Join Us for the Be the Change Film RIVERBLUE

“There is a joke in China. They say you can predict the “it” colour for the season by looking at the colour of the river”

 – From the documentary RiverBlue

On October 18th, the Be the Change Film Series kicks off its 10th year with the documentary RiverBlue. The film looks at the environmental impact of the “fast fashion” industry on our waterways, and as a result, our health.

We’re sponsoring the series, and would love to see you there! There are two show times, 5PM and 7:30PM, at the Simcoe Street Theatre. Tickets are $8, and all proceeds go to Elephant Thoughts and The Blue Mountain Watershed Trust.

See the full 2017-18 line-up and buy tickets here!

Terry Fox Run: September 17, 2017

Getting our kids moving is SO important for their overall health and success. In fact, movement is important for all of us–especially getting outside for fresh air and nature.

This Sunday brings a great community based opportunity to get outside and to move as a family, all in support of one of Canada’s heroes, Terry Fox.

The Marathon of Hope

It’s astonishing to look now at photos of Terry back in 1980. He was just 22, and running a marathon a day with an artificial leg that he dipped in the Atlantic in April before setting out to do the same the Pacific after running across the country.

Sadly, on September 1 of that summer, coughing and suffering severe chest pains, Terry’s run ended near Thunder Bay. His cancer had returned and spread to his lungs.

Terry died the following June. During his Marathon of Hope, he had run 5,737 kilometres in 143 days, inspired a nation, and kicked off what would become the single largest one-day cancer fundraiser in the world.

To date, more than $750 million has been raised worldwide.

Terry Fox from Nick Schelle on Vimeo.

You can help continue Terry’s legacy by participating in this year’s run. Registration for the Collingwood event is here.

Run Details

  • Sunday, September 17, 2017
  • Registration: 8:30 am
  • One Start: 10 am
  • Location: Harborview Park (behind McDonald’s Restaurant – Look for the tent for Registration)
  • Main intersection: First Street and Cedar Street
  • Free parking and public transit accessible

What to Bring

  • Dress appropriately for weather (can be cooler at the bay)
  • Water, snacks, warm-up, and music will be provided
  • The event is bicycle, stroller, and wheelchair accessible
  • And dog-friendly, too!

This event has no entry fee and no minimum fundraising amount. There are no barriers to entry. You don’t need a particular level of fitness. You can walk, run, jog, bike, or otherwise roll your way around the 2.5 km loop.

Register here.

June 3rd is National Health and Fitness Day!

Let’s make Canada the Fittest Nation on Earth!

We write an annoying amount a lot about the many health benefits of exercise.

It really is one of the most important things to do for our overall health, so when we became aware of the Canada’s National Health and Fitness Day we just had to share.

The first Saturday in June, National Health and Fitness Day (NHFD), is an initiative to mark one day to promote Canadians getting out and getting active in any way they wish.

Springboarding off the spirit of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, former MP John Weston and Senator Nancy Greene Raine have worked to involve the 338 MPs and 100 Senators to encourage their local communities to proclaim the day and mark it with local events. Hundreds of communities have already proclaimed the day and the National Health and Fitness Day Act, Bill S-211, became law in December 2014!

Our community is hosting a MOVE walk/run, and a MOVE showcase of booths, demos, and activities. It all shakes down this Saturday, June 3rd from 9 AM to 1 PM at Central Park in Collingwood. Get all the details here!

Maybe you can use this to jump start a year of exercise. It’s the best 30-minute daily investment you can make!

Free Meditation Night at StoneTree

The team at StoneTree is excited to welcome Lanee Brown for an evening of mindfulness and meditation.

Mindfulness has left the fringes, and gained incredible traction in recent years. Research has shown that meditation can:

  •  Improve mental focus and increase short-term memory
  •  Reduce the risk of heart disease and lower blood pressure
  •  Improve sleep and reduce anxiety
  •  Increase self-confidence and self-esteem

Many of these benefits seem to be associated with how meditation changes the brain–something that’s now well-researched.

Please join us at the clinic this Wednesday, April 5, 2017. from 4-6 PM.

This evening is an opportunity to discover a taste of what mindfulness meditation offers. There’s no charge, and no experience required. Here are a few details:

  • 4-5PM – arrival, tea, talk and gentle movement in preparation for our meditation
  • 5-6PM – meditation & discussion
  • Doors will be locked at 5PM sharp as we will start the meditation at that time.
  • There will be some chairs available, but you may want to bring a cushion if sitting on the floor isn’t comfortable for you.

Please RSVP and let us know if you will be joining us by calling the clinic at 705-444-5331, or emailing [email protected].

 

 

2 Health Issues for International Women’s Day

March 8th is International Women’s Day. The intention of this day is both to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women, and to be call to action for increasing gender equality.

On this wonderful day of “girl power”, the StoneTree team wanted to empower our patients around two important health care issues that affect women.

1. Heart Disease

Some 27% of female deaths in North American are a result of heart disease. This is far more then breast cancer. Add another 8% due to stroke, and another 3% related to diabetes, both of which are related to the same lifestyle issues as heart disease, and this should really get our attention.

Women do not experience symptoms of heart attack quite the same as men, so they tend to get care later then men. Also, when they do get care, they tend to be treated less aggressively than men. The result is a women is twice as likely to die within a month of having a heart attack compared to a man.

What to do? First, you can begin by assessing your risk here. Next, you can focus on preventing the heart disease in the first place with the following five things:

  • Quit smoking. No explanation needed here. If you still smoke, please get help and stop.
  • Exercise daily (Yes, daily.). Try this for a little motivation.
  • Eat a Mediterranean diet. Lots of veggies, fruits, legumes, anti-oxidants and good fats.
  • Get enough sleep. It matters.
  • Keep on-top of your blood work. Not only is it important to know what your cholesterol is doing, but what about your blood sugar? Your inflammatory markers like hs-CRP? Knowing what these numbers are and acting before they become a problem is the best way to prevent the outcomes of heart disease.

2. Women’s Reproductive Health

The screening recommendations for women’s health in Canada have changed in recent years. The Canadian Task Force on Preventive health care looked at the evidence and made recommendations around screening tests and exams and this what they came up with:

In asymptomatic, non-pregnant women with low risk:

  • No pelvic exams
  • No clinical breast exams
  • No teaching of self-breast exams
  • Mammography only after age 50 – every 2-3 years
  • Pap smear only after age 25 – every 3 years

If you’re like many of our patients, you read this and gasp. It is quite a departure from what we grew up with–a full physical exam including PAP every year.

You may also be wondering why. The logic behind the recommendations are two-fold:

  • One of the outcomes of “preventative screening” is that you find things. And sometimes, you find things that would never have turned into a scary disease at all. For example, breasts can be normally lumpy and bumpy. Doing a self exam or clinical exam would find lumps that then need to be tested to make sure they are not cancerous and most of them won’t be. So the screening leads to tests and interventions that cause undue stress and harm to the patient receiving them.
  • All of this testing costs money. In a publicly funded system, we need to make sure that the money we are spending is positively effecting the most people and is not wasteful. Spending money on tests that are mostly benign can be seen as wasteful of a public resource. Another way of looking at this is that when the recommendations change to do a PAP on asymptomatic women from every year to every three years, we know we will miss some cervical cancer (in fact, 3 in 100,000). It’s just that it is less expensive to deal with those three women with disease then it is to screen all women every year to catch those three.

This isn’t necessarily the logic that helps people sleep at night, but it’s the reality of health care in a system with limited resources.

International Women’s Day is about women empowering themselves. If you’re concerned about these recommendations, or would like more frequent screening, talk to your health care professional. Naturopaths are trained and licensed to perform regular Pap smears, and pelvic and breast exams. Our unique Well Woman Visit offers a warm, caring environment for reproductive health screening at the frequency you decide with your doctor.

StoneTree Clinic and the Coldest Night of the Year

The Coldest Night of the Year is a super-fun, family-friendly walking fundraiser that raises money for the hungry, homeless and hurting in 100+ communities across Canada. It’s been going on since 2011 and has raised over $12 million.

The walk is held on Saturday, February 25th, 2017. Participants can choose to walk 2, 5 or 10 km. The idea is to feel a small hint of the discomfort and challenge homeless people face, particularly in the winter.


The Collingwood event information is here.

You can support or join the StoneTree Team here.


Walks start at 5:15 PM at Trinity United Church and ends there with a light meal for all walkers and volunteers.

The StoneTree Clinic team has entered a team with the goal of raising $500 for Home Horizons.

Here’s How You Can Help

  1. Donate to the cause. You can do it right now, right here.
  2. Join us! Everyone is welcome to walk, and we’re happy to have you! Join on the same page, here.
  3. Spread the word. Tell your friends…and better yet, bring your friends!

This is a small thing, and an easy thing, and a good thing. Thank you for your support!

Tonight’s Be The Change Film: Minimalism

Minimalism: A Documentary about Important Things – Tickets here.

Some of the happiest times in my life have been while living out of a backpack, carrying my house, my kitchen, my bedroom and few good books from place to place. Those were times of travel as a young woman, before the responsibilities that I have now as a mom, wife, doctor and business owner. Why wouldn’t they be happy times?

As I settled down into a more “adult” life, the draw of a bigger house, a better car, more furniture, the next big thing was sometimes overwhelming–after all, that’s what you did. The quantity of your stuff was a measure of your success, and it was so very easy to get sucked into the quest for more.

But does more stuff make people more happy? Beyond basic needs, I see no evidence in my life to support that. In fact, in all the places we have traveled and lived in the world, some of the happiest people I have met were in countries where they had the least.

Tonight’s Be The Change film series documentary, Minimalism, explores the consumerism and its impact on our lives, our health, and our environment. You should go.

Join us at the Simcoe Street Theatre today! Tickets are still available for the 5PM show. Watch the trailer here if you can’t see the video above.

Eating You Alive Film

The 2016-17 Be the Change film series kicks off on October 19th with the new documentary “Eating you Alive”.

We love the film series as a rule, but we’re hosting this particular film because we know from training, from clinical experience with thousands of patients, and from our own lives, that what you eat is directly tied to your health.

This is one of the core philosophies of naturopathic medicine, but the evidence in the scientific literature is building to the point that it just can’t be ignored by anyone in health care any longer. Food is medicine. You can use that medicine to your benefit, or to your detriment. The choice is yours, and this is one of those films that makes the right choice abundantly clear, and easier to make.

There are showings at 5PM and 7:30PM on Wednesday, October 19th. Come out and join us to learn more about how your diet can change your health and your life!

:: Info and Tickets

Eating You Alive Trailer

Please Join Us: Grand Opening June 21

In my 15th year of practice in this wonderful community, we here at StoneTree have found our way to our fourth and final home at 27 Third Street in Collingwood.

This heritage building, originally constructed in the late 1800’s, has a long history of housing local health care providers. During four months renovating her, we chatted with many enthusiastic locals who would delight in the telling of all manner of interactions with this lovely little building and all the people who worked in it.

We are so happy to continue the tradition of continuing health care at this address, and hope you will all come and join us for a look around on June 21st from 4-7PM. All are welcome.

Join us for refreshments, recipes, demos, office tours and samples. The official ribbon cutting will be at 5PM, with Mayor Cooper doing the honours!

Well Woman Visit Dates for 2016

October is breast cancer awareness month. Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer diagnosed in Canadian women—in 2015 alone, over 25,000 Canadian women will be diagnosed. Over 5,000 women will die of it this year.

Early detection of the disease has been responsible for a steady decline in the death rate from breast cancer. What’s even more important, however, is preventing it in the first place.

Our recent patient newsletter looked at some lifestyle risk factors for breast cancer–you can read it online here. (And you can sign up here.)

2016 Well Woman Days

As part of breast cancer awareness month, we’ve added our new Well Woman Visit dates for all of 2016. This unique service offers a warm, caring environment for annual visits that includes:

  • A complete breast exam
  • Self breast exam education
  • Full gynecological exam with PAP test

You can learn all about the service here. Dates for 2016 are:

  • Jan 18
  • Feb 29
  • April 4
  • May 16
  • June 27
  • Sept 12
  • Oct 24
  • Dec 5

It’s become a popular service at the clinic, and dates have been selling out. You can call us at 705-444-5331 to reserve a spot, or book online here.