If you have had, or currently have babies, one of the hardest most heart-wrenchingly painful things you can hear is your baby crying uncontrollably.

Especially when they wake up, and you are stumbling, blearily around the house trying to get them fed, hoping it's simply because they're hungry and not that they are constipated and not because they have colic!

Colic is one of the biggest complaints I hear from new moms.  Some patients say their pediatrician has recommended over the counter antacid medication (Zantac) for their colic-stricken baby. 

Before we dive too far into why I think this is stupid, we will talk a bit about what colic is and how to fix it. Colic is estimated to affect about 25% of children in this country.  The problem is that colic is just a primary label for a highly upset baby.  If your baby cries for more than 3 hours, three days a week for more than three weeks then they “have” colic. 

Basically, if your baby cries for prolonged periods of time, even if they...

PCOS: What It Is and Why It Matters

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome affects 5-15% of women of reproductive age—approximately 6 million diagnosed annually in the US. Despite how common it is, most women receive inadequate explanations about what's actually driving their symptoms.

Common manifestations include irregular or absent menstrual cycles, subfertility or infertility, male-pattern hair growth (hirsutism—not just facial hair, but thick growth on arms, chest, abdomen), difficulty losing weight despite caloric restriction, low libido, and persistent acne on face and torso.

PCOS also correlates with increased risk for Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, endometrial hyperplasia, and endometrial or ovarian cancers. If you're reading this list and recognizing your own patterns, you're not alone. And more importantly: PCOS isn't a genetic sentence you're stuck with.

The Problem with "It's Genetic"

The prevailing medical explanation for PCOS is genetic predisposition. Thi...

Ultimate Bacon Lovers Dinner I've had a busy week at the office and not been able to cook much this week.  So, Erin took over the cooking duties and she rocked it!   This was a great bacon meal.  She said that it was really easy, and I have to say it was absolutely delicious!
Bacon Green Beans & Almonds Ingredients

• 4 Cups Green Beans
• 6  slices of bacon
• 1/3 cup almond shards
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

1. Cook bacon.  While making bacon, boil a pot of water for the beans.
2. Boil beans for just a few minutes, then drain and rinse with cold water.
3. Take out bacon and chop, and throw the pieces back in the pan.
4. Place the beans in the pan along with the bacon pieces, mix well, and add salt, bacon, garlic powder, mix again, then add almonds.

Bacon Wrapped Chicken

• 4 Slices of Bacon
• 4 Chicken Breats
• 2 Tblsp Butter
• 4 Slices of Monterey Jack Cheese
• Fresh Chives
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Flatten Chicken
...

Have you ever wondered where the term bombastic comes from? Paracelsus (Born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) was at the very least a very interesting man! 

He was so exuberant and arrogant that his name still has meaning today even if you have never heard of him.  And, he probably had some reason to be arrogant after all he has been credited as the father of toxicology, giving Zinc its name, and the terms “gas,” “chemistry” and “alcohol.” 

Paracelsus was a renowned physician, among other things, that felt the medical practices of his time were barbaric.  He felt that all diseases were the result of an imbalance between the body and nature.

Summing up his philosophy: “Because everything in the universe was interrelated, beneficial medical substances could be found in herbs, minerals and various chemical combinations thereof.

Paracelsus viewed the universe as one coherent organism pervaded by a uniting life-giving spirit, and this in its entirety, Man include...

I am sorry to tell you that, no, there is not any safe meal replacement shake, powder, or bar out there that I have ever found.   These "meal replacements" are highly processed and fractionated “foods” - if you can really call them that.  Also, in my experience, they're usually laced with heavy metals, food allergens, and artificial sweeteners.  

In 2010 Consumer Reports noted significant levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury in these powders.   In some of the powders, it was tested to be above the “safe” limits established by the pharmacopeia. 

Granted these are naturally occurring, but literally, those things will kill you, make you sick, and/or crazy! Even if you can find an absolutely pure protein that is tested to be free of heavy metals, these powders are still highly processed, fractionated proteins and during the processing, an isolated formation of MSG is produced. 

This formation of MSG causes a cascade of inflammation that most people don’t need in their lives!  I...

Normally I pick a single blog post from someone's blog and share it here, however, when I ran across Evolvify I quickly noticed all the posts are excellent!  I could single out the post on Alpha Males,  or the predictors for being cheated on for women, but only if I also link to the predictors for being cheated on for men.

From Evolvify's About page: "The Paleo Diet Meets Paleo Psychology Humans evolved to have a few friends, play, eat, work (a little), love, play, and make love (and play). Humans did not evolve to sit in traffic, hang out at the gym, farm, have 2.7 million neighbors, or eat food that’s been pre-chewed by robots from a feeding trough. The modern world prevents us from maximum flourishing, but we can hack the hell out of it to fix that. The rapidly expanding paleo community is a reflection of, or reaction to, Western/American culture.

The bad thing about the paleo movement is the incessant and myopic focus on diet and exercise as if those are the beginning and end of ...

T'is the evening for ghouls, ghosts, goblins, and zombies to come out! What everyone forgets is that they don't go away the next day, in fact, in most cases, they're still around thanks to the sugar overload from those candy filled buckets. And we all know that what the kids don't eat gets taken to the office to torture our childless coworkers.

They're easy to recognize - dark circles, groaning, swollen bellies, occasionally candy-colored fingers from all the dye. The good news is these zombies will recover, unlike all the Hollywood zombies. Halloween and excess amounts of sugar go hand in hand, and they causes your body to produce lots of acid and acid equals lots of inflammation.

High inflammation can cause a person to have pain and stiffness, sleep poorly, increased allergies, and so on. If you find yourself or your children feeling sluggish after Halloween, candy overload is likely to blame. It takes about three days of near perfect diet to get your blood sugar back into some s...

Often when a patient comes in, I adjust and change their diets by instructing the patient to eliminate grains and gluten. The next visit, usually within a week or two, they bounce into the office listing all the surprising and strange symptoms that brought them into the office initially have gone away!

These symptoms can be as broad ranging and far reach as a skin rash, or eczema, to severe and life-threatening autoimmune disorders like Multiple Sclerosis. There's a fascinating case where a man had severe neurological symptoms that mimicked ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), even had an MRI that had the same lesions on the brain that ALS has, after he removed gluten from his diet all his symptoms abated and the MRI Lesion cleared.

Gluten is a terrible little protein, and gluten intolerance or sensitivity can be life altering. Symptoms of Gluten Intolerance or Sensitivity:

This was amazing! It was one of the tastiest and simplest meals we've done.  I had the entire meal from prep to table in less than 30 min.  The pecans added to the fish filets.  Erin typically doesn't like things crushed in nuts but was pleasantly surprised by this recipe.  She kept asking what else I added the nuts and was shocked when I told her it was simply salt and pepper.

Paleo Pecan Halibut

• 4- 6 oz. Halibut filets (can substitute Cod)
• 1/2 Tablespoon butter
• 2 Cups pecans
• 2 Eggs beaten
• Salt and pepper to taste

Sauteed Spinach

• 3 Tablespoons minced garlic
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 1 pound of baby spinach

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 
2. Coat a baking dish with butter. 
3. In a blender or food processor chop the pecans and place on a plate or bowl. 
4. Dredge the halibut in the beaten eggs and coat with the chopped nuts. 
5. Place each piece of fish in the baking dish and bake for 18-20 min.
6. While the fish is baking heat the butter and garlic.  Once the butter is hot a
...

My morning ritual usually starts with either a 5:15 am the alarm for Erin or myself to go to the gym, or a baby monitor going off sometime around 6:30 am.

On the mornings I don’t go to the gym I first make a run for the coffeemaker, get the kids out of bed and usually turn on the Today show or a music station. With the Today Show, we at least get an idea of how the weather is going to be for the day. I’ll be honest, commercial TV, and especially the Today Show, drive me nuts! The programming, commercials, and shows all have a decidedly medical slant. This week Today Show has been mainly medical with a concentration in pain management.

I had had to turn the TV off most mornings because I seriously considered throwing the remote through it when they were talking about treatments for low back pain, neck pain, and migraines. Today I was pleasantly surprised when they were profiling “alternative” treatments, like acupuncture, in a very positive light. They were even talking about needlele...