Eat Move Think

Scientific researchers believe that cardiorespiratory fitness, in the form of VO2max, should be a vital sign that doctors consider alongside heart rate and blood pressure—and Medcan has just taken steps to incorporate a test designed to provide clients with an estimate of their VO2max level. So what is VO2max—and why should you care? This episode provides the ultimate cardiorespiratory fitness exp...

The relationship between diet, exercise and weight loss is more complicated than you think. You know that 500 calories you burned on your morning run? Your body doesn't just credit you that energy for weight loss. In fact, the work of evolutionary anthropologist and globally recognized metabolism expert Herman Pontzer of Duke University suggests that your body will figure out a way to offset those...

Cannabis has been legal in Canada for almost four years now. Eat Move Think's very first episode at the start of 2020 explored the wellness implications of legalization. At that point, few gold-standard research studies had been conducted on cannabis, CBD and THC. So in this episode we revisit the topic. Medcan senior medical consultant Dr. Lorne Greenspan checks in with Dr. Mark Ware, the chief m...

  Which supplements actually help your muscles grow? Do plant-based eaters need more protein than meat eaters? Do sports drinks boost athletic performance? Is chocolate milk the perfect post-workout drink? To find out the answers to these and other questions, we consulted with two of the most prominent names in Canadian nutrition: Medcan's director of food and nutrition and Dietitians of Canada ch...

Dog ownership skyrocketed during the pandemic. Lots of pet owners claim that owning a dog can boost your mental health. But which breeds are best? Dan McCann of the legendary McCann Dog Training family, joins Medcan mental health clinical lead Samantha Charan to explore the health benefits that can come with owning a dog. They'll help you figure out if dog ownership is right for you, and unpack th...

Health Canada recently approved a new weight loss drug, semaglutide, also known as "Ozempic" or "Wegovy." Experts refer to it as a "game changer" for its ability to curtail appetite and spur weight loss. In this episode, Medcan's director of weight management, Dr. David Macklin, a co-author of Canada's national guidelines for obesity treatment, provides host Shaun Francis with a semaglutide explai...

More people than ever before are exercising to stay fit and active well into their senior years. The field of sports rehabilitation and therapy is flourishing as a result, with lots of therapies generating buzz. But which ones work for aging athletes, and which ones are a waste of money? Here, Medcan's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Peter Nord, and the Director of Orthopaedic Surgery, Dr. Sebastian Ro...

It's spring, and if you have a garden that means it's time for yardwork—raking out dead leaves, planting annuals, fertilizing the lawn. Here, Medcan's Dr. Lorne Greenspan teams up with the legendary gardening expert Mark Cullen to make the argument that gardening is one of the single best things you can do for your overall wellness, with compelling benefits from an eat, move and think perspective—...

Intermittent fasting is an increasingly popular diet method intended to trigger weight loss. It's also said to provide other health benefits. But does it actually work? And which form is appropriate for which people? Dr. Krista Varady is the University of Illinois, Chicago professor of nutrition and a globally recognized expert in intermittent fasting. Here she discusses her recommendations with L...

You know that exercising is good for your muscles and bones. But exercise can also improve brain health. In her new book, Move The Body, Heal The Mind , Dr. Jennifer Heisz of McMaster University's NeuroFit Lab shares the latest research about how to use physical activity to optimize mental and cognitive wellness. Here, she speaks with Dr. Andrew Miners, Medcan's clinical and product director of sp...

The World Happiness Report has for the fifth year in a row ranked Finland as the planet's happiest country. Yet the nation is darker and colder than Canada. So what are the Finns doing right? Could it have anything to do with sisu, saunas and plunges into ice-cold water? Medcan's Clinical Director of Psychology, Dr. Jack Muskat, investigates with Eat Move Think senior producer Russell Gragg, who r...

The ultimate way to achieve a personalized wellness prescription is to base it on one's unique genetic code—to have every one of your DNA base pairs mapped, in a process known as whole genome sequencing, and then using that information to create precisely the right strategy for you. With its Genomic Health Assessment powered by whole genome sequencing, Medcan is pioneering the most precise form of...

As you get older, your chances of getting sick and developing diseases get higher. But what if aging itself is the condition we should be treating? Dr. Nir Barzilai is the founding director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the world's leading expert on metformin. Here, he joins host Shaun Francis to discuss the potential of metformin to fight aging...

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices are being tested by elite athletes to determine whether better management of carbs and blood sugar can boost athletic performance. Dr. Michael Riddell is a professor at York University. As an athlete who lives with Type 1 Diabetes, Dr. Riddell has studied glucose for years and is on the scientific advisory board for Supersapiens, a glucose-tracking app....

Positive psychology refers to a type of therapy that focuses on optimizing mental wellbeing, rather than fixing any specific problems. If conventional psychology helps people living with mental illness to achieve normalcy, then positive psychology helps people at a normal baseline achieve an optimal state. "Absence of symptoms is not the presence of wellbeing," says Dr. Tayyab Rashid of the Univer...

Lots of studies have been done on the effects of exercise on men . But when it comes to exercise and women's health, the scientific research falls short. Dr. Michaela Devries-Aboud is an exercise physiologist at the University of Waterloo. She's one of a growing number of scientists examining how exercise affects the female body. Here, she and Medcan's Clinical and Product Director of Sports Medic...

Romantic relationships are a key driver of personal wellness, and these days texting is the main way people communicate when dating. In her just-released book, Speaking in Thumbs , Dr. Mimi Winsberg, a Harvard- and Stanford-educated psychiatrist and Facebook's former in-house psychiatrist, examined how to connect better online with potential and existing partners. Here, she's in conversation with...

One measure of aerobic fitness is VO 2max , which reflects your body's ability to take oxygen from air and put it in a form that helps you go. We noticed that one ranking of the best-ever VO 2max scores featured five cross-country skiers in the top 10 results. So for our Winter Olympic special, host Shaun Francis and his team investigated what's so great about cross-country skiing. Including two C...

COVID-19's Omicron variant is airborne-transmitted. So does it make sense to buy a HEPA filter to reduce spread? Or are there more cost-efficient ways to increase safety? We assembled a panel of experts to provide their guidance, including two members of Medcan's Medical Advisory Services team, Dr. Peter Nord and Dr. Matthew Burnstein, as well as NASA consultant R. Vijayakumar and Prof. Frank Kell...

Mounting evidence suggests that our diet may play a role in our brain health as we get older. Age-related inflammation, or "inflammaging," has recently been linked to higher risks of chronic disease, dementia and Alzheimer's. But how can we know which foods spur inflammaging? In today's episode, our host Shaun Francis talks with Medcan's director of food and nutrition, Leslie Beck, RD, to explore...

We've spent 99 episodes interviewing global experts about optimal wellness. So for our 100th episode, host Shaun Francis and his team turned the mic over to listeners and explored audience-submitted Eat, Move and Think stories. Featuring one listener's thoughts on dairy, a 70-year-old man performing remarkable feats of strength, and an easy way to control your social media use. Also: An Omicron CO...

Life can be difficult. Whatever we're enduring—a global pandemic? a difficult medical diagnosis?—emerging scientific research shows that humour can be an important coping tool. In this episode, we explore how author/comedian Jessica Holmes (Royal Canadian Air Farce, The Holmes Show) and mental health comedian Ryan Zeitz (Mental Hellth) use humour to get through tough times—and what the rest of us...

As we ring in the new year, many of us have goals we want to accomplish. Some of us will achieve them. Others won't. University of Victoria exercise psychologist Dr. Ryan Rhodes has devoted his career to determining why people don't do the things they want to do—and devised strategies to help. In conversation with Medcan 's Dr. Jack Muskat, Dr. Rhodes describes how to achieve those resolutions. (E...

Omnipresent screens and always-on work schedules are playing havoc with our sleep cycles, creating a population that is getting less shut-eye, and experiencing more sleep disruptions, than ever before. That's a problem because research suggests that sleep is integral to our cognitive, physical and mental health, with poor sleep increasing risk for everything from high blood pressure to diabetes an...

When she was 17, Samra Zafar was forced to marry an older man she'd never met and move to Canada with him. She suffered years of verbal, physical and emotional abuse, but eventually, through hard work and the support of peers, she gained the courage to walk away, and build a new life for herself and her daughters. Now, Zafar is an international speaker, a bestselling author and a med school studen...