Health
Rodents on the rise: How to avoid an infestation this fall
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Rodents have become a larger problem for Canadian homeowners since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The pests that lived near bars and restaurants moved into residential neighbourhoods during lockdowns, spreading out their colonies and causing trouble.
With colder weather just around the corner, these rodents are likely to break into people’s homes. Invasions are especially common in the fall and winter when pests seek a warmer place to stay. Mice sneak in via the holes in the wall, and rats dig underground and into the basement.
While many homeowners deal with mice every year, it is important that they be kept out. Rodents are potential carriers of disease, and they will damage the home’s interior. The following tips, when used together, will help ensure that your home is pest-free this winter.
Block Entry Points
Rodents come from outside. While it may seem like they appear out of thin air, rodents find openings in the outer walls of the home and sneak their way inside. Wall vents, cracked window frames, and doors that have been left open are often to blame.
Examine your home’s exterior very carefully and use caulking or mesh to block the openings you find. Check between the layers of your siding, underneath your deck, and along the edges of your soffits for openings of 5mm or more. Put weatherstripping on the bottoms of your doors and seal cracks in the foundation with epoxy.
If you’re not sure you got them all, contact a mice exterminator for an inspection and pest-proofing service. Professionals offer complete pest-proofing in addition to pest control. They can find the entry points you missed and close them for you. If you know that there are rats in your neighbourhood, a professional can protect your foundation by digging a trench and attaching a mesh to its sides. This will prevent rats from digging into the basement.
Do Some Fall Cleaning
Spring isn’t the only time of year for cleaning. Mice, rats, ants, and other pests can smell the food you keep, and they will want their share. Deep clean the kitchen this fall and maintain it to keep pests out when it gets cold. Vacuum everywhere and clean the floors beneath your major appliances. Keep surfaces clean and store food in airtight containers to reduce odours. Never leave dirty dishes out overnight and use lidded garbage cans.
In addition to food, pests love clutter. Rodents like to hide in quiet, cluttered areas, like messy basements and storage rooms. This way, they can hide as they move from place to place. Get organized this fall and get rid of what you don’t need. Move objects off the floor and create space so there is nowhere for pests to hide.
Tidy up the Yard
Because rodents love food and clutter, it is important that you maintain the yard, as well. Trim back the vines, bushes, and plants that grow around the walls of the home to reduce the number of potential hiding spots. Move patio furniture and firewood away from the sides of the home, as well. Mow the lawn, rake the leaves, and bag all your organic materials for collection.
Pest control experts recommend getting rid of the bird feeder because it attracts rodents. While it is unfortunate, bird feeders are magnets of animal activity. Consider getting rid of it when the temperature cools or switch to one that hangs far away. Harvest your apples and home-grown produce on time, and secure your garbage cans with bungee cords or tight locks.
Health
We all experience stress. How we handle it is key to our health, say experts – CBC.ca
The Dose24:36What’s the connection between stress and my health and well-being?
It could be a morning traffic jam. A deadline at work. A conflict with a family member. Taking care of kids and aging parents.
Stressful situations are all around us, and experts say how we manage stress is key to preventing it from causing long-term health problems — both physical and mental.
Short-term stress doesn’t have to be negative, but research shows that ongoing stress wears away at the body’s systems and can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, Type 2 Diabetes, and mental health challenges.
“It’s like walking around with a ten or fifteen-pound weight continually on your back and not being able to shed that weight,” psychologist Dr. Zindel Segal told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC’s The Dose.
There are techniques and strategies to decrease that stressful load, however, and lessen the impact of stress on the body and the mind.
Is stress good or bad?
Stress means that we are unable to use our personal or social resources to meet the demands being placed on us, said Dr. Eli Puterman, a health psychologist and associate professor in the school of kinesiology at UBC.
But not all stress is bad stress, said Puterman.
“It sometimes can motivate you to also move in the direction of, ‘Let’s change our goals,'” he said.
From an evolutionary perspective, our bodies are engineered to handle stress, said Segal, a distinguished professor of psychology and mood disorders at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
But after the stress response, we need a period of rest and recovery, which allows the body to recoup the resources that were used up during the stressful situation.
Chronic stress is when we’re unable to step out of the situation and take advantage of our own natural capacity to restore, said Segal.
It’s a system that is “stuck in the fifth gear without the ability to downshift,” he said.
Connecting with your senses
The first step to managing stress is recognizing it, said Segal, and that means tuning into our bodies.
“Are you noticing that maybe your heart is racing, or that your palms are sweating, or that your temple and forehead are pounding?” he said.
Grounding techniques can anchor us in the present moment and help pull us away from intrusive thoughts or feelings to take a broader view of the situation, said Segal.
“One of the things that we lose the ability to connect with is the sensory world,” he said, which is why so many techniques for managing stress are about reconnecting with your senses.
“Sensations are a way of actually helping us step out of thinking, to ground ourselves.”
A breath of fresh air
Doing yoga, meditating, exercising and deep breathing can all help ground us in our bodies and change our perspectives on stress, said Segal.
However, stress can cause barriers to being physically active, said Puterman, so he prefers to think about moving our bodies as opposed to exercising.
“Getting outside and going for some walks for 10, 15 minutes per day can help us start having those moments where we’re taking care of our bodies,” he said.
The Dose1:50A guided exercise in box breathing
One simple exercise Segal recommends is a technique called box breathing. Here’s how to try it:
- Sit in a chair and notice the sensations of sitting: the feet pressing down into the floor, the hands folded in the lap or on the thighs.
- Breathe in for four beats (visualize the left side of the box).
- Hold for four beats (visualize the top of the box).
- Breathe out for four beats (visualize the right side of the box).
- Hold for four beats (visualize the bottom of the box).
- Repeat as many times as you like.
What stress does to the body
It may be easy to understand how stress can take an emotional and mental toll, but research also shows that stress can have an impact on our physical health — including an increased risk of heart attack or stroke.
“In the short term, it rapidly increases your blood pressure, which can potentially result in a tear in the plaque that is in your arteries and then subsequently cause a heart attack or a stroke,” said Dr. Hassan Mir, a cardiologist at the Ottawa Heart Institute.
When we’re feeling stress, it activates our sympathetic nervous system, the part of our nervous system that carries signals related to our fight-or-flight response.
That can cause an increase in our blood pressure and heart rate, said Mir.
Another reaction to acute stress is a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or a weakened heart muscle, he said.
“When you’re really stressed, you can have this release of adrenaline in your body,” Mir said.
Mir has seen people who come into the hospital because their partner had a cardiac arrest, and then they suddenly get rushed to the ER because it looks like they’re having a heart attack.
“You go and look inside and the coronary arteries look completely fine, but their heart muscle looks like it’s completely weakened,” Mir said.
If you’re frequently activating your sympathetic nervous system due to stress, that can cause other issues in the body, said Puterman.
“If you’re starting to shift your baseline of the functioning of your physiology, you’re now entering the state where now you have too much cortisol that’s then activating too much glucose release,” he said.
Too much glucose released into the body can cause people to enter a pre-diabetes state, said Puterman.
How much stress is too much?
A little bit of stress could help us handle more stressful events in the future, a theory called the inoculation hypothesis, said Puterman.
“Some stress on a daily basis or in life actually inoculates you to future exposures to stressors,” he said.
But there are some telltale signs that the stress you’re experiencing is causing harmful effects, said Puterman. They include:
- Not sleeping well.
- Not getting as much exercise as usual.
- Consuming more alcohol or drugs.
- Withdrawing from others socially.
- Getting into more arguments with family or friends.
The trick is finding that sweet spot, said Segal, between having enough stress and too much.
“We don’t want to tip over into a point where the stress that we’re facing is overwhelming,” Segal said.
Health
Medical officer encourages measles vaccinations as global cases rise – SteinbachOnline.com
As cases of measles are increasing in parts of Canada and around the world, Manitobans are reminded that staying up to date on their vaccinations is one of the most important ways to prevent and reduce the risk of measles and other serious illnesses.
Measles is very contagious, says Dr. Mahmoud Khodaveisi, Medical Officer of Health for Southern Health-Santé Sud.
The most recognized symptom of measles is a red, blotchy rash, which often begins on the face and spreads down the body. Other common symptoms include fever, runny nose, cough, drowsiness, irritability and red eyes. Measles is a serious illness, especially for young children, and can result in lung and brain infections and other conditions that lead to serious complications or death.
Although there have been no recent confirmed cases of measles in our province since 2019, there is increasing concern as the number of cases are rising in Canada and around the world.
Dr. Khodaveisi says that before the vaccine was available, measles was a significant cause of childhood illness, and as a result, people born before 1970 are considered immune to measles as they were likely exposed growing up.
As part of Manitoba’s routine immunization schedule, children can receive two doses of a vaccine that protects against measles, first at 12 months and again between the ages of four and six. Together, these doses provide 97 per cent protection against measles.
The province reports that the most recent data available shows that about 80 per cent of children in Manitoba have received one dose of the vaccine that protects against measles by age two. Nearly 75 per cent of children have received two doses of the vaccine by age seven and this rate increases to over 88 per cent by the age of 17.
The province has sent information out about measles to health-care providers.
Measles is a reportable disease, meaning public health must be informed about cases by laboratories and health-care providers. Once a case is reported, public health will launch an investigation. This includes identifying close contacts, offering vaccination where appropriate and notifying the public of relevant exposures if needed.
Manitoba’s immunization registry was established in 1988, so records for anyone who has received immunizations since then should be contained in the registry.
If you are not sure if you or your children have been vaccinated, immunization records can be requested online at https://forms.gov.mb.ca/immunization-update-request/. Alternatively, you can contact your local public health office or contact your health-care provider.
-With files from Corny Rempel.
Health
Measles in Toronto: 2nd case confirmed – CP24
A second lab-confirmed case of measles has been identified in Toronto.
The city’s public health agency said that an infant who recently returned from travel has contracted the disease. The child is recovering at home.
The first Toronto case was identified on Feb. 16.
Toronto Public Health is warning that anyone who attended the Agincourt Public Library between 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on March 11 may have been exposed. Individuals should monitor for symptoms until April 1 and double check that their vaccinations are up to date.
Symptoms of measles include red rashes, fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and fatigue. Individuals can also get unusual white spots in their mouth.
The number of measles infections in Ontario so far this year has already surpassed the total number of cases reported in 2023.
As of March 13, Public Health Ontario had confirmed at least eight cases of measles across the province. Cases have been identified in Peel Region, Hamilton, Brant County and Windsor-Essex County.
Of those infections, six were related to travel and two had an unknown source of exposure.
In 2023, there were seven cases of measles confirmed in Ontario.
Canada-wide data is less detailed, with the Public Health Agency of Canada reporting 17 cases of measles as of March 2, along with one case of congenital rubella syndrome.
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