You’d think knowing that the fourth leading cause of death in the US is correctly-taken prescription drugs would push physicians to prescribe fewer of them. But the facts haven’t entered the collective brain of the medical profession. Big Pharma advertising controls both that brain and yours with its ubiquity of magazine, internet, and TV ads for drugs. Only […]
Category: Alternative Therapies
Alternative therapies or alternative medicine refers to any medical treatments that are not traditional medicine techniques. Examples of this include Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Meditation and more.
Beating The Blues
Like it or not, it’s the nature of life to get the blues from time to time. Maybe your relationship isn’t working out, the dream job hasn’t been all that dreamy, or it’s your weight, your back pain, or our endless dark winter. The result? You just can’t get yourself cheered up about anything. You’re […]
Reversing Mental Decline Part 4: Nine Immediate Steps to Prevent Dementia
We’ve covered a lot of scientific territory in this series, from the basics of Alzheimer’s to the tests used to evaluate risk. This final installment is something you can follow up on right now, regardless of where you fall on the risk spectrum. Concerning your brain, let’s say you’re in one of these four situations: […]
Reversing Mental Decline Part 3: Tests For Alzheimer’s Prevention
Dale Bredesen, MD, author of The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program To Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline, refers to the tests you should undergo if you’re concerned about brain health as a “cognoscopy,” sort of a colonoscopy for your brain. Perhaps thinking back on your own colonoscopy, it’s reasonable to ask, “Do I really […]
Reversing Mental Decline Part 3: Tests For Alzheimer’s Prevention
Dale Bredesen, MD, author of The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program To Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline, refers to the tests you should undergo if you’re concerned about brain health as a “cognoscopy,” sort of a colonoscopy for your brain. Perhaps thinking back on your own colonoscopy, it’s reasonable to ask, “Do I really […]
Reversing Mental Decline and Preventing Alzheimer’s, Part 1
You saw a movie last week and in discussing it with friends simply can’t remember the important parts. Plus you just missed another appointment. Planning to drive to a north suburb, you instead got on the southbound expressway and after 15 minutes of Loop traffic realized your error. You’re mixing up words and forgetting too […]
Best Financial/Health Advice Part 4: Prescription Drugs
For Part 3 in this series, click here. I know you’re all tired of the word collusion and especially the notion of government collusion, but let’s face facts. If there’s any single part of our egregiously expensive healthcare system in which the US federal government has given carte blanche to a single industry to rob […]
Disappointments With Testosterone
For 80 (!) years physicians have prescribed testosterone to men without being certain if it actually had any effect other than raising testosterone levels. The only FDA-approved indication for testosterone is pathological hypogonadism, in which there’s an actual disorder of the male reproductive system that results in the body not producing enough testosterone. Examples are testicular […]
The Flu
It’s here, folks. You’ve likely had the flu in the past and if you’re currently coming down with symptoms you’re not looking forward to the next few days. Your throat hurts, your nose is first watery, then clogged with something approximating cement. Your muscles ache and you’re pretty sure you have a fever, but you’re […]
The Saga of Dr. 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 35 years ago and then seemed to vanish. But completely disappear? Hardly. Based on what I’ve been reading online, it’s a safe […]
Pain Management Specialists Get A Reality Check
The front-and-center coverage of America’s opioid crisis is certainly affecting the two groups most involved: physicians and people in chronic pain. There are so many rules and restrictions on opioid prescribing that many physicians simply don’t bother any more, referring their chronic pain patients to pain management (PM) specialists. As well-intentioned as PM physicians may […]
130/80: What The New High Blood Pressure Guidelines Mean For You
You might not have known it, but last Monday, November 13, 2017, you may have awakened with high blood pressure (hypertension). Don’t feel alone. A massive increase in the number of people with hypertension occurred overnight when the definition of high blood pressure was officially changed from 140/90 (and higher) to 130/80 (and higher). I’m […]
Functional Medicine 101 + Introducing Dr. Alaina Gemelas
Functional Medicine is without a doubt the fastest growing medical specialty of the 21st century. Public interest in it and public acceptance of it continues to please me. Every day I hear the sentence, “I made this appointment because I wanted a functional approach.” When I ask patients how they learned about it, the answer […]
Your First Step For Any (Any!) Chronic Symptoms
Here’s an unfortunate trend: more and more young people (at my age, everyone under 50 is young) are troubled by chronic physical and emotional symptoms. Sometimes there’s a diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s, fibromyalgia. But just as often there are plenty of symptoms and no diagnosis. I can’t count how many times patients have […]
Your Text-Neck and Smartphone Chin(s)
For nearly four decades I’ve lived literally on the campus of DePaul University and every day hundreds of students walk past my house. From my bedroom window, I can look across the street into their classrooms (I imagine that the students looking back see an aging man in pajamas). Except for the fact that I […]
Welcoming (Back) Christine Savas
It’s a source of pride when one of our staff employees, like a medical assistant or someone working in patient or financial services, thinks, “I like WholeHealth Chicago and I like what they do. I’m going back to school and returning as a health professional.” Twenty five years ago, our very first employee, Mari Stecker, managed […]
Preparing for Less Daylight and Seasonal Depression (SAD)
My staff and I brace ourselves for the autumn day when clocks are set back an hour and the already dwindling sun-filled days diminish to darkness at 5 p.m. Add the overcast skies of winter and the “I’m NOT going outside” bitter cold, and we all may wonder why we’re not living in Santa Barbara. […]
Meet Our New Naturopathic Doctor: Caley Scott, ND
It wouldn’t surprise me if you didn’t know much about naturopathy. There aren’t many naturopaths in the US and the 5,000 or so we do have are mostly located along the east and west coasts, seriously outnumbered by 800,000 MDs and 100,000 DOs (osteopaths). Just to remind you: these are difficult days for health care […]
Women and ADHD, Part 2: Can I Treat This Without Meds?
“I lose my keys endlessly. I pay big bucks in unnecessary late fees on bills that I put down somewhere and just forget about. After I finished college, I never read another book–it was just too much work. I can cope with a magazine article, but hardly ever remember what I’ve read. I even have […]