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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 […]

You Probably Don’t Need A Colonoscopy

Quite often the patient sitting before me helpfully finishes my sentence. “Yeah, yeah, I know, I need a colonoscopy.” This happens in person or during a Telemed visit when I remark how they’re approaching (or recently turned) 50, 60, or beyond. Or they’re a few years beyond 50 or 60, and I genially ask, “Your […]

Your Body Keeps Score

This may be an emotionally difficult Health Tip for some of you. Imagine you’re a small child and for as long as you can remember, no one’s face has ever lit up with a smile when you walked into a room. In fact, to avoid being struck by a family member, you’ve learned a variety […]

Your Microbiome: Finally Legitimized By Mainstream Medicine

It’s not uncommon for medical groups like WholeHealth Chicago to have their patient charts audited by health insurance companies “for quality.”  After all, insurers want to see how their money is being spent and since they’re for-profit businesses with egregiously overcompensated management teams, they do want doctors to keep costs as low as possible. Some […]

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 […]

Your Text-Neck and Smartphone Chin(s)

For nearly four decades I’ve lived literally on the campus of DePaul University and every day hundreds of students walk past my house. From my bedroom window, I can look across the street into their classrooms (I imagine that the students looking back see an aging man in pajamas). Except for the fact that I […]

Your Smartphone Is Stealing Your Brain

Spoiler alert: I don’t own a smartphone. Also, I’ve been reluctant to write a Health Tip on smartphones lest two of my least desirable characteristics–smugness and self-righteousness– surface. But now a very well-conducted research study on how smartphones lead to cognitive decline compels me to warn you that if you value your brain, use your […]

Your Doctor’s Tunnel Vision Is Harmful To Your Health

I can’t find the source of this quote. Maybe philosopher Bertrand Russell, but I’m not sure. Once, when asked how he’d respond if given evidence that went totally against something he’d believed for years, he answered, “I would change my mind, of course. What, sir, would you do?” It’s too bad the same can’t be […]

You Can Prevent Weight Gain

Before you dismiss this Health Tip with a stifled yawn and an “Oh, sure. Just stop being a little piggy,” you should know about a study published last week in the British Medical Journal tracking the weight-gain patterns of an astonishing 124,086 men and women in the US over 24 years. In fact, if you’re […]

You’ll Never Relax In Front Of Your TV Again

More than 30 years ago, I read a book that influenced my entire life. Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television was much discussed, a best seller, and is still in print. The author, an ad executive named Jerry Mander, didn’t spend much time on program content. That had been addressed 17 years earlier when […]

“You Have Very Youthful Gums”

Head tilted back, mouth stretched to the max to accommodate fingers, cotton, and something metallic and vaguely medieval, my plaque was sandblasted to smithereens. Dr Mintz peered inside, cocked an eye, and remarked, “You have very youthful gums.” I cannot deny my unalloyed pleasure on hearing this. I’d been thinking about aging recently, recalling actress […]

Young Docs Vote To Suppress Alternative Medicine Info

Disappointing, but not surprising. In what’s been called a thinly veiled rebuke of physician media star Mehmet Oz, MD, delegates at this month’s meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) supported resolutions that endeavor to hold physicians responsible for advice they dispense via the media. One of the resolutions, sponsored by residents and medical students, […]

Your Body Keeps Score

This may be an emotionally difficult Health Tip for some of you. Imagine you’re a small child and for as long as you can remember, no one’s face has ever lit up with a smile when you walked into a room. In fact, to avoid being struck by a family member, you’ve learned a variety […]

You Can Survive The Healthcare System

The entire healthcare system is rapidly changing. Despite the flaws in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), I believe it’s a positive that virtually everyone now has access to medical care. When one of America’s poorest states, West Virginia, enrolled tens of thousands of impoverished citizens over a period of a few weeks, physicians observed a […]

You, The Patient: Fired!

The invitation looked harmless enough. One of Chicago’s largest health insurance companies was coordinating an evening meeting with physicians to discuss “the future in healthcare.” I knew this was coming. For the past few months, insurance companies had been conducting staff meetings at the larger medical groups to give physicians a reality check on their […]

Your Walking Pace, Thighs, and Longevity

I’m sure you shared my sense of relief when you read earlier this year that being a tad overweight actually was a positive in terms of lifespan. Not obese by any means, but a little chunky–husky if you will–was just fine. Researchers analyzed thousands of moderately overweight people and concluded that their all-cause mortality was […]

Yoga: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

In the 1990s, when it dawned on the medical profession that their patients were flocking in droves to alternative medicine, yoga classes were generally deemed acceptable to otherwise highly skeptical doctors. Especially compared to virtually anything else “alternative.” As someone personally in the thick of things, I observed the predictable rancor and opposition to chiropractic, […]

Younger Than 45? You May Press Delete Now

Ours being a youth-oriented culture is a cliché. Yet at a certain point in our lives we may neither know nor care who the Grammy winners were, be indifferent to the screen resolution of the latest iPad, and in the mirror realize those pricey anti-aging supplements aren’t working as magically as advertised. All this is […]

Yet Another Mystery Rash

These mysterious rashes that patients want help with are a real diagnostic challenge. Usually the visit begins with “I’ve been to dermatologists about this and all I get are steroids. Once I’m done taking them the rash comes right back.” In previous health tips, we reported on a young man who developed a very real […]

“You Are Corn”

Since you’ll never find the film King Corn in theatres, I strongly urge you to rent this important independent documentary (netflix has it here). It certainly was an eye opener for me.

I’d always known that high fructose corn syrup is bad for us, but King Corn reassured me the problem was actually much worse.