Back in 1993, several weeks before the opening of what would come to be called 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. Seeing […]
Category: Candida (yeast) and Parasites
Jonathan Toews, Covid-19, and CIRS
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Chicago Blackhawks captain, his long illness, and the good news that he’s back on the ice. After saying in December that feeling drained and lethargic had kept him from playing, the three-time Stanley Cup Champion said last week that he had CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Never heard of it? […]
Conquering Candida: A Telemedicine Consultation
You might be reading this Health Tip from a town 40 miles north of Mobile, Alabama, or somewhere west of Pecos, New Mexico, and you might be thinking, “Well, this sounds exactly like what I’ve got but there’s no doctor around here who knows anything about it.” We hear you. You’re a victim of the […]
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 […]
Functional Telemedicine, Wherever You Are
All things considered, we’ve rather enjoyed our telemedicine interactions with patients. Doctoring this way also recently provided me with an Aha! moment. What I realized was that much of what we do as Functional Medicine specialists, both diagnosis and treatment, can be done online with you never leaving your home. Such a consultation would include […]
Heal Your Gut…Now
Last week I discussed how naturopathic and functional medicine practitioners usually begin their healing process (and prevent future health troubles) with careful attention to that 30-foot food tube meandering through you from your lips to your anus. The essence of good gut health is essentially how well you’re digesting, absorbing, and using the food you […]
First, Heal Your Gut
About 25 years ago, when I was organizing what today is WholeHealth Chicago, I attempted to learn everything I could about all the fields of what was then called alternative medicine. Since naturopathic medicine, or naturopathy, didn’t really exist in Illinois (perpetually blocked by the Illinois State Medical Society), I flew to the west coast […]
Case Study: Tracy’s Eczema From Hell
She had wisely trimmed her fingernails to avoid injuring her own skin, but as she sat in my office she continuously rubbed one part of her body or another with the ball of her thumb in order to relieve the itching. Tracy was in her 20s and accompanied by her mother. Although I could see […]
Controversial Diagnosis #3: Candida Overgrowth Syndrome
Patients come to WholeHealth Chicago regularly with this common refrain: “You’re the fourth (or seventh or tenth) doctor I’ve seen. I feel terrible but am always told that my tests are normal and there’s nothing wrong with me. Recently I read about Candida overgrowth and the symptoms seem to fit me exactly. But the doctors […]
Ten Controversial Medical Conditions: An Introduction
Consider this list.• Fibromyalgia• Chronic fatigue• Candida overgrowth• Leaky gut• Non-celiac gluten sensitivity• Chronic Lyme disease• Intestinal parasites• Black mold illness (including sick building syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome)• Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)• Chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS) Back in medical school, the only one of these I’d actually ever heard of was […]
Functional Medicine 101 + Introducing Dr. Alaina Gemelas
Functional Medicine is without a doubt the fastest growing medical specialty of the 21st century. Public interest in it and public acceptance of it continues 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 […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses: Parasites
If internet scare tactics from companies selling herbal supplements for parasites weren’t enough, the cable TV show “Monsters Inside Me” with its toe-curling film clips has cinched it. We’re in a new “Alien versus Predator” mode, though you might ask which one is us and which them. Those really large parasites you’ll see wriggling across […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses +1: Rx Drug Side Effects
I’d planned a series of six commonly missed diagnoses, but today I have one more, a life-threatening addition you’ll want to add to your mental list. If you’ve been following this series you know we’ve covered low levels of vitamin B-12 and vitamin D, subtly underactive thyroid, gluten sensitivity, intestinal parasites, and candida (yeast) overgrowth. […]
The Girl Who Smelled Like Pennies
She could not get rid of the awful taste in her mouth. Metallic, she described it, like having pennies in your mouth. Two years it had been. She’d tried a tongue scraper to no avail. Changed her diet, swished an assortment of mouthwashes, rinsed her sinuses with a neti pot, and then, thinking she might […]