I can’t find the source of this quote. Maybe philosopher Bertrand Russell, but I’m not sure. Once, when asked how he’d respond if given evidence that went totally against something he’d believed for years, he answered, “I would change my mind, of course. What, sir, would you do?” It’s too bad the same can’t be […]
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.
A Gynecologist Joins The Team At WHC: Welcome Andrea Lee, MD
It may surprise you to learn that WholeHealth Chicago has been trying to find the right gynecologist to join our group for more than 16 years. “What?” you ask. “Why so long?” We did know we needed one. Just sit in our waiting room or shop the apothecary and it occurs to you that a […]
Tired All The Time? Useful Info and Two Supplements
As you might expect, fatigue is a fairly common reason people visit doctors. Feeling tired is vague symptom and can be linked to dozens of possible diagnoses, plus there’s a need to differentiate between physical fatigue and mental fatigue (brain fog) or consider both. When your doctor or nurse practitioner starts to ask questions, she’s […]
Acupuncture Getting The Respect It Deserves
Before President Nixon opened up US relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1972, Americans knew virtually nothing about acupuncture. It had been mentioned in an 1892 medical textbook by the renowned physician Sir William Osler as a treatment for sciatica, but back then opium, morphine, cocaine, and pure heroin were all available over-the-counter […]
The WholeHealth Chicago Wellness Exam
The WholeHealth Chicago Wellness Exam Patients new to WholeHealth Chicago, along with patients I’ve not seen for a while because they’ve felt good and sensibly wanted to avoid the health care system, often ask for a wellness check-up when they schedule an appointment. You’ve probably had variations of these exams throughout your life: kicking and […]
Time To Seriously Rethink Prescription Drugs
Over the past few months, you may have noticed a spate of new warnings about commonly used prescription drugs, and even non-prescription drugs. Just last week, the FDA issued urgent precautions about the serious risks of non-aspirin NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), which worldwide are probably the most overused medications of all. Go into any drugstore […]
Young Docs Vote To Suppress Alternative Medicine Info
Disappointing, but not surprising. In what’s been called a thinly veiled rebuke of physician media star Mehmet Oz, MD, delegates at this month’s meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) supported resolutions that endeavor to hold physicians responsible for advice they dispense via the media. One of the resolutions, sponsored by residents and medical students, […]
Lyme: The Latest, Part 2
Last week we looked at the fundamentals of Lyme disease and the different ways it can manifest. This week, diagnosis, treatment, and (first things last) prevention. Diagnosing Lyme The antibodies your body makes in response to infection with the Lyme spirochete underlie the two most common diagnostic tests for Lyme disease. The first antibody test […]
Clip-N-Save: Your Healthcare Under the Affordable Care Act
Posted 03/24/2014 A hip replacement should not cost $13,000 in Iowa and $130,000 in New Jersey. That’s just crazy. Virtually everyone agrees that under our existing healthcare system the price of services–from a five-minute office visit to an appendectomy–needs some kind of regulation and standardization. And yet the standardization of prices is definitely not the […]
In-Network or Out-of-Network Physician: What’s Best For You?
Few patients truly grasp what it means when your primary care physician contracts into an insurance network. Actually, until doctors (including me!) have been under contract for a few years, we’re sort of confused about it ourselves. And it doesn’t help that in-network contracts vary widely among health insurance companies. Basically, the in-network doctor has […]
Conventional Medicine Bashes Supplements (Again)
Posted 12/24/2013 The nutritional supplement industry took a few body blows this month from conventional medicine, with several reports published in the Annals of Internal Medicine regarding the effectiveness of daily vitamins and minerals. An accompanying editorial urged physicians to discourage their patients from taking supplements altogether. Moreover, the editorial suggested the government should stop […]
Welcome Dr. Kristen Donigan
This health tip is especially exciting for me as I have the pleasure of announcing that a new physician, Kristen Donigan, DO, has joined WholeHealth Chicago and is available for appointments. After a decade of trying to find my first physician associate, I felt blessed when Casey Kelley, MD, joined us, though I was concerned […]
State of Our Health Mega-Study: A Poor Report
The new movie “Elysium” is set in Los Angeles, 2154 AD, nearly 150 years into the future. The city is utterly unrecognizable, the world in chaos–over-populated and crime-ridden, destroyed by wars, pollution, and serial economic catastrophes. Most everyone is brown-skinned, speaks an interesting Spanglish, and struggles in a subsistence existence, half starved, chronically diseased, living […]
Functional Medicine Diagnosis and Treatment: Be Your Own Doctor
Posted 08/12/2012 Several previous health tips have mentioned the phrase “functional medicine” and I have a sneaking suspicion that many readers aren’t quite sure what it is, how it works, or how it differs from the conventional treatment you’ve likely been receiving all your life. Today, walk alongside me and try your hand at diagnosing […]
A Final Commonly Missed Diagnosis: Functional Symptoms
This missed diagnosis is a bit more complicated. It’s not one specific condition, like a slightly underactive thyroid or gluten intolerance. It’s about you and your doctor’s tunnel vision, the “if your only tool is a hammer, then everything around you is a nail” sort of thinking. Functional symptoms constitute a huge spectrum of missed […]
WholeHealth Chicago and Kids?
Posted 1/09/2012 The short answer is “We welcome kids”. The longer answer is we’re here if your child has a problem and you want to see if an integrative approach will help. None of us is a pediatrician and we really would prefer that your child have a primary care pediatrician or family practitioner for […]
Physician’s Guide to Fibromyalgia
This short guide accompanies my patient-directed book Healing Fibromyalgia, which is based on my experience treating more than 1,600 fibro patients. Because of the nature of this condition, and the frequent necessity of prescription drugs, I wasn’t quite sure how to get the reader’s primary care physician involved. Virtually all fibro patients need professional expertise […]
Arrogant Doctors
I’ve been curious for some time about the arrogance and rudeness in my profession. When a new patient starts to relate her health history and interrupts herself with a comment like, “The so-and-so doctor was awful” (or really unpleasant or disrespectful), I inquire “Oh? What happened?” And she’s truly glad to tell someone, especially a […]
Welcome Casey Kelley, MD
Finding Dr. Casey Kelley has been an 11-year project for me. That’s how long I’ve been scanning the horizon for the perfect holistically oriented MD associate. And believe me this project was no walk in the park.
Overall, newly minted MDs avoid primary care specialties (family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics) because by choosing one of them they’ll earn barely enough to pay off their medical school loans. Each time I’d actually locate a well-trained primary care physician, I’d quickly discover that while he or she might “like” the idea of integrative medicine the number who’d actually be willing to devote their professional career to a holistically oriented practice was excruciatingly small.
Return of the Hundred Million Dollar Pen
Last week, pocket calculator panting from exhaustion, I explained how my humble pen, along with the pens of the other 899,999 physicians in America, was responsible for paying out about $2.24 trillion every year to thousands of health care “providers.” That’s the amount the US spends annually on our essentially mediocre healthcare system.