When life gives you lemons....Michelle Schoffro Cook profile

Michelle Schoffro Cook doesn’t look like a woman who has danced with death. Where, one wonders, is the consumptive, Camille-like pallor, the dark circles? Even a whiff of quietly heroic martyrdom would do. If such a struggle exists, the Ottawa-based author and doctor of natural medicine has cleverly disguised it under a cheerful mop of ringlets, twinkling eyes and one of those complicated, layered outfits that requires the wearer to adopt...

Posted in Alternative on 01/06/2009 - 0 Comments

The Last 15

Every diet has them--those last few kilos that, no matter what, just won’t budge. It may be called a diet plateau, but it may as well be Mount Everest. Yet it doesn’t have to be, says best-selling Canadian diet guru, Dr Joey Shulman. “Those stubborn few kilos are what I call the tipping point. For 98 per cent of dieters, the kilos they lost will return within five years. One reason is metabolism, which slows by five percent every decade,” she says in her latest book, The Last 15: A Weight Loss Breakthrough. (Wiley, $48, Hardback). “You can’t do anything about your basal metabolic rate, which accounts for 65 per cent. But you can do plenty about the other 35 per cent.” Where do you start?

Posted in Diets on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

Turning the tide on type II diabetes in children

He doesn’t look like it, but Chris Singh is one scary Canadian statistic. On the surface, the affable Vancouver 15-year-old is everything his doting mother Asha could hope for: Tall, fit and studious, he plays computer games, and works out every other day. He eats every balanced meal Asha offers him and hates fast food. In short, he is as fit as a fiddle. He also suffers from type 2 diabetes, a disease never—ever—before seen in children.

Posted in Food on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

The Three Ds of Fatness

It’s a Tuesday night, and there’s nothing on telly. Lee Anne Bean heaves herself out of her armchair and heads for the kitchen. She’s not hungry, but she pulls out an entire pound cake from the freezer. She defrosts it, slices it and smothers it in butter. Eating it standing at the counter, she doesn’t stop to ask herself why. Nor did she wonder why, earlier that day, she bought three chocolate bars, ate one in the car and the others at home. It’s so long since she’s had hunger pangs, she’s forgotten the sensation.

Posted in Behaviour on 12/04/2008 - 0 Comments

100 Weight Loss Tips That Really Work

You’ve made your New Year’s resolution: Those five extra kilos have got to go. Now for the big decision: Which diet is right for you? Low fat or low salt? High protein or raw food? Every diet has bits that really work, but you shouldn’t have to read every diet book to find them, says Dr Fred A Stutman, an American weight loss expert and author of the recently-released

Posted in Diets on 11/30/2008 - 0 Comments

Keeping it all in check

When it comes to breast cancer, the numbers speak for themselves: 22,400 Canadian women will be diagnosed this year, and 5,000 will die. Scary stuff to be sure, but that's not what keeps Dr. David Servan-Schreiber up at night. For Servan-Schreiber, the French-born author of the international bestseller, Anticancer (HarperCollins) and a clinical professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, there's another number that worries him more.

Posted in Food on 11/22/2008 - 0 Comments