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The Care and Feeding of Your Vaginal Microbiome

In our quest for well-being, we often overlook an unsung hero within us—the vaginal microbiome. While we commonly associate the term “microbiome” with our gut, it extends its influence to various corners of our body, including our skin and, yes, our vagina. This remarkable microbial community, consisting of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and even parasites, plays a pivotal role in maintaining our health. A balanced vaginal microbiome contributes to seamless digestion, a robust immune system, neurotransmitter production, and even longevity. Yet, in our well-intentioned efforts to care for our bodies, we may inadvertently disrupt this delicate ecosystem. From douching and smoking to antibiotics and unwashed sex toys, several factors can upset the harmonious balance of the vaginal microbiome. In the pages ahead, we will explore the intricacies of this often-overlooked aspect of women’s health, shedding light on the care and feeding of your vaginal microbiome, and offering insights into maintaining its delicate equilibrium.

I Just Don’t Feel Right, and My Tests Are Normal.

Readers of these Health Tips know the usual suspects we look for at WholeHealth Chicago: chronic Lyme disease, toxic mold, multiple chemical sensitivities, but to me, as a physician, the most exasperating source of symptoms are those caused by correctly taken drugs, whether over-the-counter or prescribed by another physician. Because when this is the case, […]

Why are we Getting Cancer When We’re Younger?

Throughout my earlier years as a physician, cancer was considered a diagnosis of the elderly. A person survived infectious diseases of childhood, heart and lung issues of middle age, and then, blind to the risks of smoking and having no access to colonoscopies or CAT scans, would develop cancer in her seventies or eighties and […]

NAD+: Getting Serious About Anti-Aging Therapy

We’re living in a time of major, worldwide breakthroughs when it comes to understanding how we age and also the steps we can take to not only slow down aging, but to all appearances reverse the process. Over history, the fountain of youth seekers came, literally and figuratively, to dead ends, but back then Ponce […]

Anti-Aging Medicine: Testosterone For Men, And Yes, It Really Works

In middle age, you, as a man, or your sexual partner (keeping this observation to her/himself), will likely start to notice a group of symptoms due to a slow but inevitable decline of your male hormone testosterone. As the movie director Martin Scorsese put it well, “Sex becomes memory.” Not necessarily. Not by a long […]

Heart Disease Prevention Part 3

The (alleged) BIG NEWS in health care last week, that spread through CNN, Prevention Magazine, NYT, Journal of the AMA, etc. etc., was the publication in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology which compared the cholesterol lowering effect of statins to those of several nutritional supplements (cinnamon, fish oil, garlic, red yeast rice, […]

Heart Disease Prevention Part 2: Getting Started

Checking Your Family History Most people aren’t certain what illnesses run in their family and how dangerous these might be. Probably best not to spend much time agonizing about this, unless you’re pretty sure there was an unusually excessive amount of premature deaths (50’s, 60’s) from heart disease.  Better to work mainly on yourself. Hearing […]

Covid Distracted Us, But Heart Disease Remains Our #1 Killer

About 700,000 of us will die of heart disease every year; most of which is preventable provided we become proactive patients.   But you do need to know that for most “heart patients”, dying does not come quickly, like a dart falling from the sky, fatally nailing you, as you clutch your chest, your friends desperately tapping 9-1-1 on their […]

Infusions & Supplements to Maximize Your Surgical Success

If you’ve ever undergone surgery, either “emergency” (like “we need to remove your appendix
NOW”) or “elective” (a strange term basically meaning “you can put your surgery off until it’s
convenient for either of us but let’s not forget about it”), you may remember you needed to
undergo “surgical clearance.”

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 […]

The Statistically Proven Dangers of Television Watching

There’s some interesting data in this Health Tip based on both recent and older research concerning our screen viewing habits and their effects on both mind and body. When I present you with a “number” like this one, “the average American watches 3.1 hours of TV every day” (in this, we’re highest in the world), […]

Phosphatidyl Choline (PC) an Anti-Aging Wonder Pill

You’ve likely read or heard about phosphatidyl choline somewhere, maybe online or on a bottle in a supplement aisle. Perhaps, like many of us, you could barely pronounce it and therefore disregarded it completely. It’s a good rule not to swallow anything you can’t pronounce unless someone reasonably knowledgeable and credible explains why you should. […]

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 […]

Longevity Medicine: Three New Facts And Five Anti-Aging Supplements

Scientists completely agree coffee drinking helps longevity. During these days of generally bad news (people getting shot, the Monarch butterfly population in steep decline) it is heartening to read the findings from a huge study (over 170,000 men and women with average age 55 tracked over seven years) whose “all cause death rate” was dramatically […]

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 […]

LONGEVITY MEDICINE: Chronic Inflammation and Cytokines

Did you ever wonder why some obese people, after decades of being badgered by their families and physicians to lose weight, out-live all of them and are healthy for decades? Or how someone of normal weight falls over dead in his fifties from a massive heart attack the week after his check-up which included a […]

Longevity Medicine: Take A Family Inventory

If every one of your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents made it well into their 90’s, and passed away with their bodies and minds basically intact, you can probably skip this Health Tip. Something like, “Dad was 94 and had finished chopping logs. Sat on a stump, closed his eyes and just died.” Or, “Meemaw (Grandmom was clearly from […]

Longevity Medicine: How Owning A Gun Might Shorten Your Life

My personal experience with guns is close to zero, except for coveting (and never receiving) a Daisy Red Ryder air rifle when I was about twelve years old. Otherwise, I’ve never held, much less shot, either a rifle or a handgun, nor have I ever been in a situation where I might have muttered, “If […]

The Roe Vs Wade Debacle And My Decades Dealing With Abortion

The opinions on abortion are mine and not necessarily those of the staff at WholeHealth Chicago. For Health Tip readers who have commented that I should not voice political opinions and stick to my work as a doctor, I suggest you glance at any of the websites aimed at physicians themselves. Fully one third of the […]

LONGEVITY MEDICINE: LONG TERM EXPOSURE TO LEAD

Lead is always toxic in the human body. There are no “safe” levels of lead. An atom of lead enters your body, usually though your lungs or skin, then quickly displaces another atom you really need, like zinc for your immune system, or iron to build blood, or calcium for bones, or dozens of metabolic […]