Eat Move Think

Canada’s new 24-Hour Movement Guidelines include brand-new recommendations for sleep. The move reflects a growing awareness among researchers that rest and recovery is crucial to overall wellness. Not getting enough shut-eye can lead to weight gain, memory problems and poor mental health. In this episode, host Shaun Francis interviews Dr. Jean-Philippe Chaput, the expert who helped to develop both Canadian and World Health Organization guidelines.

Heart disease remains the second highest cause of death of Canadians, behind cancer. About 63,000 Canadians have heart attacks every year. Dr. Beth Abramson is a Toronto cardiologist and the director of the Cardiac Prevention and Rehabilitation Centre at St. Michael’s Hospital. She argues that recent advances in cardiology are changing the way we understand life after heart attacks. Statins, pills of concentrated fish oil and COVID’s effect on the heart round out her conversation with our guest host, Dr. Peter Nord, chief medical director of Medcan.   Episode website: https://www.eatmovethinkpodcast.com/podcast/ep39-cardiology

Time-restricted eating is said to encourage weight loss and improve metabolic health. But how effective is it? In conversation with guest host Leslie Beck is Dr. Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist who studies human metabolism at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Weiss used to be a fan of intermittent fasting—until he conducted his own randomized controlled trial on humans. His findings may surprise you. LINKS AND HIGHLIGHTS: Dr. Ethan J. Weiss’s web page at UCSF, and his Twitter feed. Dr. Weiss’s randomized control trial on the 16:8 form of intermittent fasting is published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study was featured in numerous different publications, including the New York Times and CNBC. Episode website: https://www.eatmovethinkpodcast.com/podcast/ep38-intermittent-fasting

In the U.S. and Canada the public-health response to COVID-19 discouraged people from visiting hospitals or seeking care from MDs, prompting cancellations for childhood vaccinations, colonoscopies and mammograms. How will such decisions affect overall wellness? And what should we learn from what happened? To discover the answers, host Shaun Francis interviews Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of Harvard Medical School, who tracks large data sets of doctor visits. In public health emergencies, Dr. Mehrotra says, spillover effects “can have a larger toll than the actual thing that triggered that emergency.”

Today wearable technology is integral to wellness and the future of precision medicine, with such devices as the Fitbit, the Oura Ring and the just-released Apple Watch Series 6. But which tech is best? For guidance, host Shaun Francis talked to the most tapped-in tech observer out there, Amber Mac, about the little-known wearable that Amber thinks tops everyone else. Plus, the goods on the COVID Alert app and Amber’s recent interview with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Disagreeing with stop-the-spread coronavirus strategies is Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine in biostatistics at Harvard. As a founding signatory to the Great Barrington Declaration, Prof. Kulldorff believes most COVID government policy is wrong. Protect the vulnerable, he says, and allow the virus to spread through the young healthy population to achieve herd immunity. Here, in a feature interview with host Shaun Francis, Kulldorf describes his logic.

The pandemic is spurring positive lifestyle changes — such as the transition away from restaurant eating, and toward home cooking. In this episode, guest host Leslie Beck, Medcan’s director of food and nutrition, interviews Prof. Sylvain Charlebois, an expert in food trends and eating patterns. Based on surveys Charlebois has conducted at the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, the so-called “Food Professor” argues that the pandemic has triggered long-term changes in the way that people consume, prepare and procure their food. He also discusses his forthcoming book about poutine—and where the best plate of cheese curds and fries are found.  

Health columnist André Picard has been at the Globe and Mail newspaper since 1987. Covering the coronavirus has made him one of the most closely-read pundits of the pandemic. Here, Picard speaks with host Shaun Francis about his belief that we have to learn to live with COVID-19, the disastrous effects of the virus on long-term care, and what the pandemic reveals about our health-care system overall.

Leading the fight against the professional weight loss industry is Dr. Arya Sharma, a crusader for a new, medical approach to treating obesity that recognizes the patient’s lived experience and takes into account just how difficult it can be for a person to lose weight and keep it off. But hope is on the horizon, Dr. Sharma says. Here, Dr. David Macklin, Medcan’s director of weight management, interviews Dr. Arya Sharma, the founder and scientific director of Obesity Canada.

The COVID-19 vaccine prompts a lot of questions. How effective should we expect it to be? How long will its protection last? Will it be safe? Has Canada secured enough doses and from the right pharmaceutical companies? And perhaps the single biggest issue: When will a vaccine actually arrive for Canadians? In a wide-ranging interview with executive producer Christopher Shulgan, Medcan's Dr. Jason Abrams explains how vaccines work, and provides answers on the race to solve the global pandemic.