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 […]
Category: Women’s Health
Women’s health medicine can include treatment specific to women’s health concerns to optimization and anti-aging.
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 […]
Nutritional Supplement Shotgun Therapy
I once had a new patient arrive with her forms completed, a stack of medical records under her arm, and a large bulging gym bag in tow, saying “I brought all the supplements I’m taking. I’m hoping you can suggest a few I might not need.” One by one, she placed bottles and jars of […]
A Lifetime Of Experience With Abortion
Let me start by saying the opinions on the topic of abortion are mine alone and not necessarily those of any staff at WholeHealth Chicago. For Health Tip readers who have commented that I should not voice political opinions and stick to my work as a doctor, I suggest you glance at any of the […]
Boosting Fertility With Traditional Chinese Medicine
Many couples struggle with issues of infertility, and last week I voiced my concern about the one-size-fits-all approach that most conventional infertility centers take, along with their reluctance to offer simple, inexpensive, and safe nutritional and alternative therapies first. The exact opposite of “everyone’s the same” therapy is traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). When a couple […]
Treacherous Times In Healthcare
Two related ideas come together in this Health Tip and I want to convey why this is all happening. First, a large part of our day at WholeHealth Chicago is spent dealing with insurance companies denying you benefits. Second, many patients have been telling me about the wave of anxiety they feel every time a […]
A Gynecologist Joins The Team At WHC: Welcome Andrea Lee, MD
It may surprise you to learn that WholeHealth Chicago has been trying to find the right gynecologist to join our group for more than 16 years. “What?” you ask. “Why so long?” We did know we needed one. Just sit in our waiting room or shop the apothecary and it occurs to you that a […]
Can Your Diet Actually Prevent Breast Cancer?
An important study published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine confirmed what doctors had suspected for some time but had been unable to prove. You can definitely reduce your risk of developing invasive breast cancer by pledging to follow that Mediterranean Diet you’ve read about but never got around to taking seriously. Researchers in Spain […]
Some Good News About DCIS and Worrisome Mammograms
I’ve lost track of the number of women who’ve told me something like this: “My mammogram experience was horrible. They called me back with this get-in-here-right-away sense of urgency. I was terrified. They took lots of pictures, talked about calcifications. I had one biopsy, then had to return for another. The suspense was horrible.” And […]
The Girl Who Smelled Like Pennies
She could not get rid of the awful taste in her mouth. Metallic, she described it, like having pennies in your mouth. Two years it had been. She’d tried a tongue scraper to no avail. Changed her diet, swished an assortment of mouthwashes, rinsed her sinuses with a neti pot, and then, thinking she might […]
How Many Women With PMS Does It Take To Screw In A Light Bulb?
(Snarl your answer) “JUST ONE! ME! HEY, BUDDY–YOU GOT SOME SORT OF PROBLEM WITH THAT?!” Ah, PMS. Even if you don’t ever want a baby let’s see if we can fix things so you don’t have to put up with this crap for 30 years. I can write about PMS, and over the years have […]
WTF Happened To My Sex Drive?
I don’t mean to catch you mid-croissant on this topic, but I want to report the latest research on a woman’s libido and its relationship to her masturbation activities. If you’re a woman in your mid-40s or older, partnered or not, straight or gay, you may have noticed something about your sex drive you’re not […]
Menopause and Acupuncture: Great News For Women
Some women sail through menopause like they’re traversing the calm waters of Walden Pond. You know who you are. First, your periods seem to be changing a little–shorter, longer, irregular, but overall not worth much thought. Then one day you realize you haven’t had one in months. “Well,” you think to yourself. “That was a […]
Melanie’s PMS Hell
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 to get help from their doctors […]