I suspect men have wanted to control female sexuality since the dawn of time. Certainly aphrodisiacs (named after Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love and desire) appear in the medical writings of ancient Greece, and in Chinese medicine the perfect combination of acupuncture and herbs is supposed to work wonders. Ayurvedic practitioners have suspected that chiropractic […]
One evening a couple of weeks ago while at a movie I felt my cell phone vibrate. This was unusual, since virtually all my patients correspond via my often-checked e-mail. The caller ID was unknown to me, and was not that of my answering service. I would have waited 15 minutes until the movie ended, […]
Try this experiment. Sit somewhere unobserved, like a Starbuck’s or a doctor’s waiting room, and just watch people. If you see someone sitting alone, likely she’ll be checking her smart phone or laptop or plugging into music. People sitting in groups of two or more will interrupt themselves to glance at their phones, text-checking. If […]
Right up front, let me say if alternative medicine therapies could cure cancer they wouldn’t be alternative. Conspiracy theory alert: there is no plot on the part of oncologists, radiation therapists, pharmaceutical companies, et al. to keep lifesaving alternative therapies just beyond your reach so they can control your lives (and pocketbooks). If the mainstream […]
The medical profession has always been very reluctant to acknowledge that vitamins are useful for anything except treating vitamin deficiency diseases, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. This negativism toward vitamins begins in medical school, where doctors-in-training are indoctrinated with phrases like “Vitamins end up in the toilet,” “Anyone eating a healthy diet […]
A recent issue of Hepatology, a medical journal devoted to liver diseases, featured a lengthy discussion about acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol and many other medicines.
Acetaminophen is sold both over-the-counter and by doctor’s prescription, and more than 600 products now contain it. The conclusions of this article are definitely worth sharing with you.
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 […]
There’s a most exciting development at WholeHealth Chicago this week, but first let’s take a brief look at the 20-year arc of what we know as alternative medicine. Since the early 1990s, when data started appearing about the unexpectedly wide use of alternative therapies by the US public, there’s been a nonstop conversation about what […]
Post 06/04/2012 The current guesstimate says roughly 20% of the population are intolerant to gluten, with about 1% of that group having a potentially fatal intestinal condition called celiac disease. The remaining 19% or so are classified as having “non-celiac gluten sensitivity.” Despite the dozens and dozens of medical and psychiatric conditions linked to gluten […]
Posted 05/28/2012 I went to medical school in London for awhile and quite honestly didn’t learn much. But it was the 1960s and if you were going to be anywhere on the planet, central London was the place to be. The fact that the hospital to which I was assigned had a pub in its […]
Likely because German-Americans have been so completely absorbed into American culture, we’re often surprised to learn that more Americans (17% plus, in fact) trace their family origins to Germany than to any other country. The huge wave of German immigration occurred in the 19th century, when eight million arrived in New York, virtually all passing […]
Last week we talked about a blood test for allergies. This week a few integrative approaches for treating them, but first a quick review of conventional treatments: Antihistamines (Claritin, Zyrtec, and many others) block the effects of histamine, the chemical released by disrupted mast cells when whatever you’re allergic to (ragweed, cat dander) lands on […]
After you’ve been a doctor as long as I have, you feel entitled to make sweeping generalizations, broad observations, and the like about the patients you’ve been attempting to keep out of harm’s way as efficiently as possible.
Purpose: To identify hidden food allergens that may be causing some or all of your symptoms. During the elimination period, all common allergens are completely eliminated from the diet for two to three weeks. After your symptoms improve, foods are added back one at a time to determine which foods provoke symptoms.
In last week’s health tip, I talked about Big Pharma’s predilection for creating illnesses to fit new chemicals, and how the controversial hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) was a “perfect match” for a failed antidepressant called flibanserin.
Strange trio, right? But keep this health tip in mind a few months from now when you’re watching a sexually charged TV commercial for a (yet unnamed) prescription libido enhancer as your wonder “Didn’t I read about this somewhere?”
The flowering herb Phyllanthus amarusis indigenous to India, where it has long been used by practitioners of traditional Ayurvedic medicine to treat liver problems. In recent years scientists have discovered compounds in the herb that fight the virus responsible for causing hepatitis B, a chronic and potentially serious liver inflammation that can cause jaundice, fatigue, and other problems. Phyllanthus may contain other as-yet-unidentified substances that protect the liver as well.
For years doctors were taught in medical school that gluten sensitivity and its severest form, celiac disease, were rare, identified mainly in children who were unable to absorb food. In photographs, youngsters with celiac disease looked like starving children because in fact they were starving, for nutrients. Once the diagnosis had been made and they’d been taken off all gluten grains–wheat, barley, rye, oats, kamut, and triticale–they rapidly regained weight and lived normal lives.
Although H1N1 along with our annual “regular flu” are rightfully grabbing the headlines these days, now that it’s October we need to brace ourselves for the annual epidemic of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
In a recent health tip I commented that we Americans hadn’t learned much when it comes to taking care of ourselves.