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Put some perspective in the Christmas stocking

Diana Gifford-Jones
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Put some perspective in the Christmas stocking

How many times in 2025 did you complain about something? And with good reason! But this is the time of year for setting aside our thoughts about the issues driving us crazy. Take a step back during the holidays and reflect on what really counts.

Health and happiness. That’s the bottom line.

My Christmas wish to all is a generous dose of perspective. The year 2025 brought a long litany of disasters. Deadly heat waves. Catastrophic flooding across parts of Europe and Asia. Wildfires forcing mass evacuations in North America and Australia. Powerful earthquakes striking without warning. And humanitarian crises that deepened, driven by conflict, hunger, and climate displacement around the world.

I don’t think I would be alone to say that 2025 brought bad news to family members and dear friends. We suffered setbacks. We lost loved ones. Our hearts ache for those who have been dealt a terminal illness, at no fault of their own.

It’s likely the year ahead will bring more trouble. Though, I hope and pray for less. Don’t we all.

Every year, my husband and I stuff four stockings for our children – now all of them grown up, but still we love the tradition. And every year, I try to find that little something that instills a sense of faith. But faith in what? It’s hard to say.

Faith in our common man? After all, we’ve watched neighbours shovel each other out after storms, while strangers raise millions overnight for people they will never meet.

Faith in our country? That’s harder, when public trust feels thin and institutions seem slower to protect the vulnerable than to protect themselves.

Faith in artificial intelligence? It promises efficiency and answers at the click of a button, yet it still can’t teach compassion, wisdom, or when to pause before doing harm.

I’d like to have more faith in a greater God. But aside from the humility of knowing that we just don’t have all the answers, religion has not been kind to the world.

I have decided to put luggage tags in the stockings this year. The message is, get out in the world. Go far enough away to see how small your own assumptions are and how much we all share once borders blur. When you get to know distant people by being up close, it’s a lot easier to love one another.

In fact, though, one needs not go far. Just down the road is often far enough to come across people who are perfect strangers, and yet, neighbours. There is nothing wrong about trying to “do unto others” with the people right around the corner.

Perspective doesn’t just broaden the mind. It teaches gratitude by showing us how much we have compared with how much we truly need.

And gratitude is the hardest thing of all to put into a Christmas stocking.

We are now a quarter century into the 21st century. We have more information than at any time before, more comfort, more choice, and yet remarkably little patience for uncertainty or inconvenience. But gratitude has not kept pace with innovation. And we are slow to learn it.

This is the first year I must wish readers a Merry Christmas without my father alongside. I can hear his voice, lamenting that over all his many years, people have not learned from history. But hope springs eternal, I prefer to think. Let’s make the year ahead a better one.

If you catch yourself complaining, just stop. Have perspective. Be well. Be happy.

This column offers opinions on health and wellness, not personal medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

Why big science matters

Diana Gifford-Jones
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Why big science matters

We applaud people solving problems who are focused, efficient, and fast. But I was recently reminded that progress doesn’t always follow a straight line. Before investigators can conduct studies that yield breakthroughs, they often need others to finance and build major research infrastructure. It takes time, with various stops and starts, different collaborations often involving many institutions and countries, and not always a clear sense of direction.

TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator centre in Vancouver, a partnership of 21 universities, enables study on the inner workings of atoms. The high-energy cyclotron technology developed there, and the specialists trained to use it, produce lifesaving isotopes used to diagnose cancer and guide treatment. As Dr. Lisa Kalynchuk, Vice-President of Research & Innovation at the University of Victoria, put it to me: “When you invest in scientific infrastructure, you’re investing in possibility. You can’t always predict where breakthroughs will appear – but you can create the conditions for them to flourish.”

The Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon is a synchrotron – essentially a machine that bends electrons until they emit intense light. It was built to explore the physics and chemistry of advanced materials, enabling researchers to visualize viruses, investigate chronic lung disease, and understand how drugs interact with the body. Infrastructure constructed for physics and engineering research functions as a lab for understanding human life.

The International Space Station is an example of extraterritorial international collaboration at the frontiers of scientific exploration.  It is also a health lab. Astronauts lose bone density rapidly in microgravity, so efforts to keep them strong have helped with osteoporosis, frailty, and aging here on Earth.

Ocean Networks Canada collects and shares data about all aspects of the ocean. The seas are a source of medicines for cancer treatment, new sustainable materials from kelp, renewable energy that reduces the negative health effects from burning fossil fuels, resources to reduce food insecurity, and adapting ocean life systems to better understand human health. The unusually large nerve fibres of squid, for example, made it easier for scientists to understand the electrical basis of the nervous system, knowledge that is shaping treatments for epilepsy, depression, and Parkinson’s disease.

Some of the greatest breakthroughs in human health have arrived not by design, but by accident – provided an inquisitive mind was paying attention. Alexander Fleming wasn’t searching for the world’s first antibiotic when he returned from holiday to find that a wandering mold had killed bacteria on a petri dish. Yet penicillin went on to prevent more deaths than we can count. As Louis Pasteur once said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

Increasingly, big science facilities throw researchers from different domains together, triggering unexpected and important outcomes.

These examples remind us why we must invest in large scale research collaboration even when the practical benefits are not obvious. It’s tempting to demand that every dollar be tied to a clear payoff. But history teaches the opposite. Discoveries emerge when we give scientists the freedom to ask bold questions, even ones that seem unrelated to human health. To insist that research must always serve a tidy, immediate purpose is to miss the possibility of much more.

Most people will never see a cyclotron or synchrotron at work. Very few will set foot on the Space Station. But many are benefitting. The decisions made years earlier – that few noticed, debated, or celebrated – have delivered health advances that now touch almost all of us.

The next time we hear about governments debating billions in scientific infrastructure, we might remember, these aren’t abstract investments. They are the seedbeds of discoveries that one day may save our lives.

This column offers opinions on health and wellness, not personal medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

It’s Halloween, and here we go again

Diana Gifford-Jones
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It’s Halloween, and here we go again

It is a night when we willfully indulge children in alarming amounts of things we call treats. Halloween is a lot of fun for kids, and for adults too. But otherwise intelligent people are facilitating the celebration of a tradition that has swerved in the wrong direction. What could be high-quality, entertaining time together for parents, children, and neighbours is instead the occasion for collection of the lowest-quality chocolate bars, candies, and other tooth-rotting, high-calorie junk.

Halloween has become a hallmark holiday for getting it wrong. We succumb to harmful market forces, misguided commercialized interests, and risky behaviours. We’re not stopping to think. And we’re not finding ways to elevate the voices of those who are putting forward better approaches to health, happiness, and preservation.

Sure, it can be nice to see homes lit up with Halloween lights, adorned with decorations and all kinds of scary elements to widen the eyes of marauding children. But not so when birds, bats, and other wildlife are being caught and killed in decorative webs of sticky string in trees. How much of the cheap, plastic ghosts, devils, bats, and broomsticks end up in a landfill each year? It might be surprising to know that every Halloween, thousands of children require visits to the emergency room because they have cut themselves badly when carving a pumpkin. And it’s tragic that the risk to children of being fatally killed in a roadside accident increases by a factor of ten on the night of October 31.

The evening’s haul of candy means more dentists bills. But it’s not just teeth at risk. The tidal wave of refined sugar that floods young bodies affects insulin response, mood, and sleep. It’s a youthful kickstart in health erosion. Yet year after year, we do the same thing, smiling as we hand over the very substances that prime children for poor habits and chronic disease. It’s the devil’s gift: a pillowcase full of candy.

But there are people trying to make Halloween better. Some nutritionists, educators, and community leaders are reimagining the holiday. Some parents hand out toys, stickers, or healthier snacks instead of candy. Others organize neighborhood scavenger hunts, outdoor games, or lantern walks where the focus is on adventure, not consumption. But a billion-dollar industry still saturates screens, shelves, and minds. Those who are trying to make change can fight for attention, but they have little hope of winning.

Is there any chance of shaming corporate powers? Not likely. Witness the big tech companies, long under pressure, but only now taking small steps to protect young minds from the digital junk food of social media. It’s too little, too late. And profitability remains the goal, not the health of individuals or society.

What can we do? We can choose to make the night about imagination, not ingestion. Teach children that dressing up, exploring the neighborhood, and telling spooky stories can be just as thrilling as counting candy bars. Buy decorations that last. Use LED candles instead of real flames. Avoid fake spider webs that trap wildlife. And when it comes to treats, keep a balance: maybe a few sweets, but also healthier surprises, or better yet, experiences. Homemade costumes, joke cards and skits, genuine connections with neighbours.

Halloween can be about creativity, not consumption. If we shift even slightly each year, the next generation might inherit something better – a night of wonder that doesn’t reward kids with garbage food, more plastic waste, and preventable injuries. The ghosts and goblins of Halloween should be pretend. The harm doesn’t have to be real.

This column offers opinions on health and wellness, not personal medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

It’s flu season but it’s not the flu

Diana Gifford-Jones
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It’s flu season but it’s not the flu

“The superfluous,” said Voltaire, the French philosopher, “is a very necessary thing.” Alas, his thinking predated our understanding of the norovirus. The norovirus is one of the most common viruses on the planet – yet it seems to be doing nothing useful, let alone necessary. It’s just making hundreds of millions of people worldwide sick in any given year.

A lot of people made sick by norovirus think they have the flu. The symptoms are similar. But norovirus isn’t the flu at all. It’s a tiny, highly contagious virus that infects the stomach and intestines. It spreads through contaminated food, water, surfaces, and most usually, dirty hands.

The virus is found only in humans, not animals, and it doesn’t need much help to make trouble. A microscopic particle is enough to make you sick. Once ingested, it multiplies rapidly and exits just as quickly, shedding billions of copies that can infect others. It’s so efficient that it’s been called “the perfect pathogen.”

Most outbreaks emerge in familiar places like restaurants, daycare facilities, cruise ships, or long-term care homes. The virus is so hardy that it survives freezing, mild heating, and many cleaning products. Even alcohol-based hand sanitizers, so effective against most bacteria, don’t reliably stop it. Soapy water is the best prevention.

Symptoms of infection include sudden nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach cramps. It comes on fast but is usually over in two or three days. Most people recover without lasting harm, though the elderly, very young, or those with weakened immune systems can become dangerously dehydrated.

Unlike other viruses, getting it once doesn’t make you stronger. You might think that exposure would at least give your immune system a workout and lead to lasting protection. Unfortunately, norovirus doesn’t play by those rules. Your body does mount a defense and produces antibodies, but they fade quickly – usually within six months to two years – and only protect you from the exact strain that made you sick. But norovirus keeps changing. It mutates its surface proteins just enough to fool your immune system the next time around. That’s why you can catch norovirus again and again. There is literally nothing good about norovirus unless you count that it makes victims better appreciate good plumbing.

Scientists have been working for years to develop a vaccine. But so far, the virus’s habit of constant reinvention has stymied efforts. There are dozens of strains, and new ones emerge every few years.

Norovirus often strikes just after a family dinner. Within 24 hours, one person starts feeling queasy, another rushes to the bathroom, and soon everyone is apologizing or looking for culprits in the cooking. But it’s not the food. It’s norovirus that came uninvited on unwashed hands.

What can we do? The answer is old-fashioned but effective. Wash hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially before preparing food and after using the bathroom. Keep kitchen surfaces clean. Cook shellfish thoroughly, since oysters and clams can carry the virus if harvested from contaminated waters. And if someone in your home is sick, disinfect using a bleach-based cleaner and handle laundry and dishes with care. Norovirus may be hard to kill, but it doesn’t like hot water, chlorine, or good hygiene habits.

The larger lesson in all this is about humility. For all our medical advances, a virus invisible to the naked eye can still level us for days. Immunity isn’t always cumulative, and strength doesn’t always come from exposure. Sometimes, health depends less on what we can endure and more on what we can avoid.

This column offers opinions on health and wellness, not personal medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

Getting a boost of energy, naturally

Diana Gifford-Jones
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Getting a boost of energy, naturally

Do you ever find yourself a little low on fuel, right when you could really use some? Men may discover they need a touch of help with their tiger, so to speak. But being low on steam could occur at less exciting moments too, like when walking up the stairs. I’m referring to instances when you expect your body to have the same vibrancy of youth, but it just doesn’t anymore.

You can chalk it up to age, stress, or not enough sleep. And you can aim to get more sleep and eat a better diet. There’s no denying that aging is a major factor, and there’s nothing that can be done to stop that march. But don’t forget, there are safe, natural remedies that can address a lack of energy.

One of the proven ones is nitric oxide, something that your body produces naturally to help your blood vessels relax and expand, improving circulation, and supporting the delivery of oxygen and nutrients throughout your system. As we age, our bodies produce less of it. A lot less. By the time you’re 40 or 50, your nitric oxide levels may have dropped by half. That has ripple effects not just for heart health, but for stamina, recovery, even brain function.

If it’s a dietary source of energy you want, then turn to beets. They are one of the few foods that directly increase the body’s ability to produce nitric oxide. But not everyone wants to eat beets every day. And sometimes diet isn’t the answer, especially if your system has trouble converting nutrients effectively.

Consider trying remedies you can find in natural health food stores. There are many products purporting to do what beets do, but few that have the credibility of Neo40. It’s not a medication. It’s nitric oxide in tablet form, containing a combination of beetroot powder, L-citrulline (an amino acid that supports nitric oxide production), and sodium nitrite (a form of nitric oxide). Putting a tablet of Neo40 on the tongue and letting it dissolve enables the body to replenish nitric oxide levels quickly.

It’s amusing what scientists celebrate. They might forgive us for not following along. But in this case, you might be pleased to know that nitric oxide won the “Molecule of the Year” award in 1992. They brought out the big spotlights in 1998 when the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro, and Ferid Murad for their discovery that nitric oxide acts as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.

It was groundbreaking science because it revealed that this short-lived gas has an important role in communicating between cells and regulating blood flow. Knowing the role of nitric oxide, researchers soon found the pharmaceutical pathway to Viagra, which is not nitric oxide, but it functions in a similar way, enabling signals to blood vessels to stay dilated.

In taking up this column, I promised to cut through the noise with a clear-eyed view of what’s actually working for people. Viagra is one of those things, but so too is Neo40. And a nitric oxide tablet has the benefit that it suits a wider set of purposes for men and women. I recommend having a look at the information online from both the company involved, called Humann, and even the critics of natural supplements. This is one of the ones that gets a thumbs up. It’s a good product.  

On a personal note, I witnessed first-hand its effectiveness. In the years after my father suffered a heart attack at the age of 74, he always had Neo40 on hand to help when he needed a boost.

This column offers opinions on health and wellness, not personal medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

How to protect against uterine cancer

Diana Gifford-Jones
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How to protect against uterine cancer

Why do so many women ignore one of the most obvious warning signs of uterine cancer? It’s a cancer that usually announces itself early. But women wait, or brush off the warning signs, and that allows the disease to take hold.

Uterine cancer, also called endometrial cancer, is not rare. And it can strike anyone. Anne Bancroft, the Oscar-winning actress best known as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, died of this disease. She never spoke publicly about her illness, a missed opportunity to build greater awareness. And where are the public health campaigns to prevent it? Uterine cancer needs a champion to yell the warning signs from the rooftops.

Each year, thousands of women in Canada and tens of thousands in the U.S. are diagnosed. And the numbers are climbing. Yes, we’re living longer. But there’s another culprit: obesity. You may not know this, but in addition to the ovaries, fat tissues actively produce estrogen. Too much estrogen is like fertilizer that keeps making the lining of the uterus grow. Research shows obesity can triple the risk.

A recent study points to another concern. Researchers found that women who frequently use chemical hair straighteners have more than double the risk of developing uterine cancer. Why? Possibly because of hormone-disrupting chemicals absorb through the scalp. Are Black women, who use these products most frequently, advised by their salons of this danger?

Other risks are harder to avoid. Women who start menstruating early, or reach menopause late, spend more years with estrogen acting on the uterus. Estrogen itself isn’t the enemy. It’s essential for reproduction. Each month it makes the uterine lining thicken for a possible pregnancy. Progesterone usually balances this growth, but when it’s absent or insufficient, the lining can grow too thick or irregularly. Over time, this increases the chance that abnormal cells will form, and some can become cancerous.

That’s why women who never have children, or who don’t breastfeed, are at higher risk. Pregnancy and breastfeeding both give the uterus a long holiday from estrogen. It’s also why hormone therapy after menopause must be handled carefully. Estrogen on its own increases risk, but combined with progesterone, it can be safe. Other risks, like taking tamoxifen for breast cancer, or inheriting genetic conditions such as Lynch syndrome, can’t be avoided, but they do mean vigilance is even more important.

Uterine cancer is one of the cancers that almost always sends a signal. The red flag is bleeding. Before menopause, if periods suddenly change, get heavier, or if bleeding happens between cycles, don’t let anyone brush off the incident. After menopause, even a single spot of blood is abnormal.

Diagnosis isn’t complicated. An ultrasound can measure the thickness of the uterine lining. But the most reliable test is a biopsy, done in a quick office procedure. If the results aren’t clear and bleeding continues, more investigation is needed. This is where women must be their own advocates. Too many walk away reassured when they shouldn’t.

Caught early, uterine cancer is highly curable. Surgery to remove the uterus, sometimes along with the fallopian tubes and ovaries, is often enough. If the cancer is more advanced, radiation or chemotherapy may follow. For younger women who want children, hormone therapy can sometimes delay surgery. But the key is catching the cancer before it spreads.

Don’t wait for someone to make uterine cancer their cause célèbre before getting active with prevention and early detection. Maintain a healthy weight. Don’t let strong chemicals seep into your scalp.  And above all, never ignore abnormal bleeding – before or after menopause – not even one drop.

This column offers general health and wellness, not personal medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

Fights over drugs have enduring meaning

Diana Gifford-Jones
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Fights over drugs have enduring meaning

Every so often, history taps you on the shoulder. That happened to me recently when I discovered a book on the science, culture, and regulation of drugs by Professor Lucas Richert, a historian of pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The book devotes its entire first chapter to none other than my father, Dr. Ken Walker — better known to readers by his penname, W. Gifford-Jones, MD.

Richert’s book, Strange Trips, presents the history of recreational, palliative and pharmaceutical drugs and the tension in debates between evidence and opinion, compassion and politics.

Readers may not know that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, my father became Canada’s most vocal advocate for the legalization of medical heroin. He had lost close friends to cancer and seen his own patients suffering in pain. At the time, heroin was widely used in Britain for pain control, yet Canadian patients were denied access. Why? Not because of science, he argued, but because of “political, not medical, decisions.”

Richert captures this clash well. As one expert observed, “heroin is particularly good at inducing opinions which conflict with all the evidence and ‘evidence’ that is then moulded to fit the opinions.” My father’s campaign forced Canadians to ask: should terminally ill patients be denied effective relief because heroin carried a stigma?

He didn’t stop with advocating for change in his column. He collected more than 30,000 signatures on a petition, received another 20,000 letters of support, and presented them in Ottawa to Health Minister Monique Bégin. He flew to the UK on a fact-finding mission, speaking with doctors, nurses, and patients. Scotland Yard officials, he noted, brushed off the claims of critics that medical heroin stored in hospital pharmacies would increase crime. They had far bigger problems to worry about.

When political action stalled, he doubled down, placing full-page awareness ads in newspapers. In one, he accused opponents with the blunt headline: “Will the real hypocrites please stand up.” That kind of language didn’t make him friends in the medical establishment or in policy circles, but it drew public attention to the cause.

Support began to build. Editorials in The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail endorsed his position, pointing out that British cancer patients had long had access to heroin without social upheaval. The Canadian Medical Association ultimately supported legalization, after uncovering how Canada had been pressured decades earlier by the United States into banning the drug. Dr. William Ghent, a leading CMA figure, didn’t mince words: “We followed the US like sheep, and now, like sheep, we’ve got their manure to deal with.”

By the mid-1980s, the government relented. New trials were approved, and eventually heroin was legalized for cases of severe chronic pain and terminal illness. The fight didn’t end debates in palliative care, and experts then and now would argue the focus should be broader than drugs alone. But it was a turning point. Canada acknowledged that compassion had a place in drug policy.

The debate continues today in a new form. Researchers now point to psychedelics such as psilocybin as tools to ease end-of-life distress, yet patients face the same barriers of politics, stigma, and delay. Humans often fail to learn from history, and as Richert’s book shows, the fight over heroin was just one of many stories.

For me, it is a point of pride to see my father’s efforts remembered, not only as a medical crusade but as part of the larger story of how societies negotiate the meaning of medicine. Readers who want more detail can find a synopsis of Richert’s chapter, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, available through our website.

This column offers health and wellness, not medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

Why is information so hidden in healthcare?

Diana Gifford-Jones
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Why is information so hidden in healthcare?

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of factual debates. This week let’s talk about transparency. It’s one of those words that gets thrown around in health discussions. Politicians promise it. Hospital administrators profess it. Insurance companies advertise it. But when ordinary people go looking for reliable information about their own health, we hit a wall, there’s silence, or confusion prevails.

Take something as basic and important as our own medical records. In Canada, we’ve been talking about universal digital access for years. Yet in many provinces, it is still astonishingly hard to get a picture of your health history. In Ontario, there are perplexing tools, portals and disjointed systems, and even after years of public outrage, we still don’t have good access to our records. Most people still end up calling around, waiting for responses, or even paying fees to see their own information. And it’s not that sharing personal or sensitive information isn’t possible. We can check our bank balance in an instant, but not the results of a blood test taken last week.

There are brighter spots. In British Columbia, the Health Gateway app lets residents pull up lab results, imaging reports, immunizations, and medications going back decades. Updates appear within days. This is proof that transparency is possible when the will exists. It also highlights the inequity of a patchwork system where some Canadians enjoy open access to their records and others remain in the dark.

In the U.S., the issue shows up in different ways. In 2021, for example, a U.S. law came into effect requiring hospitals to post the prices of common procedures online so patients could shop around. It sounds like common sense, especially in a system where patients are paying costs out of pocket. Yet when investigators first looked, they found most hospitals ignored the rule or buried the information in ways that were incomprehensible to patients. Some reports put compliance as low as 14 percent. Even today, after penalties were increased, many hospitals remain noncompliant. Progress is being made, but patients are still left asking: if restaurants can post menus online, why can’t hospitals share something as fundamental as their prices?

What unites these examples is that transparency is never just a technical problem. The systems exist. The technology exists. What’s missing is the decision to put users of healthcare ahead of providers. What’s worse is deliberate obfuscation. A lack of openness doesn’t happen by accident. It reflects vested interests – whether governments that want to downplay wait times, hospitals reluctant to expose their performance, or corporations that profit from complexity.

It doesn’t have to be this way. When patients have access to their records, they become partners in their care rather than passive recipients. When people can compare prices or outcomes, they can hold institutions accountable. Transparency builds trust, reduces misinformation, and forces systems to improve. Opacity, on the contrary, breeds frustration, suspicion, and inequity.

I also want to be transparent with you. My father, Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, was a physician. I am not. I know some readers have assumed otherwise, and I don’t want there to be any confusion. What I can offer is continuity of his work, which was never about hype or fads. For fifty years, his column translated medical research into plain language and encouraged readers to weigh evidence for themselves. That remains my goal: to report honestly, to point readers to credible sources, and to highlight where the system is letting people down.

It is time for health care in Canada, the United States, and everywhere else, to be a lot more transparent.

This column offers health and wellness, not medical advice. Visit www.docgiff.com to learn more. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

Health is the good fortune you make

Diana Gifford-Jones
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Health is the good fortune you make

When it comes to health, my father always told me that good luck is as important, if not more so, than good genes. Like genes, luck is allocated at life’s outset. Watching nightly news on wars, famine, and other disasters has always made me grateful to have been born in Canada. Yet, there’s something to be said for manufacturing your luck too. Sometimes the greatest good fortune comes not from happenstance, but from the choices you make. And among the most consequential of choices is the selection of a life partner.

People commonly equate getting married with happiness. But it is every bit as important to health. Research shows that being teamed up doesn’t only add years to life, which on average it does. It also means quicker recognition of symptoms of a health problem, a supportive push to see the doctor and assistance in getting there, and caring advocacy for best interests.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who lived to 100, credited his 77-year union with Rosalynn as “the best thing I ever did”. Comedian Rita Rudner said: “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” Herein, two commonly unrecognized elements of how marriage generates health: love and laughter. If you are lucky, you get both.

In addition to the benefit of living longer, people in committed partnerships recover more quickly from illness, and face lower risks of depression, dementia, heart disease, and even cancer. But the quality of the union matters. Stress-filled, resentful partnerships are like slow-acting poisons, raising blood pressure and weakening the immune system.

The healthiest marriages, in fact, are not fairy tales. They are long experiments in teamwork, patience, forgiveness, and stamina. Healthy unions generate happiness. But they also test the ability to recover after inevitable ruptures – little ones or big ones. In finding good health, resilience is more important than avoiding every risk. The healthiest people are not those who never fall ill, but those who rebound well. The same is true in relationships. A marriage that can heal after conflict, adapt through change, and find laughter in the middle of the mess is often the strongest of all.

Think of it like inflammation. In the body, chronic inflammation erodes health, quietly damaging arteries, joints, even the brain. In a marriage, unresolved resentment does the same. Forgiveness, like an anti-inflammatory, doesn’t erase the injury, but it allows healing to begin.

How do shared struggles strengthen your bond and lead to better health? Couples who weather illness, financial strain, or any kind of trouble with children often emerge closer than before. A new kind of bond develops from hardships. Much like bones that sometimes heal stronger at the fracture site, marriages can become most resilient at their breaking points. Unfortunately, too few people know this. It’s not taught. People give up, and therein lose a great deal.

It seems wrong to be overly calculating about marriage. Falling in love is so much more romantic than arranged marriages. But there does come a time in any partnership when it’s useful to develop skills of appreciation. Both individuals in a couple need to know that arguing about the thermostat can be an opportunity for expressing care for each other. Whatever the issue, when tempers flare, you’ll be wise to remember how much stronger the team is than the sole player. Years on, you won’t recall who ‘won’ the thermostat battle, only that you fought it together.

Don’t aim for a perfect partnership. Aim for a resilient one. Done well together, this is its own form of health.

Sign-up at www.docgiff.com to receive my weekly e-newsletter. For comments, diana@docgiff.com. Follow on Instagram @diana_gifford_jones

Fireworks Still Cause Tragedy

Diana Gifford-Jones
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Fireworks Still Cause Tragedy

We are not setting out to be killjoys. In fact, living it up with special celebrations is a good thing for most people. But every year, we witness foolish people setting off fireworks, ignorant of or uncaring about potential injuries. The numbers may fluctuate, the types of fireworks may evolve, and safety messaging may get louder, but sadly, the dangers persist. Every year, fireworks cause life-changing injuries, tragic accidents, and unnecessary suffering.

The truth is, fireworks are not harmless fun. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported over 10,200 fireworks-related injuries were treated in emergency rooms in 2022 alone. Nearly all of these occurred in the first week of July when amateurs are trying to have fun, or when kids are prone to making terrible mistakes.

Of these injuries, nearly 15% involved the eyes, and over one-third were burns, mostly to the hands and face. The most injured age group? Teen boys between 15 and 19 years old. No surprise there.

What’s more, data shows that people in lower-income neighbourhoods have more than twice the likelihood of getting injured by fireworks than residents of high-income communities. Regardless of where it happens though, the vast majority of injuries are preventable, and most victims are bystanders.

The toll isn’t limited to humans. Recent studies are giving voice to pets who suffer in silence – or more accurately, in terror. According to research published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science in 2021, dogs exposed to fireworks often suffer from anxiety, destructive behavior, and long-term stress responses. One survey found that over 60% of dogs showed severe signs of distress during fireworks displays.

It’s not just pets. A 2020 study out of the Netherlands revealed that fireworks cause abrupt changes in bird behavior, with flocks fleeing in the middle of the night, flying at unusually high altitudes and burning through precious energy reserves. What’s a moment of fun for people can be a life-threatening ordeal for wildlife.

Many argue that if used properly, fireworks are safe. But how many backyard pyrotechnicians have proper safety protocols in place? Alcohol and explosives do not mix, yet somehow, every July 1st and July 4th, we see plenty of people holding beer in one hand and a lighter in the other. If you are going to use alcohol or drugs, stay away from fireworks.

Organized and sanctioned shows can go wrong too. We remember a public occasion when an improperly secured fireworks container tipped over, sending a series of burning projectiles directly at us and other families. Miraculously, there were no injuries. In recent years, there have been harrowing incidents that made headlines. In 2023, an innocent 11-year-old in Michigan lost three fingers lighting a firework in her bathroom. The stick exploded with the force of dynamite in her hand.

Even sparklers, those seemingly innocent favourites of toddlers everywhere, burn at around 1,800°F. That a temperature hot enough to melt gold! Every year, emergency rooms see cases of searing burns from these so-called “safe” fireworks. One quick swipe across the face or hand is all it takes for a lifelong scar.

So, what’s the takeaway? It’s simple. Fireworks are explosives, not toys. Leave them to the pros. If you really want to light something up this summer, try a barbecue, invite your friends, and keep the flames on a slow, safe broil. Teach young children, who have not lost their compassion, about the impact of fireworks on animals. And don’t forget the magic of watching fireflies on a summer’s night – far more beautiful than any noisy flash of fire in the sky.

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