There’s some interesting data in this Health Tip based on both recent and older research concerning our screen viewing habits and their effects on both mind and body. When I present you with a “number” like this one, “the average American watches 3.1 hours of TV every day” (in this, we’re highest in the world), […]
Tag: lifestyle
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 […]
Case Study: High Blood Pressure
Phyllis B. was a longtime patient of mine whose medical problems were happily under control and who usually came in only for annual check-ups. As I’d just seen her last month, I expected today’s visit meant some new problem had emerged. “I’m here for Kirk,” she began. I’d only met her husband once, years earlier. […]
Are Lifestyle Changes Impossible?
Many years ago, I became exhausted dealing with a friend who ignored my advice on living a healthy lifestyle. His attitude toward exercise was similar to Oscar Wilde’s “I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.” His attitude toward food, especially restaurant food, was that he didn’t care much about quality […]
Pain And How We Perceive It
Many people suffering chronic pain and fatigue hear far too often the dismissive “it’s all in your head.” Dr. Edelberg has written frequently on the destructive nature of this statement, which places all the blame on the patient and none on the physician to dig deeper into the causes. As Dr. E wrote in a […]
Disappointments With Testosterone
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 […]
Out Of Whack Hormones
“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 […]
Out Of Whack Hormones
“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 […]
Will You Live Another Five Years?
Of course you might not want to know the answer to that. Or, having worked diligently on healthful eating and regular exercise, you may want to know if it will all pay off. Now, in a joint project between Swedish statisticians and a half million (!) volunteers in the UK, there’s a simple questionnaire that […]
How To Get Off Statins
Getting off statins is easy. Stop swallowing the pill. If you’re not in a potentially high-risk group (as described below) and your doc prescribed a statin to get your cholesterol down a bit, you won’t have a heart attack or a stroke that day or week or probably that decade. There’s no “statin withdrawal” and […]
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.
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.
Laugh Your Troubles Away
Click here for the Health Tip link. It’s been one tough day. Your boss chewed you out for something that was clearly her own doing and your computer crashed. The dry cleaner lost your favorite suit. Your car is making an odd but expensive-sounding noise. But wait–don’t pull a blanket over your head or reach […]
Q&A: New Year’s Resolution
Click here for the Health Tip link. Q: Dr Edelberg, if you could recommend one new year’s resolution to your readers and patients, what would it be? A: Let’s face it, 2008 has been a very rough year and we keep hearing that it may be a walk in the park compared to 2009. During […]
Holiday Cheer
The holidays are fast approaching. For most people, this is a time of great anticipation, and also a lot of work. There are presents to buy, decorations to put up, preparations for travel or for guests, and this year, there is the added financial uncertainty. So, as wonderful as this time of year is, it […]
Help! I’m Getting the Flu
Click here for the Health Tip link. We’ve talked about the flu in my last couple health tips, but let’s review before we discuss Tamiflu, the antiviral drug. First, learn to differentiate a common cold from the flu. With a cold, most of the symptoms you feel are evidence that your body is trying to […]
Preventing Flu
Click here for the Health Tip link. The advice in this health tip works for preventing virtually all virus infections, including the flu. Of the 150,000 genetic variations of mushrooms on our planet, it’s guesstimated that about 5% have useful medicinal properties. Of these, we know something about just a scant handful. Like every other […]