Posted 12/24/2013 The nutritional supplement industry took a few body blows this month from conventional medicine, with several reports published in the Annals of Internal Medicine regarding the effectiveness of daily vitamins and minerals. An accompanying editorial urged physicians to discourage their patients from taking supplements altogether. Moreover, the editorial suggested the government should stop […]
Category: C
Chilling Health Care News
It’s tempting to begin this health tip with “Here’s the news from Lake Wobegone…” You’ll soon discover why as I tell you about two recent articles of note. Also, I’d be most interested in your interpretation from a health care consumer’s point of view. The first article, published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, reported […]
Coping With Work Stress
You’d need to be a fly on the wall of my secluded little exam room at WholeHealth Chicago to realize how thoroughly day-to-day stress contributes to chronic physical and emotional ill health. Stress occurs when some force to which you’ve relinquished power controls your life. The source might be work, money, relationships, caregiving…or some grim […]
Coping With Work Stress in Today’s Uncertain Job Market
Everyone has experienced some level of work-related stress. Dubbed the “21st century equivalent of the Black Death, stress is the top cause of workplace sickness. While some workplace pressures can be stimulating and motivating, when they become stressful, it means you are struggling to cope. The tension and anxiety resulting from stress plays out on […]
Catherine’s Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Catherine, a pale thin woman in her thirties, was into her third year with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). She’d been “everywhere,” including the Mayo Clinic, but no one had been able to answer her question: why am I ill? All treatments, conventional and alternative, had given her only temporary relief before they stopped working or […]
C’est Moi
If I hadn’t been experiencing an annoying sensation in my throat with every swallow that in my fears had escalated to advanced throat cancer, the week would otherwise have begun quite nicely. For example, while talking to a new patient with some longstanding neck and shoulder issues, I asked if she would mind if my […]
Hidden Food Sensitivities
Let me begin this case study health tip with some related background. Girding their corporate loins for the arrival of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health insurance industry has taken some predictable steps to prepare for 35 million new enrollees, many of whom, having had no health care most of their lives, are probably […]
How To Make Your Child Smarter
I was at the magazine rack at my local health club, about to grab something from among the tattered copies of Self, Men’s Health, Bazaar, and Modern Bride, when I discovered, peeping from behind its fellows, a pristine and virtually unread copy of Perspectives on Psychological Science, subtitled “A Journal of the Association for Psychological […]
Do I Really Need A Check-Up?
Posted 06/24/2013 You’d never guess this would be a hotly debated topic among physicians, since an affirmative answer seems so obvious. As for patients, assuming you have insurance, a doctor, and nothing’s really wrong with you, you still might like someone to look things over and ensure nothing’s amiss, no evil lurking inside that will […]
“Club Med” Diet
Posted 04/15/2013 I was surprised to learn that the much-revered Mediterranean Diet went back nearly 70 years to the work of American physician Ancel Keys, MD, stationed in Italy during World War II. Keys, who died in 2004 at age 100 (!), noted the very low incidence of heart disease and the excellent longevity among […]
The Brutal Chelation Therapy Wars
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 […]
How To Make Your Child Smarter
I was at the magazine rack at my local health club, about to grab something from among the tattered copies of Self, Men’s Health, Bazaar, and Modern Bride, when I discovered, peeping from behind its fellows, a pristine and virtually unread copy of Perspectives on Psychological Science, subtitled “A Journal of the Association for Psychological […]
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 […]
Chronicle of a Death
A very disturbing article, the likes of which I’ve never read in all my years as a physician, appeared in a recent issue of the AMA’s Archives of Internal Medicine. Written by Neil Holtzman, MD, a Johns Hopkins-based pediatrician, it describes the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of his beloved wife of many years, Barbara […]
Are You The Canary in Our Coal Mine?
The canary in the coal mine had its literal origins in the mining industry. In order to test for toxic gases, miners would lower a caged canary into a mine shaft. Bringing up a dead songbird meant humans wouldn’t be descending that shaft. The metaphor remains apt because, even today, some of us are the […]
Case Study: Hidden Food Sensitivities
Let me begin this case study health tip with some related background. Girding their corporate loins for the arrival of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health insurance industry has taken some predictable steps to prepare for 35 million new enrollees, many of whom, having had no health care most of their lives, are probably […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses: Candida (Yeast)
Posted 06/18/2012 Back in 1993, several weeks before the opening of what would be known as WholeHealth Chicago, I was summoned to the office of the chief of medicine at the hospital where I was a staff member. The chief had heard rumors I was opening a center that would combine conventional and alternative practitioners […]
Chinese Medicine Tackles Your Weight Concerns
Despite all the hoopla about the “best” way to determine if we’re overweight–getting on a scale, BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, pants won’t button, body fat percentage–we ultimately rely on our intuition to let us know we feel fat. In other words, if you think you’re overweight or obese you probably are. Two-thirds of Americans are one […]
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 […]
Canada’s Medicine Explained
Several years ago, I happened to be in Toronto when the results of a national survey asking Canadians to select the one Canadian they most admired were announced. By universal acclimation–beating out both Alexander Graham Bell and Wayne Gretzky–they selected Thomas Clement “Tommy” Douglas. “Who is Tommy Douglas?” I wondered. Every Canadian knows the story […]