Health

Connor McDavid envisioned this moment.

Growing up in the suburbs north of Toronto — whether it was the outdoor rinks, the arenas or on the street with friends — hockey glory danced in his mind’s eye.

Just like countless Canadian kids.

“You always dreamt of yourself playing in that game and scoring that big goal,” McDavid said. “You’re not sure you’re ever going to get that opportunity.”

After a roller-coaster season and a playoffs with plenty more twists and turns, the stage is set for the superstar captain.

McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers face the Florida Panthers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final Monday — the last hurdle in an improbable journey this season.

A disastrous start to the schedule. Last in the overall standings. A coaching change. A near-record-breaking winning streak. Playoff pushback.

And a trio of victories after trailing the title series 3-0.

“It’s been fun to be a part of,” McDavid said. “The group has played some of our best hockey over the course of the last seven, eight days. We feel good about where things are at.

“It comes down to one game.”

1:35
Edmonton Oilers fan’s 2018 yearbook prediction close to coming true

Edmonton is looking to become just the fifth team in NHL history to win a best-of-seven series after trailing 3-0. The 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs — in the middle of the Second World War, some 82 years ago — are the only club to accomplish the feat in the final when they stormed back on the Detroit Red Wings.

The Oilers, who last sat atop the NHL mountain in 1990 when the franchise won its fifth championship, can also end the Cup drought for Canadian-based clubs dating back to the Montreal Canadiens’ 1993 victory.

“We’re all human, and we’re aware of the situation and what we’ve accomplished so far,” said Edmonton centre Leon Draisaitl, the Robin to McDavid’s Batman through their careers in the Alberta capital.

“We have to focus on winning one hockey game on the road and play our best.

“All the stories will take care of itself after.”

Florida raced out to its 3-0 lead before McDavid took over in Game 4 and Game 5 with a pair of mesmerizing four-point displays.

The Oilers then picked up a 5-1 victory in Game 6 — the third time the Cup was polished and ready to be presented to the Panthers — at home Friday to send everyone back to South Florida.

“Just sticking with it,” Edmonton centre Adam Henrique said. “Believing in each other.”

Florida, meanwhile, is aiming to avoid an ugly place in the record books.

1:04
Deliriously happy Edmonton Oilers fans celebrate Game 6 win

The Panthers remain in a terrific position to win the franchise’s first Cup after losing in the 1996 final and then again last spring.

But the motivation of not having your name associated with an epic collapse might be just as big a motivator.

“Doesn’t matter how it’s gone or how you draw it up,” Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk said at the team’s Fort Lauderdale practice facility ahead of the 1,400th and final contest of the NHL campaign.

“They lost the first three, we lost the next three … it’s even right now. It doesn’t matter what has happened to get to this point.

“It’s easy to forget.”

Edmonton, which holds a 20-5 aggregate scoreline over the last 10 periods, has ridden solid goaltending Stuart Skinner and detail-oriented defensive structure to get into a position not many outside the locker room predicted just 10 days ago.

It is, however, slightly easier to believe when your team has the best player in the world.

“He can do magical things,” Edmonton winger Corey Perry said of McDavid, a three-time NHL MVP. “It’s not a switch he flips, but all of a sudden he’s dancing through three or four guys.”

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Edmonton Oilers: What fans can expect from game 7

The only Oilers player with a Cup ring won with Anaheim in 2007. Perry then lost in 2020 with Dallas, in 2021 with Montreal, and in 2022 with Tampa Bay.

“You dream of playing Game 7s and being a hero, on the backyard rink, on the street,” he said.

“Now it’s reality. Now you get to live that. Somebody, and hopefully he’s in this room … will go down in history for being the hero.”

The Panthers have the same hope.

“I was one of those kids,” Florida captain Aleksander Barkov said. “I’m thinking about like, ‘This is Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.’ You think about those moments.

“Now it’s becoming a truth … the most exciting time to be a hockey player.”

It’s fitting on some level the furthest distance between cities in a final — Edmonton and Sunrise are more than 4,000 kilometres apart — is going the distance.

“It’s been a long road to get to this point,” said McDavid, the first pick at the 2015 draft and hockey’s most-hyped talent since Sidney Crosby.

“A lot of ups and downs, a lot of lessons along the way.”

And a lot of dreams about what Monday might bring.

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People taking weight-loss and diabetes injection drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy may have an increased risk of sudden and irreversible vision loss and blindness, a new study has found.

However, doctors say there’s no reason for patients who take the uber popular drugs to panic or discontinue taking their prescriptions.

The study, conducted by Harvard researchers and published Wednesday in JAMA Ophthalmology, analyzed data from 16,827 patients over a six-year period at the Mass Eye and Ear Harvard teaching hospital.

Of those, 710 had type 2 diabetes, with 194 being prescribed semaglutide medications, marketed under brandnames like Wegovy and Ozempic, that belong to a class of medications known as GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Another 975 patients in the study were overweight or living with obesity, 361 of them being prescribed semaglutide.

Among those prescribed semaglutide, an eye problem known as nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, was eventually diagnosed in a small percentage of patients. None of the more than 16,000 patients were initially diagnosed with NAION.

After taking patients’ other risk factors for the condition into account, such as high blood pressure and obstructive sleep apnea, use of semaglutide was associated with a more than four times higher risk of NAION in those receiving it for diabetes and a more than seven times higher risk in patients taking it for weight issues.

Among those taking semaglutide for type 2 diabetes, 8.9 per cent developed NAION, compared to 1.8 per cent taking non-GLP-1 medications, researchers found.

Among those prescribed semaglutide for overweight or obesity, the rate of the eye condition was 6.7 per cent, versus 0.8 per cent for those receiving other types of medications for weight reduction.

1:38
Wegovy weight loss benefits sustained in longest medical trial to date

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NAION affects the optic nerve, the bundle of fibres that connects to the back of the eye and carries signals to the brain allowing sight. Those with NAION have reduced or blocked blood flow and oxygen to the optic nerve – a type of painless eye stroke which can result in sudden loss of vision.

The study found that the risk of developing NAION was greatest within the first year of being prescribed semaglutide, but researchers say their findings should be viewed as “tentative” for now.

“The use of these drugs has exploded throughout industrialized countries and they have provided very significant benefits in many ways, but future discussions between a patient and their physician should include NAION as a potential risk,” lead researcher Dr. Joseph Rizzo, director of the neuro-ophthalmology at Mass Eye and Ear and a professor at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release.

“Our findings should be viewed as being significant but tentative, as future studies are needed to examine these questions in a much larger and more diverse population.”

Dr. Tom Elliott, medical director with B.C. Diabetes, told Global News that he’s already fielding emails from concerned patients about the study, and is calling the association between the drug and cause of blindness “exceedingly rare.”

“It’s not like they’re saying that Ozempic causes this problem,” he explained. “It’s just more frequent in people who are taking the drug.”

Elliott says he’s reassuring his patients that if they have good reason to be taking a semaglutide, “the benefits massively outweigh the downside,” and that the drugs can be “enormously beneficial.”

He says that not only are semaglutide drugs helpful in managing diabetes and weight, but also to cardiovascular health, and that the potential risk of NAION should not deter people from using semaglutide if they really benefit from it.

2:00
Semaglutide medication’s like Ozempic contribute to heart health, study finds

“In people with previous heart attacks and strokes, (these drugs) reduces the risk of death by 20 per cent. So, in people who haven’t had those events….the overall benefits to diabetes, to weight, to cardiovascular risk, are quite significant.”

Another factor in the study that needs to be considered, says Dr. Mark Eltis, president of the College of Optometrists of Ontario, is that leaving diabetes untreated can also cause vision problems.

“If we don’t treat diabetes, the blood vessels at the back of the eye can become leaky, or new blood vessels can form which are not as stable as the regular ones because they’re not supposed to be there, and so they can more easily collapse and cause hemorrhaging or bleeding at the back of the eye.”

While NAION is the second-most common optic nerve condition, Eltis says it’s a “far distant second” to glaucoma. What differentiates the two, however, is that NAION causes sudden vision loss, where glaucoma is usually a more gradual disease that sees vision worsen over a period of time.

Novo Nordisk, in an emailed statement to Reuters, noted several limitations of the study design, which was not a randomized controlled trial, and pointed out that the study did not take into account some potentially pertinent information such as how long patients had diabetes or whether they were smokers.

“Overall, the data published in the study is not sufficient to establish a causal association between GLP-1 receptor agonist use and NAION,” the Danish drugmaker, which manufactures Wegovy and Ozempic, said, adding that the condition “is not an adverse drug reaction for the marketed formulations of semaglutide.”

It’s worth noting that Canadian warnings for both Ozempic and Wegovy include vision changes among potential side effects.

Eltis says anyone considering taking semaglutide should speak to their doctor about the risks and benefits of the treatment and be assessed for any eye conditions at the time, too, to ensure an individualized plan.

“You cannot leave the diabetes untreated. That is not the correct path. Every treatment has a risk and benefit, and a lot of these should not be blown out of proportion because they are low probability.”

— with files from Reuters

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Canada’s poison centres see more semaglutide calls as Ozempic use rises

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Chandigarh: With the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) taking the initiative to develop a network of phase 1 clinical trial units (CTUs) across the country, the PGI is one of the four selected units so far which will play a crucial role in evaluating new drug, diagnostics and devices in the early phases of clinical development, commonly referred as exploratory clinical trials, fostering innovation and promoting indigenous research in particular.

Other three selected institutions are KEM Mumbai; Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) Mumbai; and SRM Chennai.

“Over the past two years, the ICMR has been inspecting sites by rigorous inspections, presentations and on-site evaluations by expert teams to ensure they meet the highest standards,” said Prof Nusrat Shafiq, clinical pharmacology unit, department of pharmacology, PGI.

ICMR is keen that the existing unit was built in the last decade with support from Central Drug Research Institute, under the guidance of Prof Samir Malhotra, head of the department pharmacology. ICMR has proposed that PGI enhances its clinical trial unit by increasing its bed strength from four to eight for the participating volunteer/patient, creating dedicated areas for sampling and upgrading the existing units for enabling more types of exploratory studies in participants. “We would increase the unit this way for more nuanced studies so that it gives a boost to drug development in India,” said PGI director Prof Vivek Lal.

PGI’s unit has been actively supporting translational research by means of early (exploratory) clinical trials of new drugs and vaccines and now new devices.

The network is now supported by ICMR for optimising processes of these CTUs. The unit at PGI has conducted first in human studies of indigenously developed drug molecules and devices by colleagues/teams within the institute and collaborating institutes. The current team led by Prof Nusrat Shafiq is multi-disciplinary in nature and working towards improving processes, providing training on the special skills, capacity building and hand holding besides actual planning and conduct of such studies.

The advantages of these ICMR-supported networks are manifold. Firstly, they prioritise Indian developers, fostering a conducive environment for home-grown innovations. Secondly, they facilitate capacity building by providing specialised training and resources, enabling researchers to take their molecules further along the development pipeline. Additionally, these studies can be seamlessly expanded to other centres within the network, allowing for a broader representation of diverse populations and expediting the generation of comprehensive results.

“This project is for five years for which we have been allotted a dedicated budget, manpower, and training support. The vision is to develop larger, globally competitive units that meet international standards,” said Prof Nusrat. If a promising molecule or technology emerges from any institution, the ICMR’s network, including PGI, will lend its expertise and resources to facilitate its early phase translation.

First-in-human study was done in PGI in 2006

PGI is one of the oldest units for phase 1 clinical trials where the first-in-human study was conducted in 2006. This was on an anti-malarial drug molecule developed by Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow. PGI was asked to take it further and a joint protocol was developed and delivered upon.

A growing number of people in Canada and globally are physically inactive, the World Health Organization said in a new study, calling it a “silent threat” that needs greater attention.

Data published in The Lancet Global Health journal on Tuesday showed that more than a third (31.3 per cent) of the global adult population — or roughly 1.8 billion people — did not meet the WHO’s recommended levels of physical activity in 2022.

This was an increase of almost four percentage points from 2016, when 27.5 per cent of the global population was insufficiently physically active.

For adults, the WHO recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or its equivalent combination of activities, each week.

In Canada, 37.2 per cent of adults were reported as physically inactive in 2022, the WHO study showed, going up from 31.1 per cent in 2010 and 25.6 per cent in 2000. If these trends continue, by 2030, the prevalence of physical inactivity in Canada could go up to 41.4 per cent, the WHO estimates.

“Unfortunately, the world is not going into the right direction,” said Ruediger Krech, WHO’s director of health promotion, during a virtual news conference.

“Physical inactivity is a silent threat to global health, contributing significantly to the burden of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes or respiratory diseases,” he said.

2:08
More screen time and less exercise: report finds pandemic is leaving it’s mark on Canadian kids

The WHO study looked at the levels of insufficient physical activity for 197 countries and territories between 2000 and 2022. It included 507 surveys from 163 countries and territories.

It concluded that about half the countries, including Canada, have increasing trends of physical inactivity, while the other half have made progress over the past decade.

Fiona Bull, head of the WHO’s physical activity unit, said 22 countries, mostly from Europe and the West Pacific region, are on track to meet the agency’s global target of a 15 per cent relative reduction in levels of physical inactivity by 2023.

But, overall, the world is off track from meeting that goal, she said.

“This is a wakeup call that we are not doing enough in nearly half the countries and even in those countries where there’s promising trend, there’s no room for complacency,” she said during Tuesday’s news conference.

Scott Lear, a professor of health sciences at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, said that the “distressing” part about the Canadian data is that there’s probably more people who are physically inactive because people tend to overestimate their level of activities when self-reporting.

“This 37 per cent might be closer to 45 per cent, getting close to half of the population being physically inactive,” he said in an interview with Global News.

5:17
Promoting physical activity among children and youth

On average, women continued to be less active than men around the world with a difference of five percentage points, data showed.

High-income countries had a greater prevalence of physical inactivity when compared with low-income countries, but the highest levels of inactivity were in the lower-middle income classification.

There are multiple factors why physical inactivity is increasing globally, experts say.

Changing transportation patterns as roads have become unsafe means fewer people are walking and cycling, Bull said.

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Healthy Living Report June 4: benefits of walking regularly

Work models have shifted toward more sedentary work with greater reliance on technology, she added.

Bull also pointed to changes in leisure time activities that are more screen-based and sedentary.

“All of these trends combined with the changing environments in which we live, where there’s increasing car use, increasing pollution, and creating urban environments that are not supported for being active, add together to create conditions that do not enable physical activity,” she told reporters.

While the WHO analysis did not take into the account the impact of COVID-19 people’s levels of activity, Lear said the pandemic restrictions also likely played a role in these trends.

Affordability is also a barrier to physical activity, experts say, as gyms, organized sports and clubs are getting more expensive.

Physical inactivity is one of the leading risk factors for noncommunicable diseases and death worldwide, according to the WHO.

Hence, increasing your physical activity can minimize those risks, experts say.

“Physical activity needs to be accessible, affordable and enjoyable for all so that we can significantly reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases and mental health conditions,” Krech said.

The WHO is calling on countries to strengthen policy implementation to promote and enable physical activity through community sports, active recreation and transport, through walking and cycling, as well as the use of public transit.

5:27
Improving your heart health with cardio

Bull stressed the need for public open spaces where people live, work and play.

She said physical activity can be undertaken through either traditional sports that are formal and competitive or informal and unstructured sports, such as yoga, walking and cycling,

Even though the recommendation is for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity per week, Lear said you can start to feel the benefits from the first minute of physical activity.

He advised setting daily reminders for “an exercise snack,” where you walk around for a few minutes, do some pushups, squats or jumping jacks.

If you don’t feel like going to the gym, Lear said activities like raking the leaves in the fall, cutting the grass with a push mower over the summer, or even grocery shopping, are also considered moderate activities.

“The best activity or exercise for any one person is that activity that they enjoy doing,” he said.

Environment Canada has issued heat warnings for parts of Vancouver Island and inland sections of coastal British Columbia as the province braces for a heat wave.

The weather agency says a high-pressure ridge building over the West Coast will bring “very high temperatures” starting Friday and stretching into next week.

The first series of warnings spans eastern Vancouver Island, including Courtenay, Campbell River, Duncan, Nanaimo, Fanny Bay and other nearby communities.

The bulletin says daytime highs are expected to hit the low 30s C in those areas with nighttime lows of around 16 C.

Another warning covers inland sections of the north and central coast, including Kitimat and Terrace, where the weather agency says daytime temperatures near 30 C are expected to persist from Saturday until Tuesday night.

Environment Canada says the heat poses a “moderate risk” to public health before the forecast returns to more seasonal temperatures later next week.

“Right now, it looks like (next) Wednesday is the day for a change in the airmass,” said Armel Castellan, a warning preparedness meteorologist with the agency.

He said the province is divided into five regions based on their typical climatology, and each region is subject to different criteria for triggering a heat warning.

In the northwest, it’s two days or more with daytime highs of 28 C or higher and overnight temperatures of 13 C, Castellan said in an interview.

But temperatures in parts of the southern Interior must hit 35 C for two days with an overnight low of 18 C to trigger a heat warning.

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B.C. evening weather forecast: July 4

“Vancouver itself would be at 29 degrees for two days and 16 degrees overnight,” Castellan said of the heat warning criteria in the province’s most populous city.

A special weather statement is also in effect for Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, where above-average temperatures are expected well into next week.

The forecast for Vancouver projects daytime highs of 26 C on Sunday and Monday.

Environment Canada’s forecast says the mercury in Kamloops, B.C., is expected to hit 40 C on Monday and Tuesday, followed by 39 C on Wednesday.

In the northern community of Fort Nelson, B.C., daytime highs between 28 C and 30 C are expected from Sunday to next Wednesday. The entire community was evacuated for more than two weeks in the spring due to the threat of an early-season wildfire.

B.C.’s heat alert and response system is the result of work by a committee struck in January 2022 to help the province respond to extreme heat events.

It followed the deadly heat dome event of summer 2021, when temperatures soared above 40 C in many communities between June 25 and July 1.

The BC Coroners Service reported 619 heat-related deaths that summer.

Castellan said the current heat wave will be different because temperatures aren’t expected to surpass the heat warning criteria by such large margins.

He said Wednesday that he expects Environment Canada will issue additional warnings as the heat moves from west to east across the province.

The agency says risks associated with heat are elevated for older adults and people with conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and mental health challenges.

The heat warnings encourage people to watch for signs of heat illness including heavy sweating, rashes and fainting, and also to check in on friends and neighbours who may be at greater risk, especially if they live by themselves.

The BC Centre for Disease Control says heat waves are expected to “become more frequent, longer, and hotter” in the province due to climate change.

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Special weather statement issued with heat in B.C. forecast

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