“Orthomolecular medicine”. Now there’s a phrase you don’t hear in the 21st century, except in historical terms. Invented by two-time Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling (Do you even remember him? Ah! How fleeting is fame!), one prize for his work on chemical bonds, the second, the Nobel Peace Prize for his work banning atmospheric […]
Everything Begins In The Gut
I sometimes wonder if new patients to WholeHealth Chicago think we’re overly preoccupied with their digestion, gut health, nutrition, and even the consistency and quality of their stool when they scheduled that appointment for a seemingly unrelated problem. We certainly treat a large variety of health concerns: anti-aging and disease prevention, dermatologic problems, chronic fatigue, […]
Controversial Diagnosis #7: Mast Cell Activation Syndrome
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS for short) is one of those annoying conditions in which a patient, after having read an article like this one and suffering similar symptoms, asks her doctor and gets one of two disappointing answers: “Never heard of it” (translation: MCAS is fairly new and often overlooked) or “Consulting Dr. Google […]
NAD+: Getting Serious About Anti-Aging Therapy
We’re living in a time of major, worldwide breakthroughs when it comes to understanding how we age and also the steps we can take to not only slow down aging, but to all appearances reverse the process. Over history, the fountain of youth seekers came, literally and figuratively, to dead ends, but back then Ponce […]
How Menopause Can Destroy Mental Health
“Pretty dramatic title,” I thought, “especially for usually staid, Guardian newspaper.” But the writer had been collecting data from UK doctors, interviewing patients, and clearly was shocked at what she had found. Not only were individual women describing their personal experiences with serious bouts of depression, anxiety, panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, but also “brain […]
Water and Your Longevity
You’ll like this story. Sometime in her eighties, my Aunt Hildy, who passed on at 94 or so, handed me a book, “Your Body’s Many Cries for Water”, by an Iranian physician with a totally unpronounceable name, Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D. She told me it had changed her life. Dr. B. attributed virtually all chronic illnesses, […]
Women and ADD: Part Two
In my last Health Tip, we discussed Claire, a woman in her thirties with attention deficit disorder (ADD), reviewing lifestyle and non-medication approaches. This week, I’ll go over the conventional medications used for this very common condition (estimated at 5% of the population). Let me start by saying that untreated ADD, in both children and […]
Women and ADD
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, she arrived flustered and embarrassed, and “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 […]
The Loneliest, Saddest Patients In America
Imagine this: one night, you awaken from sleep feeling itchy all over. You scratch and scratch, eventually getting back to sleep. The next day, you feel like your skin is crawling. Your hair just doesn’t feel like your hair. A few days later, you see skin lesions on different parts of your body. You go […]
Three Paths To Great Looking Skin: Diet, Hormones, Your Gut
Let’s clear away what everybody knows about speeding up skin aging: cigarettes(click to yucky picture), too much sun exposure, junk foods. As a nutritionally oriented physician, a healthful diet is really important for an attractive skin. Nowhere is the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” more apparent than there, right on your face. When you’re eating […]
Quell The Fire of Menopause Hell With Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT)
When it’s time, you can expect to transition through menopause in one of three ways. If you’re unlucky enough to land in Menopause Hell, give some serious thought to bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). Some women experience Menopause Heaven, in which your periods start changing and then stop without drama. A year goes by without […]
Slow Aging and Track Your Results
Most people figure they must be getting older based on how they feel and look. We wince at our first grey hair, deepening wrinkles, and shifting body fat. We huff and puff climbing the stairs, forget names, and occasionally leak fluids. We relate to the line from a Leonard Cohen song, “I ache in the […]
When Your Thyroid Medication Isn’t Working
Two thyroid facts worth knowing: You’ve shown up for your usual ten minute, quick glance billed to your insurer as an in-depth primary care office visit. You’re allowed to talk about one problem only, and so you present the symptoms of hypothyroidism every doctor and nurse practitioner should be able to recite in their sleep. […]
Anti-Aging Medicine: Testosterone For Men, And Yes, It Really Works
In middle age, you, as a man, or your sexual partner (keeping this observation to her/himself), will likely start to notice a group of symptoms due to a slow but inevitable decline of your male hormone testosterone. As the movie director Martin Scorsese put it well, “Sex becomes memory.” Not necessarily. Not by a long […]
Heart Disease Prevention Part 3
The (alleged) BIG NEWS in health care last week, that spread through CNN, Prevention Magazine, NYT, Journal of the AMA, etc. etc., was the publication in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology which compared the cholesterol lowering effect of statins to those of several nutritional supplements (cinnamon, fish oil, garlic, red yeast rice, […]
Heart Disease Prevention Part 2: Getting Started
Checking Your Family History Most people aren’t certain what illnesses run in their family and how dangerous these might be. Probably best not to spend much time agonizing about this, unless you’re pretty sure there was an unusually excessive amount of premature deaths (50’s, 60’s) from heart disease. Better to work mainly on yourself. Hearing […]
Covid Distracted Us, But Heart Disease Remains Our #1 Killer
About 700,000 of us will die of heart disease every year; most of which is preventable provided we become proactive patients. But you do need to know that for most “heart patients”, dying does not come quickly, like a dart falling from the sky, fatally nailing you, as you clutch your chest, your friends desperately tapping 9-1-1 on their […]
Protect Yourself From the Chemical Swill In Your Body and All Around Us
The American Medical Association estimates that 80,000 to 100,000 people will die unnecessarily every decade because of our government’s failure to respond quickly enough to the harsh EPA rollbacks that occurred during the Trump administration. Things are getting better but not quickly enough. For example, just a few days ago The Guardian uncovered documents about […]
Ready For This? There Are 115 Known Manifestations Of ‘LONG COVID’.
“But,” you splutter, “I read everywhere how the COVID numbers are going down. Nobody’s dying of COVID these days. And what about those boosters?”. Yes, the numbers appear to be going down because boosters have made cases milder. People aren’t racing off to emergency rooms or urgent care centers. They’re not even bothering to self […]
Wellness Path To Cancer Prevention
After a certain age, every person fears getting cancer (and believe me, doctors are just as skittish as everyone else!). Being told, “I’m sorry you have cancer,” or “we need to find you a good oncologist,” is a moment you will remember forever. You leave the doctor’s office stunned by this information, wondering “how long […]