This summer, Manitobans aren’t just sweating under the August sun — we’re coughing, wheezing and blinking through a haze so thick you could mistake Portage Avenue for a foggy morning in San Francisco.

Recent air-quality readings put Winnipeg at the worst in Canada, with PM2.5 levels soaring well past the “very unhealthy” threshold. Health experts aren’t mincing words: prolonged exposure to this kind of pollution can increase risks of heart attacks, worsen asthma and even impact brain function and mental health. It’s not just your lungs feeling the burn, it’s your energy, recovery and overall resilience.

And while the headlines are everywhere, the lesson isn’t: you can’t out-train bad air. The basics of health — movement, nutrition, recovery — don’t change, but how you approach them needs to adjust when the environment throws you a curveball.

Here’s how to stay fit despite the forest-fire smoke.

If you’ve been on Instagram lately, you’d think the fountain of youth is hidden somewhere between a cold plunge and a capsule of the NMN supplement.

Everyone’s chasing vitality right now with hopes of living longer, looking younger and “bio-hacking” their way into immortality with infrared saunas, hormone cocktails, red-light helmets and supplements you can’t pronounce. (NMN, by the way, stands for nicotinamide mononucleotide.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for stacking the odds in your favour. I’m bullish on the role AI advancements will play in our quality of life going forward.

But let’s be honest. If your foundation is broken, none of this new-age stuff really matters. You can’t out-stimulant chronic poor sleep. You can’t undo a junk-food diet with 10 minutes of red-light therapy. And you definitely can’t fix a sedentary lifestyle through supplements.

Like many Canadians, I got COVID. Like most other people, it put me down for a couple of weeks before I recovered.

But not everyone was so lucky. According to a 2023 Health Canada report, about 3.5 million Canadians reported longer term symptoms, with 58.2 per cent — 2.1 million people — continuing to have them.

One of those people is Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, vice president academic and dean of seminary at Tyndale University in Toronto.

Neufeldt-Fast got COVID in July, 2023 — his first time. Today, he is one of many people still struggling with long COVID symptoms such as extreme fatigue, brain fog, memory and concentration issues and pain. Any exertion, mental or physical, can incapacitate him for hours or even days.

We’re cracking open the ol’ Mitch Mailbag to tackle a handful of questions I’ve been getting from clients lately — questions a lot of people wrestle with on their fat-loss journey.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, confused or like you’re doing everything “right” but the scale won’t budge… let’s start there.

Q: I’m doing everything right but my fat loss has stalled — what gives?

A: Most plateaus aren’t real. They’re death by a thousand bites — literally. The easiest way to burn calories is to not eat too many of them in the first place.