You might be surprised how many of the health and medical facts we accept unquestioningly today are exactly the opposite of what my chosen profession recommended to the public back when I began my training. For example, most doctors (as well as the AMA) did not believe smoking caused lung cancer and the doctors lounge […]
Category: Functional Medicine
Functional medicine is an individualized approach to medicine that focuses on the underlying causes and prevention of serious chronic disease rather than disease symptoms.
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 3: Your Adrenal Glands
Patricia is 33, happily married as far as marriages go, one daughter, steadily employed in a less-than-satisfying corporate job, good eating habits, and, until recently, a health club goer a couple/three times a week. Then the lockdown came and it’s been hard to restart her workouts. After a long day working at her computer, aerobics […]
Chronic Fatigue/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Fibro and Covid-19
Regular readers of British mystery novels from the 1930s and 1940s are familiar with the old trick where the detective actually turns out to be the murderer. Or where Character A, innocent and charming, is none other than Character B, the poisoner. In other words, the villain can be highly elusive, and every once in […]
Your Blue Poop: An Easy At-Home Test of Gut Health
Anyone who has ever visited a WholeHealth Chicago Functional Medicine practitioner knows that lots of questions focus on digestion. The reason for this goes all the way back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who is alleged to have said “All disease begins in the gut.” This concept is not at all taught in medical […]
Jonathan Toews, Covid-19, and CIRS
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Chicago Blackhawks captain, his long illness, and the good news that he’s back on the ice. After saying in December that feeling drained and lethargic had kept him from playing, the three-time Stanley Cup Champion said last week that he had CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Never heard of it? […]
What Supplements Do You Take, Dr E?
It’s a question I’m asked with some regularity. Last week, when I told you about our new WholeHealth Supplement Plans for personalized monthly supplement delivery (which we started offering yesterday), I ended that Health Tip by mentioning that I swallow 18 supplements twice a day. You might have thought it weird and/or nauseating. But, hey, […]
Gut Restoration: Repairing Your Microbiome
At one time, conventional physicians simply did not believe in the concept of intestinal dysbiosis, in which the intestinal tract has an unhealthful mix of the 100 trillion bacteria thriving within it. This population of bacteria is called the microbiome, a word for years ignored in medical schools and barely recognized by gastroenterologists. It was […]
How To Slow Aging and Track Your Results
Most people figure they must be getting older based on how they feel and look. We wince at our first grey hair, deepening wrinkles, and shifting body fat. We huff and puff climbing the stairs, forget names, and occasionally leak fluids. We relate to the line from a Leonard Cohen song, “I ache in the […]
Commonly Missed Diagnoses: Parasites
If internet scare tactics from companies selling herbal supplements for parasites aren’t enough, the show “Monsters Inside Me” with its toe-curling film clips clinches it. With this show, we’re in alien-versus-predator mode, though you might ask which one is us and which them. Those really large parasites you see wriggling across your flat screen as […]
Commonly Overlooked Diagnoses: The Subtleties of PMS
Several women’s health websites place the number of symptoms attributable to premenstrual syndrome (PMS) at 150. I personally think that’s an undercount. I really began to appreciate this some years ago when a young woman came to see me with recurring hives. Out of the blue, she’d awaken from sleep covered in large red itchy […]
Commonly Missed Diagnosis: Early Autoimmune Disease
Amazingly enough, there are more than 100 different autoimmune conditions, which collectively are responsible for more chronic illness and disability in women than heart disease and cancer combined. Men can get autoimmune diseases too, but the predominance in women (2:1) is striking and also puzzling, though current thinking attributes this susceptibility to a combination of […]
Getting The Lead Out (And A Further Word About Immunization)
I’ll bet you didn’t know that Chicago has by far the worst problem with lead exposure in the entire US. It’s now estimated that fully 80% of our underground pipes are lined with lead. This means we’re all exposed to potentially toxic lead levels and the accompanying health risks. You’ll recall from last week’s Health […]
Get The Lead Out (And Other Toxic Metals Too)
In last week’s Health Tip we discussed the chemical swill accumulating in your body from a variety of sources, some obvious and some not. This week we’re looking at heavy metal toxicity. For those who were otherwise preoccupied that day in high school chemistry, the heavy metals are a group of especially dense metals or […]
The Chemical Swill Accumulating In Your Body
I was pleased with the election of Joe Biden, not least because we might end (and start reversing) the more than 100 pollution rollbacks that the Trump administration has initiated in favor of corporate polluters. However, I was genuinely disheartened to learn that his current EPA lackeys recently finalized a rule that will sabotage any […]
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 […]
Surge Protection
A confession: I’ve never done well with authority figures. Those who know me, the mildest and gentlest of souls, would never guess that years back I had issues with various medical associations and physician groups about such “controversial” notions as having conventional and alternative practitioners working together or actually treating (again, “controversial”) diagnoses like chronic […]
Brain Fog and What To Do About It, Part 1
You can’t remember the name of the Netflix movie you saw just last night, literally hours ago. And that actor–what was his name? He was in, you know, that other movie. You think it was a thriller, but maybe a war movie. Then you get a notice from Verizon that they’re turning off your phone […]
Welcome Nurse Practitioner Rachel Gates + Lifestyle Medicine 101
This week we welcome Rachel Gates, NP, to WholeHealth Chicago, where she joins nurse practitioners Katie McManigal and Wendy Ploegstra. Like Wendy, Rachel is specially trained in a new (and desperately needed) branch of healthcare called Lifestyle Medicine. More about that later. Indiana-born and raised, Rachel began her education at Purdue University, earning her RN […]
Functional Medicine 101 + Introducing Dr. Parisa Samsami
Functional Medicine (FM) is without a doubt the fastest growing medical specialty of the 21st century. Public interest and broad public acceptance of it continue 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 is […]
The Heartburn That Wouldn’t Quit
Dierdre had written “I want to get off my heartburn medicine” on her WholeHealth Chicago intake form. This, by the way, was a tele-med appointment. I’ve actually never met her in person. We changed Dierdre’s name to respect her privacy, but her story is worth sharing. Dierdre was in her 30s and had been working […]