Does anyone remember the late director Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”? A deranged US Air Force officer manages to launch a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union (now Russia). When the president calls in the Russian ambassador to apologize for this embarrassment, the […]
Category: Healthy Lifestyle
Achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle can include visits with a lifestyle medicine provider, nutrition counseling, meal planning, stress management and exercise and sleep plans.
How To Make Your Child Smarter
I was at the magazine rack at my local health club, about to grab something from among the tattered copies of Self, Men’s Health, Bazaar, and Modern Bride, when I discovered, peeping from behind its fellows, a pristine and virtually unread copy of Perspectives on Psychological Science, subtitled “A Journal of the Association for Psychological […]
All Hail The Bean!
What a pleasant surprise to open this week’s Archives of Internal Medicine and find the results of a trial on the benefits of eating legumes–beans, lentils, and chickpeas. This was a real clinical trial, working with a group of people who had mild Type 2 diabetes. During the three-month study period, half the enrollees ate […]
Helmet-Free Biking (Sometimes)
Chicago is in the process of selecting where to locate some 300 racks for its new bike-sharing program, delayed until Spring 2013 by politics (which will come as no surprise to any true Chicagoan). Modeled after similar programs in Canada and Europe, the bike-share program is simple. The racks are stocked with rental bikes. Swipe […]
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 […]
You, the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay
Back in the 19th century, the physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote the cheerful poem “The Deacon’s Masterpiece or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay.” The poem tells of a deacon who wanted to build a perfect shay, a popular two-wheeled carriage drawn by a horse, one that would last 100 years. He did so, […]
A Good Night’s Sleep
You may have discovered as you travel this weary road of life that you’re not sleeping quite as well as you did as when you were younger. Gone are the glory days when you fell asleep listening to a bedtime story and then, suddenly, it’s morning! What happened? “Why,” you ask (and probably too often), […]
The Two-Bag Syndrome
During my training as a physician, and there’s no reason to believe this has appreciably changed for young doctors now, I was taught that if you saw a patient in your office for a medical problem of any sort she’d leave dissatisfied if she didn’t receive a prescription. “Reaching for your prescription pad,” the professor […]
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 […]
A Paradigm Shift
Brace yourselves. Wear comfortable shoes. Like it or not, you’re about to participate in a paradigm shift in health care. A two-page article tucked into last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reporting on the results of physician surveys about the Affordable Care Act reflects a genuine paradigm shift. First, let’s clarify the […]
Hospitals, Health Spas, and Feeling Great
Posted 04/16/2012 Here’s a good general rule for the rest of your life: all things considered, you’re better off avoiding hospitals and instead, every year or so, checking yourself into a resort/health spa for a few days. Personally, I don’t care much for hospitals. Whenever one of my patients ends up in one (fortunately a […]
Good News…And The Bad
Posted 03/26/2012 I recently saw a documentary about comedienne Joan Rivers. At one point, she shows viewers her “joke room,” which contains an entire wall filled with her joke files. Among them is a drawer packed with good news/bad news jokes. Most of us feel anxiety when someone says, “I’ve got good news and bad […]
Temperature Test for Hypothyroidism
RATIONALE: There is considerable evidence that blood tests fail to detect many causes of hypothyroidism (under-active thyroid). It appears that many individuals have ‘tissue resistance’ to thyroid hormone. Therefore, their body may need more thyroid hormone, even though the amount in their blood is normal or even on the high side of normal. A low […]
Younger Than 45? You May Press Delete Now
Ours being a youth-oriented culture is a cliché. Yet at a certain point in our lives we may neither know nor care who the Grammy winners were, be indifferent to the screen resolution of the latest iPad, and in the mirror realize those pricey anti-aging supplements aren’t working as magically as advertised. All this is […]
For Better Brain + Memory, Remember This
When our patients make a wish list of what they’d like most for their health, maintaining an active, creative, and well-functioning brain always scores near the top. By the time we hit our 30s, we accept that we may not be the smartest people on the planet. There will always be someone else who grasps […]
Antibiotics: Maximize Benefits, Minimize Intestinal Backlash
Posted 02/20/2012 Patients seem to be divided equally in their attitude toward antibiotics. Either they love ‘em, remembering relief from a painful bladder infection, a nagging cough, or clogged sinuses, or they hate ‘em, recalling minimal relief along with lots of diarrhea and/or an industrial-strength vaginal yeast infection. That first group often progresses to what […]
Death By Cupcake
Happy Valentine’s Day! People who know me will say today’s health tip on the dangers of sugar is just typical, badgering innocent people on a holiday dedicated to love, romance, and dessert. Before we get started, let me pull out my two favorite passive-aggressive chestnuts: “I’m just looking out for your best interests” and “I […]
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 […]
Physicians as Morons
I do know that title sounds judgmental, perhaps even harsh, but sometimes you wonder if there might not be a bevy of physicians who received their education online at the University of Phoenix, or their medical licenses by having a relative in Springfield.