  David Edelberg, M.D. David Edelberg, M.D., author of The Triple Whammy Cure (Free Press; 2006), has a long-standing interest in chronic illnesses that have eluded conventional treatment. He has been a practicing physician for more than thirty years. From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, Dr. Edelberg was medical director of Health First, Chicago's largest privately held group of primary care clinics. In 1993, he founded American WholeHealth (AWH), a network of health care centers specializing in integrative care that combined the best of conventional and alternative medicine. Currently, Dr. Edelberg is senior clinician and medical director at WholeHealth Chicago, located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Dr. Edelberg was chief medical advisor of WholeHealthMD.com, AWH's website, which is the exclusive information provider for the AARP Alternative Health and Wellness Network. Dr. Edelberg has written extensively on complementary and alternative medicine in books for the general public and also for physicians considering career changes into integrative medicine. He teaches alternative and integrative medicine to medical students and residents from the University of Chicago, usually providing their first exposure to alternative medicine. He is also assistant professor of medicine at Rush Medical College. Dr. Edelberg is on the Rodale Medical Advisory Board, has served on the board of the American Holistic Association, and is president of the board of Facets Multimedia, a not-for-profit center of art and foreign film in Chicago, where he lives with his wife and two sons. Why I Wrote This Book My patients frequently tell me a lot about themselves as we jointly try to understand their health. And when they do, I feel blessed to be allowed this glimpse into the heart and mind of a fellow human being. Each tale is unique, and I'm perpetually astonished by the profound courage, pain, and endurance that my female patients display. One morning recently, it came to me that, on virtually every working day for the past 30 years, I've been taking care of people, listening as they revealed their lives and pains, their anxieties and fears. In fact it was my patients' stories that led me to write this book. As a holistic doctor, I'm committed to treating whole people. I don't simply treat their diseases and believe that all people are pretty much interchangeable—that they have the same reactions to the causes of illness or to the illnesses themselves—the way I was taught in medical school. I listened as my patients told me the details of their lives, and I began to see patterns of poor health. So many women came to me to ask why they felt so bad and unwell after endlessly hearing doctors tell them that all their tests were normal and nothing was really wrong. Does any part of this sound like your own story? You've been feeling just plain crummy for too long. In fact, you're beginning to have some difficulty remembering when you last felt “just fine.” Quite reasonably, you want an explanation for your chronic ill health. You don't want to be told you look fine and that your test results are normal. You're getting weary of seeing doctors, getting referrals, and taking medicines that don't help. You want a way out of this mess. You want your health back. Let's clear the air right away: your symptoms are valid and you do feel awful. “So,” you say, “if my tests are normal, and my doctor says I don't have a disease, what exactly do I have?” Follow this carefully: what you're experiencing is not a disease, as doctors think of disease, but rather the consequences of a susceptibility you have as a woman on three separate fronts. Your symptoms are the result of a three-pronged assault--a “triple whammy” so to speak—consisting of:
You can't get a gene transplant hoping to erase your factory-installed genetic susceptibility to low serotonin. But there are definite steps you can take to prevent this susceptibility from manifesting itself—steps that are simple and effective. And that's why I wrote this book. I decided that the five finest words any doctor can ever hear are “I think I'm feeling better,” and my patients tell me they do feel better when they follow the Triple Whammy Cure. In fact, some of them say they feel like they got their lives back. Up to now, you've probably been losing against the Triple Whammy assault. Some women have come to believe that feeling crummy is unavoidable, but it's not. Your situation is far from hopeless. In fact, with a few lifestyle changes, nutritional supplements, and some safe, gentle alternative therapies, women with the Triple Whammy can get their lives back. So it's time to turn things around. It's time to:
This book will show you how. Heidi Hough Heidi Hough was editorial director of the American Medical Association Consumer Publishing division for twelve years, where she directed the development of thirty consumer books, including the best-selling AMA Family Medical Guide, the AMA Encyclopedia of Medicine, the James Beard Award-winning AMA Family Cookbook, and the nineteen-volume AMA Home Medical Library. In conjunction with The Stonesong Press, Simon & Schuster, and the physicians at the Harvard Medical School, she helped to conceive, write, and edit the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide. She has also worked with Reader's Digest Books and Web-based wired.MD, which produces digital health care information. Ms. Hough, who has a deep interest in alternative therapies, lives in Chicago. |
