In February 2015, Mary Zuk, 73, came to see me in Chicago. I am using her real name—Mary encouraged me to tell her story in case it could help someone else. She was a long way from her hometown in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. She had a long list of worrisome issues: Her diabetes was out of control, she had abdominal pain, and she had bouts of diarrhea after eating. A previous doctor told her she was “lactose intolerant,” but the recommended Lactaid milk didn't help.
Read MoreWe have a guest blogger, the newsletter Whole Health Insider, with the latest news on the link between the plastics chemical, BPA, and childhood obesity. Did you know that 92% of us have BPA in our urine? Here's more. By now, most of us have heard of bisphenol-A, otherwise known as BPA. This common chemical compound found in hard plastics and the linings of food and drink cans has been under a great deal of scrutiny over the past decade due to its link to several serious health problems.
Read MoreI am a “dissenter” on flu shots. I think there are big questions about their safety and effectiveness. Here are some of the problems.
Read MoreHere's what I wrote about swine flu, from the point of view of integrative medicine, before all the flurry of writing about swine flu.
Read MoreI just read a headline that Haitians are dying because of a dispute about funding their care in the United States. We could be airlifting them out, and bringing them here for medical care. Instead, our system, full of its usual “wars” between the states, and wrangling about payment, has stopped the airlifts.
Read MoreHere is an abstract of an article from the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine describing a study that showed that extended-release Niacin-a B Vitamin outperforms a new, expensive drug and creates better outcomes for people with cardiovascular risk.
Read MoreHere's a reprint of a great BBC article.
Read MoreI just hung up the phone a little over an hour ago I was on the line with President Obama! What an honor to be included in a conference call about healthcare reform. One of the questions was about an older couple who was doing fine until he got sick and had a stroke and then it was the same sad story of hard-won life savings swept away by the unbelievable costs of health care. I really should not use the term health care in this case, it should be disease management, which increasingly has been the focus of our system of hospital and office medicine since (believe it or not!) the early 1920s. We have had almost 100 years of medicine that puts the profit of individual doctors and medical institutions, and sales of pharmaceuticals and related medical goods above every other consideration.
Read MoreI have been looking at labels for years, on everything under the sun, including sunscreens. It never made sense to me that you should apply chemicals to your skin and then bake it at high temperatures. Now, Margaret Schlumpf and her research group at the Department of Pharmacology, University of Zurich, Switzerland, have confirmed my common-sense concerns. They have found that these chemicals have strong estrogenic activity.
Read MoreJust a quick late-night note about the proposed reduction in healthcare costs that are supposed to be presided over by the healthcare industries themselves! What an amazing flurry of activity by insurance and drug companies, doctors, and hospitals, to convince the Obama administration that they will reduce costs over the next ten years. Would that be anything like the self-regulatory brilliance of the financial industry over the last ten years?
Read MoreAfter 27 years of making prevention and wellness the centerpiece of my practice, it was amazing to see in the New York Times that the government now plans to make them the centerpiece of health care reform. (Sort of like being in an alternate universe.) With the government finally getting on the bandwagon, it is important to make sure that a majority of the programs focus on true prevention-which involves our nutrition, our exercise, and our attitudes!
Read MoreLast week I wrote about swine flu and sent some recommendations for a friend, Sara Altschul, to post on her health blog, www.health.com. Here's what I recommended.
Read MoreLook for all the latest information on getting well and staying well. Our “blogger in chief” is Martha H. Howard, MD -a pioneer in integrative medicine who has more than 25 years of experience with the best in holistic health.
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