 hour wait. I had to wonder: Why were those with pre-existing conditions, expecting mothers, and young children made to stand in crowded queues, often outside in the cold and rain for hours, putting them even more at risk?

Are people taking an unnecessary risk by standing in a crowd waiting to get vaccinated or is the risk balanced out by the necessity? I don’t have the answer; I just think it is something to ponder. I do know this: Making the frail, the very young, and expecting mothers wait for hours in line-ups placed undue emotional and physical stress on these people.

A major by product of all this pandemic coverage by the media is fear.  Let’s hope things will go more smoothly next time.

Recently, some research has emerged that show how magnets inside of iPod-style headphones can interfere with implanted heart defibrillators and pacemakers.

If you wear an implanted heart device, you can still rock your MP3 player and ear buds - just keep the cords and devices at least an inch from your device. But what about the urban legend about MP3 players boosting your risk of being struck by lightning? [Read more →]

Bring a little of the outdoors to your indoors!

Houseplants add an organic, natural touch to rooms in your home or to your office workspace. Gazing at the greenery amidst that tangle of cords and technology can be quite soothing.

According to Eureka! Science News, “Adding these plants to indoor spaces can reduce stress, increase task performance, and reduce symptoms of ill health.”

Not only that, plants can also help to clean up indoor air - which can sometimes be even more polluted than the air outside!

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) given off by furniture, paints, building supplies, and office equipment can make people sick, triggering headaches, nausea, dizziness, irritation to eyes, nose, and throat, and worsening of asthma symptoms. Long-term exposure to high VOC levels can increase risks of cancer and damage to the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system. (Read more about “sick-building syndrome” here.)

But thanks to a process called phytoremediation, indoor plants can gobble up these pollutants. Of the plants tested by researchers from the University of Georgia Department of Horticulture, a few leafy species seemed to have super pollutant-neutralizing powers:

- Purple waffle plant

- English ivy

- Variegated wax plant

- Asparagus fern

- Purple heart plant

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Got pets? Before bringing plants into a pet household, check their toxicity to cats and dogs (known to nibble on leaves now and then …)

Last night, my yoga instructor guided us into our class-culminating savasana, that restful “corpse pose” that allows all of the session’s efforts and actions to settle into our bodies. I love savasana, can’t wait for it, and savour every silent, still second of it.

But last night something in me resisted. A crampy pinch in my neck had triggered a headache midway through the class, and I just couldn’t seem to to get my brain to let go of the pain so I could rest.

This headache followed me through my sleep and into today. So here I sit, aching in front of this computer - never the ideal place for someone with a headache. I decided that before I reached for ibuprofen I would try drug-free ways to deal with the pain.

Of the 8 suggested strategies, I’ve already tried the ones I can get away with in the office. Nothing has worked yet. Since I feel the pinch in my neck, I’ve been trying to stretch it and to relax my shoulders. In the process, I realized how bad my posture can be!

As I do this posture check-in, the headache doesn’t magically disappear. But I should feel something positive happening … [Read more →]