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Health Research That’s Music To Our Ears Here’s another reason your mother was right about keeping up music lessons—there’s a long-term health benefit. Some musicians have fewer age-related hearing problems than non-musicians, according to a study at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute in Toronto. Many people experience the “cocktail party problem”—trouble hearing a conversation when there’s background noise, but musicians develop the problem at a later age. A 70-year-old lifelong musician can understand speech in a noisy environment as well as a 50-year-old non-musician. Older musicians also do better at detecting gaps in continuous sounds, which helps with speech perception, and detecting different sound frequencies, useful in separating one voice from another.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dan Drew has seen any number of soldiers blown up by IEDs (improvised explosive devices). He was one of roughly 200 Canadians embedded with an Afghan brigade of 3,000 in Kandahar province for seven months in 2008, a time when “there were a lot of bad guys and not a lot of us.” IEDs were the Taliban’s weapon of choice. Fighters used them to blow up soldiers on foot patrol. They used them to blow up vehicles. They planted them in roads, in fields, along paths and in stone walls.

By the end of the year, veterans will be able to go online to apply for Veterans Affairs Canada benefits and services, one of the suggestions in the 2011 annual report of the Veterans Ombudsman. Providing online application for benefits is one way for VAC to improve communications and access for veterans, says Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent. “The ultimate goal,” is for veterans to use a benefits navigator on the VAC website. Such a navigator was developed for use by staff in the ombudsman’s office when it opened in 2007 and shared with VAC following a technological upgrade in 2011.

A House of Commons committee has joined the chorus calling for increasing payments and expanding eligibility for veterans’ funeral and burial benefits. In its report, Commemoration In The 21st Century, the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs recommended changes to the funeral and burial program which provides veterans’ families financial support to cover some expenses. The $9.3 million program is funded by Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) and administered by the Last Post Fund.

Preparing For Winter Living The shortest, darkest day of winter has thankfully passed, but Canadians still have the two coldest months to endure. Here are tips, bits of news and observations to help you be prepared to welcome spring with a healthier body and in a healthier frame of mind.

Thousands of injured veterans are beginning to benefit from enhancements to the New Veterans Charter which came into effect in October. But veterans advocates say there is still work to be done to make this “living charter” more responsive to the needs of veterans and their families.

Private Alexander Johnston, killed in battle in 1918 at the age of 33, for decades was counted among the more than 19,500 Canadian First World War soldiers with no known grave. But in October he was finally given a funeral with full military honours and buried in France under a headstone inscribed with his name.

Captain Nichola Goddard of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in Shilo, Man., was a forward observation officer during a firefight with the Taliban roughly 24 kilometres west of Kandahar in May 2006. She had been standing in the turret of a LAV (light armoured vehicle), helping to target artillery, when a rocket-propelled grenade hit, unleashing a storm of lethal shrapnel; the piece that killed Goddard penetrated above her body armour.

The federal government’s budget paring exercise will be carefully watched over the coming months by veterans advocates, including The Royal Canadian Legion, to see whether programs and benefits for veterans will be affected.

At some point in life everyone experiences acute pain from broken bones, wrenched joints, burns, sports injuries, childbirth, illness or medical procedures. About 20 per cent of Canadians also live with chronic pain, and that percentage climbs as we age. Statistics Canada has reported that 27 per cent of seniors living on their own and 38 per cent of those in health institutions live with chronic pain.