Already ten minutes late for her first appointment, Claire phoned from her car that she’d be in the office in five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, she arrived flustered and embarrassed, and “Oh, my gosh, I left all the forms on my kitchen table, but I did fill them out,” and “My insurance card? I’m sure I had it, I can call my husband, he has one, I think,” and “Could you please put money in the meter for me, I just realized I forgot and I have s-o-o-o many tickets…”
Category: W
Women and Weight: Don’t Shoot the Messenger
During a typical week in the office, sometimes I think the number of women who tell me “I’m trying to lose weight” is equal to the very number of women patients I see.
The Launch of Our Updated Website
We’re pleased to announce the launch of WholeHealth Chicago’s updated website, www.wholehealthchicago.com.
At WholeHealth Chicago, our passion is integrative medicine, which merges an array of clinically proven alternative therapies with cutting-edge advances in conventional medicine. We believe providing clear and detailed information about integrative medicine is a powerful tool that can help you maintain good health and also address any problems as they occur.
Exercise and Weight Loss
The Time Magazine article that ran last week was food for thought for people who exercise regularly. Let’s face it, many of us who work out aren’t doing so to boost mood, enhance mental skills, prevent Alzheimer’s disease, or reduce heart attack risk–all of which exercise does–but rather to lose weight.
Sturm and Drang at Whole Foods
Click here for the original post. Sometime during the past couple of weeks you may have caught a downwind draft from the tempest stirred up by a Wall Street Journal editorial written by the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. To set the stage and let you know immediately where he stood, Mackey opened with […]
Women’s Herbal Combination
As indicated by its name, a women’s herbal combination provides several herbs in one convenient capsule, sparing you the inconvenience of taking an assortment of products. Standard components include such traditional “female-healthy” herbs as black cohosh, chasteberry, dong quai, and soy. Many contain additional herbs such as kava and dandelion root that can help with specific symptoms, as well as key nutrients such as calcium, vitamins E, C, and B, and magnesium.
Wild Yam
The Aztecs and Mayans were the first to recognize healing properties in the root of the wild yam (Dioscorea villosa),a climbing vine. They used it to relieve pain. Years later, Native Americans and early colonists made such a practice of treating joint pain and colic with this native North and Central American plant that it was, for a time, popularly referred to as “colic root.”
White Willow Bark
The bark of the stately white willow tree (Salix alba) has been used in China for centuries as a medicine because of its ability to relieve pain and lower fever. Early settlers to America found Native Americans gathering bark from indigenous willow trees for similar purposes.
Walnut Leaf
Recently, the delicious and easy-to-crack nuts from the walnut tree (Juglans regia) have received a lot of attention because of their rich stores of omega-3 fatty acids and other healing nutrients. But for centuries herbalists have recognized the healing properties of another part of the walnut tree–its pointy green leaves.
Writing Therapy
Writing therapy involves putting thoughts and feelings into words as a therapeutic tool. It is based on the belief that recording memories, fears, concerns, and/or problems can help relieve stress, promote health and well-being, and lead to personal growth.
Weight Loss
On some days, dealing with problems of excessive weight seems to represent the (pardon the pun) bulk of patient complaints. Some of these concerns are genuine: Real obesity does predispose you to a variety of health risks. Understanding the whole issue of being overweight is more complicated than you’d think. Genetics play a part, as does individual metabolism. And don’t forget your environment. There’s no question that for some of us losing weight is hard–and frustrating. We live in a land abundant with good things to eat and everywhere we go, someone is snacking on something.
Warts
Then, one day, you realize the dermatologist’s waiting room is looking awfully familiar these days and more than likely, you’re there because the wart is back on your kid’s finger. These fleshy little growths (the wart, not the kid) are caused by the papillomavirus, of which there are thirty different types. Interestingly, all the different warts you’ve read about (common wart, plantar wart, genital wart, and so forth) are essentially the same, but their appearance changes according to their location on the body. Because the virus invasion is confined to the topmost layer of skin, it manages to elude the radar screen of the immune system. When a wart does disappear spontaneously, it probably just got ‘noticed’ and appropriately zapped.
Resistance, Sigmund Freud, and Getting Well
Click here for the Health Tip link. Physicians worldwide agree that Sigmund Freud was one of the two or three most influential figures in medical history. It’s hard for us to imagine a medical landscape with virtually no mental health counseling whatsoever, except for a few primitive asylums. A landscape where patients for years simply […]
Case History Part 2: Resistance to Getting Well
Last time I started the story of a patient I call Catherine and her chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a case history intended to illustrate the concept of resistance. Now in my office for the first time, a sad Catherine asked if she could relate her story while lying down. I reviewed dozens of pages of […]
Case History: Resistance to Getting Well
Click here for the Health Tip link. In my last health tip I promised you a story that would illustrate the concept of resistance. Here’s a case history (patient’s name changed) from my files. Catherine, a pale thin woman in her thirties, was into her third year with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). She’d been “everywhere,” […]
Something New for Weight Loss
Click here for the original post. Even though I’m a doctor who specializes in nutritional medicine, the article in The Journal of Nutrition was a technically difficult read. It discussed how combining the antioxidant resveratrol (the compound found in grapes, purple grape juice, red wine, peanuts, and certain berries) with genistein (a soy isoflavone) reduced […]
Wintertime Blues: 10 Steps to Turn Them Around
The wintertime blues, also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), usually begin when the days get shorter and the sky clouds over into perpetual gray. Many people with SAD dread late autumn because the clocks move back an hour and, in a single day, autumn twilight becomes dark night.
Benefits of a Whole Food Diet
In my last health tip we discussed the damaging effects of all the sugar we’re eating. I urged you to boost your intake of whole foods–real fruits and vegetables that are so readily available now in the farmers markets of our northern hemisphere.
Where You Live Matters
Regular readers know that I’m fond of studies that confirm what seems to be obvious, intellectually or intuitively. Here’s one to get you walking.
Researchers writing in the American Journal of Health Promotion found that people who live in the most pedestrian-friendly sections of New York City have less body fat, as reflected in a lower body mass index.
Are You Drinking Enough Water?
My patients ask me all the time how much water they should be drinking each day. It’s a good question. Generally speaking, you’ll feel and look better when you’re well hydrated. Your kidneys will more easily be able to flush out waste products and environmental toxins, and your skin will have a healthy glow.