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WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN, BUT AT A PRICE

The blurb about women’s health was tucked into a corner of The Guardian and required some tracking on my part to locate the source. It was a report (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) in Lancet Public Health, that I fear will largely be ignored, that is a general call-to-action jumpstart for worldwide […]

WELLNESS PATH TO CANCER PREVENTION 2024

 Okay, so this Health Tip seems pretty important. After a certain age, every person fears getting cancer (and believe me, doctors are just as fearful as everyone else!). Being told by a health care professional, “I’m sorry but the biopsy confirmed it. You have cancer,” or “We need to find you a good oncologist.”, that […]

Natural Treatments for Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis

It’s important that you keep these two forms of painful arthritis separate in your mind. Osteoarthritis (OA) is considered ‘non-inflammatory’ and basically a ‘wear-and-tear’ phenomenon that occurs with passage of time. There are inflammatory components as ‘anti-inflammatory medications’, like aspirin, or the NSAIDs (Motrin, Aleve, etc.) will relieve pain, but so will Tylenol, which is […]

Three Paths To Great Looking Skin: Diet, Hormones, Your Gut

Let’s clear away what everybody knows about speeding up skin aging: cigarettes(click to yucky picture), too much sun exposure, junk foods. As a nutritionally oriented physician, a healthful diet is really important for an attractive skin. Nowhere is the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” more apparent than there, right on your face. When you’re eating […]

When Your Thyroid Medication Isn’t Working

Two thyroid facts worth knowing: You’ve shown up for your usual ten minute, quick glance billed to your insurer as an in-depth primary care office visit. You’re allowed to talk about one problem only, and so you present the symptoms of hypothyroidism every doctor and nurse practitioner should be able to recite in their sleep. […]

Anti-Aging Medicine: Testosterone For Men, And Yes, It Really Works

In middle age, you, as a man, or your sexual partner (keeping this observation to her/himself), will likely start to notice a group of symptoms due to a slow but inevitable decline of your male hormone testosterone. As the movie director Martin Scorsese put it well, “Sex becomes memory.” Not necessarily. Not by a long […]

Heart Disease Prevention Part 3

The (alleged) BIG NEWS in health care last week, that spread through CNN, Prevention Magazine, NYT, Journal of the AMA, etc. etc., was the publication in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology which compared the cholesterol lowering effect of statins to those of several nutritional supplements (cinnamon, fish oil, garlic, red yeast rice, […]

Heart Disease Prevention Part 2: Getting Started

Checking Your Family History Most people aren’t certain what illnesses run in their family and how dangerous these might be. Probably best not to spend much time agonizing about this, unless you’re pretty sure there was an unusually excessive amount of premature deaths (50’s, 60’s) from heart disease.  Better to work mainly on yourself. Hearing […]

Covid Distracted Us, But Heart Disease Remains Our #1 Killer

About 700,000 of us will die of heart disease every year; most of which is preventable provided we become proactive patients.   But you do need to know that for most “heart patients”, dying does not come quickly, like a dart falling from the sky, fatally nailing you, as you clutch your chest, your friends desperately tapping 9-1-1 on their […]

Wholehealth Chicago Partners With Chicago’s Finest Trigger Point Therapy Team

Let me tell you about Mary Biancalana and the value of myofascial trigger point therapy. A lifelong fitness expert and personal trainer, in her early thirties Mary found herself with chronic headaches. First, she was told they were ‘psychological,’ then a manifestation of a little understood term called “trigger points” and another condition she’d never […]

LONGEVITY MEDICINE: Chronic Inflammation and Cytokines

Did you ever wonder why some obese people, after decades of being badgered by their families and physicians to lose weight, out-live all of them and are healthy for decades? Or how someone of normal weight falls over dead in his fifties from a massive heart attack the week after his check-up which included a […]

Longevity Medicine: Take A Family Inventory

If every one of your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents made it well into their 90’s, and passed away with their bodies and minds basically intact, you can probably skip this Health Tip. Something like, “Dad was 94 and had finished chopping logs. Sat on a stump, closed his eyes and just died.” Or, “Meemaw (Grandmom was clearly from […]

LONGEVITY MEDICINE: TESTOSTERONE FOR MEN, AND, YES, FOR WOMEN,TOO

In middle age, men will begin very slowly to notice a group of symptoms attributable to the decline of their male hormone testosterone. The medical term for this is “andropause” sometimes called “male menopause.” I see billboards along the expressways referred to “low T.” Here’s andropause: a loss of your sex drive (libido); erectile dysfunction; […]

You’re Only As Old As Your Arteries

I first heard this phrase in medical school, but physicians have been using the phrase “hardening of the arteries” to describe the slow decline and death of old people probably since they started dissecting bodies in Ancient Greece. If you’ve got a few spare hours and a yellow highlighter, you might want to print out […]

Anti-Aging Therapies: Carl Bogaard, Hormones, and Peptides

Before I get into today’s details about longevity medicine–lab tests, hormones, peptides, and the like—let’s pause and reflect on Carl Bogaard, who died August 7 at age 103. Mr. Bogaard was famous as a fitness buff, doing dozens of pushups daily, even at 102 years old. He seemed like a good guy who also took […]

Phosphatidyl Choline for Anti-Aging and Chronic Illness

You’ve likely read or heard about phosphatidyl choline somewhere, maybe online or on a bottle in a supplement aisle. Maybe, like many of us, you could barely pronounce it, and it’s a good rule not to swallow anything you can’t pronounce unless someone reasonably knowledgeable gives you a good reason to do so. Phosphatidyl choline […]

WELCOME TO WHOLEHEALTH CHICAGO! ANNGELA LEONE, LAc.

Anngela Leone, LAc. Is a licensed and board certified acupuncturist and herbalist in the state of Illinois. Anngela offers minimally invasive healing modalities that allow your body to heal itself. Chinese Medicine looks at each person through a broader lens where we see you as a whole person, not just a set of symptoms. As […]

Should You Try a Ketogenic Diet and Intermittent Fasting?

Just about half the patients we see in our office classify themselves as overweight and wish they weren’t. Not many are in the obese range, likely because when you come to a place called WholeHealth Chicago you’ve got a running start in being interested in health, well-being, and longevity. Still, weight is an issue for […]

Before I Forget: My Supplements for Memory

As we get older, many of us do worry about the health and well-being of our brains. No kid taking the SAT who forgets a vocabulary word she’d studied the night before is concerned that this is the first sign of dementia. But as the years pass, you ask yourself if forgetting someone’s name, wondering […]

This Side Of The Sod: Dr E’s Anti-Aging Supplements

Slowing the rate at which you age isn’t just for old people. If you’re under 40, the supplement basics offered in WholeHealth Plan #1 provide plenty of coverage, provided you live your entire life with the goal of reaching your upper 90s or early 100s. But living a long life, though undeniably nice, isn’t much […]