Last week we began a series on brain fog, a term used by patients to describe a situation in which they’re experiencing poor focus and concentration, memory problems, and/or an overall lack of mental clarity. There are medical conditions, covered below, associated with brain fog that your doctor can screen for using a few simple […]
For 80 (!) years physicians have prescribed testosterone to men without being certain if it actually had any effect…other than raising testosterone levels. The only FDA-approved indication for testosterone is hypogonadism, in which there’s an actual disorder of the male reproductive system that results in the body not producing enough testosterone. Causes of hypogonadism include […]
Somewhere in my library is a copy of Gary Taubes’ 2008 Good Calories, Bad Calories, one of several books that appeared in the wake of the really vicious controversy that surrounded Robert C. Atkins, MD’s Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution, which first appeared in 1972, has been published in 13 revisions and editions, and continues to […]
Let me start by saying that the majority of board-certified endocrinologists give me a pain. They’re internists, like me and our newest WholeHealth Chicago physician Neeti Sharma, MD, but they have additional training via endocrinology fellowships. Somewhere along the way, many of them become almost too academic, no longer actually listening to patients but rather […]
New patient Phil told me he’d been suffering muscle pain every single day for more than eight years. He’d seen neurologists and rheumatologists, had had an MRI of his spine, was told he had spinal stenosis (narrowing), had cortisone shots, and recently had been scheduled for neurosurgery. Then a friend told him to stop taking […]
Last week in Part 1 we wrote an overview of osteoporosis and osteopenia. I couldn’t help but note that most US physicians can date their knowledge of both diagnosis and treatment to the saturation marketing of Big Pharma’s variety of osteoporosis medications, most notably the bisphosphonates (Fosamax, Boniva, Reclast). As we all get older, our […]
As is the case with many of our contemporary ailments, it was a combination of Baby Boomer longevity, the ready availability of devices to measure bone density, and Big Pharma creativity that taught both patients and physicians about osteopenia (low bone mineral density) and its more serious consequence, osteoporosis, in which bones become brittle and […]
Reversing Mental Decline and Preventing Alzheimer’s, Part 1 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 […]
We’ve covered a lot of scientific territory in this series, from the basics of Alzheimer’s to the tests used to evaluate risk. This final installment is something you can follow up on right now, regardless of where you fall on the risk spectrum. Concerning your brain, let’s say you’re in one of these four situations: […]
For 80 (!) years physicians have prescribed testosterone to men without being certain if it actually had any effect other than raising testosterone levels. The only FDA-approved indication for testosterone is pathological hypogonadism, in which there’s an actual disorder of the male reproductive system that results in the body not producing enough testosterone. Examples are testicular […]
For 80 (!) years physicians have prescribed testosterone to men without being certain if it actually had any effect other than raising testosterone levels. The only FDA-approved indication for testosterone is pathological hypogonadism, in which there’s an actual disorder of the male reproductive system that results in the body not producing enough testosterone. Examples are […]
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 […]
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 […]
“My hormones are out of whack!” That’s the single most common sentence I hear from my patients. It can come from a 25-year-old with irregular periods and industrial-strength PMS whose energy has gone down the tubes. Or from a 45-year-old (on the threshold of pre-menopause) who continues to gain weight even though she’s eating less […]
It’s an interesting phenomenon that more women ask about testosterone therapy for the men in their lives than men ask for themselves. And when a man does ask, the question is usually couched with hesitations, “Uh, my…wife wanted me to…uh…ask about…you know…testosterone.” There are good reasons for hesitation. For men, the symptoms of age-related testosterone […]
That box of chocolate chip cookies you never should have purchased in the first place is sitting there on your kitchen table, luring you, taunting. Your period is due in two or three days and you feel grumpy, depressed, bloated. You’re agonizing. “Just a…couple/two, three at the most” you think, knowing you’ll actually feel emotionally […]
I was at dinner with an old physician colleague of mine who happens to be French. Despite living in the Midwest for decades, he continues his lifetime subscription to Le Monde and preserves–no, cultivates–his accent so efficiently that I miss about ten percent of what he’s saying. Given we were both well into our second […]
“My hormones are out of whack!” That’s the single most common sentence I hear from my patients. It can come from a 25-year-old with irregular periods and industrial-strength PMS whose energy has gone down the tubes. Or from a 45-year-old (on the threshold of pre-menopause) who continues to gain weight even though she’s eating less […]
It’s an interesting phenomenon that more women ask about testosterone therapy for the men in their lives than men ask for themselves. And when a man does ask, the question is usually couched with hesitations, “Uh, my…wife wanted me to…uh…ask about…you know…testosterone.” There are good reasons for hesitation. For men, the symptoms of age-related testosterone […]
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 […]
