As he often does, Dr. Bland contextualizes COVID-19 in a way that brings clarity and renewed purpose. Having originally shared these thoughts via email, Dr. Bland kindly approved us to share them here for others too.
“I think that it is important for us to remember that COVID-19 is a lifestyle disease that is remediated through the way we live, act, eat, and socialize. It is the classic example of a personalized lifestyle health care issue. We will always be confronted with communicable viruses. It is how we as a global EACH manage our environment, lifestyle and social structure that determines its pathogenicity. The Functional Medicine matrix provides the only way to address these aspects of a condition such as COVID-19 in the absence of an immunization to prevent it. We look to medicines to be a solution to treat these viruses when we know that there are still 770,000 people who died of HIV infection last year. Pharmaceuticals are only a part of the solution, the majority of the solution lies within the social determinants of disease addressed by the Functional Medicine model.”
Kara Fitzgerald, ND, received her doctor of naturopathic medicine degree from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. She completed the first Counsel on Naturopathic Medicine-accredited post-doctorate position in nutritional biochemistry and laboratory science at Metametrix Clinical Laboratory under the direction of Richard Lord, PhD. Her residency was completed at Progressive Medical Center, a large, integrative medical practice in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Fitzgerald is the lead author and editor of Case Studies in Integrative and Functional Medicine and is a contributing author to Laboratory Evaluations for Integrative and Functional Medicine and the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM)’s Textbook for Functional Medicine. With the Helfgott Research Institute, Dr. Fitzgerald is actively engaged in clinical research on the DNA methylome using a diet and lifestyle intervention developed in her practice. The first publication from the study focuses on reversal of biological aging and was published 04-12-2021 in the journal Aging. She has published a consumer book titled Younger You as well as a companion cookbook, Better Broths and Healing Tonics and has an application-based Younger You Program, based on the study.
Dr. Fitzgerald is on the faculty at IFM, is an IFM Certified Practitioner and lectures globally on functional medicine. She runs a Functional Nutrition Residency program, and maintains a podcast series, New Frontiers in Functional Medicine and an active blog on her website, www.drkarafitzgerald.com. Her clinical practice is in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Additional publications
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