Detox 2015!

Happy new year!!! Its that time again, Detox time :) Now that the gorging and partying and sitting around of the holidays is over, this would be a good time to consider a detox program and of course revamping your exercise program. Get into a healthier mind set for the spring. I am at your service and here to help if you need me. As an added incentive for the rest of January all detox and weight loss products along with the sauna will be 10% off, let's get started :)

New Year VIP program 2015

Happy New Year! Welcome to those who joined our VIP program this year.*********** This blog is to discuss the program in more detail and to explain how it may be particularly helpful for various people.****************** In a nutshell the program is one which requires an annual one time fee. For this fee patients enhance their already VIP status :) ****************** BENEFITS: VIP's get immediate same day appointments.************** Extended visits on special days. ************ No waiting time in the office. ************* Direct telephone access to the doctor as well as email. ************** Courtesy Hospital visits throughout the Baltimore Washington Area.**************** Same Day prescriptions.******************* 10% off all products.********** $60 maximum for office visits including those for people already enrolled in the HRT and Anti-aging programs Free blood draws in the office. ********************* One free Executive Physical with memory testing etc annually.*********************** Home visits when you are unable to come to the office. *************************** WHO SHOULD DEFINITELY CONSIDER ENROLLING: People who travel a lot, you will have access to your doctor wherever in the world you are. International patients.*********************** Terminally ill patients and the elderly. ************** People who have a hard time leaving the house and dont want to get sick from sitting in urgent care and emergency room centers.*************** People with high insurance deductibles.************** The office visits will still count towards your deductible but you will know that you never have to pay more than $60 in the office. This way you can get affordable care but you will have insurance should something catastrophic happen like needing surgery or hospitalization.********** If you like the idea that whatever healthcare facility you end up in your personal physician is monitoring your care and watching out for your best interest. This can save many extra days in the Hospital and unnecessary medication and tests because I know my patients and can tell the physicians what you may or may not need.******* If you have a cafeteria plan, put it to good use to improve your health throughout the year.*************** Let's have a healthier 2015 than 2014 in all ways, I am at your service!

Please dont go to the Dominican Republic!

Its Mothers Day and I finally got the chance to write about a subject that has been troubling me for years. If you are thinking about a trip to the Caribbean please don’t go to the Dominican Republic. I know the rock bottom pricing is amazing and tempting but you should understand that your tourist dollar is promoting modern day slavery. I do not intend to get into a long dissertation on the subject but hopefully it will stimulate your interest to read about the subject some more. All the hard back breaking work of construction and sugar cane harvesting in the Dominican Republic is done by people of Haitian descent. There is a documentary called “Black Sugar” you may wish to watch. I haven’t watched it myself because I know it will just upset me and besides, I have been there, many times both as a tourist and as a Health Care Volunteer. On my last visit a gentleman who was the administrator for ILAC, a center run for US students by the Catholic church, proudly took us to his farm and showed off his farm workers. “Haitians are like dogs” he said. He certainly housed them as if they were. He happily told my husband to demonstrate the point that since Dominican girls are not allowed to sleep with Haitians and there is a relative shortage of Haitian women he hires a Haitian prostitute to ‘service’ his workers. He said they would form a line outside the hut and you could hear the person inside shouting ”Next!”. I didnt think this was a particularly appropriate story to tell in front of a lady but then again perhaps he did not view me as such. If you are of Haitian descent no matter how many generations before you cannot obtain Dominican citizenship. This means you have no passport and are trapped inside the country with no opportunity for an education or health care. I offered to pay for a Health Canter for the people in a batey (ghetto for Haitians) in Santo Domingo and the staff of ILAC told me it would be a waste of time because all doctors are paid by the government and they would not send a doctor there regularly. They told me instead to use the money to build a school for Dominican children because “Haitians don’t appreciate an education”. Even the United Nations has not been able to convince the Dominicans to change. Last year the Dominican High Court stripped more than 200,000 Haitians of any claim to citizenship making them legally stateless and denying their children the right to receive education, health care or any basic human rights. Many Haitians were actually kidnapped and taken to the Dominican Republic to work, if they run away they are beaten and returned. Sound familiar? It is convenient for those of us who are comfortable and free, to ignore the plight of those human beings who are basically slaves. Can you really lounge on the beach and raise that Pina Colada with a clear conscience, pretending you don’t know just because you got a deal?

Hair, Skin and Nails

Hair tends to be less lustrous as we get older, Nails more brittle and Skin more saggy. Is there a common thread? Of course, not just the obvious generic aging syndrome but also deficiencies that we can actually point to (and replace). Here are some basic tips: Use an antimicrobial shampoo before you use the fancy, nice smelling, super conditioning stuff. make sure the producte you use dont cause build up. Consider massaging coconut oil into the scalp before washing, leave on for a minimum of 20 minutes. Get the supplements on our list for whichever is problematic for you, hair, skin, nails or all of the above. If you notice rapid aging check for hormone imbalances, thyroid etc and vitamin deficiencies. Maintain your internal anti-oxidant levels and of course use the Stop-Aging Skin therapy twice a day. This would be a good time to stock up on maintenance items for the New Year, if you were registered for today's seminar because of the 10% discount. Yours in health Dr. Nadu A. Tuakli

PREVENTION, CONTROL AND CURE OF ARTHRITIS Have you ever heard that there is nothing that can be done about Arthritis? Its not true! An Aunt of mine was having a terrible time earlier this year with bad arthritis of her spine causing so much pain she couldn’t move. Unfortunately she is not in the States and I could not get to her. She told me she was hospitalized and was put through the ‘usual’ paces. MRI’s, Spinal taps and injections, pain medications and anti-inflammatories and then the usual ‘nothing can be done’. My first thought was: that’s a lot of money, time, energy and pain to end up with “nothing”. My second was : Of course something can be done, they are just staying with the same old paradigm. One of the most magnificent things about the body is its ability to heal itself, those of us who practice traditional medicine just need to learn to tap into that ability. If we do, the sky is the limit, we will even ‘find’ the cure for cancer! As always prevention is better than cure but what do you do if you are already afflicted? I have read 9 books on Arthritis over the past month (I am happy to share the titles with anyone who is interested) and I am so excited about the information I was going to discuss it this afternoon at my ‘Skin” seminar! Not that arthritis and skin are not related because they are, but it certainly is a stretch on the ‘looking great for the holidays’ theme! (By the way for those of you who keep asking me ‘when is your next seminar’, arranging a huge seminar like the last one is really time consuming so I will be doing mini-seminars at my office and sharing new information periodically.) So why the excitement? I do believe that arthritis can be prevented, contained and cured! But not by managing it the way we are taught in medical school. i.e take anti-inflammatories to decrease the inflammation while your joints get worse and you suffer from the side effects. Oh, and then when it completely breaks down replace the joint with an artificial one. I now believe that the non pharmaceutical measures you can take are much more powerful than drugs for the treatment and prevention of arthritis. These do not suppress the symptoms while the disease gets worse, they stop it. So here’s a summary of what may be needed: Oral Hygiene measures. Dietary changes. Healthy Oils Supplements Vitamins Exercises Maintain a healthy weight Antimicrobials when indicated Allergy testing Balance your Hormones Nothing invasive! If you have an interest in generating a personalized program for arthritis treatment then please feel free to schedule a consultation. If you have arthritis personally or in your family I would strongly encourage you to do so SOONER than later. (Those of you who signed up for today’s seminar will be mailed the supplement sheet we prepared for today). Yours in health Dr. Tuakli

Dont discount doing a pap smear

A patient said to me last week “I do believe you saved my life for the second time Dr. Tuakli” And I thought Wow! You know what, she is right. People thank me for saving their lives from time to time and not to sound cavalier but I often think that it is nice to hear but I was just doing my job. Any qualified physician could have been credited with doing the same thing. But this time was different and very stark. This 50 something year old lady has been in my practice for perhaps 3 or 4 years. She has a variety of medical issues that we have been working on and from time to time I would suggest she have a pap. She had told me previously that she had been told that she didn’t need one because she had had a hysterectomy. Interestingly enough whenever I probed further she never seemed sure about exactly what had been done. Was the uterus completely gone including the cervix? How about the ovaries? Why was the surgery done in the first place? It never ceases to amaze me how many times I ask those questions and the answer is “I don’t know”, particularly in over 40 year old women. I eventually convinced her that it would be a good idea to just do a routine check up even though she had no symptoms and so I did a pap. As soon as I started her pap I knew from the look of the lesion in her vagina that it was cancerous. Putting cells on a slide and sending it to the lab quite frankly was a formality and I had her schedule an appointment with a gynecology oncologist pending the results. She told me when she came in last week that the specialist walked into the room and the first thing he said to her was “What is a women your age doing still getting pap smears?!” (I wont be referring any more patients to him). The arrogance dissolved when he saw the cytology report and the patient has since had the appropriate surgery. So why do I tell this cautionary tale? Well, for one thing, the current guidelines imply that she did not need a pap smear, simply based on her age. Secondly, I think that many women are walking around thinking that because they have had a hysterectomy they are immune to genital cancers. Thirdly, standard recommendations are just that, written for the common good but not by someone who knows you. Do not take them as gospel. You could argue that this is the exception to the rule and that is probably true but it also means that someone’s mother and sister will still be alive 3 years from now and she also managed to avoid the trauma of cancer therapy that would have resulted had she found it later. In medicine it is not always easy to argue with “official recommendations” and specialists who don’t know the patients. I believe that I taught myself something with this case, not everything has to be rational, and care must be individualized regardless. I am a strong believer in learning from past experience even if its not written anywhere. I derive no satisfaction from my patient being diagnosed with cancer but I am sure glad I followed my gut. When in doubt get a pap, it sure beats the alternative!

If you do get a high PSA level it might be worth doing another test

As I mentioned before there is a lot of controversy about the PSA test. But what happens if you get an abnormally high PSA, should you automatically move to the next step of treatment? There is the old saying that more men die with Prostate cancer than die from it. No one wants the cure to be worse than the disease. So the good news is that there is a new genetic test that can help assess how aggressive a prostate cancer might be. This may be a useful adjunct if you are unfortunate enough to do a PSA and end up with a high value. This test is not in common usage yet but it is becoming more common.