Stories like the one I’m going to tell you this week and next make me proud to be a Chicagoan. Nobel prize winning Chicago author Saul Bellow said that we reside in the “contempt center of the USA” and, you know, I’ve got to agree. We take to such chicanery as well-placed bribes, cronyism, no-bid contracts, and politicians hay-tumbling with big corporations as naturally as naive folk worldwide take to breathing.
Evil Health Insurance Tactics
Time for another appalling health insurance story. Today we’ll discuss an invention of theirs called Step Therapy, allegedly created “for your safety and to control health care costs.” It won’t surprise you that its real purpose is to generate massive revenues for their bottom line. Unfortunately, you, the patient, virtually always suffer unnecessarily in the process.
The Carrot and Your Longevity
Well, not only the carrot. The sweet potato, too, and also the squash, greens (collard, turnip, and mustard), apples, green beans, cantaloupe, broccoli, and tomatoes, a colorful list you can etch into your brain and learn more about by clicking here.
Sex! Wine! Italians!
Many people, myself included, secretly wish they were Italian. In fact, I’ve been told that Italians themselves divide the world into two groups–Italians and those who wish they were. And perhaps, after reading the results of this medical research, you’ll wish that you too were Italian. That, or at least pour yourself a nice glass of red wine at dinner tonight.
Can We Slow Down Aging?
Ever notice how people age? Some people just look younger or older than their actual age. We see an old friend after an absence of a few years and think, “Jeez! Did he age!” and wonder what might have befallen him to press the fast-forward button on the aging process.
Integrative Fixes for Allergy Miseries
Last week we talked about a blood test for allergies. This week a few integrative approaches for treating them, but first a quick review of conventional treatments: Antihistamines (Claritin, Zyrtec, and many others) block the effects of histamine, the chemical released by disrupted mast cells when whatever you’re allergic to (ragweed, cat dander) lands on […]
Sneezy, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy (Doc)
Well into my teenage years, every summer I’d get so throttled by allergies that I became consolidated into 4/7ths of Snow White’s dwarves. Some years later, after my allergies had temporarily eased up, I would add a fifth: Doc.
Is There A Wonder Drug in Our Midst?
For better or for worse, virtually all prescription drugs must be officially approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an immense bureaucracy that regulates the vast segment of our economy that the words “food” and “drugs” imply.
Obsessing Over Regrets
We each have our own personal stash of regrets, and when they surface our language trends to the elegantly named counterfactual conditional phrasing: “If only I had married Bob, I would have been happy.” Well, you didn’t marry Bob (instead you married The Jerk), and in any case there’s no guarantee Bob isn’t his own brand of jerk.
It’s Official: Aspirin Prevents Cancer
Most doctors I know swallow one of those low-dose healthy heart aspirins every day. I count myself among them (here’s the 81-mg version I take, but many brands are available, Costco’s among them). When research studies first started appearing well over 20 years ago showing a daily smidgen of aspirin could prevent both heart attack and stroke, the general attitude among most doctors was a profound: “Well, it couldn’t hurt…”
Homeopathy and Kids
About 25 years ago, when my boys started being born and getting acquainted with Chicago–and also before I became involved with alternative medicine–the oldest began to get ear infections. At the time, I was medical director of a big group of very conventional doctors and had access to some really good pediatricians. My son was prescribed antibiotics, his ear cleared up, but when the antibiotics were stopped, up popped another infection. Then, more antibiotics and later yet another infection.
Stress Less: Meditation
Meditation is the simplest relaxation technique to explain and by far the hardest to master.
Symptoms: Disease or Functional?
In medical school, you’re taught that patients either have a disease or don’t: That your patient is either genuinely unwell with a name-able condition (and the positive test results affirming this diagnosis) or not.
Money and Happiness
“Money won’t make you happy.” A boring cliché, hammered into our heads by our moms since that gleeful afternoon when we showed her our first day’s profits from the lemonade stand. We still try our best to believe it, but secretly we don’t. In our hearts we’d like–just once–to be tested with wealth.
Sea Salt Nonsense
It was the 1920s social critic H.L. Mencken who etched the phrase into American history: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
14 Food Changes to Consider
Today we’re not touching on why sweetened beverages are rotten for you and we’re not ranting against fries, Little Debbies, or that new national favorite, KFC’s Double Down. I’m hopeful you’ve put all that behind you.
How Much Exercise?
I owe the details of this health tip to Dr. Joseph S. Alpert, the physician-editor of the American Journal of Medicine. Since a subscription to this highly respectable journal is, for non-physicians, $166 a year, I’ll assume it’s not regularly thrust through your mail slot and share his article with you.
The Weather and Your Symptoms
I can always tell when there’s a major drop in barometric pressure by the number of e-mails I get from patients that begin, “I can’t believe I’m having such a terrible flare-up of my…”
Doctors and Lab Tests
When I was in pre-med (back in the Pleistocene Era, to many of you), I worked as a lab technician in a small hospital. All those blood and urine tests you’ve had whose results are now fully automated were once processed slowly and painstakingly by hand (mine among them). The so-called metabolic profile of about 20 tests that today takes a few seconds to complete would have occupied me for nearly a full workday.
Biography as Biology
I’d first come across this phrase during a lecture by psychologist and medical intuitive Carolyn Myss, PhD, at a meeting of the American Holistic Medical Association and later reading some of her books, especially Why People Don’t Heal. In it she explores the common problem of people with chronic symptoms and negative test results, delving into how these symptoms develop and what might be done to help them.