It’s best to have a positive mental attitude when struggling with a bout of simple diarrhea. It may be comforting, while you’re sitting there, to realize how none of the Beautiful People has ever been spared the experience. Believe me, the likes of Oprah, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Tom Cruise have all been there, just like you. Be philosophical and accept your body is doing its job. Your intestines are simply struggling to deal with the water you were told not to drink, the leftovers that tasted a little funny while you were eating them, or the virus which recently arrived in your neighborhood. Of course, any episode lasting more than a week, or accompanied by fever, severe cramps, or bleeding needs medical attention. As do episodes of recurrent diarrhea.
Category: Knowledge Base
Diabetes
Most of the people with diabetes that I see have the adult-onset type 2, which typically develops after age 40. Conventional medical treatment for this condition is certainly very good, and someone with well-controlled adult-onset diabetes can expect a perfectly normal life span. But too often, both physicians and patients consider diabetes a “medical problem”–meaning all a patient has to do is take his medicine, watch his sugar intake, and check in with the doctor every so often.
Depression
Usually when I hear someone complain about “feeling depressed,” it just means they’ve had a bad day or are feeling temporarily down. As a medical condition, however, depression is quite different: It’s a mood disorder that can range from mild but persistent melancholy, to alternating moods of elation and despair, to a despondency so severe that a person can even feel suicidal. Fortunately, there are lots of options for people with depression. At WholeHealth Chicago we suggest a wide range of treatments–from counseling, lifestyle changes, and natural therapies to supplements and even prescription medications.
Cuts and Scrapes
After 40 years, you’d think I would have learned how to shave without leaving a piece of my face under the razor. And when I consider the cuts and scrapes that appear out of no where on my fingers and hands, I realize that someone in my family is always shouting for a bandage. During their routine check-ups, patients are constantly showing me kneecap scabs where they embarassingly tripped on a curb, or the shin recently scraped against a coffee table, or the long scratches left by an annoyed cat. In other words, whether we’re 7 or 70, we’ll always be victims to wounds of the flesh. Our WholeHealth Chicago recommendations will not help you become more coordinated, or more adept with sharp objects, but instead we offer a few simple ways to ease the pain and speed up the healing the next time you scratch, scrape, slice, or dice yourself.
Crohn’s Disease
We don’t understand a lot about Crohn’s disease, but we do know that more and more young people are being diagnosed with it. Crohn’s is a chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. It strikes mainly adolescents and young adults, and manifests itself as abdominal pain, fever, diarrhea, and weight loss. The small intestine is primarily affected, and the patient develops real problems in absorbing important nutrients. Physicians use the anti-inflammatory drugs sulfasalazine and steroids to reduce the inflammation. As the disease seems to be related to alterations in the immune system, they sometimes add medications to suppress immunity as well. Unfortunately, the disease often progresses despite drug therapy, and surgery is frequently needed for infections and intestinal obstruction.
Cough
As any doctor will tell you, there are coughs–and then there are coughs! All coughs, though, are a response by your body to rid itself of something that wants to get out. This could be infected mucus in your lungs or the piece of popcorn that “went down the wrong tube.” Basically this means you don’t always want to interfere with the process. You feel the first type of cough, called bronchitic, deep in your chest. For these coughs, you need an expectorant to help the lungs bring up phlegm, to be “productive,” as doctors say.
Constipation
Just the way lots of people seem perpetually dissatisfied with their weight, some days everyone’s complaining about their bowels. It’s not the frequency, I tell them, or the failure to experience a daily movement that’s most important, but, rather, the comfort and ease of passage of your stool. If your passage is a struggle (and by this I mean a dried, hard movement with a lot of uncomfortable straining or a dependence on laxatives), then, yes, you are “officially” constipated. Hopefully, our WholeHealth Chicago suggestions will bring you relief.
Congestive Heart Failure
Treating congestive heart failure (CHF) is one of the first skills a young doctor learns in medical school. This process essentially involves balancing one group of medicines to clear excessive fluid (the “congestion” building up behind the weakened heart) with another group of drugs to strengthen the heart’s role as a pump. And often within a few hours many patients treated for severe CHF feel better. So despite its scary sounding name (“heart failure”) most primary-care doctors can probably sleepwalk through a treatment of CHF. But don’t you try it; CHF is definitely not in the do-it-yourself category of common ailments. However, if you agree to work with your doctor using the information from this WholeHealth Chicago Healing Center, then certain herbs, supplements, and lifestyle changes can make a positive difference.
Colds
Doctors call them “viral upper respiratory infections” or “acute viral nasopharyngitis” because big words always sound impressive to patients. But the common cold is…well, common. Most of us get two or three a year. Colds are caused by upward of 200 viruses and it’s this large number that not only prevents developing a “cold vaccine” but is also responsible for the woeful complaint, “Another cold? This isn’t fair! I just got over one.” Neither conventional nor alternative medicine can cure a cold yet, but our WholeHealth Chicago remedies will get you feeling better muy pronto and may just might knock a few days off the usual seven to 10 days you can expect a cold to last. And you might even build up some more resistance to fend off the next cold virus that comes your way.
Cold Sores
Any condition that keeps you from smiling and kissing is inherently dislikable. Cold sores (also called fever blisters) are generally a harmless condition I’d classify as a medical “annoyance,” like dandruff or hemorrhoids–not a danger to life or limb. Nevertheless, no one wants to go through the day with a large, unsightly sore on the lip, especially since they seem to appear on days you’re set for an interview or an important photograph. Actually, good news is here. At WholeHealth Chicago, we’ve found some safe and effective natural therapies that can either prevent the eruption of a cold sore or inhibit the virus that causes it, heal the inflamed skin, and shorten its unsightly life. (One such remedy is an herb with the lovely name of melissa.)
Chronic Pain
Experiencing any condition that involves chronic pain can be a life-changing event. As the patient, you recall your blissful pain-free life with a real sense of longing. As the significant other of someone in pain, you stand by helplessly, wanting to do something (anything!) to relieve the suffering. Interestingly, although there are excellent analgesics (pain relievers) available by prescription, there are also plenty of ways a patient can treat his or her own pain, safely, naturally and effectively.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Although fully 20% of any doctor’s patients report being tired or fatigued, actual cases of chronic fatigue syndrome are (fortunately) rather uncommon. Yet it’s also a condition that, like fibromyalgia, is markedly complex and about which doctors disagree. CFS (also called CFIDS, for Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome) first came to prominence in the 1980s when young people, after suffering cases of really awful flu, simply couldn’t get their energy back to normal again. And even though they seemed to have symptoms of a lingering virus (muscle aches, headaches, swollen lymph glands, sore throats), no virus wa
High Cholesterol
Some cardiologists have philosophized about Western civilization’s love-hate relationship with cholesterol. For what’s basically a form of grease, it’s certainly more valuable than gold. After all, to surgically by-pass a pea-sized morsel of cholesterol will set your insurance company back about $50K. In fact, this tiny amount of cholesterol lodged in just the right place can kill you with a heart attack or paralyze you with a stroke. So on one hand, here’s the food industry developing more imaginative ways to feed us salted fat, and on the other, the pharmaceutical industry creating cholesterol-lowering medications we’re supposed to gobble up like M and M’s.
Cataracts
Cataract surgery is truly a wonder of modern medicine. Today, ophthalmologists remove cataracts and insert lens implants as skillfully (and, it appears, as effortlessly) as you tie your shoes. As a bonus, Medicare picks up the tab because almost all surgery is performed on people over age 65. At WholeHealth Chicago, we believe you don’t necessarily have to develop cataracts. They may be a normal part of aging (rather than a disease), but they’re not inevitable. While no medicine is available to reverse cataracts, plenty of evidence exists on how lifestyle changes and nutritional supplements can significantly lessen your chances of developing them in the first place. Even if you’ve developed the start of a cataract, you can keep it from worsening.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Doctors have written about carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) for more than 100 years, but it took the emergence of computer keyboards for the condition to achieve national prominence. In fact, any activity that constantly strains the wrist, from guitar playing to rowing, from assembly line work to knitting, can bring it on. Sometimes, however, carpal tunnel syndrome can begin without any apparent cause at all. Carpal tunnel syndrome usually starts as repeated local irritations swell the tendons and ligaments in the wrist. This then compresses the median nerve, which passes through a “tunnel” from the forearm to the hand. The combination of the inflamed tendons and the squeezed median nerve are responsible for the pain, tingling, numbness and weakness of the thumb and index and middle fingers characteristic of CTS. In addition, any of the following have been associated with this painful condition: an underactive thyroid, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, obesity, pregnancy, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), birth control pills, and menopause.
Although conventional medicine can be very helpful, I believe one of its options, namely surgery, should be the last resort. As many physicians are unaware of alternative therapies, let’s see if our WholeHealth Chicago suggestions can help keep you out of the operating room. No guarantees, of course, but nothing ventured . . .
Cancer Prevention
Every person on the planet fears getting cancer (and believe me, doctors are just as frightened as everyone else). But in a very dramatic way, we have made one major advance against cancer: We know, in many cases, how to prevent it. Actually, we really don’t have a way to prevent all types of cancers (yet!), but we’ve made great strides with specific cancers, most especially lung, colon, and skin cancers, all of which can be avoided to a great extent. Experts now think that lifestyle choices contribute to about 75% of all cancer cases. Here at WholeHealth Chicago, you will find general guidelines for avoiding all cancers, from getting regular screening exams that make early detection possible to increasing your intake of cancer-fighting antioxidants.
Canker Sores
You usually get your first one as a kid and you can’t believe it. How can anything so small hurt so much? As an occasional sufferer myself, I’m convinced there’s a canker sore demon haunting our lives, maybe sitting at a computer somewhere, waiting to catch us off guard. Press the “Enter” button and, Oh!…Ouch! Then, depending where it’s landed, and unable to kiss (or eat or smile), I mutter pearls of wisdom like, “Doctors can transplant a liver, but they can’t cure a canker sore.” This is all the more exasperating when you’re a doctor yourself. Well, actually, the integrative approach we use at WholeHealth Chicago has helped me quite a bit. And although I can neither transplant your liver nor fully cure your canker sore, let me share with you what has worked for us.
Candida Overgrowth Syndrome
At least once a week, a patient comes in, saying, “You’re the fourth [or seventh or tenth] doctor I’ve seen. I feel simply terrible but am always told that my tests are normal, and there’s nothing wrong with me. Recently I read about yeast overgrowth, and the symptoms seem to fit my case exactly. The doctors, however, all tell me there’s no such illness.”
Cancer
You learn the diagnosis and your life is never the same. If you want to do as well as possible with the diagnosis of cancer, let me offer this advice: Drop the “victim” mentality immediately. More people are surviving cancer–and thriving thereafter–than ever before. Then, take charge of everything.