I hope you never have to hear these words from any doctor. Dismissive and ending anything useful you hoped from a consultation. You scheduled this appointment months earlier. You wanted help for longstanding and unexplained symptoms. But you’re also not stupid. You actually have an idea what might be wrong. You’ve read a book or […]
Tag: functional medicine
You Know It’s Time To Change Doctors When…
Despite waiting weeks for an appointment and filling out all those forms, you can tell from the get-go, you’re being regarded as an inconvenience. Maybe, despite your persistent symptoms, you “look” too healthy to have anything seriously wrong with you and your new doctor has scheduled you for a cursory history/physical/basic blood work before she […]
LONGEVITY MEDICINE: Chronic Inflammation and Cytokines
Did you ever wonder why some obese people, after decades of being badgered by their families and physicians to lose weight, out-live all of them and are healthy for decades? Or how someone of normal weight falls over dead in his fifties from a massive heart attack the week after his check-up which included a […]
Longevity Medicine: Take A Family Inventory
If every one of your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents made it well into their 90’s, and passed away with their bodies and minds basically intact, you can probably skip this Health Tip. Something like, “Dad was 94 and had finished chopping logs. Sat on a stump, closed his eyes and just died.” Or, “Meemaw (Grandmom was clearly from […]
Longevity Medicine: Your Gums And Your Lifespan
Last week, we chatted about how your microbiome affects your longevity. Now let’s meander to the other end of your 30-foot-long alimentary canal, up to your mouth, specifically your gums. WholeHealth Chicago patients know we do a check on the health status of their mouths during the physical exam, asking about their dental visits or […]
Longevity Medicine: Your Intestinal Microbiome As A Predictor Of Longevity
Seriously folks, I really don’t believe conventional medicine knows much about your intestinal microbiome except, “Too many antibiotics cause diarrhea” and “C. difficle is really dangerous.” (Note: both conditions are iatrogenic, i.e., caused by doctors themselves). That’s the limit of what I was taught in medical school and residency and things haven’t progressed when I […]
Longevity Medicine: How Your Herd Of Specialists And Their Fragmented Care Can Shorten Your Life
“Silo medicine”. It’s an odd way to express it, “silo medicine”, but there have been articles written using just this phrase to express one of the most serious flaws in the health care system. Picture an open field somewhere in the Midwest with a couple of dozen silos. “Cardiology”, “Rheumatology”, “General Surgery”, “Psychiatry”, and so […]
Finally! Whole Health Chicago To Open A South Side Office
OK, OK, so it took 20 years, but it will be worth the wait. WholeHealth Chicago’s new location is in the Beverly neighborhood, at 3237 W, 111th Street. The location is actually in Mount Greenwood, but no one except those who live there knows where Mount Greenwood is. (There is also to my knowledge no […]
Wikipedia’s Disservice to Alternative Medicine
We’ll return to the Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue series next week, but today a change of pace. I feel I must write about this Wiki business because yet again a patient printed out some misinformation about alternative medicine and brought it in to me for review. “Oy vey!,” I thought. “If she only knew […]
Welcome Nurse Practitioner Rachel Gates + Lifestyle Medicine 101
This week we welcome Rachel Gates, NP, to WholeHealth Chicago, where she joins nurse practitioners Katie McManigal and Wendy Ploegstra. Like Wendy, Rachel is specially trained in a new (and desperately needed) branch of healthcare called Lifestyle Medicine. More about that later. Indiana-born and raised, Rachel began her education at Purdue University, earning her RN […]
Functional Medicine 101 + Introducing Dr. Parisa Samsami
Functional Medicine (FM) is without a doubt the fastest growing medical specialty of the 21st century. Public interest and broad public acceptance of it continue to please me. Every day I hear the sentence, “I made this appointment because I wanted a functional approach.” When I ask patients how they learned about it, the answer is […]
Diagnosing and Treating “Sewer Breath” via Telemedicine
Those are actually the words patients use to describe their breath, though sometimes it’s “poop breath.” The medical term for bad breath, as you probably know, is halitosis, so if you don’t mind I’ll stick with that. For some people, the self-perception of chronic halitosis is more socially isolating that anything demanded by Covid-19. At […]
The Cleveland Clinic and WholeHealth Chicago
I know, I know. It’s presumptuous of me to mention Cleveland Clinic in the same line, much less on the same page, as WholeHealth Chicago, though we do have significant attributes in common, as you’ll see today. This research article, which appeared last week on the JAMA website, links the two of us in ways […]
Welcome, Neeti Sharma, MD + A Functional Medicine Primer
I’m truly delighted to welcome our newest WholeHealth Chicago staff member, Neeti Sharma, MD, a board-certified internist (like me) who earned additional postgrad training in integrative medicine at Dr. Andrew Weil’s program at the University of Arizona Medical School. She also has a special interest in Functional Medicine. Any health-conscious patient with reasonable skepticism about […]
Functional Medicine: Your Wacky Hormones and Adrenal Glands
“Exhaustion is my reality. At four o’clock, I’m wiped, totally wiped. So tired I could sleep at my desk.” Patricia is 33, happily married as far as marriages go, one kid, steadily employed in the usual American lessthansatisfying corporate job, good eating habits, and, until recently, a health club goer a couple/three times a week. […]
Understanding Functional Medicine
A couple of weeks ago, I touched briefly on the new field of Functional Medicine and remarked that while it’s far from accepted by the vast majority of conventional physicians, the prestigious Cleveland Clinic had opened their own Institute of Functional Medicine, headed by the popular physician-author Mark Hyman, MD. I added that we at […]
Your Doctor’s Tunnel Vision Is Harmful To Your Health
I can’t find the source of this quote. Maybe philosopher Bertrand Russell, but I’m not sure. Once, when asked how he’d respond if given evidence that went totally against something he’d believed for years, he answered, “I would change my mind, of course. What, sir, would you do?” It’s too bad the same can’t be […]
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 […]
Welcome Dr. Kristen Donigan
This health tip is especially exciting for me as I have the pleasure of announcing that a new physician, Kristen Donigan, DO, has joined WholeHealth Chicago and is available for appointments. After a decade of trying to find my first physician associate, I felt blessed when Casey Kelley, MD, joined us, though I was concerned […]
Functional Medicine Diagnosis and Treatment: Be Your Own Doctor
Posted 08/12/2012 Several previous health tips have mentioned the phrase “functional medicine” and I have a sneaking suspicion that many readers aren’t quite sure what it is, how it works, or how it differs from the conventional treatment you’ve likely been receiving all your life. Today, walk alongside me and try your hand at diagnosing […]