The Science Pawdcast

Episode 36 Season 7: Seahorse Dads, Dogs vs Horses, and Smarter Health with Dr. Shazma Mithani

• Jason and Kris Zackowski • Season 7 • Episode 36

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A father that gives birth, a horse that says “no,” and an ER doctor who wants to keep you out of the hospital—this episode brings science and everyday choices into sharp focus. We start with a mind-bending dive into seahorses, where males carry the pregnancy and build a placenta-like environment from skin. New research shows familiar pregnancy genes at work inside the brood pouch, but with an unexpected hormonal switch: androgens, not estrogens, drive gestation. It’s evolution repurposing its toolkit—and a powerful reminder that sex roles in nature are more flexible than we think.

From there, we move into animal-assisted therapy and the role of consent in touch. A new study comparing dogs and horses found that forced interactions with horses raised heart rate and lowered HRV, signaling more stress, while choice calmed people down. Dogs showed no significant difference between conditions, suggesting human perception and species-specific behavior shape outcomes. If you run therapy programs, the insight is simple and humane: build animal choice into sessions, especially with horses, and track long-term welfare alongside human benefits.

Then ER physician Dr. Shazma Mithani joins us to turn insight into prevention. We talk helmets for anything on wheels or snow, why e‑scooters drive more severe injuries per use than bikes, and how regular checkups and screening prevent emergencies before they start. We break down wildfire smoke—how particulates inflame lungs and harm the heart and brain—plus when to wear a well-fitted N95 outside and how to upgrade home air with MERV 11–13 filters or HEPA purifiers. Finally, we tackle measles: an airborne virus that lingers for hours, demands 95% vaccination for herd immunity, and is best stopped with two doses of MMR. Unsure where to get trusted answers? Talk to your doctor, pharmacist, or public health nurse, and lean on credible sources rather than influencers.

If this helped you think differently about biology, safety, or public health, tap follow, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway—we’ll feature our favorites next week.

Dr. Shazma Mithani's links:

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Her Podcast

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello, science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zakowski.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm Chris Zikowski.

SPEAKER_00:

We're the pet parents of Bunsen, Beaker, Bernoulli, and Ginger.

SPEAKER_01:

The science animals on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right spot.

SPEAKER_00:

So put on your safety glasses.

SPEAKER_01:

And hold on to your tail.

SPEAKER_00:

This is the Science Podcast. Welcome back to the Science Podcast. This is episode 36 of season seven. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. Chris, are you happy and healthy or are you cold and not liking our weather?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm healthy, so that's the number one. But two, you're absolutely correct. It felt like minus 34 degrees Celsius with the wind chill this morning. So certainly not help, certainly not happy about the weather. But it is what it is. It's just weather. And I just dream of sunny skies in summer.

SPEAKER_00:

I took the dogs for a walk yesterday, bundled up Beaker in her snow pants. She was so happy. And the burners weren't cold at all. So I think there's a lower temperature where if the ambient temperature is around minus 35, I think that's when Bunsen doesn't really want to go out. I've never seen Bernoulli cold. Have you seen him cold? Have you seen him look?

SPEAKER_01:

He's always happy, always healthy, happy and healthy out there in the minus 35 ambient temperature.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've never seen him cold. Okay, let's warm up with some of the news that we're going to be looking at this week. In science news, we're going to be looking at a new study that came up that broke down some explanations as to why seahorse pregnancy is so interesting because the males take a great big role in it. In pet science, we are going to be looking at animal-assisted interventions and the differences or similarities with using dogs or horses. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_01:

That is super cool for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And our guest and ask an expert is medical doctor, Dr. Shasma Minthani. She works actually in Emmetton at the Royal Alberta Stollery Children's Hospital. So it's a great discussion with her around communicable diseases. And as everybody's gathering for Christmas time, it's important to think about that and talk about it. All right, let's get on with the show, Chris. There's no time lake.

SPEAKER_01:

Science time.

SPEAKER_00:

This week in Science News, let's talk about how seahorses have bay bait.

SPEAKER_01:

Now that was fascinating. It's super fascinating because when we went to Hawaii, we went to a seahorse farm. I was gonna mention that it was just so it was so cool, like impactful. Going around and around and learning all about the seahorses and what they do. That was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it was one of the highlights for me too. And then we got to put our hands in a little tank and the seahorse tail curled around you. It was cute. I couldn't feel it though. They were so little.

SPEAKER_01:

They were tiny seahorses.

SPEAKER_00:

So, some other fun facts about seahorses before we get to the lead is they're terrible swimmers. They use ocean currents to move around because they rely on their tiny dorsal fin, and that flaps up to 70 times per second. But that's kind of like jumping in a pool with a blanket and using and flapping the blanket to make yourself swim. Not super great.

SPEAKER_01:

Not super great. So they have to hitch their tails to seagrass to avoid drifting away. Did you know that their tails are square, not round?

SPEAKER_00:

I think they told us that when we were in Hawaii, but I would have forgotten.

SPEAKER_01:

I would have forgot that too. But that gives them better grip when they're anchoring to coral or plants.

SPEAKER_00:

And one more fun seahorse fact. So you might win a trivia night at a pub. They have a unique cornet that's like their crown-like structure on the top of their head. That's unique to every single seahorse. It's like their fingerprint. That's super cute.

SPEAKER_01:

So the least I think the most important part is like how you lead, how you led into this was talking about the pregnancy part. So seahorses are among the few fish that form monogamous pair bonds with and they often greet each other daily with synchronized dances. That's so cute.

SPEAKER_00:

That's romantic. So seahorses are a bit of an evolutionary rule breaker, and that's the lead of the story. The findings for this was published in Nature and Ecology and Evolution. So if there was a best dad award in the animal kingdom, it probably wouldn't go to me, but it would go to male seahorses.

SPEAKER_01:

Hands down.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, thanks. Unlike other animals, male seahorses carry and give birth to the babies, not the females. I know that would probably help out a lot of women if males of humans helped out that way.

SPEAKER_01:

What the females do in the seahorse world is they deposit their eggs into the male's brood pouch, where the male then fertilizes, protects, and nourishes them until birth. And the brood pouch functions in many ways like a womb, providing oxygen and nutrients to developing embryos. And then once the male gives birth or expels the babies, then the whole cycle begins again. So the male is just a brood pouch carrier of the babies.

SPEAKER_00:

So the female seahorse is foot loose and fancy-free during this time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, probably hanging out with her.

SPEAKER_00:

Probably drinking wine and watching sex.

SPEAKER_01:

Probably, but they're making the eggs to deposit at this time.

SPEAKER_00:

That takes a lot of energy to do that. So this is well known. If you've if you study seahorses, this these this is not new information. So what the researchers wanted to know is how the male brood pouches form and whether they resemble female pregnancy tissues at the genetic level. So if the males are quote unquote giving birth to bi-bye seahorses, is the process similar to what normal pregnancy would be in other animals?

SPEAKER_01:

And the scientists discovered quite a few interesting things. They discovered that the seahorse brood pouches use many of the same genes involved in pregnancy in female animals. So the genes that they found help build supportive tissue, regulate oxygen exchange, and deliver nutrients to the embryos. And so that suggests it's a an evolutionary suggestion that pregnancy isn't reinvented from scratch each time. It's more reduce, reuse, recycle, reusing existing genetic tools in new ways. So it's like reusing genes and cells, not brand new intervention.

SPEAKER_00:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. But there is a big twist. Of course, in nature, there's always a big twist. There's a hormone switch. So in mammals and other animals, female hormones like estrogen and progesterone, they trigger the womb and placenta development. In seahorses, actually, a male hormone does that job instead. Now the researchers aren't certain whether the hormone is testosterone specifically, but it belongs to the androgen family. So that's super interesting. What they did is they experimentally exposed testosterone to female seahorses, and they actually develop brood poaches, and that confirmed male hormones can activate pregnancy-related genes.

SPEAKER_00:

So those genes are switched on by that male hormone. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

Super interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Another interesting thing from the study is they found that in pregnant males, the seahorse placenta is made from their skin. So while the male's pregnant, the brood pouch thickens and the blood supply increases, and oxygens, oxygen, and nutrients are delivered to the embryo very much like the placenta does. And it functions like a placenta with a huge difference in that it just makes itself from the skin, not from the reproductive tissue in a male seahorse. And literally that we know of, no other pregnancy system works this way.

SPEAKER_01:

So the father has skin and then it develops into a brood pouch. It's just skin.

SPEAKER_00:

It would be like a male all of a sudden growing like a uterus to hold a baby because it wasn't there before.

SPEAKER_01:

Or like a kangaroo pouch.

SPEAKER_00:

I guess, I guess it's more like a kangaroo pouch.

SPEAKER_01:

But still it's like your kangaroodie. I call them bunny hugs. But it's like the pouch in the front. Yeah. That's where I want to put bricks.

SPEAKER_00:

So if you're wondering about pregnancy in evolutionary terms, it's evolved over 150 times across different animals, almost always in females. And seahorses show that sex roles are not biologically fixed, and similar outcomes can arise through very different evolutionary pathways. Biology, biologists find this fascinating, and I think it's really cool. And many biologists would describe this as one of the most extreme examples of sex role reversal known.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And it's very ironic or coincidental that this article came across our desk because I was talking to my students about it on Thursday or Friday afternoon.

SPEAKER_00:

As was I. That's why I wanted to do this one. Because in grade nine, right now, we're talking about asexual and sexual reproduction. And this would be a very interesting example of internal fertilization because normally the sperm is deposited in the female, and this way that this is different. The egg is deposited in the male. It's similar in that the gametes have to be protected, but very cool role reversal. Now, would you have given up being pregnant to me, Chris? Would you have hoped to be able to do that?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I actually really okay. I enjoyed being pregnant. Now, having said that, I was, I guess, nauseous for six months during my first pregnancy, but I really loved at the end of the day being pregnant. I don't think I would trade it.

SPEAKER_00:

So I so we don't have to like genetically worry about making a brood pouch from my skin.

SPEAKER_01:

No, but we could give you more testosterone and then see what that does. Will it turn you into the incredible hulk? Because you're already incredible.

SPEAKER_00:

Probably it would just give me anxiety, anger, and loss of hair. So two of the three, the two of the three the incredible hulk has. All right. All right, that's science news for this week. This week in Pet Science, let's talk about a unique animal-assisted intervention that was published on AnthraZoos. And just quickly, an animal-assisted intervention. They are being increasingly used in healthcare systems and situations. We've talked about how dogs go into hospitals to help calm down patients. Dogs go into dentists' offices to help kids deal with really big mouthwork that they might have to do. So even dogs are at airports to help with airport flying anxiety. And many of the studies we've looked at, they're very positive, meaning that when you interact with an animal, you have better mental and physical health outcomes with whatever you're doing while you're interacting with that animal.

SPEAKER_01:

There is tons of data out there about that positive mental and physical health outcome connection. But the idea of touch. Touch is a central idea or component of many animal-assisted interventions. But how touch conditions affect human physiology and emotions is not fully understood. So this study actually focused on whether forced versus consensual touch with animals influences the human responses.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's interesting. So they were the purpose of the study, of course, was to, as you said, examine those touch interactions during animal-assisted interventions. And they tested in the humans their heart rate and their heart rate variability. That's the HRV. And they did a survey on their emotional states before and after. They compared the results when animals were forced to interact versus animals were allowed to choose who to interact with. So that was more consensual touch. Like we can tell Bunsen and Beaker, and we're working on this with Bernoulli, but we can tell Bunsen or Bruno Bunsen and Beaker, go see this kid, and they'll pat over and the kid gets to touch them. And maybe that's not real consensual touch. I don't know. But also Bunsen and Beaker choose kids that they want to see. And Bunsen, especially, when I've taken him into the school, he picks a few kids that he really likes and then he gloms onto them, whereas Beaker is a social butterfly and she flits between all the kids. Now, the interesting thing about this study is they also threw horses into the mix. So they were comparing dogs and horses. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

And what that allowed them to do was to compare effects between the species of the horse and dogs, and also to determine whether prior experience with horses influences human responses. Because not everybody just gets to see a horse every day.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

So in the study design and the participants, there were two separate experiments conducted. The horse experiment contained 10 horses, and the dog experiment contained 18 dogs. In the human participant world, 49 participants interacted individually with horses, and 44 participated, 44 participants interacted individually with dogs. Now, what they did is each per each participant completed interactions under two conditions. One of the conditions was forced touch. So the animal was restricted and required to interact with the participant. And the second condition was consensual touch, where the animal was free to choose the interaction.

SPEAKER_00:

They did a bunch of stats. They tested all of the things we mentioned, heart rate variability, their positive effect state. That was a survey, as I mentioned, and ran the numbers. And here are the results. So when they crunched all the numbers, here's what happened in the horse group. Forced touch humans had a higher heart rate and a lower variability. So these findings indicate generally greater physiological arousal and stress during those forced interactions.

SPEAKER_01:

Interestingly, looking more at the horse and the participants, if there was previous horse experience, the survey or the researchers looked at the how does that influence the participant? And what they found is that previous horse experience or the level of experience with horses did not affect the human heart rate, and it did not affect the human HRV, the variability in their heart rate. But having experience with horses did influence the emotional responses. The more experienced participants felt less activated.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, horses are big though. Like they're huge. But they if you've never been around a horse before, just you know, having more experience might give you a leg up. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

I've been around horses. We've raised horses, we've had horses on the farm, and they mirror what you're feeling. So they're a really good indicator, and there is a whole field of study into equine therapy. And the a friend of mine that we went through our master's together, that was her project, and she looked at equine therapy, and she actually is on a farm and has horses, and she was able to bring them into the school, which was super awesome and amazing. I think they brought the kids to her farm.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, she didn't take the horse. Yeah, no, to take a horse into a school. Yeah, no, they I mean, what is this like 1910 in the your it's my grandpa's story, riding his horse to school?

SPEAKER_01:

No, but like the children were able to interact with uh well-trained horse at a facility.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's cool. Now moving over to the dog results, the touch condition had no significant effect. So whether it was forced or consensual, yeah, whether it was forced or consensual. So having the dog somewhat restrained didn't affect the heart rate variability or their emotional score, or letting the dog find a person didn't affect it either. So there was no difference. And the conclusion is that the participants probably perceive the dog interactions more positively than horse interactions, maybe because like restraining a dog just means they're on a leash versus not. Conclusions of the study probably lead towards allowing animals a choice to engage, especially if they're horses. It improves the emotional experience and it reduces psychological arousal. But with dogs, there doesn't seem to be any difference. The effects of the forced interaction was a lot stronger for horses.

SPEAKER_01:

So, of course, when you complete a study, you get some answers potentially, but then you're also left with more questions. So there are some implications for further research, maybe to explore why dogs and horses elicit different human responses and investigating a long-term effect of consensual versus forced interactions. And then also the last one could be examining animal welfare outcomes along with the human benefits. Because I know that when I'm walking around with our new little cat, Bricks, when he is cuddled in my arms, I love it. When he's trying to be get away because he feels restrained, I don't love it. And I just want him to cuddle in my arms every day, all day.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Bricks is way better than ginger. If you pick up ginger and she doesn't want to be picked up, she just goes, No, like she starts meowing right away that she does not like what's happening at all.

SPEAKER_01:

But Brixy, he's oh okay, you can pick me up and you can carry me around and I'll purr. And then I see that there's a treat, so bye. He's very opportunistic.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but he's mostly cuddly. He's mostly cuddly. He does get squirmy, but not he doesn't protest as Ginger does. Maybe they need to do a cat one for this forced cat. How do you force a cat to go see somebody? Forced cat interaction versus the cat chooses you. Man, if a cat chooses you, I bet you everything is the best because you've been blessed.

SPEAKER_01:

The best.

SPEAKER_00:

You've been blessed if a cat chooses you. Like a cat in a room with 20 people and the cat chooses a person, go out and buy a lottery ticket.

SPEAKER_01:

Or go get some allergy medication. Because they usually pick the people who are allergic.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, that's pet science for this week. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr. Shazma Manthani with us today. Who is an ER doc? How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm doing great, Jason. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm good. I introduced you as a doc. And where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

SPEAKER_02:

So I'm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And I'm an emergency doctor. Yeah, I work in the ER.

SPEAKER_00:

Sweet. That is a job that is many times dramatized on TV. Did you always want to be an ER doc when you were little? Like work as a doctor or work in the fast-paced area you are now?

SPEAKER_02:

No, I didn't really realize I wanted to be a doctor until late in high school, or certainly that's when it started to when I started to think about it more seriously because of how much I liked chemistry and biology. So as a chemistry teacher, I'm sure you like to hear that. But didn't so much like physics, but like definitely liked chemistry and biology and did pharmacology in undergrad. So lots and lots of chemistry in that and biochemistry. And then just felt like medicine was a good applied way to use those sciences with human interaction, which I love. I love people and I love being around people. And so that's in grade 12 into undergrad is when I started really thinking about it more seriously.

SPEAKER_00:

And to be where you are, just for folks that maybe are wanting to know more about that path or interested in themselves. What is your training to be an ER doc? I'd imagine it's similar in North America, like south of us to the States, but just in Canada, for example.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So in Canada, I did my undergrad first. So that's four years. And then it was four years of medical school after that. Some places, there are a couple of places in Canada have that have three-year medical schools where they don't have summers. I did four years of medical school and then I did five years of residency to specialize in becoming an emergency doctor. So yeah, I guess do the math on that. So that's a lot of years.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a long tall. Yeah. I have been in the ER a few times myself. So I've made use of the emergency room. I've talked to a few ER doctors. And in your bio, you said something there's something really powerful on your social media. And I think it's also on your website. You want, and hopefully you can correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I think I'm quoting it. You want to empower us all with the tools to stay out of the ER. I was thinking about that, and I was like, the you have a profession, perhaps, that the best day ever would be when there's nobody coming in to see you. Is am I on the right track?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, there's so many things in the emergency room and just medicine in general that are entirely preventable. And for me, living in Canada, we have a publicly funded healthcare system that is, to me, like such a part of part of our identity as Canadians and such an important part of being a doctor here is that it is accessible to people no matter what your ability to pay is. And that is a valuable part of our Canadian identity. And the the reason that I got into this space on social media was coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we still had very overloaded emergency departments where people were coming in, they didn't have family doctors or access to primary and preventative care. And we're coming into the ER because they didn't know where else to go. But a lot of these things either are A, preventable or B, could be managed at home or at a walk-in clinic or at an urgent care rather than coming to the EMERGE. And so my end goal was that if I can keep people out of the eMERGE that don't need to be there, then the eMERGE is there for the people that truly need it. Yeah. And so that's why I started doing these educational videos and I have a podcast myself now with my friend and co-host. And so just to try to again inform people and arm them, empower them with information so that they can take control of their own health and understand what the like how important preventative health is as well. Because the idea is if we can keep people healthy, help them have the information to manage things at home, then we keep them out of the hospital. And that's better for everybody.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly. Can you plug your what's your podcast? Just so you mentioned it and I don't want to like swing back and forget.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so the podcast is called the Doc Talk Podcast. My co-host, Sheila Wajayasinga, is a family doctor with a focus on women's health who's in Toronto. Um, and then I do Emerge. And so between the two of us, we have a lot of quite a breadth of knowledge in the medicine space. And so we talk about all sorts of topics with the intended audience not being doctors, but being the general public to help demystify health a little bit.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. That's cool. Okay, we will have a link to your podcast in our show notes, everybody. So you can click on that and not when you're driving. So if you're one of those people that listen to a podcast and drive, I'd imagine that's one way you're gonna wind up in the ER. We don't want that.

SPEAKER_02:

Um no, don't want that.

SPEAKER_00:

But I but just piggybacking back to things we could do to keep us out of the ER. Can we talk about that a little bit? What are some ways, what are some things you see that are preventable that that doe heads like me might get ourselves into?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so lots of so many injuries in particular are preventable. So the first thing that immediately comes to mind is wearing helmets. So a lot of people think of helmets as just related to bicycles, or even don't wear them with bicycles, but that is so much broader than that. For me, what I always say is like anything that is a wheeled device that you can go faster than walking on, you should be wearing a helmet. So a scooter, a skateboard, rollerblades, or roller skates. Yes, a bicycle as well. Things like other things that people don't think of. Snow sports, so skiing, snowboarding, sledding as well. Helmets really important because I've seen a lot of head injuries in those situations too. Equestrian sports. Like there are so many things that helmets are useful for to protect the one brain that you have. And like injuries are a big thing. And then of using substances, right? So yes, if you want to use substances, use them. But use them, yeah, use them safely. So whether you know it's alcohol or cannabis or other substances, humans are going to use substances that is part of our beings, but use them responsibly. Don't operate heavy machinery, don't use alone. So just having more parameters or boundaries in place when you're using substances, that's another big one. And then even broader than that is like things as simple as being able to have things like your blood pressure and your cholesterol under control, because these are things down the road, if they're not controlled, your diabetes as well, that lead to things like strokes and heart attacks. And those again are like over the long term preventable. So not so acute like in injuries or substances, but those are things where visits to the ER down the road can certainly be prevented by having that part of your health under control, too.

SPEAKER_00:

I've got a quick question for you, just about something you mentioned, because I covered it on the podcast, my podcast like a year ago. There, have you seen an explosion in injuries from the e-scooters that are everywhere? Because have you seen that reflect itself in your ER?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, absolutely. I've made so many videos about e-scooters telling people not to use e-scooters. I don't think that we should, this is probably an unpopular opinion. They are they are quite dangerous. I've seen quite significant injuries between my colleagues and I with e-scooters, like devastating head injuries that have ended people up in the intensive care unit, broken bones that require surgery, severe concussions, rib fractures, like so many different injuries from e-scooters. These things get going really fast. And when people are using them, they're often intoxicated, or in a busy space with lots of other vehicles around them, whether it be a bicycle or cars around them. And so that makes and often not wearing a helmet. So that makes these particularly unsafe. A lot of people ask me why I kind of harp on e-scooters instead of bicycles, and a lot of that actually just has to do with the data. So when we look at the data, e-scooters actually do proportionally like more people ride bikes. So, of course, as an absolute number, injuries related to bikes are going to be higher. But when you look at it on a quote unquote per capita or on a per use basis, e-scooters actually lead to more injuries. There is some good data to show that. So that's why I don't like e-scooters. I see a lot of injuries with them.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that I saw that there was a study we looked at last year, too. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but what I seem to remember was the per capita injury is higher, but the chance of a catastrophic injury is also higher. Something that is way like big would require, I'm not sure the exact parameters of a severe injury, but more severe injuries, or even I think the study called them catastrophic injuries.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm just glad those little hoverboard things didn't catch on.

SPEAKER_02:

Did oh my yeah, those I do know those look scary too. Like they're even more unbalanced looking than these e-scooters.

SPEAKER_00:

Our school, if you can believe it, years ago when they were so popular, they bought six of them. Six of these hoverboards, and the administrators were zipping around on them because just like this cool thing. And I think somebody crashed and really hurt themselves, and then that was the end of the end of those hoverboards. Little hoverboards, right? You're probably not wearing a helmet when you're on a hoverboard inside of school zipping around, anyways.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a good point. Probably not.

SPEAKER_00:

You mentioned cholesterol and high blood pressure. When should people get that checked? If you go through life and unless you are in a position where your blood is checked, like when do you go? Because uh you have to have your blood taken for at least cholesterol levels. When is that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and so I think the the most important thing for people to know from that is to see their doctor regularly for checkups. So it's not necessarily every year, right? So there are lots of jurisdictions now that are saying see your doctor every two years, especially if you're otherwise healthy. But when you go to see your doctor, that's when they'll check your blood pressure. That's when they'll do blood tests depending on what your risks are and what your age is, because there are lots of different factors that go into how early to start testing. So if you're someone that, for example, has a family history of high cholesterol or has a family history of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, your family doctor will start testing you earlier for those things. If you're someone that is in like a zero risk category, they'll likely start testing you later for those things. But that is where primary care with your family doctor or nurse practitioner comes in because they're checking those things regularly so that they can pick those abnormal numbers up and then treat you when you need to be treated.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, cool. All right. I do need to make an appointment with our I think we are family doctor retired, so we have a new family doctor, but I do need to make an appointment with our doctor. So that's a good reminder for myself.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, but other sorts of regularly screened things. So lots of cancers require screening at different ages. And so seeing your family doctor regularly so that they can let you know, hey, you're 50, so you should start getting colon cancer screening, for example. Or you're a woman in between the ages of 40 and 50, depending on where you are. This is a good time to start getting breast cancer screening. So these are other important things that your family doctor can have these conversations with you about as you get older and as you age into those things.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha. Okay, cool. Pro tip, everybody, make sure you're seeing your family doctor if you can.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, absolutely. Another important thing is like a lot of people don't have family doctors right now. So the latest Kai Hi data says that over six million Canadians are without a family doctor, probably similar proportions in the US. And that so if you don't have a family doctor, even just finding a walk-in clinic, the same one that you go to regularly, or finding a clinic that has a family medicine clinic that has doctors and also nurse practitioners that does practices teen-based care. There are other ways to get care if you don't have a specific family doctor. So important to mention that too.

SPEAKER_00:

Good point. Yeah, I was thinking about that because we we struggled finding another doctor when our awesome guy retired. So yeah, I can imagine other Canadians are struggling too. But that's you can always you might have to wait, depending on how busy the walk-in is, but that's a solution, obviously. In the past, you had uh kind of like a regular radio column for CBC in your uh freelancer now with both them and the Globe and Mail. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so the CBC thing is actually something that started as a video column during the pandemic, where I was doing similar things to what I'm doing on my social media channels, which is just picking a specific health topic and having a short little video. So I was making these videos at home by myself because it was like right in the thick of the pandemic. And so it was great. Like it was we the producers and I would find a topic together. So it ranged from things like nosebleeds to like poor air quality to gastrointestinal illness to just whatever topic kind of seems topical at that time. And then as things evolved, we actually moved to a weekly radio column with CBC Edmonton. And so similarly, I would go into studio every Wednesday afternoon and talk about whatever thing was topical. In the fall, we talked about influenza and COVID, talked about injuries, talked about e-scooters as well. So lots of different topics. And then now that's I go back to CBC depending on whether there's a need for it. And then I've started recently doing some freelance writing with the Globe and Mail as well. My first uh first column was last month, and that was on five things to keep you out of the emergency department. And then more recently, just last week, I had a column uh talking about air quality and wildfires and how that kind of affects health. That's been a fun thing just to not only use my voice and video skills, but to be able to use my writing skills too.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice. That is a perfect segue into the wildfire smoke thing.

SPEAKER_02:

It's been it was it's been bad as well. And he had soccer canceled for the kids. I was canceling outdoor runs, and yeah, it wasn't great.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't remember wildfire smoke being as oppressive as it has been in the last five, six years. Is my question, I guess, to you, as somebody who's who wrote about this and knows more than me, is the smoke like, is it just annoying or is it truly bad for us? Like it's something we need to be concerned about.

SPEAKER_02:

I would say the latter. And Jason, I guess to your point earlier, yes, it is getting worse. I grew up in Alberta, so I know what the summers have been like. In my memory, and like the 40 years of my life, I the summers are getting hotter and they're getting smokier. And in particular, I recall I when I was pregnant with my second child in 2018, the summer of 2018, that was it was it happened to be a smoky summer, and it was the first time I remember like having to choose to stay indoors because of how bad the smoke was. So that was six years ago. And then actually, so there is data that showed that the 2023 wildfire season, so not last summer, but the summer before, was actually Canada's worst wildfire season on record. And unfortunately, the 2025 season is thought to be starting out at a similarly intense level. So, yes, it is getting worse, and it's not just yes, it's annoying, but it's also concerning from a health standpoint. So, both in the short term and the long term, there are well-documented negative effects on health due to air pollution secondary to wildfire smoke.

SPEAKER_00:

Is it the particulates in the air, like all of the crap that is coming from the fires? And then you breathe that in the city.

SPEAKER_02:

That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_00:

Some kind of carcinogen, some kind of do we know the mechanism as to why it's bad, or just it's really not something humans should breathe in. So it that's why it's bad. I don't know what yeah, so it's a few things.

SPEAKER_02:

And so air pollution is essentially like measuring suspended particles in the air. So whether that's from wildfires, whether that's from fossil fuel combustion or vehicle emissions, right? Though those are like there are these small suspended particles in the air that then stay there. And so depending on what the concentration of those particles is, that gives us an air quality health index. And so a lower number is low pollution or low, low particulate matter in the air, and then a higher number, so one is the lowest, and then 10 plus is the highest. So a higher number means a much higher density of these particles suspended in the air. And what ends up happening is yes, you breathe them in, and so they have a direct impact on your lung tissue acutely in that moment, but then they can actually also be absorbed into your blood. They can cause inflammation in your body as well. And although the exact kind of mechanism isn't known, there is this element of chronic inflammation and then can lead to chronic lung disease and reduced function. We know that there are also non-lung effects of air pollution as well. So it can affect your heart, it can affect your brain, it can affect your blood vessels as well, and it can certainly affect your cancer risk. And this can happen over the long term. So not just that you go outside and it's smoky and you feel like you're coughing or it might trigger an asthma attack or that sort of thing. There is data from actually the government of Canada, from Health Canada, that looked at prolonged exposure over a lifetime of just air pollution in general. And people that had more kind of pollution-filled days that they were exposed to actually ended up having a lower life expectancy for multiple multitude of reasons, but it has an effect beyond just being annoying and affecting the lungs. It actually can affect longevity and can lead to chronic illnesses too.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm sure it's also reflect that seems like it's reflected in other studies I've looked at, like folks who live around a coal-burning plant, right? The life expectancies of the folks that live around that area uh is less. It's statistical. Yeah. I'm just trying to I'll cut this, but I'm just trying to look back in time to see what the air quality index was in Calgary last week, but I think it was like the high risk, like there's five of them or something.

SPEAKER_02:

Um yeah, so we had like multiple 10 plus days. So like the high, like if you look at the air quality health index, like the AQHI, which is what Environment Canada uses, the highest you can go is 10 plus. Once there's like a certain threshold that's reached, they basically stop measuring because it's all bad above that. And so we had, yeah, multiple days of seven, eight, and then 10 plus as well in Edmonton.

SPEAKER_00:

It went up to 10. Fans of Spinal Tap would be happy if they had an 11, right? So love turn it up to 11. After 10, it's just crazy bad. Like they just don't, they just have no adjectives to describe it further. That's pretty much it's just bad, bad.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's the level. So there's three categories of poor air quality. So there's kind of one to three, which is low risk. And so that's where, like in general, it's okay to be outside. Like it's safe for the general population and even at risk populations to be outside. When we're at like the moderate range of four to six, that's where if you're in a low risk group, yes, it's still okay to be outside. Just be mindful of your symptoms. But if you're in a high risk group, like if you have underlying heart issues or lung issues, then that's when it's recommended for those people to stay indoors. Once you get to seven to 10 plus, that's when actually like everyone, no matter what your risk category is, even if you're a low risk person, should really just not spend time outside because it's risky for everybody then at that point. Point.

SPEAKER_00:

What I I uh okay, let's say you had to go outside, right? Like, what can you do? Do you wear one of those M95 masks? Do you like yes? You hold your breath? So that's okay. All right.

SPEAKER_02:

Run to the garage and get in the car. Yeah, no, so that's a good question. So if they're if you have to be outside, try to limit the amount of time that you are outside. And when you are outside, when you're in that if we're at the high risk, the high risk category of air pollution, or you're in a risk group and it's like moderate or higher, then wearing a well-fitted N95 respirator mask, so not a surgical mask, like not those blue masks, but the ones that are like N95 respirators that seal well around your nose and your face and your chin, because those are like the N95 category is a filtration level that's enough to prevent those particles or as many of those particles as needed to get through and into your lungs. So if you have to be outside, then wearing a respirator is going to be important to protect your body.

SPEAKER_00:

And I have one more question, and it's cropped up on social media. Maybe you've come across this and no, I don't know. But there there are some concerns that our homes aren't super safe when it's so smoky outside, especially if you have air conditioning units that are sucking air into your house. Air's gonna get into your house anyways if it's hot and you have your windows open. Is that a concern?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it is. And so that's a really good question as well. If you have an air conditioner that's like a built-in air conditioner in your home, and you have then a HEPA system in your home, like having the appropriate level of filtration. So there's like MERV, which is it's called MERV. So like either 11 or 13 are like the two levels of MERV filters that are are enough to filter out the air pollution particles from the air that's being drawn into the home. If you don't have an air conditioner or you need to have the windows open or that sort of thing, then just having a portable air purifier and filter is helpful as well. So Health Canada actually has a list of kind of the criteria or the specifications that you should look for in air purifiers when you're looking at air purifiers for your home or filters for your kind of furnace in HEPA or HRB, I should say, not HEPPA, your HRB system. So if you go to Health Canada and just like Google or like search air purifiers Health Canada, there's an entire list of specifications and some examples of ones that are that they recommend as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, sweet. Okay, that's cool. Yeah, it was just something I've been seeing crop up on social media. I don't know the science accounts off the top of my head that maybe have been mentioning it, but that's something they were mentioning. And I was like, oh, geez, that's not so good. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's and that's an important thing to keep in mind as well, especially when it's like multiple days of poor air quality, making sure that you have a way to filter the air that's entering your home or continuing to filter the air that is circulating in your home as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Moving away from wildfire smoke to something that is now spreading like a wildfire, and that's measles. Are we have a lot of Americans who listen to our show, and they might be shocked to know that Alberta, we have a huge measles outbreak, like bad for our population size. I don't know if you have any feedback for us on that or things we can watch out for.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so this is something that, to be honest, only felt like it was going to be a matter of time before we had a measles outbreak, and that's simply because measles is so exquisitely contagious. It's actually one of the most contagious pathogens known to humans. It is, yeah, it's spread through the air, so airborne. And the challenging thing about measles is not only is it spread in the air, it actually hangs around in the air for a few hours after the infected person has left it, which makes it, that's what makes it so contagious. Because it's not just being in the same room or the same space as someone who has measles and breathing in their air. Even once that person leaves that space, that the measles continues to float around in the air for two to three hours afterwards. And just like then entering that space, like going to a grocery store or going to an airport or going to a library, like all of those things are potential risk if there's someone that's walked through there with measles and maybe was early in their illness and didn't quite have all the symptoms yet and didn't weren't isolating yet. And so that's why measles has spread like wildfire, like you said, because it's so incredibly contagious. We've also seen, unfortunately, a steady decline in vaccination rates with the MMR vaccine, which again is part of why we are starting to see a resurgence of cases again. When you have a disease that's as contagious as measles, you actually need a high level of vaccination to reach herd immunity, which is the amount of vaccines that like the general population needs to prevent measles from coming into that population. And so for measles, because it's so contagious, that number is 95%. So 95% of people have to be vaccinated in order to have herd immunity, which is a high level of vaccination. But I'll remind your listeners that actually like back in 1998, Canada was considered eradicated of measles because we did have such a good vaccination rate. I know. And it's and it is frustrating. It's frustrating as like a science educator, it's frustrating as a physician. And the challenging part for me is like I don't blame individuals for not getting vaccinated. What I blame is the blatant mis and disinformation that is out there on social media and also like people in the public eye who sow this mistrust in vaccines that is unfounded. And so when people are hearing all of these things from so many different directions and their favorite social media influencer is questioning whether we need an MMR vaccine, uh of course they're gonna have hesitancy. That of course that's going to happen. And so, yeah, that that's where I put the blame. I put the blame on the people who have platforms and people like RFK Jr. that are worsening vaccine hesitancy, getting us in a situation like this.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's quite the situation.

SPEAKER_02:

Ontario has a big outbreak right now as well. I think we actually have more on a per capita basis. Yeah, exactly. So we actually have more on a per capita basis now. And we are seeing severe complications from this. And the problem, one of the other problems is because we have grown up at a time where we didn't have to worry about measles, our memories are short. We don't actually know people who have had bad outcomes for measles because we all had our vaccines when we were little, yeah, and then haven't seen what the consequences of measles are. And so these are things like you can get severe lung swelling that you need to have beyond a ventilator for. You can get severe brain swelling leading to permanent brain damage, you can get severe immune suppression that like happens, like where you're immunocompromised and for the rest of your life. You can die from this. We've seen, unfortunately, cases in the US and now in Canada as well, where young babies have died from this. Yeah. And this is not a this is not a benign disease. And you don't see people dying or having complications when they've been vaccinated. The vaccine is extremely effective. Two doses of the R vaccine are over 97% effective at preventing measles. And if you are in that unlucky 3%, then you're going to have very mild disease. So this is like a life-saving and complication reducing and avoiding vaccine that is safe and effective. And unfortunately, there's been a lot of mis and disinformation that has really increased the vaccine hesitancy out there. The other thing that's really concerning is that like young babies can't get this vaccine. The youngest age that you could get the measles vaccine is at six months. So that would be an early dose. The routine vaccination schedule says 12 months and then 18 months or older. So you need two doses. And now with outbreaks, that like public health is recommending that you can get the vaccine. And this is not a new recommendation. This has been around for decades where when there are outbreaks, you can offer the vaccine as early as six months, and then you still do get your two routine vaccinations after that. But any babies that are younger than six months are fully exposed. Like they're exposed when they're going out and about because we don't have that level of population herd immunity that we need to protect the vulnerable people in our population.

SPEAKER_00:

That's it would be a scary time to be a new parent.

SPEAKER_02:

I can't even imagine if my baby if my kids were young right now, I feel like I would just like not want to leave the house, which is not the it's not the right thing to do. I know that, but it would be it's so anxiety. It would be so anxiety provoking for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Especially if you're in the outbreak zones like southern Alberta. Yes. I wouldn't be taking my baby to the co-op in some communities in southern Alberta where all the outbreaks are.

SPEAKER_02:

I was talking to my or like in Texas or New Mexico in the US, those are high outbreak areas down there.

SPEAKER_00:

As I told you, I teach high school chemistry, and I will stop my lesson at the start if there's like pernient science news. And I talked about measles. I'm like when I was in high school, measles was like this myth. Measles was a disease you read about in historical fiction, or like you we'd read about it and say, Oh, they got the measles or the Mies, and they're what's outside, and oh, let's read about this from happening hundreds of years ago. And then I went through like the historic cases in Alberta, and it was like zero, zero, zero, two, zero. Oh, that was a bad year. There was like 12 dudes who got it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then now it was like, of course, I did this a month ago and it was like 500. And I said, You'll see a thousand, you'll see a thousand by exam break, maybe more, and it's only gonna go up because of the contagiousness of it.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a historic, it has been a historical disease in med school too. Like when we I remember when I was in med school and residency learning about measles, we saw the pictures of the rash, but it's like not a rash that we've seen had seen in real life. Because it, like you said, like the case it was eradicated, officially eradicated from Canada in '98. And I went to med school far later than that. And yeah, we just haven't seen it until now.

SPEAKER_00:

It's just wild. Maybe to put a positive spin on this is what can we do? This is not we're perhaps unlucky in Alberta where it's so high. I would imagine the vaccination rates are falling because of misinformation, disinformation everywhere. And it's just the as you said, it's a matter of time. What do you have some advice for folks who are listening to the show? What can we do to help you guys in the ER and in med and in medicine?

SPEAKER_02:

If you don't have two doses of your MMR vaccine, please get them. If you are, if you have questions or you're worried and just want some more information about the vaccine, go to a trusted source. So don't go to social media because there's a lot of miss and disinformation out there. Talk to your doctor, talk to your pharmacist, talk to your nurse practitioner, talk to your local public health office and the registered nurses that are there. Go to the Health Canada website. That's a reliable source of information. And just learn about it and find opportunities to ask questions to credentialed health care workers so that we can help offer you the information that you need to hopefully reduce your hesitancy and talk you through it. Because it is a safe and effective vaccine. It does not cause autism that that has been debunked time and time again. There have been multiple studies that have shown that there is no association. And it is a safe and effective and life-saving vaccine. So whatever you need to do to get there, please seek out reliable and credible information to get the information that you need.

SPEAKER_00:

And speaking of reliable and credible information, we'll have a link to your Instagram account in our show notes.

SPEAKER_02:

Love it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. Thanks for that. I know it's a I am frustrated, but I can't imagine how frustrated you folks who are working in medicine are. So I do appreciate you giving us a little measles talk there. It's been a so price of mine. My grandmother got polio the year the vaccine became widely available. So it's like a huge vaccination is a huge deal for my family.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, bad.

SPEAKER_00:

A whole bunch of stuff from post.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's just it, right? Because there are all of these vaccine preventable illnesses that we're so lucky to have vaccines for that we've eradicated, but they were eradicated so long ago that we don't remember how bad they were.

SPEAKER_00:

No. I tell my students, like, do you remember when there was no internet? And they're like, no. I'm like, exactly. That's what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the standard questions we ask all of our guests is a pet story from their life to tie the science with the humanity and the love of animals. And I was wondering if you have a pet story you could share with us.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so I have I didn't actually grow up with pets, but when I married my husband, he was someone that grew up with dogs. And so our first baby was a yellow lab named Zoe. She has left us since then, and now we have a chocolate lab named Dobby. So Zoe, so she was our first baby. We loved her so much. And one of the things that she loved to do, so she thankfully being a lab, she wasn't a destroyer of things. Like she didn't chew things or wreck. She only wrecked one shoe of mine ever in the 12 years that she lived. She loved being around our socks for some reason. And so there, what we would often do is like my husband and I, we'd go home. She'd be roaming around the house. And she often just liked to either stay in her crate or in on our bed in our bedroom. And she would actually go into our hamper and hit hand pick out or like mouth pick out just the socks. Like through all of the other things, she would fish out the socks and then bring them up onto the bed and just like nest herself around our socks. And like we would just come home, go upstairs, find Zoe, and she'd just be like laying there in her curled up little ball with just like socks right by her nose. And I think it's just because she missed us and she went to smell us. But the funny part of it is like she would ignore all of the other clothes and just like the socks. There was something with the socks that she would just pick those out and just bring those onto the bed. Yeah, she just, I don't know, the socks. She loved the socks. So I that was a common occurrence when we came home and found her just laying on our bed.

SPEAKER_00:

Aw. Yes, our first goal, then she was a destroyer of things, I'm for sure. Bernoulli.

SPEAKER_02:

Is definitely a destroyer, more of a destroyer of things for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Bunsen and Beaker aren't, but our new guy, Bernoulli, he is mischievous. He will wreck things. He ate half a boot the other day. I couldn't believe it. Half the root.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh wow, that's committed.

SPEAKER_00:

That is chaosly committed. That is committed to the chaos to eat somebody's half. All right. Thank you so much for sharing your pet story with us today.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, you bet.

SPEAKER_00:

I guess as we wrap up, I want to thank you so much for coming on our show to chat a little bit about ER, your ER business to keep us out of there and making room for folks that really need it if we can be prevents being there in the first place. And wildfire smoke, and then of course, measles. Shazma, thank you so much for being our guest today.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. And a shout out to all the top dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, The Popack. You can sign up in our show notes. Alright, Chris, let's hear those names that are part of the Top Dogs.

SPEAKER_01:

Amelia Fetting, Re Oda, Carol Haino, Jennifer Challenge, Linnea Janet, Karen Cronister, Vicky Oteiro, Christy Walker, Sarah Brown, Wendy, Diane, Mason and Luke, Helen Chin, Elizabeth Bourgeois, Marianne McNally, Katherine Jordan, Shelly Smith, Laura Stephenson, Tracy Leinbaugh, Anne Uchida, Heather Burbach, Kelly, Tracy Halbert, Ben Rather, Debbie Anderson, Sandy Brimer, Mary Rader, Bianca Hyde, Andrew Lynn, Brenda Clark, Brianne Hawts, Peggy McKeel, Holly Birch, Kathy Zirker, Susan Wagner, and Liz Button.

SPEAKER_00:

For science, empathy, and cuteness.