Welcome to your evening edition of West Coast Health.

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  Aging  

A quarter of Canadians feel older than they are, study finds

Blame the pandemic, cost-of-living woes or just a decade of change, including wars overseas and the first Trump presidency, but more Canadians these days are feeling older than their years compared to nine years ago.

In a new survey released by Angus Reid, a quarter of Canadians (25 per cent) say they feel physically older than their chronological age, while a slightly smaller number (21 per cent) claim to feel mentally older. These figures compare to 23 and 19 per cent, respectively, in a similar survey conducted in 2015.

The good news is that many Canadians continue to report feeling physically and mentally younger than their age as well, at 31 and 47 per cent, respectively. But even here, the numbers are worse than in 2015, when more than a third (38 per cent) said they felt physically younger than what their birth certificate told them, and more than half (53 per cent) felt mentally younger.

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  Addiction  

They smoke pot, drink booze and consider themselves sober

In January, country singer Jason DeFord, better known as Jelly Roll, testified before Congress about the dangers of fentanyl.

“I have firsthand witnessed this in a way most people have not,” he said, referring to his past as a convicted drug dealer and addict and to the impact addiction has had on his family’s life.

Today, Jelly Roll is sober. Sort of.

Jelly Roll — who declined through a representative to participate in this story — abstains from cocaine and opiates, which wreaked havoc on his life and landed him in prison.

But he smokes weed. “Marijuana has kept me sober,” he said in an interview with the website Taste of Country.

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  Comment  

In praise of a good night’s sleep

Every time I hear someone declare: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” I want to ring the alarm about skimping on sleep. Our calendars are packed with things to accomplish every day, but our bodies have a long ‘to-do’ list of important things to accomplish every night.

Sleep researchers are continually uncovering fresh physiological and psychological processes that happen while our heads are on the pillow. As a 30-year physician, health and wellness advocate and educator, I am forever reading the latest research and adding to the list of fabulous things that happen when we close our eyes at night. It’s a long list.

For one thing, sleep is essential to consolidate learning and memory. You can’t really learn anything unless you can sleep properly. 

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