As you’ve probably figured out by now, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) will be bringing a lot of changes to the way health care is delivered in America. Along with additional governmental regulations comes new, advanced access and control of your personal medical information. As a patient at WholeHealth Chicago, you now have the opportunity […]
Why We Take Nutritional Supplements
I’m pretty confident that you, a reasonably regular reader of these health tips, devote a small portion of your living quarters to nutritional supplements. Your morning ritual of teeth/skin/hair/clothes likely includes some pill-swallowing, an act you regard not necessarily as pleasant, but as necessary, sort of like inserting your contacts or a tampon. Most of […]
A Blizzard, A French Restaurant, and the Future of Healthcare
Posted 03/11//2013 If you’d been one of the handful of pedestrians walking down Chicago’s Halsted Street during our snowstorm a couple weeks ago, you might have glanced into the window of an otherwise deserted French restaurant, your attention held for a moment by a pair of geezers engaged in extremely animated conversation in the warm […]
How To Make Your Child Smarter
I was at the magazine rack at my local health club, about to grab something from among the tattered copies of Self, Men’s Health, Bazaar, and Modern Bride, when I discovered, peeping from behind its fellows, a pristine and virtually unread copy of Perspectives on Psychological Science, subtitled “A Journal of the Association for Psychological […]
Your Walking Pace, Thighs, and Longevity
I’m sure you shared my sense of relief when you read earlier this year that being a tad overweight actually was a positive in terms of lifespan. Not obese by any means, but a little chunky–husky if you will–was just fine. Researchers analyzed thousands of moderately overweight people and concluded that their all-cause mortality was […]
Amateur Night In The Emergency Room
Please read the important announcement about our acupuncturist Mari Stecker at the end of today’s Health Tip Let me pass on a tale of woe a new patient recently shared. There’s a useful lesson in health care within, and while I wouldn’t classify the event as malpractice (since no permanent damage occurred), it’s the story […]
Yoga: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
In the 1990s, when it dawned on the medical profession that their patients were flocking in droves to alternative medicine, yoga classes were generally deemed acceptable to otherwise highly skeptical doctors. Especially compared to virtually anything else “alternative.” As someone personally in the thick of things, I observed the predictable rancor and opposition to chiropractic, […]
How I Exercise
With a title like that, I fully understand if you have an urge to hit the delete key. You endured a health tip a few weeks ago about my colonic, and I do applaud your strength for that. But now, having read in this week’s American Medical News that the US is the unhealthiest among […]
A Bit of Chicago Medical History: Naprapathy
In what was probably a self-referential moment, Saul Bellow, Chicago’s Nobel Prize winning novelist, once remarked that Chicagoans rarely acknowledge their heroes. Well today I bring you a new candidate. Beyond a small circle of naprapathic physicians, it’s unlikely many of us have ever heard of Dr. Oakley Smith, who, as a young chiropractor in […]
Using Glandular Therapies
Given the comments on our blog following last week’s post on glandular therapies, let me say first that if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, glandular therapies are definitely not for you. But if you’re a veggie or vegan needing digestive enzymes, there are plenty of plant-based products. You’ll also face no compromise if you need […]
Glandular Therapy Back in the News
I’ve always been intrigued by glandular therapies, in which dried animal endocrine gland is used to treat a variety of medical conditions. And while I appreciate their medical benefits (like everything, some work better than others), even more interesting is their role in the history of medicine over the past century. Just when I thought […]
My Colonic
I know. You’re thinking, “Do I really need to read about Dr. E’s colonic irrigation this morning, sitting here with my latte and bran muffin?” Well, I haven’t written anything about colonics for quite awhile, but recently I learned the Illinois Division of Professional Regulation (DPR) wants to close the offices of the dozen or […]
Digital Excess and Cognitive Decline
Try this experiment. Sit somewhere unobserved, like a Starbuck’s or a doctor’s waiting room, and just watch people. If you see someone sitting alone, likely she’ll be checking her smart phone or laptop or plugging into music. People sitting in groups of two or more will interrupt themselves to glance at their phones, text-checking. If […]
Alternative Medicine and Cancer
Right up front, let me say if alternative medicine therapies could cure cancer they wouldn’t be alternative. Conspiracy theory alert: there is no plot on the part of oncologists, radiation therapists, pharmaceutical companies, et al. to keep lifesaving alternative therapies just beyond your reach so they can control your lives (and pocketbooks). If the mainstream […]
All Hail The Bean!
What a pleasant surprise to open this week’s Archives of Internal Medicine and find the results of a trial on the benefits of eating legumes–beans, lentils, and chickpeas. This was a real clinical trial, working with a group of people who had mild Type 2 diabetes. During the three-month study period, half the enrollees ate […]
Supplements I Take
Occasionally when I’m up in our apothecary someone asks “What supplements do you take, Dr. E.?” Usually I’m too rushed to answer more than, “Oh, a bunch of stuff. Seems to work. I’m still here. If you’re curious, just ask,” referring to whoever’s managing the apothecary counter. She knows what I take because my supplement […]
Multivitamins Prevent Cancer
The medical profession has always been very reluctant to acknowledge that vitamins are useful for anything except treating vitamin deficiency diseases, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. This negativism toward vitamins begins in medical school, where doctors-in-training are indoctrinated with phrases like “Vitamins end up in the toilet,” “Anyone eating a healthy diet […]
Helmet-Free Biking (Sometimes)
Chicago is in the process of selecting where to locate some 300 racks for its new bike-sharing program, delayed until Spring 2013 by politics (which will come as no surprise to any true Chicagoan). Modeled after similar programs in Canada and Europe, the bike-share program is simple. The racks are stocked with rental bikes. Swipe […]
A Step Forward for Acupuncture, Four Decades Too Late
Probably few of you remember that at one time there was virtually no acupuncture available in the US. Until the late 1970s the phrase “Why not try acupuncture?” simply didn’t exist. In 1971, when President Nixon made his historic visit to the People’s Republic of China, his press secretary James Reston experienced acupuncture for post-operative […]
Why A Wellness Check Won’t Keep You Well
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 […]