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The Citizen, 2007-04-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2007. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Ontario doctors seem to have almost as many health problems as their patients, which is not exactly encouraging news for patients looking for a quick cure. The doctors’ problems are revealed in a “physician health program” the Ontario Medical Association has embarked on to help members manage stress, improve their health and well-being and build their resilience. Doctors have been calling in to describe their problems and receive advice and the OMA has been sending members progress reports that are unusually frank for this often tight-lipped profession. Among the findings so far: Many doctors who have called say they feel lonely and isolated. “They might enjoy financial wealth” (a rare acknowledgment by doctors they are better paid than most) but do not have enough contact with friends. Their social connections have been diminished by many years of rigorous, time- consuming training and practice and they have wound up in “a kind of poverty that erodes their resilience.” Doctors like other human beings are social creatures and need friends who know their histories, strengths and weaknesses, listen to their concerns and offer honest views (one of many pieces of advice useful to all.) Friends, it says, help people face problems in their lives and make them worth living. Other doctors have health problems because they are perfectionists. They feel a doctor’s role is to stamp out all disease and they are indispensable. They impose impossibly high demands on themselves, particularly in their work, and feel anger, frustration and guilt when they fall short. This puts extra stress on them that can lead to depression. They tend to become upset if they are unable to excel. They drop activities in which they cannot reach a high level, even recreation such as golf and playing the piano, and do not have fun. These doctors have to learn to differentiate between standards of excellence that are appropriate and those that are perfect and therefore sometimes unattainable. Many doctors who seek help from the program have marital difficulties, even if they call for some other reason. Doctors’ relations with spouses often are stressed by the demands of their work. But strong, supportive relationships with marriage partners are crucial to helping them cope. Happy marriages are a major source of happiness in life and troubled and unhappy marriages add to the difficulty of managing life problems. Warning signs include doctors immersing themselves in their work so they cannot find time to talk with their spouses, feeling their job is more fun and rewarding than time spent with spouses, arguing over the same issues without resolving them and making a beeline for the liquor cabinet when they arrive home. Doctors should redefine and upgrade their relationships just as they upgrade their medical skills, the program suggests, which sounds clinical and calculating. But it adds advice not on the medical charts. Doctors should keep romance going by touching a partner gently, doing and saying the little things that endear, going to bed a little earlier to talk and unwind with their spouse after the children have gone to sleep and the home is quiet, and sneaking away from time to time for romantic weekends. Unmarried doctors, the program finds, sometimes permit work to take up all their time and provide their only social contacts. They should make a special effort to keep in touch with family and friends and cultivate non-medical friendships. The program reports doctors recovering from substance abuse nurture their friendships and family relationships as though their personal well-being depends on it and provide a good lesson for all doctors. The program has implications for the public and its first reaction may be to feel concern for doctors, who generally serve it well. Patients may also fear doctors preoccupied with their own health problems will not have their minds on their work and make mistakes or be short-tempered, but the doctors at least are diagnosing the dangers and trying to prescribe remedies. Not so healthy Does anybody remember life before home computers? Man, I dated myself right there, didn’t I? Nobody talks about ‘home computers’ anymore. We speak of laptops, Imacs, Notebooks, Palm Pilots and Blackberrys, but not ‘home computers’. That’s like talking about home refrigerators or home televisions. Nowadays, pretty much everybody this side of a monastery or a Mennonite farmhouse has at least one computer in their life and in their house. For better or worse. I’ve been thinking fond and nostalgic thoughts of the girl I ditched about 20 years ago. Sweet thing. Her name was Olive. Olivetti. She was my typewriter. A manual portable that I lugged all across Canada and the States, plus a good chunk of England, France and Spain. Olive was no beauty – especially after she took that tumble off the roof of my station wagon at 60 miles an hour. And she was….limited, unlike the hot little number I ditched her for. Olive couldn’t spellcheck, make copies, change fonts, play solitaire or hook me up with the internet, but she was reliable, in her own hopelessly old- fashioned way. And she had one virtue that I took for granted at the time. A virtue that I will never enjoy again. Olive didn’t require a password. I have probably 12 computer passwords in my life. Maybe more. I’ve no doubt forgotten a few. I have one password for my library, another password for the Globe and Mail online. Still others that will connect me to the New York Times, the Royal Canadian Legion, Salon Magazine and several on-line clubs and organizations I am loosely affiliated with. The question is: why? Why do I need a password to go online and read a newspaper? Or to check my frequent flyer points? Or to find out when the meat draw is coming up at the Legion? Sure, if I was doing on-line banking I suppose I would want the security of my own password – but I don’t do on-line banking. Whenever I get the urge to visit my overdraft I walk down to the bank and interact with actual breathing, talking human beings. Why not? They’ve got soft couches, free coffee and some of the sweetest people in town. We’re living in an age of password paranoia. Cybergeeks have terrorized us into believing that choosing a password has to be as complicated as a nuclear missile launch. Planning to use your middle name followed by your birth year? Forget it – first thing hackers look for. Ditto for using your mother’s maiden name, your partner’s nickname or any combination involving the name of your dog, your cat or your cockatoo. Some other advice from these fiends: don’t use the same password for everything. Always choose a different one. Oh yes, and be sure to change all your passwords every few weeks. As for how to come up with a ‘safe’ password, the experts advise against using any recognizable words in any language on the face of the earth. Choose a meaningless string of letters and numbers, in capitals and lower case, they say. Swell. So I come up with GwiSN#ARMfilg//niTR07. Now how am I supposed to remember that? I never will, of course. Which is why GwiSN#ARMfilg//niTR07 is printed out in painstaking ballpoint and attached to my computer screen on a sticky note. Some security. Anybody with a pair of eyeballs can find out my password by strolling past my desk. I admit I’m a bit of a password curmudgeon, but I’m not as bad as my buddy, Al. He’s a real Luddite – and guaranteed to go postal at the mention of ‘computer passwords’. I’m also a bit worried that – how to put this politely? – Al’s personal floppy disk may be full. I ran into him down at the coffee shop last week, hunched over his laptop, cursing steadily under his breath. “This **&@*$X!^#ing program won’t let me in without a password,” he growled. “Has to be at least seven characters long.” “Heck, that’s not bad,Al,” I said. “Just seven characters. That’s fairly simple as passwords go.” Al says “Yeah, but look at how long it’s gonna be! So far I’ve come up with Homer Simpson, Sarah Jessica Parker, George Costanza, Carmen Soprano, Jack Bauer…..” Arthur Black Ontario doctors feeling sick “Can you feel it, can you feel it, can you feel it?” It was 1982 and Jane Fonda’s workout video and record were bouncing off shelves as quickly as shop keepers could stock them. And boomers of every decade were feeling the burn to the beat of the Jacksons in an effort to get fit. Looking 80s chic in leg warmers and headbands, they raised their cardio levels and taxed their muscle groups with Fonda as coach. After all, if they could manage to even come close to the lithe picture of health that the 45-year-old actress was in her cover pose, her spandexed legs effortlessly lifted heavenward, well it was worth the pain. That may have been setting the exercise bar a little high for most normal folks, but, even so, it was becoming quite clear that people were re-thinking their bodies. Or at least what could be done about them. How we looked and felt had generally been taken for granted. We were what we were. Sure people had dieted, but now they were being told that exercise also contributed to weight loss – and made you healthier. A movement to physical fitness had actually begun a decade before with super-charged personalities lacing up their joggers and taking to the streets. By the early 1980’s improving the body had reached the level of obsession with the vast majority of people working out on some level. With the trend came the notion that boomers, those now between the ages of 42- 61, were the healthiest generation to date, that we were in better shape and would be living longer than any who came before us. That’s why it came as a bit of a shock to read a 2006 article from the Heart and Stroke Foundation asking if 60 is the new 70. According to their annual report on Canadians’ health, babyboomers turning 60 could be the first to “turn back the clock and experience a decline in quality of life”. According to the report, obesity had soared by nearly 60 per cent and a whopping 52 per cent are inactive. Cardiologist Dr. Beth Abramson said that this post-war population was on a downward spiral when it comes to heart health. And are apparently not prepared to take any blame. A survey of boomers that year showed that while there was great concern over the ability of the healthcare system to provide cardiovascular care, only 14 per cent of those currently free of heart disease were willing to admit their own risk could be high. And we are at risk. Look around you. The people that made aerobics a household word, that are better educated about the dangers of a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle have been challenged to maintain it. Stress and workloads make a couch an awfully tempting place at the end of a long day. And hectic schedules and availability have made fast food a mainstay for most families. Government needs to continue to take action through incentives such as tax cuts for making healthy choices, recommendations, and strategies. It’s important for generations to come. But babyboomers must take control of their own health. It’s never too late to make life- saving changes. Be aware of the risks, stop smoking, limit alcohol consumption. Eat healthy foods, low in trans and saturated fat and maintain an ideal weight. Monitor your blood pressure and keep diabetes in check. Reduce stress and see your doctor regularly. Avoiding illness is tough enough. Why bring it on yourself. Other Views Come back, Olive. All is forgiven Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.