George Lundberg, MD, former editor of JAMA and now editor-at-large of Medscape, refers to low levels of magnesium as “the emperor of all maladies.” Magnesium is largely ignored by doctors, despite the fact that having an insufficient amount of this mineral has been linked to: Heart arrhythmias and heart attacks High blood pressure Attention deficit […]
Category: Nutrition, Nutritional Supplements, Vitamins, & Herbal Remedies
Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue, Part 4: Vitamin Deficiencies
You might be surprised how many of the health and medical facts we accept unquestioningly today are exactly the opposite of what my chosen profession recommended to the public back when I began my training. For example, most doctors (as well as the AMA) did not believe smoking caused lung cancer and the doctors lounge […]
Should You Try a Ketogenic Diet and Intermittent Fasting?
Just about half the patients we see in our office classify themselves as overweight and wish they weren’t. Not many are in the obese range, likely because when you come to a place called WholeHealth Chicago you’ve got a running start in being interested in health, well-being, and longevity. Still, weight is an issue for […]
Before I Forget: My Supplements for Memory
As we get older, many of us do worry about the health and well-being of our brains. No kid taking the SAT who forgets a vocabulary word she’d studied the night before is concerned that this is the first sign of dementia. But as the years pass, you ask yourself if forgetting someone’s name, wondering […]
Introducing Our New WholeHealth Supplement Plans
If you’re a WholeHealth Chicago patient, you’ve likely noticed that we review your list of nutritional supplements during each appointment. Conventional doctors ask what prescription meds you’re taking (and of course we do too), but virtually never solicit a list of supplements. Since our area of expertise lies precisely there, it’s important for us to […]
How To Slow Aging and Track Your Results
Most people figure they must be getting older based on how they feel and look. We wince at our first grey hair, deepening wrinkles, and shifting body fat. We huff and puff climbing the stairs, forget names, and occasionally leak fluids. We relate to the line from a Leonard Cohen song, “I ache in the […]
My Favorite Supplement: Magnesium
Along with most things relating to good nutrition, I wasn’t taught much of anything about supplemental magnesium either in medical school or during my internal medicine residency. It was a professional clinical nutritionist I met during a long-ago meeting of the American Holistic Medical Association who first told me, “You’ll never go wrong if you […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses: B12 Deficiency
You’re pretty sure you know your body and you tell your doctor you’re just not feeling right. You’re tired, maybe a little depressed, a bit achy. Maybe your digestion is “off.” The list of foods you can’t seem to enjoy is definitely longer. Your doctor’s empathic, not at all dismissive of your symptoms, but after […]
“I Am So Bloated!”
Susan wrote this on our WholeHealth Chicago form in the section marked “What’s the main problem?” She went on to tell me she’d been suffering for years, her stomach feeling like some gremlin was inflating a balloon every time she ate. When the bloating was especially severe, she said she looked like she was in […]
Glandular Therapies
A surprising number of so-called alternative therapies actually have their roots in conventional medicine. While reflexology (once called Zone Therapy) is arguably thousands of years old, its modern use was made popular by an ear-nose-throat specialist who used the pressure from rubber bands applied to the fingers and toes for surgical anesthesia. The “Bach” of […]
Get The Lead Out (And Other Toxic Metals Too)
In last week’s Health Tip we discussed the chemical swill accumulating in your body from a variety of sources, some obvious and some not. This week we’re looking at heavy metal toxicity. For those who were otherwise preoccupied that day in high school chemistry, the heavy metals are a group of especially dense metals or […]
A Genuinely Useful Blood Test
Many a time, in person or via phone, someone will say a variation of “Look, I’m taking all these vitamins and minerals but I really don’t know what I’m doing. I think I’m eating right, but I might have some vitamin or mineral deficiencies I know nothing about and I don’t know the consequences.” This […]
Your First Step For Any (Any!) Chronic Symptoms
Here’s an unfortunate trend: more and more young people (at my age, everyone under 50 is young) are troubled by chronic physical and emotional symptoms. Sometimes there’s a diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s, fibromyalgia. But just as often there are plenty of symptoms and no diagnosis. I can’t count how many times patients have […]
Surge Protection
A confession: I’ve never done well with authority figures. Those who know me, the mildest and gentlest of souls, would never guess that years back I had issues with various medical associations and physician groups about such “controversial” notions as having conventional and alternative practitioners working together or actually treating (again, “controversial”) diagnoses like chronic […]
Brain-Boosting Supplements
In our previous two Health Tips, we discussed the most common causes of brain fog. The first of these focused on stress. When there’s so much you’re anxious about, your logical thinking, mental clarity, and memory become overwhelmed to the extent that you’ve added yet another stressor. “Is this early dementia?” you may wonder. Well […]
Brain Fog and What To Do About It, Part 1
You can’t remember the name of the Netflix movie you saw just last night, literally hours ago. And that actor–what was his name? He was in, you know, that other movie. You think it was a thriller, but maybe a war movie. Then you get a notice from Verizon that they’re turning off your phone […]
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 […]
WholeHealth Chicago IV Therapies: Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI)
You should know that we follow the CDC safety guidelines and that all IV therapies are administered in a sanitized room by an appropriately attired staff member. You’ll be alone in the room during your 30- to 45-minute IV session, so bring something to read. I was as surprised as everyone else, including Anthony Fauci, […]
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 […]