Most often, even before patients realize they’ve developed multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), its very first manifestation is fatigue, the sense of feeling deeply tired all the time. MCS is yet another condition I learned nothing about during my internal medicine residency, and when I asked the then-chief of allergy at Northwestern about it, he dismissed […]
Category: Internal Medicine
Internal medicine is a medical specialty that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of nonsurgical conditions in adults. Internists also promote preventive medicine including healthful eating, weight reduction, smoking cessation, and regular exercise.
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 4: Vitamin Deficiencies
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 […]
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 […]
My Favorite Supplement: Magnesium
Along with most things relating to good nutrition, I wasn’t taught much of anything about supplemental magnesium either in medical school or during my internal medicine residency. It was a professional clinical nutritionist I met during a long-ago meeting of the American Holistic Medical Association who first told me, “You’ll never go wrong if you […]
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 […]
WholeHealth Chicago IV Therapies: Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI)
You should know that we follow the CDC safety guidelines and that all IV therapies are administered in a sanitized room by an appropriately attired staff member. You’ll be alone in the room during your 30- to 45-minute IV session, so bring something to read. I was as surprised as everyone else, including Anthony Fauci, […]
Taking Care of Yourself while Staying Home
Seeing Your Chiropractic Physician via Telemedicine? Absolutely! I know what you’re thinking. ‘How can you possibly give me an adjustment during a video conference?’ The short answer is I can’t, but when coming to our office for an in-person appointment is difficult or impossible, I can continue to help. As a chiropractic physician, I’ve been […]
Covid-19 Testing: What Will It Cost You?
The short answer is that as of this writing—9 am Sunday, March 8, 2020–no one seems to know. Two laboratory giants, LabCorp and Quest, are distributing tests next week, probably enough for our immediate needs. Vice president Pence, appointed by the president as the Covid-19 czar, has said “With regard to the cost, let me […]
The Must-Have Digestive Tests of Functional Medicine
I hope you’ve been intrigued by the Health Tips on Functional Medicine we’ve written in the past month. It’s especially provocative that a growing number of physicians, as well as the Cleveland Clinic, are using functional medicine tests when challenged by a patient with longstanding, unexplained chronic symptoms whose conventional test results have been negative. […]
Getting Tough With Your Immune System
No reasonable physician (I modestly include myself here) can refrain from crowing delightedly when a 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 respiratory tract infections, […]
How To Get Off Statins
Getting off statins is easy. Stop swallowing the pill. If you’re not in a potentially high-risk group (as described below) and your doc prescribed a statin to get your cholesterol down a bit, you won’t have a heart attack or a stroke that day or week or probably that decade.
Pushing Your Wellness Exam Into The 21st Century
Patients ask me, “What about those wellness exams my health insurance company says I’m entitled to every year at no cost?” Bad news. Let’s review one of life’s basic rules: you get what you pay for. What you receive during your short wellness visit (what many consider a sacrosanct ritual that boosts longevity) is little […]
Revealed: Why Susan Can’t Lose Weight
Susan sat across from me and I could see her chin quivering as she tried to hold back the tears. “I am trying so hard to lose weight, doctor! Look at my diet diary. I’m at the gym almost every day. My thyroid numbers are perfect. And so what happens? This past month I actually […]
Controversial Diagnosis #1: Fibromyalgia
I encountered my first significant controversial diagnosis when we opened WholeHealth Chicago in the mid-1990s. The concept of combining conventional and alternative medicine was new to the Midwest and right away we began seeing patients who came to us with chronic symptoms but no solid diagnosis. One group that stood out was made up of […]
The Saga of Dr. Lasko
I need to complete the chronicle of Keith Alan Lasko, MD, begun last week in my Health Tip Pigs At A Trough with the story of the physician who wrote The Great Billion Dollar Medical Swindle some 35 years ago and then seemed to vanish. But completely disappear? Hardly. Based on what I’ve been reading online, it’s a safe […]
Pigs At A Trough
I regularly revisit the 2013 Time Magazine Special Report “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” with the same conflicted feeling I had at about age six when I learned that something painful, like picking a scab or jiggling a loose tooth, also afforded a secret pleasure that could not be shared with friends. Time’s revelations […]
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 […]
WholeHealth Chicago Is Expanding Its Staff!
WHOLEHEALTH CHICAGO, the Midwest’s oldest and largest center for integrative, alternative, and functional medicine, is expanding its staff to accommodate our rapidly growing patient base. We are seeking:A physician (MD or DO, Family Practice or Internal Medicine, Board Eligible or Board Certified) who feels confident with conventional medicine and equally at ease practicing functional medicine and […]
Worrisome Dementia Report For Women and Steps To Take
We’ve always known there was a higher rate of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in women than in men, initially attributed to the fact that women live longer and that the decline in mental function occurred with age. This turned out to be wrong. At 65, a woman has a greater than one-in-six chance of […]
Seriously Spooky Sugar
When you walk into a Walgreens (“at the corner of happy and healthy”) and make your way past the cigarette section, you’ll soon hit the candy aisle. Halloween’s coming up and there are, without exaggeration, at least a thousand big bags of candy for you to pass out to unsuspecting children. This year, don’t do […]