For many years, you couldn’t use your health insurance for a check-up. The attitude of health insurance companies was essentially that they were available when you got sick, period. But if you were just fine? “Don’t call us.” To make their point especially clear, if you did visit your doctor for a check-up and she […]
Category: Preventive Medicine
The goal of preventive medicine is to promote health and well-being and prevent disease, disability, and death. Preventive testing and treatments can include men’s and women’s health panels, physical exams, brain health, and diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention.
Worrisome Trends in Health Care
Philosophically, by now you’ve gathered I was pleased that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) leaped nearly all its hurdles and will be taking effect in a couple years. It was simply wrong that the US has within its borders 40 million citizens with no access to our health care system, and also that insurers could […]
Prostate Cancer Screening: The New PSA Controversy
Posted 1/2/2012 Nobody wants to deal with cancer, but unfortunately as we all get older we enter the realm of increased cancer risk. Around age 30, when we finally shed the delusion that we’re not immortal, we start taking better care of ourselves. We stop smoking, eat healthier, exercise a bit, abandon skydiving as a […]
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 […]
Meet Elaine
So twice a year I head to Florida to visit my 88-year-old aunt. Except for the fact she’s a Fox News Republican, we enjoy each other’s company by agreeing to avoid political arguments. I might add she’s a former nightclub singer and makes a mean martini.
Hypnotized by Big Pharma
Virtually every day, a fax arrives asking me to participate in one market research study or another on some medical issue related to Big Pharma. If I happen to be interested, I call a phone number, am asked a few questions to determine if I qualify (they especially like primary care doctors), and am scheduled for an appointment. Sometimes I arrive and there’s a group of doctors, sometimes it’s a one-on-one.
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.
Magnesium
Essential for hundreds of chemical reactions that occur in the body every second, the mineral magnesium has received surprisingly little attention over the years. Recent findings, however, suggest that it also has important health-promoting benefits, from an ability to prevent heart disease to a role in treating such chronic conditions as fibromyalgia and diabetes.
Tai Chi
Tai chi (pronounced “tie chee”) is an ancient Chinese discipline that integrates mind, body, and spirit. Practitioners use meditation and deep breathing as they move through a series of continuous exercises, called “forms,” which resemble slow-moving ballet. Though it originated as a martial art (evolving from qigong), tai chi is now practiced more for its therapeutic benefits, which include reducing stress, promoting balance and flexibility, and even easing arthritis pain.
Polarity Therapy
Polarity therapy is a method of healing based on the concept that life-giving energy permeates every part of the human body. This force is thought to be governed by opposite “poles” of positive and negative electromagnetic energy–hence the therapy’s name. When a person’s energy becomes misdirected or blocked due to stress, trauma, or other factors, disease is believed to result. Peak health can be achieved when opposite poles are balanced and the flow of vital energy can proceed unimpeded.
Osteopathy
Osteopathy is a holistic approach to the practice of medicine. It emphasizes that all systems of the body are interrelated and that any adverse changes in one part of the body may impair the functioning of other systems or organs.
Iridology
Iridology is the study of the colored part of the eye (called the iris) to determine potential health problems. Iridologists believe that changing patterns and markings in the iris can be used to reveal emerging conditions in every part of the body and to identify inherited weaknesses that may lead to physical and emotional disorders.
Stroke
It’s a reflection of the body’s remarkable power to recover that most people do quite well after a stroke. We know that actors Patricia Neal and Kirk Douglas went back to work, but so do teachers, doctors, and cab drivers.
Even more remarkable is how each year the number of people who have strokes declines. This is a dramatic statement about how medications for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, low-fat diets, and regular exercise are finally paying off.
Shingles
Since almost everyone gets chickenpox as a child, most of us are susceptible to developing shingles as adults. Each illness is caused by the same virus, which is called varicella in children and herpes zoster in adults. After the chickenpox ends, the virus goes into hibernation in the nerve cells along the spinal cord. Then, many years later, when the immune system is weakened in some way–by age, stress, certain drugs, illness (even the flu)–the virus awakens. At some point along the spine, it travels along a nerve, producing a painful rash along the band of skin served by that nerve. Herpes zoster means “belt of fire”–the name is apt.
Raynaud’s Disease
People with Raynaud’s disease are at the other end of the spectrum from people who blush at the drop of a hat. But, instead of having blood vessels that open readily, they have vessels that constrict too easily, usually in response to something cold. When you have Raynaud’s, you can walk into an air-conditioned room or even reach into a picnic cooler, and suddenly your fingers feel oddly cold, even numb and tingly. As you watch, the tips go dead white, then blue, and (after you frantically warm them up again), a bright, throbbing red.
Psoriasis
When I was a kid, there used to be a magazine advertisement that began “Do you suffer the heartbreak of psoriasis?” I couldn’t understand the connection between a skin rash and a broken heart until I began actually treating people with this skin condition. Psoriasis, which affects about 6 million Americans, is indeed a frustrating disorder, for both patient and doctor. Although the exact cause is unknown, we do know that new skin cells reproduce and accumulate faster than they can be sloughed off. The condition can range in severity from a few small patches to large and unsightly thick plaques that appear just about anywhere on the body.
Prostate Problems
I’ve had many male patients over age 40 who are not only inconvenienced by an enlarged prostate (usually in the form of a more frequent need to urinate), but who are also concerned that they either have cancer of the prostate or that cancer is right around the corner. I’m happy to report that most of their symptoms turned out to be related to a condition known as benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH. And it is indeed benign: “Hyperplasia” simply means an overgrowth of cells.
Migraine
Nearly every week, I get patients who assume that any time they have a really bad headache, it must be a migraine. Not true. In fact, migraines are a specific condition, with symptoms, causes, and treatments that differ from other headaches. To begin, what sets migraines apart is the throbbing pain–often on one side of the head–which can be intense and even incapacitating. At WholeHealth Chicago, we find a two-prong approach to migraines is often the most successful: Deal decisively with the pain of an attack (including using prescription medications, if necessary) and also find the best strategies to prevent these headaches from happening in the first place.
Gout
You don’t forget your first gout attack. Pain wakes you up in the middle of the night. Of all things, it’s your big toe that hurts. You try to go back to sleep, but the pain keeps getting worse and by morning, your poor toe can’t even stand the pressure from the bed sheet. Gout, which affects mainly middle-aged men, begins with unusually high blood levels of a waste product called uric acid. Normally uric acid is excreted in the urine, but in a gout-prone person, it precipitates as crystals in certain joints (the big toe, knees, elbows, fingers). The result is a local (and painful) inflammation. The crystals can also accumulate in the skin and in the kidneys (where they can cause kidney stones or even kidney failure).
Gallstones
Having a gallstone or two (or even more) is very common: A third of all women (it’s mainly a female condition) will have them by age 60. Fortunately, most people live peaceably with their gallstones without any symptoms whatsoever. It’s when gallstones act up that you need to do something. A painful “gallbladder attack” may occur when a stone decides to move, or simply may follow bouts of indigestion, especially after a meal rich in fatty foods. A double bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a shake should simply be renamed a “Gallbladder Special.”