About 25 years ago, when I was organizing what today is WholeHealth Chicago, I attempted to learn everything I could about all the fields of what was then called alternative medicine. Since naturopathic medicine, or naturopathy, didn’t really exist in Illinois (perpetually blocked by the Illinois State Medical Society), I flew to the west coast […]
AKKERMANSIA: THE “SHINING STAR” OF YOUR GUT FLORA
No, that nickname is not from me. However, it definitely is one of the praises heaped upon by scientists around the world as they describe the wonders of this one strain of bacteria in your intestinal microbiome. Read carefully. Link to the research papers if you like. If you have enough Akkermansia (full name Akkermansia […]
NUTRITIONAL INFLUENCES ON DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
Depressed? Anxious? In the cynical ideal world of your insurance company’s CEO, he’d like you to have a one visit with your primary care provider (PCP) and, if you absolutely must, a referral to a visit to a mental health counselor. Not too many of these visits, as these cost money and you’re usually allowed […]
GETTING YOUR PRESCRIPTIONS FILLED AND REFILLED AT WHOLEHEALTH CHICAGO
“I’m about to run out of my hormones….my Adderall..my blood pressure meds.” “My pharmacist said he sent a FAX…I need an early refill…I’m leaving for Paris in 3 days!” Okay, okay, slow down. I’m going to walk you through the incredible complexity of rules and regulations concerning your prescriptions. On the one hand, my dedicated […]
YOUR “LOW ESTROGEN FACE” AND HOW WE CAN HELP
Sex hormones are not to be taken lightly. Some recent research measuring blood levels of estrogen in several hundred young women and then making facial “composite photos” showed that those with normal to high (but not too high) levels of estrogen were more physically (read “sexually”) appealing. Go overboard with estrogen and all sorts of […]
UNDERSTANDING CANDIDA, ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Patients come to WholeHealth Chicago regularly with this common refrain: “You’re the fourth (or seventh or tenth) doctor I’ve seen. I feel terrible but am always told that my tests are normal and there’s nothing wrong with me.” Then they’ll add: “I read about Candida overgrowth and the symptoms seem to fit me exactly. I […]
CASE STUDY: ECZEMA FROM HELL
Tracy had wisely trimmed her fingernails to avoid injuring her own skin, but as she sat in my office she continuously rubbed one part of her body or another with the ball of her thumb in order to relieve the itching. Dermatologists sometimes refer to this as, “The itch that rashes, rather than the rash […]
SUPPLEMENTS I TAKE. “REALLY? EVERY DAY?!” ACTUALLY, MOST OF THEM TWICE A DAY.
Every two or three years, I list the supplements that I myself have been taking for just about twenty years or so, adding or subtracting one or two based on some new research findings. I also mention just why I take them. For example, after decades of fish oil capsules, I’ve pretty much dropped these when […]
BRAIN FOG: WHY DOCTORS AREN’T HELPING YOU
You can’t remember the name of the Netflix movie you saw last night, scant hours ago. That actor–what was his name? He was in, you know, that other movie, with that woman with the hair. “Oh, where is my mind?”. Then you get a notice from Verizon that they’re turning off your phone for nonpayment. […]
FIRST IT WAS LYME DISEASE, NOW IT’S BABESIA
Oh, these tick borne illnesses! Since we saw three new cases this week of one you may not have heard of, Babesia, I thought I’d share some information. You know, forewarned is forearmed and so forth. It’s estimated that half the ticks in that summer suburb of Chicago the locals call, “Wisconsin” are currently carrying […]
YOUR OUT-OF-WHACK HORMONES AND THE “DUTCH” TEST
Let me start by saying that in real life, endocrinologists are probably nice people and not the arrogant, dismissive and too frequently rude specialists that have been reported to me by patients over the years. One of them, over at the mega-medical center a few blocks away is notorious for tossing into her wastebasket any […]
What is “FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE”? and Can it Help Me?
More and more new patients to the WholeHealth Chicago Network are asking for a “functional approach” to their longstanding undiagnosed symptoms. Many times these are digestive in origin (bloating, GERD, food intolerances), but other symptoms are vague: “fatigue”, “brain fog”, or just “feeling old”. They’ve been reading about “Functional Medicine”, but when asked their primary […]
POLYCYSTIC OVARY SYNDROME (PCOS): NEW HOPE ON THE HORIZON!
A recent report revealed that there are so many cases of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in the US that costs for diagnosis and lifetime treatments are estimated to be $8 billion a year. If you have PCOS, obviously you’re not alone. It’s estimated that PCOS affects one woman in seven (estimates go as high as […]
THE REAL REASON YOU KEEP GAINING WEIGHT
There was an astonishing experiment described in “UltraProcessed People”, by Chris van Tulleken. It had been conducted in Brazil where they’re light years ahead of us in terms of food safety. They took a number of volunteers, and divided them into two equal groups, A and B. For two months, each group was allowed anything […]
THE SAGA OF DR. KEITH LASKO
I need to complete the chronicle of Keith Alan Lasko, MD, begun last week in my Health Tip, “Pigs At A Trough“, with the story of the physician who wrote, The Great Billion Dollar Medical Swindle some 45 years ago and then seemed to vanish. But completely disappear? Hardly. Based on what I’ve been reading online, it’s a safe […]
PIGS AT A TROUGH
I regularly revisit my battered copy of a 2013 Time Magazine Special Report, “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us”, with the same conflicted feeling I had at about age six when I learned that something painful, like picking a scab or jiggling a loose tooth, also afforded a secret pleasure that could not be shared […]
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BIO-IDENTICAL HORMONES
As a woman, unless you undergo the ‘instant menopause’ of a total hysterectomy, anticipate your own menopause transition in one of three ways. First, there’s “Menopause Heaven.” Your periods will lighten, become erratic, then stop altogether. A year goes by, and you’ll say, “Oh, so that was menopause. I wonder what everyone is complaining about.” […]
WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN, BUT AT A PRICE
The blurb about women’s health was tucked into a corner of The Guardian and required some tracking on my part to locate the source. It was a report (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) in Lancet Public Health, that I fear will largely be ignored, that is a general call-to-action jumpstart for worldwide […]
YOU REALLY SHOULD LEARN ABOUT MEDICINAL HERBS
It was in the papers and online just last week: women, who have always outlived men longevity wise, just widened the gap a bit more. All sorts of usual suspects kill off men: guns, drugs, self-neglect, poor diets, more smoking. But one factor wasn’t mentioned, probably not worth considering by statisticians, and that this: All […]
ANIMAL GLANDS USED AS MEDICINE
A surprising number of so-called alternative therapies actually have their roots in very conservative conventional medicine. While reflexology (once called Zone Therapy) is arguably thousands of years old, its modern use was made popular by an ear-nose-throat specialist who used the pressure from rubber bands applied to the fingers and toes for surgical anesthesia. The […]