This April marked an important milestone for me and my team with the publication of our groundbreaking clinical trial on reversing biological age through diet and lifestyle. And since then, quite a number of research articles have been published on this very same topic.
Are your patients complaining of bloating, abdominal pain, brain fog, or fatigue? Perhaps you run a stool test and find that after treating the abnormal results, the patient’s symptoms continue. Or perhaps you have treated your patient many times for dysbiosis only to have it return again and again. At this point, it’s wise to consider that your patient may be reacting to a common dietary component such as wheat.
Often food sensitivity testing is ordered simply due to patient demand for this service. However, the fact of the matter is that food sensitivity testing has a great deal of usefulness in clinical practice. Functional medicine practitioners have used it effectively to unearth the root cause of health problems, pinpoint the reasons behind what exacerbates a given health concern, and even determine which dietary supplements can do more harm than good.
Digestive complaints are common and can significantly impact quality of life. Not only that but they can also often be dismissed by conventional medical thinking or swept into the bucket of irritable bowel syndrome without much relief offered. In functional medicine, restoring gut health and balance is right at the core of what we do.…
New understandings of the intricate connections between gut and brain are revolutionizing medicine’s approach to mood, brain function and digestion, giving our “gut-wrenching experiences” or our “gut-feelings” a lot more meaning than they already have. The emerging evidence in this area is providing new tools to influence both gut and brain health.
According to a study released just last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Network Open), having high levels of bisphenol A (BPA) in the body is associated with a 49% increased risk of death within 10 years.
All SCFAs have wide-ranging therapeutic benefits, but in this article we’ll focus on butyrate as a therapeutic agent for gut and brain health. Butyrate is the food for the colonocytes, the thin layer of cells that comprises the lining of the large intestine. Within the intestinal environment, it protects and supports the mucosa, gut motility, and the commensal bacteria of the colon. Although butyrate is largely present in the gut, it can also have effects on the brain via the gut-brain axis, as well as by lowering inflammation, stabilizing DNA structure, and sequestering harmful metabolic by-products like ammonia.
Living in Sandy Hook, practicing medicine in Sandy Hook, my life – and the lives of all of us here – continue to be influenced by the 12/14/12 mass shooting. The day it happened, despite not losing a child in the tragedy, I was gutted, locked in grief. I also remember thinking that it couldn’t…
There has been a lot of published research lately around the role of our skin’s microbiome on overall immune health as well as the impact bacterial dysbiosis has on different diseases. The bacteria Cutibacterium acnes (C. acnes) — one of the most abundant strains of bacteria in most people’s facial microbiome — has long been associated with acne lesions. But, how does acne occur and how does our microbiome impact it?
In the Functional Medicine space, we all desire to be described under the banner of “Evidence-Based.” What does that mean, and how do we get there? In this article I will attempt to address the laboratory component of this question from the perspective of a company in the middle of this ongoing journey. The value of self-critique and continual self-examination: There is a pattern I have witnessed in the Functional Medicine Lab industry that needs to be challenged from within. We develop tests, leverage them as much as we can, and then wait for competitors or critics to raise objections or questions. If those objections never come, we may be tempted to push forward without continuing to pursue both analytical and clinical validation. Continuous self-critique is critical!
