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Université de
Montréal News Digest See the original
story in French by clicking on the link at the
end of the summary. A clinic to remember Advertising for an ideal woman The florist who could no longer name his flowers Rural Quebec could use a good diet
For media inquiries on any of the stories below, please contact: Marc Tulin
A clinic dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related dementia has started up at Université de Montréal’s north-end Sacré Coeur Hospital. Appropriately enough, it’s been named the Clinique de la memoire (The Memory Clinic). The facility, which combines teaching, research and clinical work and is aimed at the elderly, will not focus its work on the more common signs of aging, such as not being able to find the right word. The interdisciplinary team will be treating the more psychotic effects of the diseases, such as repeatedly asking questions, regularly getting lost and forgetting what they had done two days earlier. The clinic currently has 10 employees but is seeking government funding to try and grow into a major facility. Dr. Nathalie Shamlian, the geriatric psychologist who runs the Memory Clinic, says she sees it can becoming one of the “top four or five clinics in North America dedicated to the study of memory.” She says Montreal’s wealth of research in the area of age-related dementia will contribute to its growth. This area of health is a growing concern in this country. It’s estimated that by 2011, Canada will see 111,560 cases of dementia each year. To see the longer French version of this story: Click here
Advertising for an ideal woman For more than a century, beauty-product advertisers have been doing more than just trying to convince women their products could smooth wrinkled skin or straighten curly hair. Advertisers have also been selling their version of the ideal woman, according to a new study that looks back at the way advertisers targeted women at the turn of the 20 th century. For her history thesis, graduate student Mélanie Chartrand collected and analyzed more than 450 advertisements and testimonials that appeared between the years 1870 and 1915 in several Quebec French-language newspapers and magazines, including Montreal’s La Presse. The researcher was taken by the inadvertent messages in advertisers’ products, promising, among other things, to increase breast size or lighten complexions. Skin, according to advertisers, should be milky so as not to look like one has been labouring, hands should be supple like those of an aristocrat and hair should be long and flowing. The beauty they would be selling through their items could become a source of happiness or a way to achieve a higher social status, according to Ms. Chartrand. And the means with which they did it would be through faraway exotic locales, letters from satisfied customers or before-and-after images. Ms Chartrand, who recently handed in her thesis, concludes that the physical ideals put forth by the advertisers were an influence of the values of that era. Sounds like things have not changed much. To see the longer French version of this story: Click here
The florist who could no longer name his flowers A UdeM researcher has been taking a close look at a peculiar syndrome called semantic dementia. The neurological condition usually prevents a person from identifying a whole category of objects –even of an area with which the person has a close affiliation. That’s what happened to the man whose symptoms, in 1995, gave doctors their first case of the syndrome. A florist by profession, he lost his ability to remember the names of flowers. He could not even name the most common varieties. Smelling or touching them would not help him recall names. Another case had someone only remembering the names of the people he saw regularly in his life. Sven Joubert from the UdeM’s Institut universitaire de géréatrie de Montréal has been pinpointing the area of the brain where the condition originates and looking at ways to help people with semantic dementia. He says the condition is caused by a degenerative lesion on the left frontal-temporal lobe, an area that relays a host of information. Joubert is also looking at the various ways patients deal with the condition. He believes his research could be helpful to doctors who are not only studying this condition but treating people with the more common Alzheimer’s disease. To see the longer French version of this story: Click here
Rural Quebec could use a good diet In Quebec, excess weight and obesity are more prevalent among families in rural areas, according to a nutritionist who recently published the results of a massive study on Quebecers’ eating habits. Isabelle Huot argues in the Journal of Obesity, that public health organizations must target this clientele if they wish to mitigate the devastating effects of heart disease. “Our study made it very clear. In rural areas, diet is often less varied and healthy foods are lacking.” Ms Huot also measured the impact of the Projet Québécois de démonstration en santé du cœur (a Quebec cardiac awareness program) on changes in eating habits and found people had not changed their habits in any significant way. “Nutritionists are able to get their point across to the public, but it seems that people are quick to forget,” states Ms Huot. So, do nutritionists like Ms Huot have an impact? It’s not clear. But on a media level, she personally has visibility, with regular spots on Salut Bonjour and Tonus (TVA) and columns in L’actualité médicale, Capital Santé, Elle Québec, Madame, Marché Express, 7 jours and Les lettres gastronomiques. On one of the shows, Ms Huot placed in front of her 15 slices of white bread and as many pats of butter. Then, she tossed 13 sugar cubes into a glass. This, she told viewers, would be the nutritional equivalent to a hamburger, fries and soft drink at a fast-food restaurant. To see the longer French version of this story: Click here To see the longer English version of this story: Click here
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