I hope you never have to hear these words from any doctor. Dismissive and ending anything useful you hoped from a consultation. You scheduled this appointment months earlier. You wanted help for longstanding and unexplained symptoms. But you’re also not stupid. You actually have an idea what might be wrong. You’ve read a book or […]
Category: Chronic Fatigue
Updates On Anti-Aging Medicine And Dementia Prevention
Taurine. Never heard of it, right? It’s an amino acid, one of the building blocks of protein, and helps digestive, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and nervous system functions. However, we require more taurine than we can manufacture, so deficiencies are possible. Fortunately, plenty of taurine is found in protein foods: meat, poultry, dairy, seafood, and yes, vegans […]
Women and ADD: Part 2 of 2
In my last Health Tip, we discussed Claire, a woman in her thirties with attention deficit disorder (ADD), reviewing lifestyle and non-medication approaches. This week, I’ll go over the conventional medications used for this very common condition (estimated at 5% of the population). Let me start by saying that untreated ADD, in both children and […]
Women and ADD: Part Two
In my last Health Tip, we discussed Claire, a woman in her thirties with attention deficit disorder (ADD), reviewing lifestyle and non-medication approaches. This week, I’ll go over the conventional medications used for this very common condition (estimated at 5% of the population). Let me start by saying that untreated ADD, in both children and […]
The Loneliest, Saddest Patients In America
Imagine this: one night, you awaken from sleep feeling itchy all over. You scratch and scratch, eventually getting back to sleep. The next day, you feel like your skin is crawling. Your hair just doesn’t feel like your hair. A few days later, you see skin lesions on different parts of your body. You go […]
“So Many of My Relatives Have Alzheimer’s—I’m Scared.”
Jeanette, sitting across from me, was genuinely frightened about her future. Yes, she did have several elderly relatives with what she was calling “Alzheimer’s”, but I quickly pointed out that not all causes of dementia are due to Alzheimer’s Disease and much of dementia is both preventable and reversible. I asked what steps she had […]
Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation
You’ll see ultraviolet lamps in many areas of hospitals and medical centers used in a variety of ways. Doctors began to appreciate the healing powers of ultraviolet light as far back as the early years of the 20th century. In 1903, Dr. Niels Finsen won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for curing lupus of the skin with ultraviolet violet. To this day, dermatologists rely on external UV for psoriasis and certain skin cancers. But sterilizing medical equipment, or treating psoriasis, use UV externally.
Infusions At Wholehealth Chicago #1: Ozone Therapy: What It Is And How Doctors Use It
If you’ve been to either of our centers, I’m sure you’ve seen the large leather recliner chairs, often containing a patient, busy on their smartphone, tablet or reading a book and on the receiving end of an intravenous drip. Over the next few Health Tips, I’ll be talking about what these infusions are used for […]
You Know It’s Time To Change Doctors When…
Despite waiting weeks for an appointment and filling out all those forms, you can tell from the get-go, you’re being regarded as an inconvenience. Maybe, despite your persistent symptoms, you “look” too healthy to have anything seriously wrong with you and your new doctor has scheduled you for a cursory history/physical/basic blood work before she […]
Wholehealth Chicago Partners With Chicago’s Finest Trigger Point Therapy Team
Let me tell you about Mary Biancalana and the value of myofascial trigger point therapy. A lifelong fitness expert and personal trainer, in her early thirties Mary found herself with chronic headaches. First, she was told they were ‘psychological,’ then a manifestation of a little understood term called “trigger points” and another condition she’d never […]
May, June, July: Covid, Ticks, Long Haul, Chronic Lyme, What Next? Oh My!!
COVID-19 is certainly still with us. Last week, the U.S. death toll crossed the one million mark. Suburban Evanston returned to the high-risk zone for COVID transmission, yet much of Illinois, especially downstate, remains woefully unvaccinated (only 37% are VAXed and boosted). I receive at least three or four emails a day, variations on “flu-like […]
Longevity Medicine: How We Age
Gerontology is the scientific study of aging. It’s a relatively new field, pretty well dominated by research PhDs. Certainly it’s a science that was virtually nonexistent when I was in medical school, back when preventive medicine itself got little more than lip service. With the recent arrival of anti-aging medicine/longevity medicine, MDs started paying more […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 16: A Hidden Cancer
Yes, cancer is a scary topic. Most primary care doctors, this one at least, know that when a patient comes in for evaluation of a symptom she can’t figure out, a symptom that isn’t going away (like chronic fatigue), a symptom for which she’s been told, “We can’t find anything wrong with you,” at least […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 15: Long Covid
Doctors who work with patients who have chronic fatigue, chronic Lyme, and fibromyalgia have remarked on the similarity between people with these conditions and those suffering the frequently disabling symptoms of long Covid. Like chronic Lyme, in which many patients don’t remember either a tick bite or Lyme disease, patients with all the features of […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 14: Sugar (Yep, Sugar)
Picture a bowl filled with granulated sugar and a can of Coke next to it. How many rounded teaspoonfuls of sugar do you need to scoop from that bowl to equal the sugar in your Coke? Five? Ten? It’s 16. Yes, 16 teaspoonfuls of sugar in a single can. But, you think to yourself, I […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 13: Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
Most often, even before patients realize they’ve developed multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), its very first manifestation is fatigue, the sense of feeling deeply tired all the time. MCS is yet another condition I learned nothing about during my internal medicine residency, and when I asked the then-chief of allergy at Northwestern about it, he dismissed […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 12: Candida (Yeast) Overgrowth
Back in 1993, several weeks before the opening of what would come to be called WholeHealth Chicago, I was summoned to the office of the chief of medicine at the hospital where I was a staff member. The chief had heard rumors I was opening a center that would combine conventional and alternative practitioners. Seeing […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 11: Your Sluggish Liver
Spread your left hand across your upper abdomen. Beneath it lies your liver, the largest organ in your body. Liver metabolism is so complex that the late medical essayist Lewis Thomas, MD, wrote “Nothing would save me and my liver if I were in charge…for I am considerably less intelligent than my liver.” And yet […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 10: The Tick Bite You Don’t Remember
You’re 11 years old. Or 16. Or 30. Like most Chicagoans, you regard Wisconsin and Michigan as places that exist to rent us cabins for fishing, swimming, and hiking in the woods. But after a weekend breathing the fresh air, you return home and find yourself feeling sick: headache, fever, achy. Also, you’ve got a […]
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 9: Mold-Related Illness
Mold-related illness was first described almost 50 years ago when it was labeled sick building syndrome. It was met with incredible hostility from the medical profession (because there were no positive test results to verify any diagnosis) and from employers and building owners (who thought affected people were seeking financial gain or special favors). What […]