With Canadas health care system in such disarray, it might be time to call in the machines. Currently, there are more than 300 homegrown startups working on health innovations fuelled by artificial intelligence, from smartphone tools that judge the severity of a wound to a handheld digital device that detects cardiac disease to a platform that predicts the global spread of viruses like COVID and monkeypox. While most of these systems arent ready for rollout quite yetthough in some Toronto hospitals, AI is already flagging at-risk patients who may require a transfer to the ICUtheyre poised to m ..read more

Heather Campbell, a chemical engineer who lives in Calgary, was 44 and had never had a mammogram when she found a lump in her left breast.Every morning, after completing her skincare regimen, Heather Campbell would rub her fingers in small circles around her breasts, feeling for any changes. On the morning of Friday, October 13, 2017, when she was 44, her fingers bumped against a hard bulge on the side of her left breast. Shocked, Campbell stopped, palpated the lump again and decided shed wait a day before she worried. Breasts change all the time, she told herself. Then she headed to her downt ..read more

When June Jones says she wakes up early most days, she means before-the-birds early. The retired grandmother of four is up before dawn (sometimes as early as 2 a.m.) several days a week for dialysis. She crawls out of bed and creeps down the hall to her spare bedroom, where she has a hemodialysis machine set up in her Ottawa home. Jones hooks up the chest catheter, lies down and starts a four-hour-long treatment. I usually cant sleep, she says, but I rest my eyes and listen to quiet music, or I read a book.Jones, who is 61, has become an expert at managing kidney disease and, over the past 33 ..read more

The kidneys are as vital to our health and well-being as the heart or lungs. But chances are you rarely give them a second thoughtor even know how they work. The kidneys are underappreciated in terms of all that they do, says Caitlin Hesketh, a nephrologist at the Ottawa Hospital. They filter all of the blood in the body (at a rate of about one litre per minute), balancing minerals like potassium and sodium and removing waste products and excess water through urine. Kidneys also produce hormones that regulate blood pressure and red blood cell production, and they play a role in bone health, si ..read more

IV therapy. Drip bars. Energy shots. Immune injections. Nutrientbags? Whatever you want to call themthere are myriad marketing approachesyouve probably seen spas, clinics and wellness lounges offering intravenous injections of various vitamins and minerals, mixed with saline, that make all sorts of promises. You can increase your energy levels, reduce fatigue, improve cognitive function and memory or remove toxins from the body. Some formulations claim to relieve anxiety, depression or chronic headaches while improving your skin and delivering anti-aging benefits, all for anywhere from $165 to ..read more

When I signed up for my first appointment at an IV bar, I was a few weeks out from having COVID for the first time, and I still felt bone-tired. Thankfully, everyone in my family had experienced a mild case, but as many of us now know, its hard to gauge what is normal post-COVID fatigue, and what is just the general exhaustion of life with small children when youre nearing 40 and well into the third year of a pandemic. I mean, who couldnt use a little energy boost every now and then? The possibility of a little more pep in my step was pretty enticing, and I was curious.The clinic I booked, the ..read more

Ive been fighting my weight for decades, but after a lifetime of trying to meet impossible beauty and size standards, Ive finally, in my 50s, landed on body-neutralitya hard-earned, much gentler and more forgiving way to live. Most days, Im able to focus on body acceptance rather than a number on the scale. Earlier this year, however, I noticed my weight inching closer to the uh-oh side of the (admittedly flawed) body mass index (BMI). I had a sedentary day job and recently diagnosed hypertension (also known as high blood pressure), so I suspected that there might be additional health risks as ..read more

Early this year, a Canadian study published in JAMA Surgery confirmed what many patients, especially female patients, have long suspected: The sex of your surgeon absolutely matters when it comes to your outcome in the operating room. Female physicians got better results. But it turns out that the sex of the patient matters in the OR, as welland can even mean the difference between life and death.Angela Jerath, an associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Toronto, and her colleague Christopher Wallis, an assistant professor of surgery in the department of urology, canvassed th ..read more

Two drinks per week. Thats the maximum number that the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction now recommends adults consume to avoid negative alcohol consequences. And by consequences, they do not mean merely hangovers. Its actually extremely dire: Drink and your risk for developing all kinds of cancers (head and neck, stomach, pancreatic, liver, colorectal and, most significantly for women, breast) increases, as does your risk for heart disease and liver cirrhosis.But hold on. Let that sink in. Two drinks. Per week. In 2011, the guidelines for low-risk drinking allowed 10 drinks total ..read more

Rolanda Ryan For advocating for accessible abortions As the owner and operator of Newfoundland and Labradors only abortion clinic, Rolanda Ryan and her team are crucial to ensuring reproductive rights and bodily autonomy in the province. She opened her St. Johns clinic, Athena Health Centre, in 2010. Her clinic provides 90 percent of the abortions in the province, and you dont need a doctors referral to access care. Athenas practitioners also run a satellite clinic once a month, alternating between central Newfoundland and Corner Brook (a seven-hour drive away on the western coast), but acces ..read more