Fibromyalgia is real. The pain you awaken with is not “in your head.” You’re not even remotely a hypochondriac. If anyone–doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist, well- meaning loved one–ever tries to convince you otherwise, tune them out. They are wrong. Likewise, if anyone ever tells you fibro is incurable and you’ll just have to learn to […]
Category: Knowledge Base
The WholeHealth Healing Cave
The office lease describes our place as “lower level,” which any Chicagoan knows is a euphemism for basement. Some cities call these locations garden apartments, which generally means ground level, your apartment fair game for ants and burglars. We at WholeHealth Chicago are well below ground level. My partner Dr. Paul Rubin and I knew […]
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 […]
A Disgusting Taste in Her Mouth
Here’s another persistent patient story, a woman who endured years of symptoms and no definite answers. Then, six months ago, when her symptoms went into high gear, she knew she had to do something. I first met Claudia, a bright, healthy looking woman, just a few weeks ago. She told me her longstanding digestive symptoms […]
Health Consequences of Harassment
I’ve been tracking the health consequences of the recession among my patients. The first group of victims is obvious: those suffering the anxiety and depression that follows job loss, protracted unemployment, living on savings, cutting expenses, downsizing where they live, and, of course, losing health insurance. At the very moment these folks could benefit from […]
“Medical” Marijuana
As I recall, coming of age in the 1960s meant, among other things, social roles being more clearly defined then than now. For example, if you wanted weed, you met someone at an L stop named Bobby. For the reasonable price of $5 you felt a grass-filled baggie slide into your pocket and by the […]
Medicine’s Latest Step Backwards
Posted 10/17/2011 “Vitamins linked to higher odds of early death in older women,” the headlines screamed last week. I finished an anxious call from my 88-year-old Aunt Hildy. Once peacefully ensconced in her Florida condo, now, after seeing a TV news report that vitamins were dangerous when used by women over 62, Hildy was eyeing […]
A Bubble About To Burst
Posted 10/03/2011 In ancient literature, the Romans went to the ageless Cumaean Sybil for prophetic advice and apparently she had a good track record. My friends consider me the antithesis of the Cumaean Sybil. My stock predictions doom a company. Oscar-wise, Ebert beats me to a pulp every year, and sporting events and elections fare […]
Hey Doc, When Are You Going to Write Up My Case?
I hear this question virtually every time I see Alan, an extremely healthy, energetic man in his forties who could easily pass for someone in his twenties. He comes to the office once a year for a check-up (he’s always just fine), but since we cross paths at our health club I’m reminded about his “case” fairly often.
I Think My Mind Is Going
It’s fairly common, actually. You walk into a room suddenly befuddled, wracking your brain, desperate to remember just why you came to this room in the first place. Or you’re telling someone about a movie you just saw the night before, really enjoyed, and now you’re clawing at your cerebral cortex trying to extricate the title, the actor, the name of the theatre.
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.
Lady Gaga, Madonna, Andy Warhol, and Me
There’s an exhibit opening next month at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London entitled “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990.” You’re puzzled, I’m sure, by how a subject as confusing as Postmodernism could relate to a health tip, but it actually does, in a big picture sort of way.
La Vie Francaise
With the World Health Organization ranking the United States 37th in “quality of healthcare to its citizenry,” a notch below Costa Rica but thankfully edging out Slovenia, perhaps it crossed your mind, as it did mine, how health care is delivered in the top-ranked country, France.
Empty Nose Syndrome
Never heard of it? Neither had I. Sounded more like a Sherlock Holmes story than a “condition” somebody could have. But there it was, written by the patient himself in the Reason For Visit section of our intake form. Before he actually walked into the examining room, I made a quick obeisance before my PC, fingers flying across the keys, summoning the all-powerful Wiki gods for some quick education on empty nose syndrome.
The Extraordinarily Persistent Patient
Despite my admonishments to stay well if you want to avoid the multifarious problems of our health care system, sometimes–and through no fault of your own–you’ll get sick.
Your best chance of emerging unscathed from whatever ails you is having what’s called a “self-limiting condition,” namely, one that goes away by itself, with or without doctoring. With any condition that brings the phrase “if symptoms persist, see your doctor” to mind, well, best of luck. Most of the time, the gods will be on your side, your doctor will figure out what’s wrong, and you’ll do just fine.
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.
More Sleaze from Big Pharma
I can appreciate you might be fatigued with this topic, but let’s face it: for virtually everyone, health care today means going to the doctor and coming home with a prescription.
Charcoal Grilling and Cancer: How to Reduce Your Risk
First it was smoking (then asbestos and DDT) and now charcoal grilling. One after another, life’s little pleasures are yanked from us by their statistical associations with increased cancer risk.
By now everyone’s heard about the significant connection between colorectal cancer and regular consumption of red meat (beef, pork, lamb) and processed meats (bacon, ham, sausages, cold cuts, hot dogs).
Can You Get Fried By An Airport Scanner?
Ever since 2009, when that guy smuggled plastic explosives in his Jockey shorts and tried to blow up a plane on its way to Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been pushing for full-body scanners at all airports.
Belly Fat! New Research Reveals…
Between the print and TV ads and the pop-ups scuttling like mice from the four borders of your computer screen, belly fat seems to have surpassed global warming as our next great anxiety.
It’s clear these ads are aimed at women, some of whom fall for the hucksterism of what is for many little more than an annoying physiologic change occurring during a perfect storm of dietary indiscretion, genetic predisposition, and stress. As one patient laconically remarked, “My divorce from hell took a solid year. I finally got rid of him, but in the process…” (patting her tummy with both hands) “I got myself…this!”