immigating could give you a heart attack.

TORONTO - The stressful process of settling down in a new country may be putting Canadian immigrants at risk for health problems down the road, according to a new study to be presented Monday at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.
While many immigrants move to Canada with healthy hearts, the study revealed the longer they remain in the country, the worse their cardiovascular health becomes.
Surpassing risk levels of other people of the same ethnic backgrounds born in Canada, immigrants become more prone to heart disease - which can lead to premature death.
"Most times, when people move to a new country, especially coming to Canada, they're coming for an improvement in their life," said Dr. Scott Lear, lead author of the study and kinesiologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
"(Yet) the 'healthy immigrant effect' that we know fades over time."
Using ultrasound, the researchers measured atherosclerosis - or narrowing of the artery - in a group of 618 Chinese, European and South Asian Canadians, 460 of which were immigrants.
Focusing on the carotid artery, which carries blood to the head and neck and is commonly used to find a person's pulse, they found the longer the immigrant had lived in Canada, the greater the thickening of the arterial wall.
The finding came independent of other risk factors for atherosclerosis, a major contributor to heart disease and stroke, which are leading causes of death in the country.
"The speculation is that it might be the stress associated with coming to a new country, or the challenges faced by those individuals," Lear said.
"Settling themselves down, finding a job, finding a place to live, establishing financial security and in that case, health can be secondary or even much lower down on the priority (list.)"
Immigrating from Scotland 40 years ago, Jim Brown, 74, said when he arrived in Canada he never felt any cause to see doctors. It came as a shock when he suffered a heart attack in 2000, and he learned one of his arteries was 90 per cent blocked.
"This could have started long before the heart attack," he said, adding he doesn't really know what caused his ailing health.
But he does know establishing a new life in the late 1960s had its bumps.
"I had a few jobs before I settled. You stress yourself out wondering if you're going to get hired, until you're in and you're hired and they see what your potential is and you're able to keep your job," he said.
"Because when you come across here you've got no reputation, they don't know who you are."
Immigrants also tend to be less savvy when it comes to accessing health care, said Dr. Chi-Ming Chow, a Toronto cardiologist who treats many immigrant patients.
"They're older generations, their language is not as good, or they're still learning English as a working language," said Chow, a spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
It means obstacles can lie in finding the right doctor, being able to express themselves and getting over the fear of being misunderstood, he said. Changes in physical activity and diet - such as a greater exposure to fast food - upon moving to Canada are other factors that might contribute to the deterioration of health, Chow said.
The study's findings highlight a need for health care providers to become more culturally sensitive when tending to patients, he said.
"This is a wake-up call for Canada," he said. "We must translate and culturally adapt important health messages to our audience."
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More news on Scott Richmond Blue Jay's pitcher

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Perseverance pays for pitcher, 28

From scraping bottom of boats to starting for the Blue Jays

Jim Jamieson, The ProvincePublished: Tuesday, July 29, 2008

You could say Scott Richmond's baseball career hit rock bottom, quite literally, when he spent his first three years after high school working on the North Vancouver docks.
He was scraping rust and rock-like barnacles off the bottoms of boats in his job at Seaspan International's shipyards.
But Richmond, a 6-foot-5 right-handed pitcher, will see his unlikely dream of playing major league baseball come true Wednesday in Toronto when he'll get the start for the Blue Jays against Tampa Bay at the Rogers Centre. Richmond, 28, who was called up by Toronto on Sunday, will be the 14th Canadian to appear in a Jays uniform at the major-league level.

Last season Scott Richmond was playing for the Edmonton Cracker-Cats in the independent Northern League, below single A. The North Vancouver pitcher now finds himself, at 28, on the verge of playing for the Toronto Blue Jays.
"Last season Scott Richmond was playing for the Edmonton Cracker-Cats in the independent Northern League, below single A. The North Vancouver pitcher now finds himself, at 28, on the verge of playing for the Toronto Blue Jays.","On Wednesday, North Vancouver's Scott Richmond will realize an unlikely dream when he joins the likes of Rod Barajas (left) and Matt Stairs of the Blue Jays, who are shown celebrating Stairs' two-run, fifth-inning homer during a 3-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays Monday in Toronto.

"I'm smiling from ear to ear," Richmond told the Toronto Sun. "It's nice, I don't have to fly and pitch the next day. I have a few days to think about it ... but I'm going to try not to think about it."
Richmond's saga gets even more far-fetched, as he'll be trading one dream for another. The call-up to the Blue Jays likely means he'll have to forgo his spot on Canada's Olympic baseball team. He was supposed to be at the Rogers Centre anyway, as the Olympic ball squad is going to be introduced before the game. Richmond just didn't think he'd be staying out on the field.

read the whole artile http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/sports/story.html?id=7d768930-baf6-48fa-a988-64dd31f73c1c