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Practical health information available to everyone – Thanks to the Primary Care Network

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Health Cafes offer loads of practical health information

Sessions hosted by the Primary Care Network run regularly throughout the year

By Mark Weber

The Primary Care Network’s Health Cafes tap into all kinds of practical health information for residents to utilize.

Hosted on a monthly basis, the sessions, which are currently held virtually, cover a wide gamut of topics that can make a real difference in people’s day-to-day lives, organizers say.

“We try to run the Health Cafes monthly, and we partner with the Red Deer Public Library,” explained Julia Vallance, the PCN’s program manager and a registered nurse. “They are all run virtually right now – you can either watch them via Facebook Live of you can go on afterwards and watch it from the library or the PCN Youtube page,” she said. “If you

join it ‘live’, it would be on the Red Deer Public Library’s Facebook page.”

‘Living Well with an Elevated Weight’ runs April 27 at 4 p.m. and will be hosted by Dr. Sereyrath Ngeth, Recreation Therapist Lynsey Hermary and Jonah Saringo, a family nurse. “Come learn refreshing and up-to-date information
to help you live happy and healthy at your best weight,” noted the web site. Topics range from weight stigma to treatment options including lifestyle, medication and surgery. “After that, we are running a Health Café with the City of Red Deer and Alberta Health Services on May 17 at 1 p.m., and it’s going to be on ‘Year of the Garden’,” said Vallance.

It’s all part of a City of Red Deer initiative to encourage folks to get outside and be more active by gardening through the spring and summer. “We are also going to have Denise Fredeen of Alberta Health Services’ Mental Health who will talk about how being outdoors can really impact people’s mental health in a positive way. We will also have one of our coaches, Lynsey Hermary, talk about some of the different things we can all do outside – other great options out in the community,’ she added.

And on June 15, a Health Café on ‘Post-partum Mental Health’ is set to start at 1 p.m. This session will be hosted by Ivy Parsons of AHS and PCN Family Nurse Michelle Abbott.

This 60-minute session is an introduction to what’s involved with the transition into motherhood.

“The post-partum adjustment period can be challenging as new mothers navigate low moods, sleepless nights and anxiety.”

“They’ll also be talking about what are normal expectations to have after having a baby. What are the common challenges women face? What is considered normal and what goes into the realm of the ‘not-so-normal’ – those kinds of topics,” she said.

Meanwhile, staff at the local office, located at 5120 47 St., also offer a range of ongoing workshops from Anxiety to Calm, Happiness Basics and Moving on With Persistent Pain to Relationships in Motion, Sleep and Journey Through Grief. Others include My Way to Health (formerly Health Basics), Strong and Steady (which focuses on bolstering one’s strength and flexibility), and H.E.A.R.T.S which has been designed to help families through the loss of a child during pregnancy or shortly after birth.

Several individual programs are available as well via the PCN, from help with diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol to pharmacy queries to assistance with everything from quitting smoking to learning more about housing or financing.

Lorna Milkovich, the PCN’s executive director, noted that there is always an emphasis on designing the workshops to be primarily skills-based, interactive and experiential. Most are available in either four or eight-week modules as well.

A key goal these days is also to bolster awareness of all these programs, and to spread the word that they are completely accessible to the public at no charge as well, she said. And as Vallance pointed out, positive feedback as to the programs’ impact shows the information indeed can make a profound difference.

Another exciting new tool this year is the introduction of a downloadable publication called My Self-Care Journey, which is available on the PCN web site. Hard copies can also be picked up at the PCN office at no charge.

As Milkovich pointed out, the PCN is also a one-stop-shop for those looking for further information about health and wellness resources in the community.

For more about the PCN, check out reddeerpcn.com or call the office at 403-343-9100.

Born and raised in Red Deer, Mark Weber is an award-winning freelance writer who is committed to the community. He worked as a reporter for the Red Deer Express for 18 years including six years as co-editor. During that time, he mainly covered arts and entertainment plus a spectrum of areas from city news and health stories to business profiles and human interest features. Mark also spent a year working for the regional publication Town and Country in northern Alberta, along with stints at the Ponoka News and the Stettler Independent. He’s thrilled to be a Todayville contributor, as it allows him many more opportunities to continue to focus on the city and community he not only has a passion for, but calls home as well.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Health Risks from Water Fluoridation are not just in RFK’s Head

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

“There is evidence that fluoride exposure has been associated with the diseases [and] disorders that RFK listed, but with caveats”

Water fluoridation has returned to the forefront of public policy debates thanks to environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is expected to have a role in the Department of Health and Human Services, giving his opinion more weight than ever.

In a post to X, Kennedy wrote, “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”

The post links to a High Wire video interview with lawyer Michael Connett, lead attorney in a successful case against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Last September, Obama-appointed District Court Judge Edward Chen sided with Connett and mandated the EPA to more strictly regulate water fluoridation.

Chen’s ruling states, “In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water…”

Fluoride is a poisonous industrial byproduct, handled in its pure form by people in hazmat suits. Dealing with sodium fluoroacetate was an expense for the Aluminum Company of America before Edward Bernays helped turn it into a profitable venture. In the 1940s, Bernays, the father of modern public relations and nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, used mass psychology and public health advocates to have fluoride put in drinking water. Fluoridation opponents were dismissed as kooks ever after.

The toxicology adage “The dose makes the poison” applies. Chemicals, including drugs, can benefit health in some respects but undermine it in others. Unfortunately, recent analysis suggests the “side effects” of fluoridation may outweigh its alleged benefits.

A recent analysis by Cochrane Reviews said water fluoridation may provide a slight dental benefit, but less so since the mid 70’s when manufacturers commonly added fluoride to toothpaste. Fluoride reverses or stops early tooth decay by remineralizing teeth, making them stronger. It also reduces bacteria’s ability to make acids that cause decay.

Fluoride capsules have little effect on teeth, which suggests its main positive effect is topical (meaning by direct contact). An obvious question follows: if fluoride of roughly one part per million passing over the teeth before swallowing, what is its effect during digestion or bodily storage? After all half of fluoride is passed through urine, while the remainder is stored in the body.

In 2020 The Institute of Technology and Business in the Czech Republic made a six-article issue dedicated to the mechanisms of fluoride toxicity. One explained in the abstract that “fluoride is an enzymatic poison, inducing oxidative stress, hormonal disruptions, and neurotoxicity.” The toxic effects were magnified when trace amounts of aluminum were present, and “might contribute to unexpected epidemics in the future.”

Sleeplessness, hypothyroidism, and autism to conditions linked to fluoride consumption, whether through natural sources or water fluoridation. The risks were found through statistical studies comparing health issues in water fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas, biochemical analysis, and human and animal studies.

“We concur with the conclusions of many authors over the world that fluoride neurotoxicity is a serious risk associated with elevated fluoride exposure… […] Fluoride toxicity is a slow, hidden process. Evolving evidence should inspire scientists and health authorities to re-evaluate claims about the safety of fluoride…”

In 2019, researchers from Canadian and U.S. universities tested over 500 Canadian women throughout their pregnancies for fluoride levels in their urine. Their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that for each milligram of fluoride per litre in the mother’s urine, IQ dropped 4.5 points in their male children tested at ages of three to four years.

Christine Till, a professor in the Department of Psychology at York University in Toronto, told CNN, “At a population level, that’s a big shift. That translates to millions of IQ levels lost.”

Ashley Malin, an assistant professor in the University of Florida’s Epidemiology Department, had similar findings in her Florida study, published in JAMA in 2024.

“There is evidence that fluoride exposure has been associated with the diseases [and] disorders that RFK listed, but with caveats,” Malin told the Virginia Mercury in a recent article.

“Aside from fluoride’s impacts on neurodevelopment, I think that there is more that we don’t know about health effects of low-level fluoride exposure than what we do know, particularly for adult health outcomes,” Malin added.

In August, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in the United States found that fluoride levels higher than 1.5 mg/L (the highest acceptable level in Canada) are associated with lower IQs in children. The NTP said there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there are similar risks at the recommended level of 0.7 mg/L.

Montreal recently ended its water fluoridation and hopefully other cities will follow. Only a misguided nanny state would poison young minds and old bones for the sake of people who don’t brush their teeth.

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Fauci admitted to RFK Jr. that none of 72 mandatory vaccines for children has ever been safety tested

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, recently recounted how Dr. Anthony Fauci had to admit that none of the 72 vaccines currently mandated for children in the U.S. has ever been safety tested.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently recounted how when threatened with a lawsuit, Dr. Anthony Fauci finally had to eat his words and admit that none of the 72 vaccines currently mandated for children in the U.S. has ever been safety tested.

“For many years, I was saying that not one of the 72 vaccines mandated for children has ever been safety tested in pre-licensing, placebo-controlled trials,” began Kennedy, speaking at a Hillsdale College event. “Not one.”

Fauci went so far as to call Kennedy “a liar.”

When then-President Trump appointed Kennedy to run a vaccine safety commission, Trump ordered Fauci and Collins to meet with him along with White House counsel present.

Kennedy told Fauci, “You say I’m lying. For eight years you’ve been saying I’m lying,” and challenged Fauci to “show me the study” which shows that the multitude of vaccines America’s children are required to receive have been safety-tested.

Fauci claimed that he didn’t have it with him. “It’s back in Bethesda. I’ll send it to you.”

“I never got it,” said Kennedy, “so I sued him.”

“After stonewalling us for a year, their lawyers met us on the courthouse steps and said, ‘Yup, you’re right. We never had any study,’” said Kennedy.

There’s no downstream liability, there’s no front-end safety testing – that saves them a quarter billion dollars – and there’s no marketing and advertising costs, because the federal government is ordering 78 million school kids to take that vaccine every year.

What better product could you have? And so there was a gold rush to add all these new vaccines to the schedule that we don’t need. Most of these vaccines are unnecessary. Many of them are for diseases that are not even casually contagious.

It was a gold rush, because if you get onto that schedule, it’s a billion dollars a year for your company.

And in many cases, NIH is earning the royalties.

According to Kennedy, more obscene than the huge profits being horded by Big Pharma are the vast number of negative side-effects from all those untested vaccines.

“Neurological diseases” have “exploded,” he said.

“ADHD, sleep disorders, language delays, ASD, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, ticks, narcolepsy. These are all things that I never heard of,” said Kennedy. “Autism went from one in 10,000 in my generation according to CDC data to one in every 34 kids today.”

Kennedy is known for vehemently opposing vaccines, a stance he adopted after the mothers of vaccine-injured children implored him to look into the research linking thimerosal to neurological injuries, including autism. He went on to found Children’s Health Defense, an organization with the stated mission of “ending childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure,” largely through vaccines.

Kennedy said in October that Trump has asked him to reorganize and “clean up” federal health agencies like the CDC and FDA. This would involve ending conflicts of interest that favor the interests of pharmaceutical companies over evidence-based medicine, according to Kennedy.

Trump has also tasked him with ending “the chronic disease epidemic in this country,” especially chronic disease among children.

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