Opinion: Making Montreal’s buses run more efficiently
Let’s remove card readers from one route as a pilot
Read moreOur Tandem Bicycle
Thoughts on selling my tandem bicycle
Read moreWhy do people attempt suicide?
Recently, while watching the Netflix miniseries, “Inventing Anna” I was struck by how one of the characters, journalist Vivian, interpreted the “suicide attempt” by Anna Delvey. Vivian took it to mean that Anna was a person with real feelings, including hurt and pain, and possibly emotionally damaged as a child.…
Read moreQuebec healthcare mismanagement is greater problem than unvaccinated
While governments and journalists blame selfish vaccine refusers for the high rates of hospitalization and ICU bed occupation of unvaccinated people, there are likely causes other than the vaccine itself.
Read moreLet’s minimize our contribution to the oppression of workers
(Published on The Suburban’s website, 2021-7-28) The other day, I was looking for a set of earbuds, you know, the ones that come with Apple iPhones and have a microphone built in to one of the earphone cords. My latest iPhone no longer has an earphone jack, and I needed…
Read moreSchizophrenia: is it time to put this term out to pasture?
Introduction As a geriatric psychiatrist, now mostly retired, I’ve been sceptical throughout my entire career about the existence of the entity labeled “schizophrenia”. And for many years, when the subject came up, I might tell bits and pieces of my relationship to this disorder. But the idea of putting this…
Read moreMistletoe and cancer: does microRNA play a role?
Mistletoe, a parasitic plant, is commonly used in Europe as a complementary treatment in cancer patients, improving quality of life and possibly prolonging survival. Although there are several mechanisms that may be responsible for its beneficial effects, the relatively recent discovery of microRNA (miRNA) as a biological regulator suggests another…
Read moreWhy do people choose to become “helping” professionals?
When I began my training to become a psychiatrist in 1981, my view of the world and the people in it underwent a radical transformation. I became aware of how power is exercised within relationships. When one person is an employee and the other a boss, it’s generally pretty clear.…
Read moreManaging acute manic episodes
Sleep deprivation, especially REM sleep deprivation, not only treats depression rapidly and effectively, but it may even induce mania. This provides the basis for the theory that insufficient sleep, again primarily insufficient REM sleep, is an important cause of mania. Accordingly, to treat an acute manic episode, we need to…
Read moreMotorcycle Handling and Shaft Drives
Does the orientation of a motorcycle engine’s crankshaft and other rotating parts (eg, gears, clutch, driveshaft) affect the motorcycle’s handling? Reviews of motorcycles often mention how “light” certain bikes feel when being ridden, even for very heavy motorcycles. BMW is one brand often cited; Moto Guzzi riders are fanatically attached…
Read moreCOVID-19 mortality and vaccine efficacy in nursing homes: does vitamin B12 deficiency play a role?
Henry Olders, P.Eng, MD, FRCPC Affiliate Member, Dept of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Abstract It is believed that nursing home residents experience more disease severity and higher mortality from COVID-19, compared to community-dwelling elderly with similar comorbidities. Among the possible explanations for this phenomenon is the difference in vitamin…
Read moreRE: Take turmeric with a grain of salt
Letter to the Editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, posted online 2018-12-15 as a response to the Editorial “Take turmeric with a grain of salt” by Kirsten Patrick and Matthew B. Stanbrook CMAJ October 29, 2018 190 (43) E1270; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.181358 Wow, I’m impressed! The CMAJ has really gone…
Read moreLet’s assure nasal swab tests are done safely
Letter to the editor of The Suburban, published in the 2020-9-16 issue. A couple of days ago, I was listening to a radio programme (“The Current” with host Matt Galloway, on CBC Radio One). The 7 Sept 2020 episode was a national call-in show, “How concerned are you about schools…
Read moreOpinion: Quebec should drop idea of nationalizing private care homes
More government is rarely the answer. Legault should use the tools he already has to bring about significant improvements. Published by the Montreal Gazette as an op-ed piece on 2020-5-20: Premier François Legault has suggested that private nursing homes could be “nationalized” in response to problems brought to light by…
Read moreThe COVID-19 Pandemic: Diet-Based Approaches Based on Cross-kingdom MicroRNA
Henry Olders, P.Eng, MD, FRCPC Affiliate Member, Dept of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Abstract For many, the current COVID-19 pandemic creates fear and anxiety, to some extent because we lack control. The virus is invisible, even people we are close to could infect us, apparently healthy people may get…
Read moreOn cell towers (1): Read the federal law, change to local one
The following was published as a Letter to the Editor by the Westmount Independent on 2018-10-23, with the above title: With reference to the article by Martin Barry, “Westmount has no say on cell tower installation, says city official” (2018-10-9, p3) I would like to take issue with the interpretation…
Read moreChamplain rises above the rest
This Letter to the Editor was published in the Montreal Gazette on 2018-11-16. Re: “The new Champlain Bridge won’t be ready on time” (Montreal Gazette, Oct. 26) Over the past couple of years, I’ve observed the construction of the new Champlain bridge when I’ve crossed by bicycle from Westmount to…
Read moreMcGill Cutting Edge Lecture, 2018-10-11
This talk, titled “Why we get old and die, and what to do about it” was presented in the amphitheatre of the Redpath Museum, on 2018-10-11. Download a pdf of the slides and my speaker notes. Handout for the presentation.
Read moreWhen medical research reports negative findings: follow the money!
Big pharma has been taken to task on multiple occasions for selectively publishing studies showing benefits for their products and “burying” research with negative outcomes. So it’s surprising that there is now a trend to publish studies showing negative or null results. In fact, a journal specifically devoted to publishing…
Read moreSpeeding up Evolution
The following email was sent to Dr. Andreas Wagner, the author of the book “Arrival of the Fittest” on 2017-1-7: Dear Dr. Wagner, I was attempting to explain your theory to a friend recently, and thought that it would it be easier if I re-read your excellent book first. After…
Read moreMaking Ulysses and Bookends play together nicely
Introduction After a great deal of experimentation and trial and error, I’ve come up with a workflow to help in academic writing for the web. Ulysses is a great tool for this, but its footnote capacity does not integrate well with a reference manager like Bookends. The latter is also…
Read moreFree transit would make city more livable
The following was published as an opinion piece in the Montreal Gazette, on 2017-11-14: I am excited by Valérie Plante and Projet Montréal’s election promise to improve public transportation in Montreal, and am sure that it will generate many excellent proposals. Here’s one that deserves attention: free public transportation. Let’s…
Read moreWhy do mammalian males have scrota?
My hypothesis is that the scrotum, which in mammals, is often exposed, relatively hairless, and with thin skin and little subcutaneous tissue, may have evolved for perhaps a different reason than simply to provide a lower temperature for spermatogenesis. Consider that humans produce about 25,000 sperm every minute. Why so many?…
Read moreThe role of diet in gout
Gout is caused by an excess of uric acid (urate) in the system, which can then form crystals in various places, including the joint of the big toe. Crystals in the joint cause inflammation and pain. Excess uric acid can be due to excessive dietary intake of purines, insufficient urinary…
Read moreMethionine content of food items
To facilitate following a methionine restriction diet, I’ve put together a Filemaker “solution” (Filemaker’s name for a database using their platform) which will provide you with the methionine content for the majority of the items in the USDA nutrients database, version SR27. The solution also includes the content of cysteine,…
Read moreMethionine Restriction abstracts
Grandison, R. C., M. D. Piper, and L. Partridge (2009) Nature 462:1061-1064. Amino-acid imbalance explains extension of lifespan by dietary restriction in Drosophila. Dietary restriction extends healthy lifespan in diverse organisms and reduces fecundity. It is widely assumed to induce adaptive reallocation of nutrients from reproduction to somatic maintenance, aiding…
Read moreResearch Proposal: Treating Cancer-Related Anorexia-Cachexia with a Methionine Restricted Diet
Henry Olders, MD November 6, 2013 Research Proposal: Treating Cancer-Related Anorexia-Cachexia with a Methionine Restricted Diet Anorexia and cachexia are frequent concomitants of the later stages of cancer, and contribute significantly to poor quality of life (QOL). Moreover, family members and friends of cancer patients with anorexia and cachexia are…
Read moreThe Meaning of Consciousness
What does it mean to be conscious? Does it even have a meaning? As a psychiatrist, I am influenced by the way in which the terms “conscious”, “unconscious” and “subconscious” are used. The latter two terms generally refer to perceptions or emotions or thoughts that we are not aware of…
Read moreHammingNN classifier: results with various datasets
2012-12-19 This table presents results of using the HammingNN classifier with a variety of publicly available datasets that are frequently used for development and testing of classifier paradigms. For comparison purposes, I’ve included results from 3 other classifier paradigms. Note: you may need to widen your browser window to view…
Read moreHammingNN: a neural network based pattern classifier; results with genomics datasets
As a medical student in the early 1980’s, I was very excited when we were introduced to the physiology behind neurology. Having previously graduated in Electrical Engineering (Waterloo, 1970) and with several years of work experience in computer systems engineering, I immediately saw the potential for modeling neural networks using…
Read moreHammingNN: a neural network based nearest neighbour classifier
I made a presentation about my classifier to Emily Coffey, at the time a PhD candidate in the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute, and her colleagues, on 2011-1-21. Download a pdf of the presentation slides and notes.
Read moreDoes dietary intake of omega-6 fatty acids affect the outcome of omega-3 studies?
1. introduction 1.1. Joseph Hibbeln, a prominent researcher on the application of omega-3 fatty acids in psychiatry at the National Institutes of Health, recently wrote, “It is likely that the success and failure of different clinical trials using similar doses of n-3 LCFAs were influenced by differing background intakes of…
Read moreSleep deprivation and diabetes
It was recently reported on the CBS program “60 Minutes” that diabetes might be caused by sleep deprivation [link to web article]. As frequently happens, the reporting is more striking for its sensationalism than for its depth. Here is a deeper look: First, what do we know about sleep duration…
Read moreAsymptomatic bacteriuria in nursing home patients
Asymptomatic bacteriuria in nursing home patients This learning project was stimulated by an article (1) which looked at why urine cultures are ordered and why antibiotics are prescribed for institutionalized elderly. The article concluded that because there was no evidence for an association between nonspecific signs and symptoms and the…
Read morehammingNN progress report
Since my medical school days, I’ve been mulling over some ideas for artificial neural networks that adhere more closely to the physiology that I studied. Over the past couple of years, I finally implemented those ideas, using the Forth programming language on a Macintosh. The process went considerably faster than…
Read moreOmega-3 fatty acids and salmon oil
Salmon Oil • fatty fish (eg salmon, trout, tuna, herring, mackerel) or oils from these fish, are the only good sources for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (DHA & EPA).• short-chain omega-3 fatty acids (ALA), eg from flaxseed, walnuts, omega-3 eggs, may be beneficial, but most will not be converted into…
Read moreRitalin (methylphenidate)
Ritalin • -more effective than sertraline in improving cognitive function and maintaining alertness in patients with traumatic brain injury (Lee H 20 p97) • better tolerated than sertraline (ibid.) • -found effective in hypoactive delirium, apathy, depressive syndrome (Meyers BJ 148 1738) • -accelerates antidepressant response in elderly (Lavretsky H…
Read moreAffective disorders, sleep patterns, and treatment implications
Affective Disorders, Sleep Patterns, and Treatment Implications Problem issues in treatment of affective disorders Only 60-70% of depressed patients respond to antidepressants (in carefully done studies). The clinical reality is worse. In some patients, antidepressants worsen agitation, may increase suicidality We still don’t understand what causes depression, or how antidepressant…
Read moreA diet for life
What disease affects 33% of Canada’s population, and costs the health care system $6 billion per year? Obesity, spreading rapidly around the world, doubles in prevalence every five years. Clearly an epidemic. In the U.S., 1995 marked a milestone, when the prevalence of overweight in adults reached 50%. And this…
Read moreProsody in affective disorders and schizophrenia: diagnosis using computer simulations of neural networks
Henry Olders, MD, FRCPC Douglas Hospital Verdun, Quebec, Canada 2 Oct 1990 Introduction Effect of medication on negative symptoms An NIMH double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the effects of antipsychotic withdrawal (four weeks drug-free) followed by four weeks’ treatment with fluphenazine HCl in 19 young patients with chronic schizophrenia showed that…
Read moreHammingNN classifier – early ideas
Below is an article I wrote in 1989, describing my ideas for a neural network derived from my knowledge of physiology from medical student days, my studies in behaviour from psychiatry residency and practice, and computer principles from my time in engineering. A Neural Network Model Based On Brain Physiology…
Read moreBiomedical Ethics: A Personal View
This essay was written while taking a fourth year Bioethics course as a medical student at McGill University. Henry Olders 7717465 27 April 1981 It seems that a large part of the energy being expended on the subject of biomedical ethics has to do with making decisions in situations where…
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