No reasonable physician (I modestly include myself here) can refrain from crowing delightedly when a new clinical study confirms the value of a treatment he or she had been using for years, even if that treatment had contradicted prevailing standards. Ever since I learned something about natural medicine, I’ve been reluctant to prescribe antibiotics for […]
Category: Healing Touch
Healing touch is a holistic energy medicine therapy that taps into the body’s innate wisdom so it can heal itself. It facilitates physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health without medication, helping alleviate symptoms and addressing the root causes of illnesses and imbalances.
A Baffling Mystery: Treating Pain and Depression
We definitely treat a lot of patients with chronic pain and chronic depression at WholeHealth Chicago. I could list the potential sources of all this pain, all this depression, but why bother? If pain or depression melt away your joie de vivre, we try to help. Depending on personal preferences, we offer a variety of […]
Winter Without Depression: A Workshop
As the clocks roll back and the first snow falls, you pull out winter gear right along with your annual dread of the bone chilling, windy darkness of a typical Chicago winter. Walking and other outdoor activities are challenging if not impossible. Driving, parking, and waiting for public transportation are a real annoyance, and many […]
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 […]
Your Body Keeps Score
This may be an emotionally difficult Health Tip for some of you. Imagine you’re a small child and for as long as you can remember, no one’s face has ever lit up with a smile when you walked into a room. In fact, to avoid being struck by a family member, you’ve learned a variety […]
A Bit of Chicago Medical History: Naprapathy
In what was probably a self-referential moment, Saul Bellow, Chicago’s Nobel Prize winning novelist, once remarked that Chicagoans rarely acknowledge their heroes. Well today I bring you a new candidate. Beyond a small circle of naprapathic physicians, it’s unlikely many of us have ever heard of Dr. Oakley Smith, who, as a young chiropractor in […]
Why A Wellness Check Won’t Keep You Well
For many years, you couldn’t use your health insurance for a check-up. The attitude of health insurance companies was essentially that they were available when you got sick, period. But if you were just fine? “Don’t call us.” To make their point especially clear, if you did visit your doctor for a check-up and she […]
Are You The Canary in Our Coal Mine?
The canary in the coal mine had its literal origins in the mining industry. In order to test for toxic gases, miners would lower a caged canary into a mine shaft. Bringing up a dead songbird meant humans wouldn’t be descending that shaft. The metaphor remains apt because, even today, some of us are the […]
Bowen Technique
What Is It? An extremely gentle form of bodywork, the Bowen Technique was developed in Geelong, Australia, soon after World War II by Tom Bowen (1916-1982), a self-taught masseur. Over the course of many years, Bowen developed a precise sequence of delicate moves across muscles, tendons, and connective tissues, which are performed with great precision […]
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 […]
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.
Fibromyalgia: An Almost Natural Approach
One of the best ways to envision fibro is as a generalized anxiety disorder of the muscles, initially triggered by a stressful event and then perpetuated by the pain of the muscles themselves.
Thoughts on Infertility, Part 1
I don’t care much for the infertility industry, and let me say right up front that I know some of you are deeply grateful to it for helping you create your precious child. I love kids too. I simply don’t care for the business that infertility has become.
My first issue with infertility clinics is their utter lack of interest when it comes to approaches less drastic than all the tests, hormones, and surgical procedures. Part of the problem is the gynecologists themselves. Largely because of malpractice fears (their premiums are breathtaking), gynecologists follow the straight and narrow menu of high-tech fertility enhancers. However, it’s worth mentioning too that infertility centers are businesses that wouldn’t make as much money offering nutritional counseling as they do by performing in vitro fertilization.
Natural Healing from Trauma
Click here for the Health Tip link. Since the Vietnam War, there has been a growing awareness that modern warfare produces terrible psychological wounds. Last year, a RAND corporation study found that 20% of soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). That’s 300,000 soldiers. PTSD symptoms typically include nightmares, […]
Cayenne
Thought to have originated in Cayenne, French Guiana, cayenne is a spice derived from several varieties of dried hot peppers in the Capsicum species. Cayenne is a relative of the mild bell pepper used in salads and also of the fiery peppers found in chili powders and hot sauces, but it has no connection to black table pepper. Used for centuries by cooks around the world to add “heat” to traditional dishes, cayenne has gained a solid reputation both as a painkiller and digestive aid.
Therapeutic Touch
Therapeutic touch is a healing technique in which a practitioner’s hands are passed in wavelike motions inches above a person’s body. (Despite the name, the practitioner typically does not make contact with the body, although some practitioners do include physical touch.) It is believed that by doing therapeutic touch, the practitioner can break up a person’s energy blockages and thus improve health and well-being.
Shiatsu
Shiatsu is a Japanese form of massage therapy (the word shiatsu means “finger pressure” in Japanese). Advocates say the practice promotes health and healing by correcting energy imbalances in the body.
Reiki
Reiki (pronounced “ray-kee”) is a therapeutic technique in which healing energy is channeled, or conducted, through a practitioner’s hands into the person receiving the treatment. It is believed that Reiki brings the body into emotional and spiritual balance, supporting the body’s natural ability to heal itself.
Reflexology
Reflexology is a technique in which pressure is applied to specific points on the feet (and sometimes the hands) to promote relaxation and improve overall health. Proponents of reflexology believe that the foot surface contains a coded map of the entire body and that particular points on the feet correspond to particular organs, glands, and body systems. Pressing these points with the fingers and thumbs is thought to encourage healthy functions in the corresponding areas of the body.
Qigong
Qigong (pronounced “chee gung”) is an ancient Chinese discipline that uses breathing, meditation, visualization, and repetitive physical exercises to cleanse and strengthen the body. Translated from the Chinese, qigong literally means “working with energy.” It is believed that this form of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) promotes health and vitality by strengthening the flow of qi (energy) throughout the body.