Author Archive

My husband and I were on a week’s long vacation in Mexico recently.  On our first day there I began experiencing some serious health issues and was very skeptical about seeking medical attention in Mexico.  My situation grew worse very quickly.  My husband encouraged me to email the Dauphin Clinic pharmacy and ask their advice about medication options and medical treatment.  I sent my email that night before bed and the next morning when I got up I checked my email there was a reply waiting for me.  Trevor answered the questions I had about the medication and encouraged me to see a doctor where I was.  I did so immediately, got the medication I needed and was able to enjoy my holiday in its entirety.  It’s because of fantastic customer service like that my husband and I both make sure our business stays with the Clinic Pharmacy.  It may

sound like a small thing, just writing me an email.  But that prompt, professional reply literally saved our week’s holiday.  Thank you doesn’t seem to say enough.

Carolyn Rempel

By Barret Procyshyn, Pharmacist at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy

I like to think of November as a man’s month. CFL playoffs lead to the grey cup, the snow falls for snowmobiling paradise, wives feel like widows while their men are out deer hunting, curling and hockey are in full swing and you may even get to see the shacks moving to the Valley River. Not to mention, it is Movember, so we can grow our mustaches with pride.

While it is great to be a man and we are growing awesome mustaches, unfortunately a lack of hair on top of our heads does bother us. This used to just be a fact of getting old; we men loose our hair. While there is no magical cure for baldness there is a little more we can do than just put on a hat.

Hair loss, pattern baldness or androgenic alopecia are all fancy words for the same thing; a receding hairline. Male pattern baldness affects a quarter of men by the time they are 30 years old and two thirds of men by the time they are at the age of 60.

A popular belief for a cause for baldness is wearing a hat too often. Wearing a hat does not directly cause hair loss, but it can lead to increased hair breakage and split ends. This could make your hair look even thinner, but it is not the actual cause.  Another myth is hair loss due to the stress from a wife. However; this myth is still up for debate.

There is a saying you will be bald if your mother’s father had a receding hairline. This saying does have some truth. The “baldness” gene is carried in the x- chromosome. Your mother has two x-chromosomes, so there is an increased likelihood your mother is carrying the gene and will pass it down. Research also shows if you have a balding father, it increases your risk of hair loss.

The thinning and loss of hair from the scalp is caused by two main factors in men: heredity and a hormone called DHT (dihydrotestosterone). DHT contributes to the shortening of the growth phase and thinning of hair.

Hair loss can have some psychological and emotional impacts, specifically causing difficulty expressing feelings be more prone to avoiding family conflicts. Some men actually embrace their baldness, as the shaved head look has recently increased in popularity. Bruce Willis, Mark Messier, Howie Mandel and even Trevor Shewfelt have set the trend; being bald is cool.

If you are beginning to show sings of baldness, treatment options are available to slow progression or even stimulate new hair growth. As mentioned none of them are miracle drugs and eventually only about one third of men will be happy with their treatment. But stay positive, you could be the one in three men who have success.

Finasteride (Propecia) is a once a day pill available by prescription, aimed to treat men with mild to moderate hair loss. Finasteride lowers the amount of DHT in the scalp, the hormone which leads to hair loss. It may take up to three months to notice results and must be used continually. However, I have seen people benefit from the medication. There are some new warnings that come with propecia including reduced libido, so you should speak to your doctor about whether it is right for you.

Rogaine (minoxidil) is a liquid solution applied to the scalp twice daily. After a year of use 40% of users reported moderate hair growth and 36% reported some but minimal growth. This medication, in a 2% strength is available over the counter at the pharmacy. Those looking for something stronger can get 5% Minoxidil compounded at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy. You will need a prescription from your physician, but additional hair growth may be seen by using the extra strength compound.

Hair Transplant is another option for hair loss sufferers. It is a minor surgical procedure that moves hair and its follicles from the sides and back of the head to the balding region. This transplanted hair grows permanently at a normal rate of approximately ½ inch per month.

Be aware of expensive vitamin and natural hair growth products. These products have little evidence to support their claims. There is no miracle grow for the head. If you are a post-menopausal female who is noticing thinning hair, you can speak to a Dauphin Clinic Pharmacist for possible treatment options.

If you are suffering from baldness and it is bothering you, give one of the treatment options a try. It is very possible it could work for you. Embracing your baldness is never a bad option either. You can always grow an outstanding movember-stache. If you are interested in seeing the DCP Movember mustaches check out our Facebook page. Also remember to head down to the curling rink and watch some great

curling action at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy Cash Spiel. You can also view live results by using the link on our website at dcp.ca.

As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.

The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only.  It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice.  If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.

We now have this and most other articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website.  Please visit us at www.dcp.ca

Rita Dupley was stuck in Winnipeg because her mother was in the hospital and was running out of her medications.  We offered to get a hold of her doctor to get a new prescription and mail them to her in Winnipeg.  The following was her reaction:
“Thank you, Trevor – that is awesome!
I guess I should have known you’d be helpful – because isn’t your mission stmt something like “we want to AMAZE you with our customer service….”?
Thanks so much – my mom was just admitted …- we’re looking at a minimum of 8 more weeks here.
You Rock, Trevor!!”

By Trevor Shewfelt, Pharmacist at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy

I grew up next to a nuclear research facility.  Yes the Simpsons was originally a documentary called the Shewfelts.  What I noticed growing up was the lame stream media (yes it does hurt to quote Sarah Palin), were horribly uneducated about science in general and nuclear energy in particular.  The news paper and TV reporters always interviewed Dr. So-and-so who was the head of a concerned citizens group against nuclear energy.  The problem was Dr. So-and-so had a PhD in statistics.  He didn’t know anymore about a nuclear reactor than I did as a high school student.  Yet the lame stream media gave him a lot of air time.  No air time was given to the fact nuclear power is probably one the cleanest and most efficient ways we have to generate electricity.

As a pharmacist, there are some medications that I think the lame stream media gives a bad rap to as well.  These drugs are very inexpensive, are very safe and have already saved thousands, if not millions of lives.   The headlines should scream, “Diptheria reduced from 3000 case per year to 1-5 cases per year.”  Or “Measles reduced from outbreaks of 300,000 to 400,000 every 2-3 years to an average of 12 cases per year.”  The modern medical miracles that have made these advances possible are vaccinations.

I know there is a vocal minority out there that thinks vaccines are the root of all evil.  Despite the fact the all the studies I’ve read that say vaccines are extraordinarily safe and effective, I probably won’t convince the die hard anti-vaccine people, and that’s okay.  But if you are on the fence, lend me your ears for a little bit and I’ll see if I can give you something to think about.

Some of the objections to immunizations revolve around quantity.  People say things like, “Babies today get too many shots”, or “Multiple injections will overwhelm the baby’s immune system.”  New born babies come in contact with millions of germs shortly after birth and their immune systems can deal with them immediately.  Why?  Because babies are born with thousands of antibodies.  If one or more shots are given to a baby, that antigen load is just a small part of what babies encounter every day.  Multiple vaccines are safe to give at one time. The multiple vaccines only use a fraction of the immune system to generate the immune response. Babies can make over 1 billion antibodies, and could theoretically handle up to 10,000 shots at any one time. So all a multiple vaccine shot does is reduce the number of times the baby has to be poked.  And back to vaccines somehow harming the baby’s immune system. Vaccines do not harm the immune system but prime and train it to defend, rapidly against vaccine-preventable diseases before illness can occur.  This is important because babies are one of the most susceptible groups to the severe consequences of many vaccine-preventable diseases.

Vaccines cause autism.  It is unfortunate this rumor is still circulating.  Let’s look at what we know.  One of the reasons this rumor started was timing.  The beginning of regressive autism symptoms often happens at the same as childhood vaccines are given.  The one that often gets blamed is the MMR or measles, mumps and rubellas vaccine.  But one doesn’t cause the other.  There have been many studies that refute the link of the MMR vaccine to autism.  One of the most interesting observations has been the experiment many parents are performing on their children.  Because of the MMR vaccine scare, fewer children are getting the MMR vaccine.  However, autism rates have increased even though fewer children have been vaccinated with the MMR vaccine.  The most important flaw with the MMR vaccine scare, in my opinion, was the original premise was a fraud. 

Back in 1998 there was a study published in the Lancet by Dr. AJ Wakefield and colleagues.  They looked at 12 children that had lost acquired skills like language.  These children ranged in age from 3 to 10 years and 11of the 12 were boys.  These children could have had Autism Spectrum Disorder, depending on how that condition is defined.  Of these 12 children, eight of them had developed autism like symptoms after the MMR vaccine as determined by the parents.  So the controversy began.  But the popular media seemed to ignore that the study was only a study of 12 children, not the 1000’s of people that we usually like to see in a study.  The celebrities who announced MMR causes autism seemed to ignore that since 1998 at least a dozen studies looked for a connection between MMR and autism and found none.  In 2010 the original publisher, the Lancet, has actually retracted the original study.  On February 2, 2010 the Lancet published a short retraction that said in part “Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al are incorrect…Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.”  The whole Wakefield study was retracted!  The Lancet basically said the whole Wakefield study was a fraud.

Vaccines cause more harm than the disease they are preventing.  Let’s review what vaccines prevent.  The number of mumps cases has dropped from 34,000 per year in the early 1950’s to an average of 87 cases reported annually between 2000 and 2004. Symptomatic meningitis occurs in about 15% of mumps cases.  Swollen testicles is the most common symptom of post-pubesent boys with mumps.  Mumps can cause deafness.  The last major epidemic of polio occurred in 1959 with nearly 2000 cases of paralytic polio.  With effective immunization, Canada was certified polio-free in 1994.  In the 1950’s most people knew some child who was in an iron lung to breath for them.  Now iron lungs are museum pieces and people have forgotten how devastating the disease was.  Let’s look at the harm vaccines cause.  Most people have no reaction to the vaccine at all.  In someone gets a bad vaccine reaction, then fever, redness and tenderness where a shot was given and fussiness are the most common post-vaccination reactions.  Serious adverse effects are uncommon and vaccines are one of the most monitored tools in modern medicine. The most serious reaction to a vaccine is anaphylaxis, and it can be life threatening.  But anaphylaxis only occurs in 2 patients per 1,000,000 immunizations given.

Even with Chernobyl and 3-Mile Island, nuclear reactors still have a tiny environmental foot-print compared to all the stuff that comes out of the smoke stack of a coal fired power plant or all the land that is flooded by a hydro-electric dam.  Nuclear reactors are many times more efficient than wind or solar power.  Ever seen a wind or solar powered submarine?  Vaccines too get a bad name in the lame stream media and should get more respect.  And that should be the last time I ever quote Sarah Palin.

As always if you have any questions or concerns about these products, ask your pharmacist.

The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only.  It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice.  If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.

We now have this and most other articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website.  Please visit us at www.dcp.ca

Immunization Info from BC Health – http://immunizebc.ca/sites/default/files/docs/ImmunizationCommunicationToolFINAL.pdf

Immunization Myths – http://resources.cpha.ca/CCIAP/data/342e.pdf

Immunization facts – http://resources.cpha.ca/CCIAP/data/1688e.pdf

Immunization – can you trust what you read on the internet – http://resources.cpha.ca/CCIAP/data/0288e.pdf

Caring for Kids (Info from Canadian Paediatricians) – http://www.caringforkids.cps.ca/

Vaccine risk Awareness Network (Definitely an anti-vaccine group) – http://vran.org/

By Barret Procyshyn, Pharmacist at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy

Try a ReadiBand Sleep Watch to See How You Sleep

There is nothing better than a good night of sleep and unfortunately there is almost nothing worse than tossing and turning your way to a poor night of sleep. Poor sleep can be associated with an increased risk of traffic accidents, depression, alcohol abuse, health care utilization and a decreased quality of life. It has even been associated with increased mortality.

Insomnia is characterized by any one or combination of the following; taking more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, not having a satisfying sleep or having a difficulty in maintaining sleep continuity. That means you have broken sleep or early morning awakening, which is quite common. Insomnia can also be present during the day causing impaired alertness, fatigue, mood changes, a lack of concentration, memory difficulty or inability to perform certain tasks.

A huge portion of our adult population uses over the counter sleep aids or prescription sleeping pills and they still cannot seem to get proper amount of sleep. Medications are often needed to help get a decent night of rest. However, sleep medications are intended to be used on an as needed basis because after time they will lose their effectiveness. In fact sleeping pills should be limited to less than 14 nights of consecutive use whenever possible.

Proper sleep hygiene is important to focus on. If you are having trouble sleeping, the first measure is to establish regular bed times and wake times, which simply trains the body it is time to sleep and then time to be awake. Caffeine and nicotine should both be avoided, at least four hours before bedtime. While many may think a drink before bed may be the start of a good night of sleep, alcohol has actually shown to cause early awakenings. Exercise needs to be at the right time. Exercise in the late afternoon can help deepen sleep, while exercise three hours before bedtime may interfere with sleep.

Stimulus control incorporates the idea sleep is a response to certain “triggers”. This involves going to sleep only when you are tired and only using the bedroom for sleep. Watching television, reading in bed or using your laptop should never be done in the bedroom. If you cannot sleep, get out of the bedroom and go to another dimly lit room to read. Once you are tired go back to bed. The light a laptop, ipad or TV gives off may have an arousing effect so they should not be used. As important as it is to go to bed on time, your alarm should also be set for the same time every morning, all in an effort to train the body to sleep consistently. Napping should also be avoided during the day, even if you are tired.

More complex sleep strategies include methods where you alter sleep and wake times to maximize the amount of time in bed actually sleeping. Relaxation strategies before bedtime have also shown to be effective. If your physician thinks it is necessary they may also send you for a sleep study to track your sleeping and breathing habits in bed.  

If you are interested in finding a better sleep, tracking how you sleep is a very good start. The Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy is now providing ReadiBand Sleep Study Analysis. The ReadiBand sleep watch is worn for one week, day and night. Former NASA scientists designed the watch to track movements made by your arm. By tracking these movements the watch can tell when a person is awake or sleeping.  The watch records when you go to bed, when you actually fall asleep, if you wake up during the night and when you wake up in the morning. After wearing the watch for seven days the data is uploaded to a computer and a print out with very detailed results is provided.  While the watch cannot provide an actual insomnia diagnosis it can help your doctor determine whether a sleep study is needed. It can help determine if a consistent sleep time needs to be implemented, if medications or the time they are given need to be changed; or if other lifestyle modifications can be made. If you are interested in trying a sleep watch you can call or visit the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy to book a one week sleep analysis.

As always if you have any questions or concerns about these products, ask your pharmacist.

The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only.  It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice.  If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.

We now have this and most other articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website.  Please visit us at www.dcp.ca

By Trevor Shewfelt.  Recorded by the nice people at 730 CKDM, The Parkland’s Best Music

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By Trevor Shewfelt.  Recorded by the nice people at 730 CKDM, The Parkland’s Best Music

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By Trevor Shewfelt.  Recorded by the nice people at 730 CKDM, The Parkland’s Best Music

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By Trevor Shewfelt.  Recorded by the nice people at 730 CKDM, The Parkland’s Best Music

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By Barret Procycshyn.  Recorded by the nice people at 730 CKDM, The Parkland’s Best Music

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