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 […]
Category: H
The Health of Americans
The Lancet is a British medical journal that has been in continuous publication since 1823. Arriving each week in my mailbox (though not since its inception!), The Lancet has always been worth more than the routine glance I give to the rest of my mail. Unlike any US medical journal, it provides a truly global […]
How To Not Die At Your Health Club
All things considered, most of us would prefer not to become acutely ill in a public place. You’d rather not faint at Macy’s, upchuck in a theatre lobby, or suddenly become aware of the Mount St. Helen’s rumbling in your intestines as you sit third row center at Orchestra Hall. If you trip and fall […]
Are You Hypometabolic?
First, because the word metabolism is involved with virtually everything in our bodies, it helps to know exactly what we’re talking about. “Metabolism” means the sum total of all the chemical processes going on inside you that are necessary to keep you alive. When your metabolic rate is normal you feel pretty good. If it’s […]
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 […]
Health News Roundup
I have a wire basket on my desk stacked with medical articles that merit my muttering, “This is useful. Might be handy for a future health tip.” On the plus side, they’re all undeniably of interest. On the minus, there’s not enough material in each article to merit a complete health tip. So this week […]
A Blizzard, A French Restaurant, and the Future of Healthcare
Posted 03/11//2013 If you’d been one of the handful of pedestrians walking down Chicago’s Halsted Street during our snowstorm a couple weeks ago, you might have glanced into the window of an otherwise deserted French restaurant, your attention held for a moment by a pair of geezers engaged in extremely animated conversation in the warm […]
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 […]
How I Exercise
With a title like that, I fully understand if you have an urge to hit the delete key. You endured a health tip a few weeks ago about my colonic, and I do applaud your strength for that. But now, having read in this week’s American Medical News that the US is the unhealthiest among […]
Helmet-Free Biking (Sometimes)
Chicago is in the process of selecting where to locate some 300 racks for its new bike-sharing program, delayed until Spring 2013 by politics (which will come as no surprise to any true Chicagoan). Modeled after similar programs in Canada and Europe, the bike-share program is simple. The racks are stocked with rental bikes. Swipe […]
The HCG Diet Actually Works
I imagine diet books began appearing worldwide shortly after the Gutenberg Bible hit the shelves. And ever since, physicians, nutritionists, alchemists, personal trainers, and others have attempted to convince us that their diet is the one that will change everything. All diets fail for the same reason, an assertion I base on my experience both […]
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 […]
Hospitals, Health Spas, and Feeling Great
Posted 04/16/2012 Here’s a good general rule for the rest of your life: all things considered, you’re better off avoiding hospitals and instead, every year or so, checking yourself into a resort/health spa for a few days. Personally, I don’t care much for hospitals. Whenever one of my patients ends up in one (fortunately a […]
Important News About Hormone Therapy
It was almost 20 years ago that I first learned about bioidentical hormone therapy from a talk given by Christiane Northrup, MD, (author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause) at the first meeting I ever attended of the American Holistic Medical Association. By the way, the line-up of speakers included not […]
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 […]
Health Consequences of Harassment
I’ve been tracking the health consequences of the recession among my patients. The first group of victims is obvious: those suffering the anxiety and depression that follows job loss, protracted unemployment, living on savings, cutting expenses, downsizing where they live, and, of course, losing health insurance. At the very moment these folks could benefit from […]
Hey Doc, When Are You Going to Write Up My Case?
I hear this question virtually every time I see Alan, an extremely healthy, energetic man in his forties who could easily pass for someone in his twenties. He comes to the office once a year for a check-up (he’s always just fine), but since we cross paths at our health club I’m reminded about his “case” fairly often.
Return of the Hundred Million Dollar Pen
Last week, pocket calculator panting from exhaustion, I explained how my humble pen, along with the pens of the other 899,999 physicians in America, was responsible for paying out about $2.24 trillion every year to thousands of health care “providers.” That’s the amount the US spends annually on our essentially mediocre healthcare system.
My One Hundred Million Dollar Pen
I’ve got to introduce you to this pen of mine, just a run-of-the-mill pen, but oh the story it has to tell. Understanding the power of my pen is a useful lesson in health care, and by the end of this two-part piece what you learn might make you healthier. No kidding.
But first, let’s make you a little sick.
Evil Health Insurance Tactics
Time for another appalling health insurance story. Today we’ll discuss an invention of theirs called Step Therapy, allegedly created “for your safety and to control health care costs.” It won’t surprise you that its real purpose is to generate massive revenues for their bottom line. Unfortunately, you, the patient, virtually always suffer unnecessarily in the process.