That’s the number of titles that pops up when you enter “diet books” into amazon.com, and this reflects only books still in print. Diet books have been regularly published for more than 100 years, including such gems as the Cigarette Diet (“Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet”), The Drinking Man’s Diet, The Beautiful People’s Diet, and even The Eskimo Diet.
Category: Knowledge Base
Can I Quit My Heartburn Drug?
“As long as I’m trimming my daily prescription drugs,” remarked Mary, who had recently quit her cholesterol-lowering statin after shifting to healthful eating, “what about this Nexium? I admit I have some misgivings about stopping anything that seems to be working so well!”
I hear that a lot. Some patients have been taking a chronic heartburn drug for such a long time they don’t remember who prescribed it in the first place.
Do I Really Need My Antidepressants?
A patient I’ll call Schuyler, 31, had been using one antidepressant medication or another for more than four years and wanted to stop. As I mentioned last week, getting off prescription drugs is a fairly common reason people make appointments with us at WholeHealth Chicago.
High Blood Pressure
One of the most common reasons people give for coming to our practice is to see if there’s “something other than all these pills” they’ve been prescribed for a medical problem. I frequently hear sentences such as, “I read the side effects of this drug and think: but those are the symptoms I’m being treated for,” or “I take all these pills and I feel pretty much the same.”
Gluten Sensitivity
For years doctors were taught in medical school that gluten sensitivity and its severest form, celiac disease, were rare, identified mainly in children who were unable to absorb food. In photographs, youngsters with celiac disease looked like starving children because in fact they were starving, for nutrients. Once the diagnosis had been made and they’d been taken off all gluten grains–wheat, barley, rye, oats, kamut, and triticale–they rapidly regained weight and lived normal lives.
If You Take Thyroid Hormones
As the tens of thousands of patients who use Armour thyroid tablets have discovered, the product has simply vanished from pharmacy shelves across America. Without getting into details of why this occurred, let me say first that the product allegedly will be back sometime in mid-2010. Here’s a bit of investigative reporting on the subject. Used to treat underactive thyroid gland, Armour thyroid is often called “natural thyroid.”
Soy Foods and Breast Cancer
For the past several years, the advice given to breast cancer survivors by their oncologists simply didn’t make much sense. I must have heard this from dozens of women: “I was told to avoid soy because it would make the cancer worse.” They’d been told that soy “feeds” cancer, like adding gasoline to a smoldering […]
Hopping for Strong Bones
Although it’s the Christmas season, the title is not Shopping for Strong Bones. It is actual hopping, of the jumping-up-and-down variety. With or without a mini-trampoline (great fun, by the way, and readily available online).
Exercise researchers are spending more time these days determining which forms of exercise actually produce specific health benefits. Several weeks ago I wrote about the findings that exercise didn’t help with weight loss unless you cut calories, too.
Holiday Stress Rx: Ten Tips
December is a stressful month, especially for women and despite all the holiday cheer.
Some of you might be thinking “But he’s Jewish–what does he know about Christmas stress?” Here are my credentials: I’ve been married for many years to a Christian woman and I’ve watched as she and our extended family become fried by the stress during every holiday season. Also, my patients tell me the holidays stress them, period.
Mammogram Controversy
As if we didn’t have enough health concerns to worry about, with H1N1 flu in our midst, health insurance reform bills in the Senate, and the specter of no insurance as a consequence of the recession.
Now mammograms.
Still More on the Flu
Beyond reading the newspapers, I can tell by the number of e-mails requesting either quick information or phoned-in prescriptions for Tamiflu that the number of flu cases is rising. Despite the scary headlines (any headline about children dead of flu is truly horrifying), the overall number of fatalities remains small.
More on Infertility
Many couples struggle with issues of infertility, and last week I voiced my concern about the one-size-fits-all approach that most conventional infertility centers take, along with their reluctance to offer simple, inexpensive, and safe nutritional and alternative therapies first.
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.
Q&A: Tanning Beds to Boost Vitamin D and Serotonin?
Click here for the original post. Q: You write a lot about how sunshine increases vitamin D and serotonin. Do you recommend using a tanning bed or booth to accomplish this? A: Short answer: No. Longer answer: You shouldn’t be using ultraviolet tanning salons for anything. A World Health Organization position paper on tanning beds […]
A SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) Time of Year
Although H1N1 along with our annual “regular flu” are rightfully grabbing the headlines these days, now that it’s October we need to brace ourselves for the annual epidemic of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
Iodine and You
You don’t see many people with goiters anymore. I remember seeing them as a kid, pointing out some poor person’s huge neck to my mother while asking, “Hey, what’s growing on that woman’s neck?” before getting an educational jab in the ribs. To see a mild goiter click here.
Preventing and Treating the Flu
All in all, the news is generally good about H1N1 (swine) flu. We’ve got both a vaccine to prevent it and an antiviral prescription medicine to treat it. Epidemiologists have concluded that if you had the “regular” flu last spring, you actually have some protection from this year’s epidemic of both regular and H1N1 flu. The odds are in your favor that you won’t have two bad flu years in a row.
First Line Therapy
FirstLine Therapy is a physician-supervised approach to implementing simple lifestyle changes that can dramatically improve your overall health. The therapeutic lifestyle you’ll learn in FirstLine Therapy integrates food choices and preparation with physical activity and stress management to enhance your well-being, alleviate symptoms, help prevent chronic disease, and give you greater control of your health.
Should I get the Swine Flu Vaccine?
By now, everyone knows there are two flus this season. First, the regular seasonal flu (for which you get an annual flu shot), as always requiring a slight change in vaccine formulation to ensure it targets this year’s flu strain. The second vaccine protects against the well-publicized H1N1 virus, better known as swine flu.
The Launch of Our Updated Website
We’re pleased to announce the launch of WholeHealth Chicago’s updated website, www.wholehealthchicago.com.
At WholeHealth Chicago, our passion is integrative medicine, which merges an array of clinically proven alternative therapies with cutting-edge advances in conventional medicine. We believe providing clear and detailed information about integrative medicine is a powerful tool that can help you maintain good health and also address any problems as they occur.