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 for […]
In middle age, you, as a man, or your sexual partner (keeping this observation to her/himself), might 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 shot. The medical […]
Never heard of it, eh? That’s what each of the four new Babesia patients I have seen during the past two months have told me. They’d been through multiple doctor visits, had tests up the gazoo, and nothing materialized. Heard the routine, “We can’t find anything wrong with you. Maybe you’re anxious. Have you talked […]
As a quick introduction: when I write theses Health Tips, I usually flip through medical journals and medical libraries. Most often I’ll refer (or rather I sadly once referred) to the National Library of Medicine. This astonishing resource of worldwide medical research is now history. Here’s what appears when you click to it. Trump cut […]
Sex hormones are not to be taken lightly. Some recent research measuring blood levels of estrogen in several hundred young women and then making facial “composite photos” showed that those with normal to high (but not too high) levels of estrogen were more physically (read “sexually”) appealing. Go overboard with estrogen and all sorts of […]
You’re tired of being overweight, and you’ve been a victim of the tyranny of the last ten, twenty pounds or much more as long as you can remember. You’ve tried everything. You’ve been dieting and nothing happens that ever lasts except hunger. You exercise to exhaustion, lose some pounds and gain them back. No matter […]
Many a time, either in person or via phone, someone will say a variation of the following, “Look, I’m taking all these vitamins and minerals but I really don’t know what I’m doing. I think I’m eating right but I might have some vitamin or mineral deficiencies that I know nothing about. I really don’t […]
The uptick in “brain fog” as a complaint among new (and many returning) patients at WholeHealth Chicago offices really began with the COVID pandemic. As the numbers were being collected, first nationally, then globally, that one out of five people who had experienced COVID also had “long COVID,” with “brain fog” as a major long […]
Really frustrated by the lack of progress on her bevy of unexplained symptoms, Hillary’s primary care provider and a couple of specialists, unable to make a diagnosis of her symptoms, a combination of joint pains, skin eruptions, mood swings and minor abnormalities in blood tests, agreed to refer her to the Mayo Clinic. The symptoms […]
My 50 year old patient related the following history: “The diarrhea started in my teens and has dominated my life. It got worse when I went away to college, stress was my first trigger, final exams, a date, then almost anything could trigger it. Imagine trying to find a toilet at a Big Ten football […]
High on the wish list (probably highest, actually) of a new patient coming into WholeHealth Chicago for “wellness” is not just “longevity” but “longevity plus ‘brains/wit/wisdom’” a la Betty White, Norman Lear, George Burns, late Chicago actor Mike Nussbaum. So let’s talk “brain” and say you’re in one of these four situations: 1. There’s dementia […]
Sex hormones are not to be taken lightly. Some recent research measuring blood levels of estrogen in several hundred young women and then making facial “composite photos” showed that those with normal to high (but not too high) levels of estrogen were more physically (read “sexually”) appealing. Go overboard with estrogen and all sorts of […]
You can’t remember the name of the Netflix movie you saw last night, scant hours ago. That actor–what was his name? He was in, you know, that other movie, with that woman with the hair. “Oh, where is my mind?”. Then you get a notice from Verizon that they’re turning off your phone for nonpayment. […]
Let me start by saying that in real life, endocrinologists are probably nice people and not the arrogant, dismissive and too frequently rude specialists that have been reported to me by patients over the years. One of them, over at the mega-medical center a few blocks away is notorious for tossing into her wastebasket any […]
As a woman, unless you undergo the ‘instant menopause’ of a total hysterectomy, anticipate your own menopause transition in one of three ways. First, there’s “Menopause Heaven.” Your periods will lighten, become erratic, then stop altogether. A year goes by, and you’ll say, “Oh, so that was menopause. I wonder what everyone is complaining about.” […]
A surprising number of so-called alternative therapies actually have their roots in very conservative conventional medicine. While reflexology (once called Zone Therapy) is arguably thousands of years old, its modern use was made popular by an ear-nose-throat specialist who used the pressure from rubber bands applied to the fingers and toes for surgical anesthesia. The […]
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 […]
High on the wish list (probably highest, actually) of a new patient coming into WholeHealth Chicago for “wellness” is not just “longevity” but “longevity plus ‘brains/wit/wisdom’”, a la Betty White, Norman Lear, George Burns, actor Mike Nussbaum. So let’s talk “brain” and say you’re in one of these four situations: For everyone listed above, 1 […]
Far and away, the most common mental illness troubling the human animal is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which can make life really miserable for almost 25% of women and 15% of men. When it’s not “chronic”, i.e., with you all the time, a little anxiety is actually useful. You feel a little anxious when you’re deciding […]
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, […]
