On our patient questionnaire at WholeHealth Chicago, we list a lot of symptoms that people can mark if they want help with them. Since bad breath appears as a concern so frequently, I thought I might save you some unnecessary anxieties.
Category: Knowledge Base
Acne and Diet
When I was a teenager, where acne was concerned I was convinced there was a conspiracy between doctors and parents. It seemed like everything we kids enjoyed eating would cause my face to explode. Greasy foods were taboo, and everything delicious was greasy: burgers, pizza, fries. Sugar? I don’t recommend it, but I lived on the stuff, especially soft drinks and chocolate.
The Upside of Low Serotonin
A new patient visited our center recently, writing on our intake form “need to get my serotonin higher.” She’d read The Triple Whammy Cure and felt that she’d been making progress on her own. However, she was still mildly depressed, craved carbs, and had low energy. If you’ve read my book, you all know the rest.
Exercise and Weight Loss
The Time Magazine article that ran last week was food for thought for people who exercise regularly. Let’s face it, many of us who work out aren’t doing so to boost mood, enhance mental skills, prevent Alzheimer’s disease, or reduce heart attack risk–all of which exercise does–but rather to lose weight.
Healthy Living is the Best Revenge
In a recent health tip I commented that we Americans hadn’t learned much when it comes to taking care of ourselves.
Sturm and Drang at Whole Foods
Click here for the original post. Sometime during the past couple of weeks you may have caught a downwind draft from the tempest stirred up by a Wall Street Journal editorial written by the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. To set the stage and let you know immediately where he stood, Mackey opened with […]
Case Study: Melanie’s PMS Hell
Click here for the original post. A smart woman in her mid forties, Melanie had written “Bad PMS” neatly on our patient intake form, and then gone on to trace the word “Bad” several times with her pen and underlined it. Until about ten years ago, the odds were stacked against women like Melanie, trying […]
Health Care Reform and You (and Me)
As the Washington battles over health care reform continue, these past weeks have left me seriously conflicted. My moods swing between glee at the thought of health care reform and gloom as it seems we’ve once again capitulated our country’s needs to corporate bottom lines. You’d think that as a lifetime Chicagoan, I’d be used to this by now.
Functional Medicine
Functional medicine is personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes instead of symptoms for serious chronic disease. It is a science-based field of health care that is grounded in the following principles:
Learning to Say No
Click here for the Health Tip link. I have a group of chronically stressed patients who share one characteristic: their utter inability to say the word no, as in “Sorry, but no, I just don’t have time for that.” This group can be recognized by their fixed smiles, even as they’re relating stories of stress-related […]
Walking Away From Chronic Stress (and Three Useful Herbs)
Today I’m going to skip over the obvious suggestions: meditation, yoga, self hypnosis, biofeedback, relaxation recordings, and regular exercise. They’re all undeniably useful tools to alleviate the stress of your Cuisinart existence (picture yourself trying to avoid those spinning blades). I’m also going to skip over psychotherapy, another extremely good approach to chronic stress. A […]
How Stress Shortens Your Life (And What To Do About It)
Click here for the Health Tip link. If you’ve ever been curious about how your body “feels” when challenged by relentless stress, consider this experiment. Obviously, I don’t recommend you try it. Like the car ads on TV say, “Do not attempt this. A professional is driving a closed course.” I’m asking you to think […]
Second Opinions
Second Opinions
A lot of my patients recently are relating stories of having surgery that I regard as unnecessary. More charitably, these are surgical procedures whose chance for producing symptom relief is iffy at best.
Most of my fellow internists do believe that too much surgery is being performed, and that the symptoms people are hoping surgery will cure can often be handled by lifestyle changes instead.
Two New Drugs for Fibromyalgia That Actually Work
Click here for the Health Tip link. Regular readers know I’m very skeptical about the claims of new drugs, especially those advertised on TV with a voice at the end of the commercial reading the side effects at the speed of a tobacco auctioneer (I always listen carefully for “death,” that ultimate side effect). You’ll […]
Farmers Markets: The Way to Eat
In May the Chicago Tribune ran a list of strategies for making the best of your visit to the farmers market. But, honestly, most of it is common sense. My list of tips is decidedly shorter and easier to remember: 1. Do most of your food shopping there. Choose whatever fruit’s in season and eat […]
This is Your Moment (And You Didn’t Even Know It)
I’m surprised there’s been no mention in the newspapers or on TV of a newly published article from the prestigious American Journal of Medicine. Maybe it’s that we’re all suffering a bit of bad-news fatigue and the media decided to take mercy on us. Let’s face it. The conclusions from an immense survey (40,000 participants […]
Thinking Out of the Box
Posted 06/23/2009 Patients linked me to a couple of interesting articles last week, one from Newsweek (a magazine I thought no one read anymore) bashing the health advice given on Oprah’s TV show as harmful to your health because it was unscientific and unproven. The other, a thoughtful rebuttal by Dr. Deepak Chopra, was posted […]
Astonishingly Unhealthful Eating
Click here for the Health Tip link. This all began when one of the pharmaceutical reps brought in some “treats” for our staff. Bringing morning snacks is one of those strange drug company rituals that’s been occurring for decades across the US. And recently, snack dispensing is on the rise because new government restrictions make […]
Women in the Asylum
Posted 06/09/2009 I’d wanted to see The Walls, the new play now having its world premiere at Steppenwolf Garage Theatre, for both personal and professional reasons. Chicago playwright Lisa Dillman and the members of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble have created a dramatic and troubling work about women as victims of involuntary psychiatric hospital admission, once called […]
DLPA (D, L Phenylalanine)
DLPA is a depression fighting mixture that combines two forms of the amino acid, phenylalanine. The L-portion of phenylalanine, found in protein-rich foods, bolsters mood-elevating chemicals in the brain, specifically dopamine and nor-epinephrine, while The “D” form of phenylalanine is made synthetically in a laboratory. It appears to block a nervous system enzyme that amplifies pain signals. In other words, DLPA may prevent the breakdown of the brain’s natural pain relieving chemicals. This one-two punch can relieve minor episodes of depression and chronic pain syndromes. The DLPA combo is preferable to the pure L-form, which has been associated with increases in blood pressure.