34 years of practice, 8 years of teaching Int. Med.

After over 30 years experience in treating hypertensive patients of all ages, including really studying them and listening to them describe their symptoms, and the side effects of medications they have been given either by me or by other physicians, I have become very interested in the increasingly common phenomenon of overtreatment of hypertension. I have witnessed patents with many bothersome and some very serious side effects and complications of this "iatrogenic" (caused by doctors) medical problem, and I have diagnosed hundreds of patients who have been overtreated by previous doctors. In so doing, I have been able to "give them their life back" by decreasing their med doses, while carefully monitoring them, especially with overnight ambulatory blood pressure monitors. In some cases, patients are able to get off their blood pressure medications completely, and they thus truly have "white coat hypertension." Others are able to simply reduce the doses of their medications, and they respond with new energy and zest for life, sometimes which they had previously given up for years! They still have hypertension, but the overtreatment of this hypertension is attributable to what I call the "white coat effect," or the "White Coat Phenomenon."

The school of life, as it has engaged me over the years, intermingled with an excellent education in the medical sciences, including Psychology and Psychiatry, from Northwestern University, and study of the human mind from a spiritual standpoint, has enabled me to begin to really understand the hidden causes, mechanisms, and meanings of stress-related symptoms and illness. I have always spent a great deal of time counseling and educating my patients about stress, and over the years, I have had a huge amount of success, which I attribute mostly to the excellent communication that develops in the relationships I have with my patients. There is a great deal of trust in these relationships, and it gives me the opportunity to explore the deeper origins of hurts and painful memories in their lives. By utilizing these techniques, while truly caring for patients and being willing to give of myself and my time to help them, while never judging them or thinking myself somehow better than they, I have become a somewhat highly-sought-after counselor in addition to my busy Internal Medicine practice.