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Your Blue Poop: An Easy At-Home Test of Gut Health

Anyone who has ever visited a WholeHealth Chicago Functional Medicine practitioner knows that lots of questions focus on digestion. The reason for this goes all the way back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who is alleged to have said “All disease begins in the gut.” This concept is not at all taught in medical […]

Dandruff, Fungi, and Cancer of the Pancreas

It’s an eye-catching title, I’ll admit. But the links are quite real and further research may guide medicine in new directions of cancer prevention and treatment. It all starts in your gut microbiome, the totality of microorganisms–bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi–present in your gastrointestinal (GI) tract, mouth to anus. Until recently, researchers and clinical physicians […]

First, Heal Your Gut

About 25 years ago, when I was organizing what today is WholeHealth Chicago, I attempted to learn everything I could about all the fields of what was then called alternative medicine. Since naturopathic medicine, or naturopathy, didn’t really exist in Illinois (perpetually blocked by the Illinois State Medical Society), I flew to the west coast […]

Project Microbiome: Bacterial Happiness and Health

A short article tucked in the New York Times health blog “Well” reported on a Cornell University study published in Microbiome, an obscure medical journal whose circulation is likely in the upper two digits. To my mind, it’s an important piece of research and I’d guess that years from now as we understand more and […]