HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-11-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2012. PAGE 5.
You like it hot and sticky? Have I got a
party place for you. Rent-free, for
starters, plus a constant temperature of
35°C., 100 per cent humidity – and all the food
you can eat.
Not a bad gig – for a bacterium.
We’re talking about your mouth and what’s
living in there. By the end of this column you
may never French kiss again. Even if you
brush three times a day and cut your Johnny
Walker with Listerine, you are a virtual slum
landlord when it comes to your pie hole.
You’ve got bacteria, fungi, protozoa and
sundry viruses of no fixed address hanging out
between your teeth, just under your gums, on
your tongue – even on the roof of your mouth.
The bad news is: you’ll never get rid of them.
The good news is: you really don’t want to.
Most of these wriggly critters are good guys.
They’d be wearing Mountie stetsons if we
made hat sizes that small. They toil away 24/7,
hunting down and knocking off bad bacteria
–when they’re not nibbling on the bits of
cheeseburger and corn dogs stuck between our
teeth.
Then there’s the bad guys. Not a lot of them,
really, but enough to ruin a neighbourhood. We
call them the Strep Gang (full name
Streptococcus Mutans). The Strep Gang
members used to be good guys but we got
them hooked on drugs and now they’ve gone
rogue. The drug that did them in? Refined
sugar.
See, for most of our history we didn’t have
refined sugar – and had better teeth for it.
Back in the old days, chemicals in our saliva
routinely neutralized acids from raw sugar.
But Streptococcus Mutans goes ape for the
new fancypants refined sugar – which it
converts into acid which attacks tooth enamel
and eventually produces those canyons,
arroyos, wadis, coulees and black holes we
call cavities.
The solution? Way less sugar of course –
and good luck with that. The North American
diet is saturated in refined sugars to the point
of obscenity (check out the adulterated
breakfast cereals aimed exclusively at kids –
Sugar Frosted Flakes…Count Chocula…who
needs that crap?).
Then of course there’s candy. We’ve just
come through that sugar orgy called
Halloween in which kids vie with one another
to see how many garbage bags of sweets they
can amass – chocolate bars, toffee, peanut
brittle, peppermints, butterscotch, licorice,
jelly beans, jawbreakers, Life Savers, kiss
candies, candy canes, bubble gum…
Oh – hold it on the gum. Turns out that gum
is good for kids. In fact, it turns out gum is
exactly what our candy-overdosing kids need.
I’m not making that up. A dental study in
Finland way back in the 1980s revealed that
kids who chewed gum had 60 per cent fewer
cavities than kids who didn’t. A more recent
study in Belize found even better numbers –70
per cent fewer cavities among gum-chewing
10 year olds. Not just any gum of course. It has
to be sweetened with xylitol, a naturally
occurring sweetener present in many fruits and
vegetables.
Dental experts are now recommending that
children be encouraged to chew gum in
school, three times a day, starting in
kindergarten.
Ironic. As a kid I got my knuckles whacked
for chewing gum in school. If I was a student
now, I’d be nailed for not chewing gum in
school.
Ah well. As that eminent philosopher Alfred
E. Neuman said: “We live in a world where
lemonade is made from artificial flavours and
furniture polish is made from real lemons.”
Now there’s something to chew on.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Watch your mouth! Start chewing
Over the weekend I was in Hamilton to
see the Irish punk band Dropkick
Murphys and I was overwhelmed with
a feeling of happiness at the end of it all and it
had nothing to do with the concert or its cursed
venue the Hamilton Convention Centre.
My complaints about the concert are many.
First off, it’s a convention centre, made for...
you guessed it: conventions. I should have
been at a wedding or watching a PowerPoint
presentation, not a punk band.
Second, organizers must have banked on the
seldom-subscribed-to theory that Irish punk
music fans are not big drinkers. The roughly
1:1,000 bartender-to-drinker ratio made for the
longest, slowest moving lines I have ever seen
at anything, including renewing my driver’s
licence and trading in a Rogers Cable box.
However, what pleased me about the evening
was that Movember was on the lips (literally, in
the cases of many) of just about everybody
there that night.
Nearly every man at the concert that night
was wearing the ribbon of men’s health on his
face and on several occasions women could be
heard discussing the movement, saying how
much they love it.
Their kind sentiments, however, have not
been shared by all, especially by members of
the fairer sex.
There are plenty of ladies out there, and men
as well, who have denounced the Movember
movement, simply due to its lack of aesthetic
value. They’re complaining about how ugly a
mustache is and how they can’t wait for the
month to be over. In addition, they don’t seem
to “get” the meaning behind the movement.
“What does growing a mustache really do to
help prostate cancer?” many have asked.
Well many of those growing mustaches are
raising money for Prostate Cancer Canada
through the Movember website. At the time of
this writing, hundreds of thousands of
Canadians had raised over $18 million just this
year with a third of the month still to go.
The movement, which is now global, at the
time of this writing, had raised over $54
million worldwide this year. However, the real
legacy of Movember is that it has men talking
about their health.
For decades the image of the strong, silent
type of man has existed. And for decades the
strong, silent man kept silent on his health
issues and for decades he refused to go to the
doctor, resulting in countless cancer cases that
doctors have said could have been prevented if
regular check-ups had been a part of every
man’s life on an annual basis.
So while growing a mustache might be fun,
and it most definitely is that, at the same time
men are learning and they’re teaching others.
And sure, while the mustache might seem silly
on the surface, it’s doing its job and saving
lives in a way that doesn’t get the spotlight like
the physical mustache does.
So ladies, ease up on the mustache. Just as
people running around city streets for the Run
For The Cure don’t physically cure cancer, the
hair on your boyfriend’s lip might not be
conducting life saving research, but it’s a
symbol that they care; and you should too.
Just two weeks ago everyone walked around
with a small piece of red felt pinned to their
jackets. Physically, what was so special about
those pieces of felt? Nothing. It’s what the
poppy represents that makes it special.
And so too goes the mustache. It represents
healthier men in everyone’s lives, something
we can all get behind. So support the
mustaches, the men growing them are doing
good work.
Defending Movember
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
There have been times when I’ve
broached the subject of traditional
gender roles versus equality before, in
my personal life, and to be honest, it never
goes well for me.
I guess my problem is that I believe
that things should be equal in this world
for all people regardless of gender, religion or
race.
It surprised me the first time I was told that
holding that belief put me at odds with women
who wanted to change the world because they
weren’t looking for equality, they were
looking for empowerment.
Confused? Well, so was I. I guess the big
difference isn’t to make everything equal, but
to give everyone the option of forcing equality
in their own little slice of the world.
Still confused? Well, you’re not the only
one.
Take the case of Faith McGregor. McGregor,
a woman from Toronto, visited The Terminal
Barber Shop, an establishment owned by
Muslims.
Why is it important that it is owned by
Muslims? Well, I’ll tell you.
The Muslim tradition has many different
caveats that some of us may find odd
or restrictive but, as it is a religious leaning,
I think that they should be allowed to
practice it as long as it doesn’t infringe upon
others.
One of those caveats is that a Muslims man
can’t cut the hair of a woman unless they are
family, according to one of the barber’s
owners, Omar Mahrouk.
Furthermore, Mahrouk admitted that he has
no training and little experience in dealing
with women’s hair.
If I walked into a barber and he or she said,
“Sorry, I don’t do men’s hair,” and, regardless
of the actual reason, they admitted to not
having experience or training in dealing with
my awesome coif, I’d be finding someone else
to do the job. My first reaction would not be,
“Well obviously there is something special
here I’m not getting, so I’d better make a stink
about it.”
McGregor considered this a human right’s
violation since she was, in her mind’s eye,
being discriminated against based on her sex.
She made a statement saying that her hair
was the same as any man’s and that she should
have the right to get it cut wherever she
pleases.
I respectfully disagree.
Before anyone writes in calling me a
misogynist or a pig or a chauvinist, I want each
and every one of you to consider the
following: There are places in this continent,
in the first world countries, that are considered
women only.
Curves gym is a primary example. Sure,
they don’t have a sign out front saying “No
men allowed,” but I can pretty much guarantee
that if you ask any man, he will identify it as a
gym for women.
And good for them, both Curves and the
women who go there. Good for Curves
because they have provided a safe place where
women can work out and feel comfortable
with it and good for those women for wanting
to lead a healthy life.
However, the very existence of a place that
denotes itself as a ‘safe place for women’
is definitely doing the same thing as
The Terminal Barber Shop, it’s just that
the owners of the barber have even more of a
right to claim their location as a gender-
specific one since it’s a part of their
religion.
My beliefs aside, the issue is being dealt
with by the Ontario Human Rights
Commission and a decision will be made in
the new year.
According to coverage of the issue,
McGregor hopes to “force” the shop to service
women as well.
To me, that was the point where I stopped
believing this was an issue about human rights
and started believing this was about
empowerment; a dangerous tool in the hands
of someone out for the wrong reasons.
“Forcing” anyone to do something has a
connotation behind. It means taking away
their right to do things the way they want.
Now, forcing has its place in society. We
force criminals to atone for their crimes as a
means of rehabilitation. We compel
individuals to tell the truth to get to the
heart of world issues. We force those
who are forcing others unlawfully. We
don’t, or shouldn’t force people to
abandon a completely reasonable religious
belief.
Heck, as a soccer referee I read horror
stories about people being allowed, and thus
forcing me to abide, ceremonial knives being
carried on soccer pitches. I hear about referees
being forced to allowed unsafe situations
happen for religious reasons. That, in my
mind, is allowing religious freedom to run
amok.
However, stopping a barber from saying he
can’t, religiously, cut women’s hair is, as far as
religious requests are concerned, pretty simple
and easy to deal with.
It’s not like we’re talking about rural
Ontario here; the next barber isn’t a 30 minute
drive away. We’re talking about Toronto.
We’re talking about a city with mass
transit systems, roads all over the place and,
after a cursory search, several salons
within a two block radius of Mahrouk’s
shop, two more barber shops in the same
radius and more than a dozen locations under
the search term “hair cut” or “haircut” within
less than that two-block radius.
While I’m certainly not going to start trying
to get in the mind of McGregor or make any
accusations, I am going to say that, in an area
that seems saturated with other options, she
either must have been very unlucky or very
determined to find the one place where women
can’t get their hair cut.
However, I will say that, as an afficionado of
bad luck, that just doesn’t seem like bad luck
to me. (Trust me, sitting here after a fender
bender, two cracked teeth and a lot of other
weird events, I know bad luck).
In summary; let Mahrouk follow his
religion at a barber shop that has existed for
nearly 90 years and let McGregor have her
moment in the spotlight, then go some-
where else.
Should empowerment trump freedom?
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den