Hashtag Health: A Health and Medical Podcast

How did cannabis go from taboo street drug (aka Wacky Tobacky), to being touted as treatment for everything from seizures to cancer pain? In this episode of Hashtag Health we discuss with Dr. Ross from the University of Toronto about what THC and CBD are, how they act in the body, and common misconceptions about these compounds.

Social media has undoubtedly played a role in how science misinformation spreads. From vampire facials to vaccine hesitancy, Tim Caulfield has really seen it all. Tim Caulfield is a professor of health law and science policy at the university of Alberta and an expert in science misinformation. In this episode, we talk to him about the trends of how science and health misinformation spreads and who...

While you're stuck at home for extended periods of time, why not try that 1950s celebrity hairdo you've always wanted to rock?

The Japanese art of Kintsugi embraces the fragmented nature of an object. How can we apply Kintsugi to a new scar, or to life after the COVID-19 pandemic?

In what ways is our approach to finding solutions for COVID-19 similar to flipping a coin?

#StayHome to #FlattenTheCurve. These hashtags are all over social media platforms now. But most people have never heard the phrase "flatten the curve" before COVID-19. The whole world is doing it, but what does flattening the curve even mean?

Masks, masks everywhere. In the grocery store, on the subway, in the hallways of your apartment. But are they effective and what for?

Can viruses like COVID-19 be cured with antibiotics? Should you be taking antibiotics anytime you have a sore throat in case it's strep? Sadly, we haven't come that far – antibiotics do literally nothing against viruses. However, 50% of people in the United States believes that antibiotics kill viruses. In part two of #AntimicrobialResistance - we dive deeper into this topic with Dr. Podolsky. How...

Dr. Luckett-Gatopoulos talks about infection dynamics of the novel coronavirus, and how it got its foothold in the human population.

Dr. Luckett-Gatopoulos works on the front lines of the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this podcast series, she shares her day-to-day perspective as a newly graduated emergency physician working in the world of medicine during COVID-19.

Should you be as scared of coronavirus as the thousands of people wearing surgical face masks would make it seem? Given that the total number of deaths has surpassed the cumulative total of MERS and SARS combined, some would say yes. But there is more to the story than just numbers. In this episode, we chat with Dr. Michael Silverman, Chief of Infectious Diseases at London Health Sciences Centre,...

What do you get when you combine magic beans and the direct to consumer sales pipeline of the internet? A lot of money in the pockets of the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Dr. Oz. Science misinformation is a wolf in sheep's clothing and camouflages as "natural" goods being sold for the sake of ~wellness~. In this episode, we chat with Tim Caulfield, a Canadian professor of law at the University of A...

In 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin from leaving a moldy petri dish out over his holidays. Pharmaceutical companies jumped on the opportunity to both develop new antibiotics and advertise the ones they already had. We spoke with Dr. Scott Podolsky, a family physician and history professor at Harvard Medical School about the history of antibiotics and the eventual development of antimic...

Acne! It affects mere babes all the way to women going through menopause. Stubborn, unsightly, and ... hard to treat? Many folks have cut out dairy from their diet in hopes that they can make a trade for clear skin. You may have heard the same thing about staying away from sugary or processed foods. But how does the evidence for these kinds of lifestyle practices hold up? On the other hand, you ma...

Once considered a historic disease, syphilis is once again on the rise. In this week's episode we spoke with Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, about what is contributing to the resurgence of the sexually transmitted disease, what is being done in response, and what we can do to prevent the spread.

In today's time, both at home and globally reproductive rights have been more contested than ever. Especially given the plethora of information on the internet, it can be difficult to decipher between fact and fiction. We sit down with Dr. Fraser Fellows to debunk the top myths surrounding abortions circulating on the internet.

Both Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson are still recovering from the injuries they sustained in the NBA finals early this year. It’s no surprise then that more and more players are taking games off for load management, a practice pioneered by 2019 NBA Finals MVP, Kawhi Leonard. In this week’s episode, we spoke to orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Chris Raynor about the reality behind Kevin Durant’s Achilles ru...

Caravans carrying Type I Diabetes patients across borders to buy life-saving drugs. Frantic parents calling pharmacies for EpiPen refills to save their anaphylactic children. With all the news surrounding drug shortages, it sounds like we are heading towards a drug-less, apocalyptic future. But the drugs in the news are everyday medications we buy at local pharmacies; so how can there be sudden sh...

Injuries of any kind are devastating for players, teams, and fans alike. But some of them are much worse than others. In this weeks episode, we talk to Dr. Chris Raynor about the medicine behind achilles and ACL injuries, what rehab looks like, and the dangers of coming back too soon. We also discuss the world of elite sports medicine.

Can one man's waste be another's... treasure? And by treasure we mean medical treatment. Modern medicine has evolved quite a bit from what it used to be hundreds of years ago... but as it turns out, to treat certain aggressive gastrointestinal diseases (ie c difficile infections) we may have to revert to the ancient technique of ingesting fecal matter. In this episode, we chat with gastroenterolog...

How does a Forbes' 30 under 30 boy genius get dubbed the most hated man in America? How about hiking up the price of a life-saving drug by 5000 percent. Is Shkreli just a bad egg, or is he one manifestation of Big Pharma's underlying dynamics when dealing with life-saving therapies? To help answer this question, we interviewed Neil Johnson, the Vice President of Cancer Care at LHSC. In addition to...

What's the difference between mental illness and healthy mental functioning? Revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V - also known as the bible of psychiatry) has left some psychiatrists wondering if the changes made to the DSM will make it too easy for people to be unnecessarily diagnosed with a mental condition. On the other hand, what if the increased diagno...

To close our our 3 part series on Xanax and other benzodiazepines, we talk with Chief of Psychiatry at STEGH, Dr. Giuseppe Guaiana. Dr. Guaiana's research investigates the effectiveness of benzodiazepines for treating anxiety compared to other modalities like SSRIs. Did you know that they're actually equally effective? To hear more from Dr. Guaiana, tune into this episode.

Does the fact that the average desk top is home to around 21,000 bacteria per square inch gross you out? Now don’t reach over and grab some hand sanitizing gel just yet. You might be surprised to learn that this might not be such a good idea. This week on Hashtag Health, we’re bringing you the case for why we as a society are maybe being TOO clean.