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Why are we more afraid of gluten than Ebola? The Beer Belly Diet Book is a lie!! We have become a society obsessed with food, but not the consumption of this necessity but the fear of it. If we walk into a mall and smell the sugar and cinnamon from the Cinnabon kiosk, we feel compelled to run over to Whole Foods where we can confront our own mortality in every isle. At stores like Whole Foods and Goodness Me, everything is “free” of something and yet it is so expensive. We let them pick our berries and mushrooms for us and hope they are pesticide and chemical free and we pay dearly for this privilege. And of course, the food that strikes fear into our hearts today has become our arch-enemy number one; gluten. Thanks to Gwyneth Paltrow, an actress who suddenly has become an expert in science, diet, and nutrition we have become aware of a new condition known as non-celiac gluten sensitivity or simply gluten intolerance. A new study published this month, titled Small Amounts of Gluten in Subjects with Suspected Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity: A Randomized Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Crossover-Trial proved conclusively that there is no such thing as gluten intolerance. The only people who cannot ingest gluten are those suffering from celiac disease and this is less than 1% of the population of Canada. However, at this time, almost 30 per cent of the Canadian population feel they have gluten intolerance and consume a gluten free diet. This movement was started by Dr. William Davis who wrote the book, “The Beer Belly Diet” that became a best a best seller and convinced people that their indigestion and weight gain problems were all caused by gluten. His book is a total lie because not only is it based on inaccurate research data, it misses the main point. It is not the gluten that causes the problem. It is the products that contain gluten such as bread, cookies, muffins, potatoes, pasta and a wide variety of starchy foods. The biggest lie in the book is told when Dr. Davis says that our wheat has been genetically modified and this is absolutely false. The DNA of Canadian and American wheat is exactly the same as it was 100 years ago. We only have developed new methods to increase the yield. A gluten-free diet is actually very healthy if you did it the right way. This would mean making all your food from scratch, preparing it all at home and having a diet rich in protein, fruits and vegetables. This diet would not include grains so no bread or cereal and of course no fast food eaten out of the house or prepared food brought into the house. However, most people are lazy when it comes to changing their life style for their health so they look for short-cuts and the food manufacturers were right there to supply them. Gluten-free foods have become the newest fad. Rice Krispies removed barley malt so they could say they were gluten-free. Campbell soups brought out a whole line of gluten-free soups. In a short period of time we had gluten-free salad dressing, potato chips, hot dogs, veggie burgers, licorice pickles, beer, vodka, toothpaste, makeup and even playdough. This was all in addition to the gluten-free breads, cookies and pasta. My favourite was a gluten-free Eucharistic wafer sold to churches for communion. The problem with all these gluten-free products was that the manufacturers had to use large amounts of sugar and fat to replace the gluten. Gluten is made of two hapless proteins, gliadin and glutenin. They give bread its elasticity and its unique taste. With the gluten removed, the new gluten-free products lack important vitamins and fibre and are made with substitute starches such as rice and tapioca that have no nutritional value at all. However, they do have a very high glycemic index and makes them very dangerous for people with Type 2 diabetes or even people with borderline sugar issues. Of course when the food manufacturers made all these gluten-free products that are actually bad for you, the price skyrocketed. Gluten-free foods are on average 242 per cent more expensive than their “regular” counterparts. It has become a huge business and everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. If there never was gluten in the product, they advertise it as gluten free. Soon you will be seeing gluten-free tires, I-phones and of course gluten-free clothes. The fact that gluten-free products are higher in fat and sugar and lower in protein than their regular counterparts, means not only less nutrition for the consumer but positive weight gain. We have been concerned for years about an overweight society suffering from high blood sugar, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, all of which contribute to heart disease. Now thanks to a best seller book of lies we are contributing even more to our obese society. It also means that people who never had any of those health issues before could now develop them because of a gluten-free diet. To a person who has celiac disease, gluten is like Kryptonite to Superman and they must adhere strictly to a gluten-free diet. Celiac is easily diagnosed with a blood test and a minimally-invasive biopsy of the intestine. Or you go completely gluten-free for one week and if all the cramps, bloating diarrhea and nauseas disappear, then you may have the disease. You must be careful because gluten is everywhere, even in ketchup and coffee, noodles, spices, processed meats, imitation seafood and even some vegetarian substitutes. You can also be fooled by food processors that use other names for gluten such as triticum valgare or hordeum vulgare or secale cereal. Other ingredients that contain gluten are bulgar, couscous, farina, malt and seitan. This means if you have celiac, better bring your reading glasses to the supermarket and study every label, especially watching out for teas and coffees. For the rest of us who do not have celiac, this is a very unhealthy diet that will surely cause weight gain and may lead to blood sugar problems. If you have poor digestion and are having weight problems, then consider stop eating bread, corn, potatoes and pastries. They are the real culprits. Its spring so get out there and so a little aerobic exercise. Go for a walk. Take out the bike and you will be much leaner, healthier and happier than before and your food bill will go down.

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Mental Illness is a Physical Disease The title of this article may sound like a strange statement but the difference between mental disease and any physical disease is simply the visibility of the condition. The moment you see your friend walking towards you in a very awkward manner, you know they have hurt their back. People with laboured breathing, those who have to stop and inhale a shot of nitroglycerin for their heart, and others with walking canes, walkers, wheel chairs and special sticks to indicate their blindness are all obvious to us. The shrunken look of your friend or loved one as they slowly succumb to the cancer within them is so visible it hurts. And yet mental illness is just as physical but we cannot see it. The fact that this disease is so invisible causes many of us to be dismissive. We all have good days and bad days so why doesn’t this person just get hold of themselves and get on with their life? We may feel that this person’s illness is in their head or self-induced and as a result we have very little sympathy for those afflicted with mental disease. Sometimes it is visible to us when we see children with Down’s syndrome or Autism or even the ramblings of homeless people but in most cases this illness is totally invisible. As human beings we tend to be judgmental and bigoted whether we admit it or not. That is why we accept mental disease when we can see it but very often dismiss it when we cannot. Let us consider for a moment the recent deaths of three hockey players, all of which played enforcer roles and took many hits to the head. What a strange coincidence that all three felt so depressed they either killed themselves with drugs and alcohol or in the case of Wade Belak, hung himself while all alone in a Toronto hotel room. Like Mark Rypien and Derek Boogaard, he had a beautiful wife and very young children and yet he chose to die. I do not believe he made that choice. I personally think that his brain, like the others, suffered so much damage that it was in physical disarray and would not work. Neurons and synapses were damaged and none of these men had the ability to use any logic to operate their lives. The nineteenth century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote that if you want to commit suicide do not do it today but wait until tomorrow. You can always commit suicide the next day if things are still just as bad. This is a rational thought available to anyone with a normal brain but not available to a person who has suffered some brain damage. In the same way that there are hundreds of thousands of diseases and infections that can make you physically ill, there are probably just as many ways for the wiring in your brain to go wrong. Look at the boxer Cassius Clay (Mohammed Ali), who after years of fighting did not commit suicide but came down with Parkinson-like symptoms that rendered him an invalid. The blows to his head caused different problems than those to our hockey players. We know very little about mental disease and all the different conditions except for the terms we see on television like paranoid schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder and attention deficit disorder. These are labels for a disease we cannot see and cannot understand but all these diseases pale in comparison to the one that seems to affect us the most, depression. Depression According to Health Canada and Statistic Canada, 8 percent of all Canadians will suffer from depression at one point in their lives. In 2008 there were almost 20 million doctor visits for this condition, second only to heart related diseases such as blood pressure and cholesterol. Statistically twice as many women are diagnosed with depression as men but this is probably because of the nature of men who do not like to open up or share their feelings easily. This is the most common of all mental diseases but it cannot be explained. We all have good days and bad days. If you lose your job or lose a loved one you should feel down and depressed. That is normal. However, if nothing changes and you find yourself in a depressed mood that will not go away, something has happened in your brain. You could give a clinically depressed person a million dollars and they simply would not care. I believe it is a physical phenomenon, no different than acquiring a stomach ulcer, a herniated disc or a sore back. Something has physically gone wrong and we do not know why. If you see your physician or a psychiatrist they will give you drugs that may treat the problem. But the research on brain disease is in its infancy and we know too little to be using drugs that have such harmful effects. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 but it was not until the mid 1940’s that we started using it as an antibacterial. Our knowledge in those days was that all infectious diseases were caused by bacteria and we could treat these diseases with penicillin. Since then we have discovered, viruses, fungi and all types of infectious parasites that require specialized treatment and which cannot be eliminated with mere penicillin. Imagine a physician trying to treat AIDS with penicillin. Yet we use antidepressants such as SSRI’s (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) that interfere with the normal ebb and flow of serotonin, a naturally occurring hormone in our brains. The newer antidepressants now interfere with another transmitter, norepinephrine and this has unusual effects on dopamine and our pain and pleasure centres. People react differently to these medications. Some are actually helped so whatever happened in the brains was adjusted by the drug. Some stay depressed and commit suicide while on the drugs. In fact, many studies show that people on antidepressants have a higher rate of suicide but of course they felt that way before they even started the drug. Most people who take the drug experience a strange set of side-effects such as insomnia, sexual dysfunction and drowsiness and weight gain. Many asinine psychiatrists, unhappy with the results of the antidepressants have the patient take anti-schizophrenic drugs along with it even though they do not have this condition. Bi-Polar Disorder This is a very strange condition that affects somewhere between 1 and 2 percent of all Canadians and is a little more obvious. A person who has this condition will experience two phases, one is a high energetic phase know as the manic phase and a lethargic almost catatonic stage in which the person does not want to do anything at all known as the depressive phase. They do not want to get out of bed, eat, wash or anything. Once again, it is not like the person with this condition suddenly decided to become two opposite creatures at once. Something damaged the brain but in this case it has been shown that excessive amounts of drugs or alcohol very often cause this type of brain damage. Unfortunately once all the drugs and alcohol are withdrawn, the condition usually remains for a long time. There are of course drugs for the condition but most of them keep the person away from their manic phase and in a constant state of depression but allow them to function at a subliminal level. The main side-effect of bi-polar medications is weight gain and it is usually very pronounced. Schizophrenia This is a very strange and rare mental disorder that is usually invisible if the person is taking their medication. Schizophrenia usually affects males and starts in the low twenties. It usually affects highly intelligent people and is definitely a very physical disease. A person with this condition does not see images the way you or I do. Colours run from object to object and shapes blur because the lines around them move into different shapes. This is an obvious physical problem with the manner in which the eye sees objects. Add to that the fact that schizophrenics hear sounds as if they were in a tunnel with an echo so sometimes they cannot distinguish between a normal conversation of a person near them and other sounds they hear which they usually attribute to voices that talk to them and make them do things. Although the drugs that treat this condition greatly diminish the quality of life of the afflicted person, they allow them to exist in communities and render them fairly safe. The problem is that once stabilized with drugs, the patient feels good enough to get off their medication and all the symptoms come back. The term paranoid schizophrenia is actually redundant because if you saw images and heard sounds the way they do you would always be fearful and paranoid. An interesting fact about schizophrenics is that over 80 percent of them smoke and if they quit smoking their symptoms become worse. It seems that nicotine is somehow helpful to people with that condition. Treatment Although the most effective treatment is cognitive therapy (Freudian style conversations with a therapist in which you try to sort out the root of your depressed feelings), it can take up to a year to get a referral to a psychiatrist. Even if you did get to see a psychiatrist most of them only do drug therapy in which they can see four patients an hour as opposed to talking therapy which limits them to one patient an hour. Given the choice of $150 an hour or $600 an hour what would you cho0se? However, our provincial government in all their wisdom is actually asking family physicians if they would like to attend lectures on psychiatry. They pay for the whole trip, hotel meals and even pay them for the time spent there. Pharmaceutical companies actually sponsor these lectures and indicate the drugs they feel your family physician should be prescribing for specific mental disorders, usually depression. For the drug companies it’s a win-win situation and for the patient who is waiting for the psychiatric appointment, a new antidepressant will be prescribed. In fact, the majority of antidepressant prescriptions are written by family physicians who have no background whatsoever in psychiatry. Sometimes a wiser choice is to sit down and talk to your priest, minister, reverend or rabbi and open up about your feelings. Your conversation is strictly confidential and will never leave the room. Furthermore, you can see them almost right away; this is cognitive therapy at its finest without any government intervention and without any drugs being prescribed. Addictions either to drugs, alcohol, gambling or even sex are physical defects of the human brain. They require a special form of treatment but in most cases there are far too many addicts for too few treatment facilities and too few professionals who may be able to help these people. Prevention If you encounter a disease for which there is no really effective treatment or cure your best chance is to do whatever you can to try and avoid mental illness. It may not always work but as a general rule, people who are healthy, do have any underlying physical conditions, eat well and exercise are less likely to get any disease. So that is my advice to you. Take precautions. So many of our physical ailments are treatable that we sometimes do not take enough care to avoid them. However, in this case I would strongly suggest it is time to get healthy and try and avoid any form of mental illness. No more excuses. You will now schedule yourself for a 30 minute walk every day. The time has come to finally quit smoking and reduce your alcohol consumption to about one drink a day. If you really love fast food, then just do it once a month and eat at home the rest of the time. Forget the packaged foods and try your hand at some new recipes that you make entirely yourself at home. Five servings of fruit and vegetables a day should become your mantra. And of all the supplements you take, high potency fish oil and powerful antioxidants are the most effective products you can take to protect your brain. [print_link]

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prostate cancer tests may replace old PSA test The old PSA (prostate specific antigen) test is not only useless and inadequate, but has created countless false alarms resulting in unnecessary biopsies, radiation treatments and unnecessary castrations, either surgically or chemically induced. Finally there are some new and sophisticated tests that will soon be available to properly diagnose the actual disease known as prostate cancer and to separate those cancers in the prostate from the benign ones that are better left untreated to the aggressive forms that must be treated. Up until now and elevated PSA number automatically made your physician order a biopsy of the prostate gland. The level of anxiety and fear created by this marginally effective test was great and put fear into the hearts of family and family members. Once a man’s wife hears the word “cancer”, then she feels that every effort must be made to fight this horrible disease. The problems with the test is that is simply measures the number and size of the prostate specific antigens in the prostate gland and this has very little to do with the actual cancerous cells that may be there. In most cases they will stay there for the duration of a man’s life and not cause his death. Almost every male over the age of seventy has cancerous cells in his prostate gland. Once diagnosed with a positive result, the majority of men undergo surgery or radiation treatment and many suffer for years, needlessly, from complications such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction. The number of men who were treated and did not need any intervention was so great that in 2011 the United States Preventive Service Task Force, a government advisory body, provoked a furor by recommending against screening, saying that far more men were harmed by unnecessary biopsies and treatments than were saved from dying of cancer. At around the same time, Dr.Richard Ablin, the creator of the PSA test said that his test was being overused and should only be used as a screening tool for men who already had prostate cancer treatment and not for the general public. This created a whole area of research to find new and more accurate treatments. Since that announcement more than a dozen companies have introduced tests recently or are in the planning stage in the United States. As a general rule, companies always launch first in the U.S. and then eventually in Canada. This means that if some of these new tests prove to be more accurate and successful at distinguishing real prostate cancer from benign cancerous growths, it may be a while before Canadians will benefit. Rather than look at a single protein such as prostate specific antigen in the old PSA test, these new tests used advanced techniques to measure multiple genes and many other so-called molecular markers. The new science of molecular markers is being done by Dr. Douglas Dolginow, chief executive of GenomeDx Bioscience, a startup that feels its test will be extremely accurate and out on the market within the next two years. Of course once these tests come onto the market there will be a great deal of competition and each one will claim to get the best results. The biggest of these competitions will be between Genomic Health and Myriad Genetics, which are both moving into the prostate cancer field after successes in breast cancer testing. Myriad is known for its test for genetic mutations that raise the risk of getting breast cancer. Genomic Health’s Oncotype DX test helps determine if a women should receive chemotherapy and which drugs will work depending on the specific genetic mutation that she has. Since the report came out recommending against the PSA test, prostate screening has declined quite a bit in the U.S. However millions still get the test and every year as many as one million men undergo biopsies with about 240,000 prostate cancers diagnosed and 28,000 deaths annually from the disease. In Canada we see about 27,000 new cases each year and the death rate is about 2900. This means that the market can be increased with new and accurate tests and more lives can be saved, and needless treatment will spare even more men from being castrated or even dying from the procedures. Both companies have developed tests in which they analyze gene activity levels in the tumour sample obtained in the biopsy to determine how aggressive the cancer actually is. This helps doctors and patients make a more informed decision about whether to treat it. Because the PSA test is so inaccurate, it is also possible to err in the other direction. In one such case, a patient had what is called a low Gleason score and low PSA levels and yet the new test done by Myriad’s Polaris showed that the tumour was aggressive and the patient required surgery. The Gleason score is based on the appearance of the cancerous tissue and the more abnormal it looks the higher the Gleason number. Some excellent research into these new tests is being done by Dr. Eric A. Klein at the Cleveland Clinic with funding from Genomic Health and by Dr.William J.Catalona, director of the prostate program at Northwestern University, the man who helped bring the PSA test to the market in the 1990’s. Hopefully in the near future we will have very accurate tests to determine not only the presence of different types and sub-types of prostate cancer but which ones are actually aggressive and need treatment.

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Mammograms: Antiquated diagnostic tests that should be replaced Spring is here and soon there will be runs and walks everywhere to raise money for breast cancer. This sea of pink campaign is extremely successful and yet a larger portion of the funds collected go for screening rather than treatment. This would be a good idea if the screening really worked, but the fact is that, depending on whose statistics you read, for every life saved, anywhere between three and ten women are over treated. A recent review published in the The Lancet medical journal demonstrated that although screening saves lives, it also picks up cases in many women that would never have caused a problem. The independent review, commissioned by the charity, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and Britain’s Department of Health, follows fierce international debate about the benefits of routine screening and recent research that shows it does more harm than good. One of the sponsors of the review is Sir Mike Richards, the Department of Health’s national cancer director and one of the sponsors of the review. One of the problems of screening is that is done on women that are too young. They usually have thicker breast tissue and when this appears on the mammogram as an area of increased density, a biopsy is scheduled. Most of these biopsies are negative for breast cancer but the ones that are positive are usually cancers that are benign, represent zero risk, and should be left alone. A huge number of these are over treated and many women will actually have healthy breasts removed because of their fear of breast cancer. Just like the PSA test, the proponents of screening just want to keep the status quo and not look into newer and better methods of diagnosing all the different types of breast cancer and this attitude is causing unnecessary radiation, surgery and chemotherapy to many healthy women. According to a survey of randomized clinical trials involving 600,000 women around the world, for every 2000 women screened annually over ten years, one life is prolonged but 10 healthy women are given diagnoses of breast cancer and are unnecessarily treated, often with therapies that have life-threatening side effects. (Tamoxifen, for instance carries small risks of stroke, blood clots, uterine cancer and a large risk of reduced bone density; radiation and chemotherapy weaken the heart; surgery, of course has its risks and downsides. Many of these women are told they have something called ductal carcinoma in situ (D.C.I.S.), or “Stage Zero” cancer, in which abnormal cells are found in the lining of the milk-producing ducts. Before universal screening, D.C.I.S. was rare. Now D.C.I.S., and the less common lobular carcinoma in situ account for 25% of all new breast cancer cases, some 60,000 a year. In situ cancers are more prevalent among women in their 40’s. By 2020, according to the National Institutes of Health’s estimate, more than one million American women will be living with a D.C.I.S. diagnosis. With a 10 years 100% survival rate, all these women become cancer survivors, and get to wear their pink ribbons. But the fact is they never had and do not have cancer. They have less than a 5% chance of developing any kind of cancer and that is the average risk of any 62 year old women for developing breast cancer. Treating these women is the same as having a diagnosis of high cholesterol and then getting heart surgery. Both make as much sense. Since the mapping of the human genome, we have actually found four distinctive types of breast cancers. They have different causes and they respond to different types of treatment. Two related subtypes, luminal A and luminal B, involve tumours that feed on estrogen; they may respond to a five year course of pills like tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors, which block cells’’ access to that hormone or reduce its levels. In addition, a third type of cancer, called HER2-positive, produces too much of a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2; it may be treated with a targeted immunotherapy called Herceptin. The final type, basal-like cancer (often called “triple negative” because its growth is not fueled by the most common biomarkers for breast cancer –estrogen, progesterone and HER2),is the most aggressive, accounting for up to 20% of breast cancers. It is more prevalent among young and African-American women. We should be focusing on specific genetic tests for these true cancers and not lumping them all together with the non-cancerous D.C.I.S. Remember the last two letters stand for “in situ”. This is a Latin term meaning something that stays in its place. A cancer can only be defined as a cancer if it spreads and any growth that stays “in situ” is not a cancerous growth. Recently, in another study, a panel of experts led by University College of London professor Sir Michael Marmot concluded that screening prevents about 1300 deaths a year in Britain but can also lead to 4000 women having treatment for a condition that would never have ever bothered them. This means that according to their study, for every death that was prevented, three women were over-diagnosed and treated. This was less than the whole world study which showed that for every one death prevented, 10 women were over-diagnosed. The review panel called for improved information, in health leaflets for instance, to give women a clearer picture of both the benefits and potential harm before they undergo a mammogram. In Britain, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer affecting one in eight at some point in their lives. Right now their country’s screening program invites women aged 50 to 70 for a mammogram every 3 years and this is being expanded to ages 47 and 73. According to KRUK, early diagnosis and better treatments have improved the survival rates to 77% in 2007 from 41% in 1971. But how many of those survivors were screened with D.C.I.DS., “Zero Stage” cancer, and have been used to pad the statistics for breast screening and survival rates. Many people are intimidated by their physicians. They tell us we must do something and we do it without question. However, just as I advise the men to ask the serious questions about their prostate, so should you women also ask the serious questions. Do not accept a diagnosis of breast cancer without the very detailed information of which type and sub-type it may be. If it must be treated, ask if there are new treatments specifically designed for that type of breast cancer and demand that your physician provide all the information. After all, if you have non-invasive D.C.I.S. you have the right to refuse treatment and the right to ask why your physician wants to treat something that cannot go anywhere and is benign and non-invasive. If this actually was your diagnosis, the fact is that without the mammogram, you would never know and live a normal healthy level to its full expectancy and your breasts would still be intact.

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Chemo Brain: Cutting Through the Fog Unfortunately for many people with cancer, they have had to undergo extensive chemotherapy treatments. While in many cases, these treatments save lives, they leave these patients with many after-effects and one of the most serious is the inability to multitask and sometimes even forgetting how to do routine tasks. In some cases they cannot go back to their previous employment because their mental ability is so diminished. Reading a book in a week becomes a thing of the past because it may now take up to two months and with a great deal of difficulty. A study that measured the electrical activity of cancer patients’ brains by University of British Columbia researchers published online in the journal Clinical Neuropsychology last spring shows chemotherapy can lead to excessive mind-wandering and an inability to concentrate. This phenomenon, known as chemo brain, can affect the daily lives of cancer patients in many ways: they may have trouble remembering words, people’s names or concentrating on daily assignments. Todd Handy, a psychology professor at University of British Columbia and a co-author of the recent study believes that even with a healthy brain, sometimes we are paying attention and, sometimes we are not, but with chemo-brain, even when the patients were paying attention their brains look like their minds were wandering. Although the concept of chemo-brain is not new, researchers hope that by gaining a better understanding of how chemotherapy affects the brain of cancer patients, it will lead to better therapies and support. The UBC researchers looked at a new way of testing patients with chemo brain using an electroencephalogram (EEG) to show whether the brains wandered or remained focused while performing tasks on a computer. They examined whether 19 breast cancer survivors performed differently from a healthy control group of women who never had breast cancer or chemotherapy treatment. While performing a task for a period of time, the participant’s brain activity was monitored using EEG and they were periodically asked to report their attention level. Future research will look at whether physical exercise can improve the ability of cancer patients to maintain their mental focus, said Kristin Campbell, associate professor for UBC’s department of physical therapy and lead author of the study. Lori Bernstein, a neuropsychologist who works for the department of supportive care with Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, believes the study is helping people who have gone through chemotherapy. Brain fog is only of the side-effects of chemotherapy but once you lose your ability to concentrate and remember simple tasks you can lose confidence in almost every aspect of day-to-day living. Her job is to help restore confidence and administer support groups to try and make these patients viable members of society once more. There are even rehabilitation centres strictly for cancer patients affected with chemo brain. Heather Palmer is the director of cognitive rehabilitation at Maximum Capacity, a company from Bradford, Ontario that helps individuals improve or maintain their cognitive abilities. In 2007 she started Brain Fog, a cancer related program that helps address the cognitive changes that survivors will experience as a result of their long arduous treatment. It is a multidimensional program that focuses on memory, task management and psychological well-being. Cancer patients are given exercises, homework assignments and group activities to help apply the in-class strategies and concepts of their everyday lives. In one exercise, participants were asked to say what they were doing out loud. When a person is speaking, their thought process is slower because people cannot speak as fast as they think and if they are in the middle of a task, it will help them remember what they were doing if they forget. More than 6,000 survivors have participated in the program that first started at Wellspring, a support network group for cancer patients in Ontario and Alberta, and has since expanded to different cancer centres across the country and the United States. In a follow-up study at UBC this year, 1268 cancer survivor patients were treated with nutritional supplements in a double blind study with an almost equal number of cancer survivors who did not receive supplements. Neither group knew if they were taking the actual supplements or placebos. The researchers followed all of these patients for a 12 month period and had them come into the clinic every 4 weeks for a series of written and verbal cognitive tests as well as taking measurements with the electroencephalogram (EEG). The supplements used were a combination of high potency omega-3 fish oil and magnesium theonate separately and in combination. The supplement users were divided into three groups; those that just were given omega-3 fish oil, those that just taking magnesium theonate and the third group which took both supplements together. After 12 months of treatment, those who were just given 5 ml of high potency omega-3 fish oil showed a 34 per cent improvement in their cognitive tests and increased brain activity over the group that did not receive supplements. The group that took both the magnesium theonate and the fish oil showed a 44 per cent better result in cognitive tests and brain stimulation and the group that just took the magnesium theonate showed a 29 per cent increase in cognitive ability and EEG activity over placebo. All the patients in both groups also came regularly for cognitive therapy and group sessions. The researchers concluded that taking Omega-3 fish and magnesium theonate certainly helped in the recovery of chemo-brain and could probably also help in almost any patient suffering from dementia or memory loss.