You probably read last week that Michelle Obama acknowledged she’d been experiencing what she described as low-grade depression. You may have wondered aloud, as I did, how anyone who sees what’s going on in the world could avoid it. Many of us are feeling hopeless or anxious, ruminating about where this is all going, eating […]
Category: Women’s Health
Women’s health medicine can include treatment specific to women’s health concerns to optimization and anti-aging.
Functional Telemedicine, Wherever You Are
All things considered, we’ve rather enjoyed our telemedicine interactions with patients. Doctoring this way also recently provided me with an Aha! moment. What I realized was that much of what we do as Functional Medicine specialists, both diagnosis and treatment, can be done online with you never leaving your home. Such a consultation would include […]
When Your Sex Drive is on Life Support
Low desire? No more orgasms? Is your sexual enjoyment a nonexistent priority in your partnership? Sex is such a physical/emotional chore that you’d rather be burning the calories in a Pilates class? Part of our intake questionnaire at WholeHealth Chicago asks if you’re satisfied with your sex life and fully half of our newcomers either […]
Issues with Endocrinologists: Thyroid Approaches and Big Pharma
My beefs with endocrinologists pretty much center on how they manage thyroid gland concerns, though they rarely win prizes for managing adrenal issues either. I don’t know any endocrinologists personally and rarely refer my patients to them. Occasionally, a patient with newly diagnosed hypothyroidism (low thyroid) will want to confirm the diagnosis with an endocrinologist. […]
When Your Female Sex Drive Is Circling The Drain
I don’t mean to catch you mid-croissant on this topic, but it may have recently dawned on you that your sex drive is not what it was when you were younger. In fact, when you think about it, maybe you never had much of a sex drive at all, no matter which of your decades […]
Case Study: High Blood Pressure
Phyllis B. was a longtime patient of mine whose medical problems were happily under control and who usually came in only for annual check-ups. As I’d just seen her last month, I expected today’s visit meant some new problem had emerged. “I’m here for Kirk,” she began. I’d only met her husband once, years earlier. […]
Are Lifestyle Changes Impossible?
Many years ago, I became exhausted dealing with a friend who ignored my advice on living a healthy lifestyle. His attitude toward exercise was similar to Oscar Wilde’s “I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.” His attitude toward food, especially restaurant food, was that he didn’t care much about quality […]
A Lifetime Of Experience With Abortion
The past two years of a Trump administration have produced an ugly upsurge in controversy over women’s rights, from the serial sexual predation revelations of the #MeToo movement to yet another state following the lead of the 25 white male Republicans (for their photos, click here) who voted to ban abortion in Alabama and send […]
Ozone Therapy: What It Is and How It’s Used
I’ll spare you a migraine. Don’t google “ozone therapy” as you’ll get 2.1 million results in 0.35 seconds. And while this is a mere fraction of what happens when you search for “migraine” (80 million in 1.19 seconds), just reading about the controversy over ozone therapy in first 20 entries might be enough to give […]
Osteopenia and Osteoporosis, Part 2
Last week in Part 1 we wrote an overview of osteoporosis and osteopenia. I couldn’t help but note that most US physicians can date their knowledge of both diagnosis and treatment to the saturation marketing of Big Pharma’s variety of osteoporosis medications, most notably the bisphosphonates (Fosamax, Boniva, Reclast). As we all get older, our […]
Osteopenia and Osteoporosis, Part 1
As is the case with many of our contemporary ailments, it was a combination of Baby Boomer longevity, the ready availability of devices to measure bone density, and Big Pharma creativity that taught both patients and physicians about osteopenia (low bone mineral density) and its more serious consequence, osteoporosis, in which bones become brittle and […]
Controversial Diagnosis #1: Fibromyalgia
I encountered my first significant controversial diagnosis when we opened WholeHealth Chicago in the mid-1990s. The concept of combining conventional and alternative medicine was new to the Midwest and right away we began seeing patients who came to us with chronic symptoms but no solid diagnosis. One group that stood out was made up of […]
Reversing Mental Decline and Preventing Alzheimer’s, Part 1
You saw a movie last week and in discussing it with friends simply can’t remember the important parts. Plus you just missed another appointment. Planning to drive to a north suburb, you instead got on the southbound expressway and after 15 minutes of Loop traffic realized your error. You’re mixing up words and forgetting too […]
Functional Medicine 101 + Introducing Dr. Alaina Gemelas
Functional Medicine is without a doubt the fastest growing medical specialty of the 21st century. Public interest in it and public acceptance of it continues to please me. Every day I hear the sentence, “I made this appointment because I wanted a functional approach.” When I ask patients how they learned about it, the answer […]
Meet Our New Naturopathic Doctor: Caley Scott, ND
It wouldn’t surprise me if you didn’t know much about naturopathy. There aren’t many naturopaths in the US and the 5,000 or so we do have are mostly located along the east and west coasts, seriously outnumbered by 800,000 MDs and 100,000 DOs (osteopaths). Just to remind you: these are difficult days for health care […]
Women and ADHD, Part 2: Can I Treat This Without Meds?
“I lose my keys endlessly. I pay big bucks in unnecessary late fees on bills that I put down somewhere and just forget about. After I finished college, I never read another book–it was just too much work. I can cope with a magazine article, but hardly ever remember what I’ve read. I even have […]
Women and ADHD, Part 1
Already ten minutes late for her first appointment, Claire phoned from her car that she’d be in the office in five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, arriving flustered and embarrassed, she blurted “Oh my gosh, I left all the forms on my kitchen table, but I did fill them out” and “My insurance card? I’m sure […]
Health Screening Offers: Should You Bother?
Like most people, you’ve received one of those brochures in the mail with a headline screaming something like “Health Screening Can Save Your Life!” They’re filled with photos of happy, healthy people on golf courses or with their grandchildren and are liberally sprinkled with quotes like, “Dan’s alive today because an ultrasound revealed his aneurysm.”
My Doctor Is A Chiropractic Physician
I’m not setting out to intentionally antagonize my fellow MDs and DOs who read these Health Tips. No acrimonious outrage, please, before I explain. Then feel free to splutter. I’m not writing this for the medical profession. This is for the rest of you, living in a country that spends 17% of its GNP on […]
Worrisome Dementia Report For Women and Steps To Take
We’ve always known there was a higher rate of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in women than in men, initially attributed to the fact that women live longer and that the decline in mental function occurred with age. This turned out to be wrong. At 65, a woman has a greater than one-in-six chance of […]