Evidence-Based Fitness is a blog I started back in 2007 in my final year of medical school. I’ve spent pretty much all of my adult life in scientific research. Before medical school, I completed a BSc in Biology from Queen’s University, my MSc in Rehabilitation Science (mostly biomechanics, with a lot of epidemiology thrown in) with the School of Physical and Occupation Therapy at McGill Univeristy, and then my PhD in Medical Science (mostly research methods and biostatistics, with a lot of musculoskeletal physiology and sport medicine mixed in) at the Sport Medicine Centre at the University of Calgary. After medical school (also in Calgary), I completed my residency in plastic surgery in 2012 in Halifax, Nova Scotia and am a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada (which is the title given for board certification in Canada). After all of that, I did a hand surgery fellowship at NYU in New York. I am currently a practicing plastic surgeon with a special interest in the hand and wrist as well as peripheral nerves.
My main research interests are in the areas of clinical trials design, the development of outcome tools in clinical research, and systematic reviews of existing evidence in medicine, with a particular interest in surgical research as well as fitness/nutrition topics. Most of my current research centers around the hand (being a hand surgery fellow kinda does that.)
I also sit on the editorial board of the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, and am a peer-reviewer for that journal and several others, including the Cochrane Collaboration, which publishes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Nothing I say in this blog or on this site represents the CJSM or its policies or opinions or those of any other publication for which I provide review services , or any institution that I work in/for (I suppose that kind of disclaimer is mandatory.)
When I’m not doing science-y/medical-ish stuff, you’ll find me on a Lindy Hop dance floor, a gym, on my bike dodging open cab doors and slow-moving pedestrians, in a coffee shop working on projects like Dear Doctor Ninja, and searching for hidden places wherever I am.