So you can read this health tip without stumbling over a key word, it’s pronounced kee-LAY-shun. Genuinely Controversial with a capital “C,” chelation therapy (are you saying it correctly in your head?) is a series of 30 intravenous infusions that can legally be administered only by an MD or a DO. For performing it, they’re […]
Category: Alternative Therapies
A Bit of Chicago Medical History: Naprapathy
In what was probably a self-referential moment, Saul Bellow, Chicago’s Nobel Prize winning novelist, once remarked that Chicagoans rarely acknowledge their heroes. Well today I bring you a new candidate. Beyond a small circle of naprapathic physicians, it’s unlikely many of us have ever heard of Dr. Oakley Smith, who, as a young chiropractor in […]
My Colonic
I know. You’re thinking, “Do I really need to read about Dr. E’s colonic irrigation this morning, sitting here with my latte and bran muffin?” Well, I haven’t written anything about colonics for quite awhile, but recently I learned the Illinois Division of Professional Regulation (DPR) wants to close the offices of the dozen or […]
Digital Excess and Cognitive Decline
Try this experiment. Sit somewhere unobserved, like a Starbuck’s or a doctor’s waiting room, and just watch people. If you see someone sitting alone, likely she’ll be checking her smart phone or laptop or plugging into music. People sitting in groups of two or more will interrupt themselves to glance at their phones, text-checking. If […]
Alternative Medicine and Cancer
Right up front, let me say if alternative medicine therapies could cure cancer they wouldn’t be alternative. Conspiracy theory alert: there is no plot on the part of oncologists, radiation therapists, pharmaceutical companies, et al. to keep lifesaving alternative therapies just beyond your reach so they can control your lives (and pocketbooks). If the mainstream […]
A Final Commonly Missed Diagnosis: Functional Symptoms
This missed diagnosis is a bit more complicated. It’s not one specific condition, like a slightly underactive thyroid or gluten intolerance. It’s about you and your doctor’s tunnel vision, the “if your only tool is a hammer, then everything around you is a nail” sort of thinking. Functional symptoms constitute a huge spectrum of missed […]
Can I Be Tested for Nutritional Deficiencies?
This is a fairly common question in our office and the short answer is yes. It’s easy to understand the curiosity. You’ve cleaned up your eating habits, buying all those fruits and veggies. Whole grains, even. And more fish (oh, those omegas!) than you ever dreamed of eating when you were a kid. On your […]
Yet Another Mystery Rash
These mysterious rashes that patients want help with are a real diagnostic challenge. Usually the visit begins with “I’ve been to dermatologists about this and all I get are steroids. Once I’m done taking them the rash comes right back.” In previous health tips, we reported on a young man who developed a very real […]
Bowen Technique
What Is It? An extremely gentle form of bodywork, the Bowen Technique was developed in Geelong, Australia, soon after World War II by Tom Bowen (1916-1982), a self-taught masseur. Over the course of many years, Bowen developed a precise sequence of delicate moves across muscles, tendons, and connective tissues, which are performed with great precision […]
The WholeHealth Healing Cave
The office lease describes our place as “lower level,” which any Chicagoan knows is a euphemism for basement. Some cities call these locations garden apartments, which generally means ground level, your apartment fair game for ants and burglars. We at WholeHealth Chicago are well below ground level. My partner Dr. Paul Rubin and I knew […]
“Medical” Marijuana
As I recall, coming of age in the 1960s meant, among other things, social roles being more clearly defined then than now. For example, if you wanted weed, you met someone at an L stop named Bobby. For the reasonable price of $5 you felt a grass-filled baggie slide into your pocket and by the […]
Lady Gaga, Madonna, Andy Warhol, and Me
There’s an exhibit opening next month at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London entitled “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990.” You’re puzzled, I’m sure, by how a subject as confusing as Postmodernism could relate to a health tip, but it actually does, in a big picture sort of way.
Integrative Fixes for Allergy Miseries
Last week we talked about a blood test for allergies. This week a few integrative approaches for treating them, but first a quick review of conventional treatments: Antihistamines (Claritin, Zyrtec, and many others) block the effects of histamine, the chemical released by disrupted mast cells when whatever you’re allergic to (ragweed, cat dander) lands on […]
Homeopathy and Kids
About 25 years ago, when my boys started being born and getting acquainted with Chicago–and also before I became involved with alternative medicine–the oldest began to get ear infections. At the time, I was medical director of a big group of very conventional doctors and had access to some really good pediatricians. My son was prescribed antibiotics, his ear cleared up, but when the antibiotics were stopped, up popped another infection. Then, more antibiotics and later yet another infection.
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.
Treating Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)
Last week we talked about PCOS and today we’re looking at treatments.
When I first read the phrase “ovarian drilling using lasers,” for PCOS, I thought: Only a guy could come up with this concept (and I bet he wouldn’t want some woman doc drilling away on his outdoor plumbing). Then an image crossed my mind of some surgeon in a OR with a hardhat setting up his rig, rolling up his sleeves, lighting a Marlboro, and getting to work.
Phyllanthus/Ayurvedic Liver support combination
The flowering herb Phyllanthus amarusis indigenous to India, where it has long been used by practitioners of traditional Ayurvedic medicine to treat liver problems. In recent years scientists have discovered compounds in the herb that fight the virus responsible for causing hepatitis B, a chronic and potentially serious liver inflammation that can cause jaundice, fatigue, and other problems. Phyllanthus may contain other as-yet-unidentified substances that protect the liver as well.
Can I Quit My Heartburn Drug?
“As long as I’m trimming my daily prescription drugs,” remarked Mary, who had recently quit her cholesterol-lowering statin after shifting to healthful eating, “what about this Nexium? I admit I have some misgivings about stopping anything that seems to be working so well!”
I hear that a lot. Some patients have been taking a chronic heartburn drug for such a long time they don’t remember who prescribed it in the first place.
High Blood Pressure
One of the most common reasons people give for coming to our practice is to see if there’s “something other than all these pills” they’ve been prescribed for a medical problem. I frequently hear sentences such as, “I read the side effects of this drug and think: but those are the symptoms I’m being treated for,” or “I take all these pills and I feel pretty much the same.”
Evening Primrose Oil
Evening primrose oil is extracted from the evening primrose plant (Oenothera biennis), a wildflower found in North America, Europe and parts of Asia. The plant’s pale yellow flowers open in the evening–hence its common name–and its seeds bear the special fatty oil that is used in healing today.