An Important GLP-1 Therapy Side Effect: Myosteatosis

As functional medicine providers, we are continually assessing the benefits and drawbacks of various therapeutic options for our patients. One such th...

How to Build a Sustainable Functional Medicine Practice Leveraging LMRC Assets for Success

How to Improve Patient Compliance in Your Functional Medicine Practice

Learn from an IFM-certified practitioner about how to use resources from Lifestyle Matrix Resource Center to build foundations for your lifestyle or f...

The Complicated Patient: How to Approach Chronic Infections

Chronic viral infections, such as EBV or HHV-6, are complex conditions to test for and treat, but there are ways to resolve virus reactivation and aut...

Protection Your Patients Need for the Holidays: Effective Approaches to Neutralize Gluten

As the holiday season approaches, eating patterns are often unpredictable. Whether it is eating out at a restaurant or going over to a family member's...

Dysautonomia: A Growing Clinical Concern

The symptoms of dysautonomia can be so varied and seemingly disconnected that recognizing dysautonomia in the clinical setting can be challenging. Whe...

Enhancing Bioactivity of the Gut Microbiome Using the Whole Turmeric Root

Since its discovery, the gut microbiome has become known as one of the most important influencers of health and disease and is a major topic of research.

How to Use Social Media to Attract Patients to Your Functional Medicine Practice

There’s no denying it, social media is here to stay. Research reports that worldwide, over 5 billion people use at least one of the popular platforms.

Strategies for Enhancing Metabolic Health in Menopause

In this blog post, we'll explore the multifaceted nature of metabolic health in menopause and delve into actionable interventions to support women thr...

Beyond Hot Flashes and Night Sweats: The Benefits of Rhapontic Rhubarb for Menopause Symptom Relief

For women seeking comprehensive support during this time, rhapontic rhubarb root extract emerges as a powerful option, offering relief far beyond the ...

Simplifying SIBO: Case Study + Treatment Plan

You have a new patient coming in to see you. As you peruse her intake forms, you see she has already been treated for small intestinal bacterial overg...

Nrf2 Activation: A Key Regulator of Detoxification

The Nrf2 pathway is one of the important genomic regulators protecting the cell from environmental stressors by managing the antioxidant and detoxific...

The Musculoskeletal Benefits of Turmeric

Recent surveys show that 80% of doctor visits have a musculoskeletal component, yet only 10% of medical education is devoted to this important topic.

Elephant in the Room: Stigma Against Offering Supplements

Functional medicine practitioners may struggle with the stigma against providing supplement recommendations from your office. However, this valuable s...

How to Make Spore-Forming Probiotics a Successful Part of Your SIBO Treatment Protocol

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is a rising area of focus in functional medicine. As microorganism levels in the small intestine increase...

Treatment Strategies to Support Patients with Low Gut Motility

Treatments for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) can be complex and frustrating, especially if numerous approaches to remove unwanted bacte...

The Misguided Approach to Polyphenolic Enhancement (and What to Do Instead)

When we think of polyphenols, we think of well-known phytonutrients such as curcumin, quercetin, rutin and resveratrol found in plant-based foods that...

Magnesium Threonate: The Go-To Magnesium for Brain Health and Function

In this blog, we examine the need for magnesium supplementation, then explore the physiology of magnesium in the human brain and its potential to chan...

The What, When and Why of Using Probiotics as Targeted Therapies

There isn’t a clear-cut guide on the what, when and why of using probiotics for different conditions, but this article offers guidance based on the au...

How to Balance Neurotransmitters Naturally

In today’s fast-paced world, stress, anxiety and mood disorders are increasingly common and often stem from imbalances in neurotransmitters, the chemi...

Saccharomyces boulardii: Exploring Its History and Health Benefits

Probiotics, used for centuries in the form of fermented foods and supplements, have experienced a surge in both popularity and scientific research in ...

Using Virtual Group Visits to Enhance Patient Success

The American Academy of Family Physicians asserts that group visits are an effective method for enhancing patients' self-care of chronic conditions, i...

Berberine and the Gut Microbiota: A Bidirectional Relationship

The popular phytonutrient compound, berberine, is a classic example of a bidirectional relationship between the nutrient and gut microbiota.

Collagen and Lyme: Why This Connection is Key for Tissue Repair

Lyme is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States, according to the CDC, and it’s primarily caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgd...

3 Strategies to Increase Patient Referrals

Get noticed, known and remembered so you can attract the types of patient you'd like to treat. Create a better patient experience, gain a good reputat...

How Mitochondria Impact Musculoskeletal Health

Referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, mitochondria are tiny organelles with a large responsibility.

How Antibiotics Impact Mitochondria

Learn more about how antibiotics impact mitochondrial health, the consequences of antibiotic use and nutrients that support mitochondria in patients a...

Promising New Weight Loss Research: Can Specialized Polyphenols Provide the Spark Your Patients Need?

Combat obesity with natural plant polyphenols! Discover how hibiscus, lemon verbena, and green coffee bean extract enhance metabolism, curb appetite a...

Patient Journey Mapping: Why Lifestyle Medicine Clinics Are Adopting This Effective Marketing Tool

Patient experience mapping aims to understand how current or prospective patients behave, with the goal of better serving patients and improving patie...

Strategies to Support Your Patients’ Health and Wellbeing

Read about a program that will teach you how to turn even your toughest patients into ones you enjoy working with, ones who will be motivated to resol...

Toxic Load, Mitochondrial Function and the High Energy Demands of Active Biotransformation

Biotransformation—commonly referred to as detoxification—is an active process within the human body essential for clearing both exogenous and endogeno...

Microbiome Availability and How Botanicals Interact with the Gut

Much of what is marketed as having increased bioavailability rarely translates into meaningful therapeutic improvements, especially when it comes to p...

Key Considerations for Rotating Probiotics

The microbiome is a complex ecosystem in which a diversity of species is required for a healthy GI environment. Here are some tips to increase bacteri...

Essential Patient Engagement Strategies to Implement Now

A strategic focus on increasing patient engagement can address poor patient compliance or retention. This blog post offers several easy-to-implement s...

Supporting Mitochondria: 3 Ways to Help Your Patients Boost Cellular Energy

Your patients with mitochondrial dysfunction need comprehensive support to beat symptoms of fatigue and optimize cellular energy production with treat...

How to Enhance Biotransformation with an Elimination Diet

Nutrition is essential for optimal biotransformation, and the elimination diet is key to your patient’s care plan to support the liver, gut and Phases...

Why Your Detox Protocol Needs a Broad-Spectrum Binder

Your patients need your help to stop the harsh cycle of toxin recirculation. You may know the benefits of detox protocols, but toxin binders like acti...

Why You Should Host Educational Webinars to Attract New Patients

Hosting free educational webinars, livestreams or in-person presentations helps many clinicians connect with current and prospective patients. Read fu...

Beyond Curcumin: The Other Bioactives in Turmeric (White Paper Excerpt)

The therapeutic potential of turmeric has been disproportionally focused on curcuminoids. However, clinical trials have shown that preparations of who...

The Quercetin Paradox: The Secret to Preventing Toxic Quercetin Metabolites

Dose may be one part of what determines whether a substance is a medicine or poison, but quercetin in particular serves well as an example of how both...

How to Maximize Turmeric's Benefits for Musculoskeletal Health

Many practitioners are not aware that the whole turmeric root, rather than just curcumin, works in the gut microbiome to support the musculoskeletal s...

6 Reasons You're Not Implementing Group Visits (and How to Overcome Them)

Growing evidence suggests group medical visits are effective and provide unique benefits—so, what's stopping you? Check out these tips to get started.

How to Keep Patients from Sabotaging Their Exercise Programs

Some research shows a connection between exercise and weight gain, so let's dig into exercise, diet and sedentary lifestyles to help your patients mak...

Why Your Patients Need Full-Spectrum Turmeric

Is there anything full-spectrum turmeric can’t do? New research shows the complete matrix of turmeric compounds provides greater bioefficacy and benef...

Novel Therapeutics to Help Soothe and Strengthen the Gut Epithelium

Alongside reinforcing healthy lifestyle habits, we can help support our patients' gut and immune health with nutritional supplements that calm the gut...

10 Tips to Build Well-Being and Resilience in Your Patients in 2024

We need to empower patients to both cope and thrive. Here are 10 tips to help your patients to build resilience and well-being as we head into the new...

Detox or Die: How to Help Your Patients Detoxify in a Modern World

Detoxification is a multi-step process that occurs in multiple organ systems but especially in the liver. Support your patients' liver detoxification ...

Fibromyalgia: Connecting the Dots Between the Thyroid, Pain and Fatigue

The causes of fibromyalgia are complex, involving chronic inflammation and thyroid, HPTA-axis, and mitochondrial dysfunction. Treating fibromyalgia of...

Polyphenols: The New Prebiotic Frontier

Prebiotics are nutrients that induce the growth or activity of beneficial bacteria in the gut, and there are options available beyond traditional fiber.

The Complex Relationship Between IBS and SIBO

The relationship between IBS and SIBO is controversial and not well-understood. Dr. Guilliams reviews the available research on the associations betwe...

Case Study: Fibromyalgia

Learn about fibromyalgia and how to treat it, including key nutraceuticals and the importance of a multidisciplinary team, in this patient case study.

PPI Overuse and Nutrient Depletion: Give Your Patients the Support They Need

PPIs are among the most widely prescribed drugs worldwide and are seldom used judiciously for short-term treatment. Instead, patients are often placed...

How to Transform Autoimmunity into Well-Being

Autoimmune diseases are dramatically increasing, likely due to environmental exposures. Here is how you can work with patients to improve symptoms.

The Immune System, Inflammation and Musculoskeletal Health

Let's broaden our focus on musculoskeletal pain and function to include how immune health and inflammation are influenced by the musculoskeletal system.

Is Birth Control or Hormone Replacement Making Your Patients Tired and Depressed?

Many prescription drugs, including birth control and hormones, cause drug-induced nutrient depletion (DIND). The Standard American Diet is insufficien...

Why You Need to Monitor Magnesium in Your Patients

The risks of inadequate magnesium intake are high, so providing your patients with the right forms via supplementation will benefit their health.

Omega-3 Index: An Actionable Nutrient Status Biomarker

O3I is a biomarker of omega-3 nutrient status, which is proven to be a remarkable measure of overall health risks and closely tied to food-derived and...

New Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine: Vitamin K2 as MK-7, Part 2

The mechanism by which warfarin prevents blood clotting may have detrimental impacts on vitamin K recycling—and even lead to arterial calcification.

New Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine: Vitamin K2 as MK-7, Part 3

Interfering with vitamin K may have unintended effects, like vascular calcification, which researchers hope to understand how to prevent.

New Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine: Vitamin K2 as MK-7, Part 1

Some experts are raising a new concern: that the common drug warfarin is actually contributing to disease by interfering with vitamin K.

4 Key Strategies to Help Restore the Gut Barrier and Relieve Inflammation

Discover four key strategies to heal and protect your patients' gut barrier integrity using vitamin D, glutamine, Chinese skullcap and bee propolis.

Functional Medicine Therapies for the Burned-Out Brain

If your patients struggle with burned-out brain from chronic stress, review these lifestyle and supplement therapies to help them resolve their symptoms.

A Paradigm for Evaluating Anxiety and Mood Disorders

Brain burnout can be caused by three broad categories of contributing factors. Learn about testing for each so you can personalize treatment plans.

What's the Deal with Cortisol? Assessing Patients Using the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR)

Learn how to evaluate the cortisol awakening response in your patients through comprehensive testing strategies—plus tips for understanding the results.

A Double-Edged Sword: How Diabetes Treatments May Worsen Neuropathy

Learn about drug-induced nutrient depletion associated with diabetes and blood pressure drugs that worsen neuropathy—plus nerve health support protocols.

Is Semaglutide the Solution to the Obesity Epidemic?

Semaglutide may be a powerful obesity treatment option, but given its limitations and challenges, other interventions can help prevent weight regain.

Turmeric: The Golden First-Line Therapy for Joint Health

Studies show the bioactives in the natural turmeric matrix provide diverse benefits for osteoarthritis and joint health beyond those offered by tradit...

Blood Sugar Stability: A Key to Longevity

Use an integrative approach with lifestyle and supplement support to treat unhealthy blood sugar levels, insulin resistance and cardiometabolic disease.

3 Natural, Therapeutic Options to Support Kids Struggling with Stress

Managing kids’ stress is important for their current and future health. Learn about lifestyle adjustments and specific nutrient support that helps bal...

4 Unique Advantages of Spore-Based Probiotics

Growing research shows spore-forming bacteria have unique advantages for your patients who need gut health support, including those with SIBO. Some of...

Top 7 Nutrients to Help Your Patients Optimize Brain Health

Cognitive function is key to overall health. Help your patients boost their memory, learning and brain health with these seven essential nutrients: om...

Helping Your Patients Optimize Exercise for Weight Loss

Discover effective strategies to help your patients achieve sustainable weight loss through exercise, and learn how to help them avoid common pitfalls...

The Master Antioxidant: Bioavailability of Oral Glutathione Supplementation

Though there are many ways to support our antioxidant status and overall immune health, oral glutathione supplementation has been clinically demonstra...

Collagen: Beyond Beauty

Supplemental collagen is for more than just healthy hair, skin and nails. Learn about the science behind collagen's multifaceted functions for musculo...

Ketogenic Diets for Cardiometabolic Outcomes: What Is the Evidence?

A growing body of research has been published regarding the keto diet’s effect on cardiometabolic measures, but practitioners should be aware of the f...

36 Great Ideas from Cardiometabolic Function: The Intersection Among Neurology, Endocrinology, and Immunology

Key takeaways from the April 2023 Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute conference, Cardiometabolic Function: The Intersection Among Neurology, En...

Tips for Supporting Elimination Pathways

How many of your patients have tried a detox that just didn’t work out as well as they planned? If they stuck to the protocol but felt worse than when...

How Mold and Mycotoxins Affect Immune Health

Mold and mycotoxin exposure can contribute to inflammatory issues and autoimmune disease in your patients. Fortunately, there are tests available to d...

Improving Energy with Mushrooms

Many studies have shown that edible and medicinal mushrooms have antifatigue properties. This article focuses on the research demonstrating the benefi...

Reprogramming Inflammation and the Immune Response

When we discuss inflammation and inflammatory diseases, it is important to consider not just the cause of inflammation but whether the body is able to...

Endothelial Glycocalyx Damage: New Considerations in Cardiovascular Disease

The endothelial glycocalyx (eGCx) serves many cardiovascular health functions. When treating cardiovascular conditions, such as diabetes and high bloo...

Making Sense of Medicinal Mushrooms and Their Impacts on Immune Function

Medicinal mushrooms offer an adaptive, intelligent approach to modulate and strengthen immune function. Different species contain unique key constitue...

NAFLD as a Key Factor in the Cardiometabolic Continuum

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is often asymptomatic, leading to delays in diagnosis and negative impacts on overall cardiometabolic health...

Using Phospholipids to Ignite Mitochondrial Function

Phosphatidylcholine is the most abundant phospholipid in the mitochondrial membrane, making it a crucial component to keep mitochondria firing on all ...

An Emerging Clinical Conundrum: Patients with "Resistant"-Type Microbiome Patterns

Functional medicine practitioners who prescribe probiotics need to consider some recent findings regarding their patients’ colonization patterns.

Uric Acid: The Body’s Physiological Alarm Bell?

Elevated uric acid levels, or hyperuricemia, are associated with cardiometabolic disorders, including hypertension, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty live...

The Cell Danger Response and Chronic Disease Progression

Discover the top nutrients to support your patients with chronic conditions based on the latest research on the cell danger response and mitochondria.

Mitochondria: The Forgotten Cause of Cardiovascular Disease

Mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with cardiometabolic and cardiovascular risk, so it is vital that clinicians support mitochondrial health.

Fundamental Principles for Building Immune Strength

Pharmaceuticals and pharmacological immunomodulating agents are often reactionary approaches to building immune system strength. For true resilience, ...

Mitochondrial Dysfunction: Key Indicators That Might Be Overlooked

Learn how to test for and treat mitochondrial dysfunction, which is involved in many conditions, including autoimmunity and cardiometabolic disease.

8 Best Practices for Healthy Detoxification

In this follow-up post to last week's blog on supporting Phase I and Phase II liver detoxification, we're going over the important considerations when...

The HPA Axis: A System Beyond the Stress Response

The HPA axis is responsible for more than just stress response and chronic disease. It is one of the most critical surveillance systems in the body, d...

Berberine Offers Multifaceted Benefits for Your Patients

Berberine is typically recognized for its antimicrobial or antifungal properties, but may better be considered a “microbial modulator” because of the ...

A Clinician's Perspective on Evaluating Stress

Lifestyle changes should be your top priority when forming patient care plans for stress management and evaluating the success of treatment based on t...

4 Consequences of Stress on Gut Health & Tips for Repair

Although stress is ubiquitous, there are ways to guide patients in managing it, including how it impacts their gut health.

Cellular Hypothyroidism: What You Need to Know About Normal TSH in Symptomatic Patients

Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) test results are not the tell-all of thyroid function. What happens if the TSH is within range, but the patient stil...

Time It Right: When You Should Educate Acute Pain Patients

Providing patient education is imperative. For patients experiencing pain, this must be carefully and intentionally delivered and timed to accommodate...

3 Targeted Therapies to Help Your Patients Overcome Anxiety

It's normal to feel anxious, worried and fearful from time to time due to the complicated lives we live. Anxiety is a natural part of life. But if anx...

Cardiometabolic Differences: EPA vs. DHA

Studies show both mechanistic and clinically-relevant differences between the fatty acids, EPA and DHA, which potentiates targeted therapeutic uses fo...

MTHFR: Treating Genes or Patients?

In the discussion about nutrition, genetics and genomics, invariably the topic of methylation and genes related to methylation will find their way int...

4 Non-Traditional Warning Signs of Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a cluster of metabolic and cardiovascular (CV) risk factors, including visceral adiposity, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia an...

Beat Fatigue with Phosphatidylcholine for Mitochondrial Health

The integrity of mitochondrial membranes is critical to cell function and energy metabolism. Recent clinical trials assessing patients with chronic fa...

Research Update: Binding Capacities for Serum-Derived Bovine Immunoglobulins

Dysfunction of the intestinal microenvironment is the primary therapeutic application of the lifestyle medicine movement. While diet and lifestyle are...

The Gut-Heart Connection, Risk Assessment and Intervention

Many factors can increase the risk of developing heart disease, including inactivity, toxic burden and being overweight or obese. But there’s an impor...

Integrate Multiple Approaches to Provide More Comprehensive Healthcare

Whichever medical discipline we choose should be leveraged as a cornerstone of our approach to healthcare. To offer more comprehensive healthcare, it ...

Top Nutrient Protocols for Acute Injury Recovery

In this article, we cover three broad recommendations for acute pain and inflammation as well as those for tissue and collagen repair.

36 Great Ideas from Mastering the Implementation of Personalized Lifestyle Medicine

On May 13-14, 2022 hosted healthcare practitioners at Mastering the Implementation of Personalized Lifestyle Medicine: Advances in Clinical Functional...

Osteoimmunology: The Emerging Bone-Immune Connection

Bone tissue is largely considered an inert mineral reservoir that provides a framework for locomotion and physical strength. However, if we drill down...

Dairy Sensitivities and Intolerances: Using the Right Digestive Enzymes

Patients with IBS or IBD often have a dairy intolerance, sensitivity or combination of both. An effective dairy enzyme blend is a great adjunct to the...

Case Study: Mold Illness

A 33-year-old male presented with a 20-year history of chronic eczema, chronic athlete’s foot, mild asthma and moderate seasonal allergies.

5 Safe & Effective Nutrients for Vulnerable Populations During COVID-19

Supporting the immune system with supplements often includes stimulatory herbs such as echinacea, andrographis, and elderberry. And these herbs are of...

GERD: Weighing the Benefits and Risks of Treatment Options

Take a moment to reflect how many of your patients experience heartburn or prolonged coughing. More than likely, it may be too many to count. And chan...

Microtrauma: The Little Things Matter

It was a typical Monday morning. I walked into one of our treatment rooms and encountered a fit, 53-year-old female patient in severe pain. She had se...

A New Approach to Overcoming Performance Anxiety at Work

It’s perfectly normal to experience some degree of anxiety before delivering a presentation, or something equally stressful. According to a 2018 surve...

Nailing and Scaling the 80/20 Rule in Cardiometabolic Disease Treatment

If you talk to non-clinicians in the health care industry, you might not be surprised to find they are unimpressed with the average clinician’s unders...

4 Tips to Help Your Patients Fend Off the Winter Blues

Shorter days and cold weather may interfere with your patients' normal circadian rhythm. For example, if you live in the northern United States, you m...

Collagen for Skin Health: Is It Healthy or Hype?

There's no doubt that your patients have either asked you about collagen or have started taking it on their own. As their health expert, it can be cha...

Folate Supplements: Differences and Benefits

There is confusion about how to define the DFE conversion for supplemental 5-MTHF since some consider it to be a natural folate and FDA has left it to...

Fasting and Cardiometabolic Disease: What Practitioners Need to Know

Fads come and go in the health and wellness space. When it comes to fasting, expect this one to stick around for the long-term. Unlike harmful diureti...

Can COVID-19 Trigger Autoimmunity?

If we look back to late 2019 and early 2020, the medical community was beginning to understand autoimmunity differently, as a growing epidemic with de...

Feedback: Why Patients Need It, When to Use It and How to Give It

If someone asked one of your new patients (between three to six months of care) how their care has been progressing, what would they say? Would they b...

Preconception, Prenatal and Postnatal Optimization: Nutritional Strategies for Patients in Their Childbearing Years

The role of epigenetics on fetal and human development is of paramount importance to all of us as healthcare practitioners and parents. Toward the end...

Strontium: Still a Viable Therapy for Bone Health

Strontium (Sr) is an alkali earth metal, with characteristics very similar to that of calcium; though having an atomic weight nearly double that of ca...

The Homocysteine Playbook: Why Should You Test, And What to Do If Elevated

A homocysteine blood test is common and relatively easy to run and has been used to assess cardiovascular and cognitive health.1-2 So, should we throw...

An Integrative Approach to Autoimmune Disease

Fifty million Americans suffer from at least one autoimmune condition. Comparatively, only 12 million suffer from cancer and 25 million from heart dis...

Back to School Nutrition: Strategies to Help Parents Fill Gaps in Kids' Diets

As we get ready to get back to school during this difficult time of a partially treated pandemic, parents will be faced with one additional problem: H...

19 Great Ideas from Simplexity Medicine 2.0: Quantifying Patient Resilience

On July 9, 2020, the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute, in collaboration with Ortho Molecular Products, convened hundreds of healthcare practi...

These Are the Cardiovascular Risk Assessments You Need for Better Clinical Outcomes

In functional medicine, we are in no short supply of tests. Given the opportunity, many clinicians would love nothing more than to run copious amounts...

17 Great Ideas from Simplexity Medicine: Health Care Reimagined

On April 16, 2020, the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute, in collaboration with Ortho Molecular Products, convened more than 4,600 healthcare ...

Is Your Practice Poised to Be the Future of Medicine?

The triumph of health care will hinge on health professionals reinventing the way in which we work with a patient, with a population, and often overlo...

The Clinical Benefits of DPA in Fish Oil

As functional medicine providers, we know that omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil have many benefits. The health benefits include inflammatory balance, c...

Health Benefits of Collagen: A Practitioner's Perspective

It is the start of a busy Wednesday morning and I walk into treatment room #2. One of my long-time patients is sitting on the treatment table, beaming...

3 Remarkable Benefits of Hyaluronic Acid

Many people have heard of hyaluronic acid in beauty products, but few are familiar with this ingredient as a dietary supplement. We'll explore a few e...

3 Key Foundational Nutrients with Pleiotropic Effects

As functional medicine providers, we go beyond traditional medicine and root out underlying causes of health issues as well as attempt to restore norm...

COVID-19 & Autoimmunity: What We Know Now

In 2020, the medical discussion was dominated by the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19, and rightfully so-this has been an unprecedented health chal...

Implications of Cytolethal Distending Toxins Bring New Perspective for Natural SIBO Treatment

For the functional medicine practitioner, it is not a rare occurrence when a patient presents to your office with uncomfortable gastrointestinal sympt...

3 Ways to Naturally Treat Histamine Sensitivities

Let's start by stating the obvious here: COVID-19 has brought forth a cocktail of health issues! Apart from the blatant immune system problems, we als...

Living Well on the Road Ahead: Vitamin D and COVID-19

Vitamin D is a pro-hormone with ubiquitous effects throughout the body. It has been shown to have a multitude of benefits, including bone health, inna...

Strategies for Helping Patients Reduce Stress and Improve Immune System Function

Stress in appropriate amounts can be beneficial for the body to function better and stay healthy.1 As much as stress is a normal component of daily li...

Building Wellbeing and Resilience in Your Patients in 2021

The year 2020 will go down in history as an extraordinary year for all of us. In fact, this year will likely be remembered as the biggest experiment e...

Helping Patients Combat Stress with Targeted Nutrition

Your patients' stress stems from many different sources,1 and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to mitigating it. Nutrition is a powerful tool th...

The Innate Immune System is More Adaptive Than You Think

A few weeks back I spoke at the Microbiome 2.0 Symposium, part of the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute's Mastering the Implementation of Pers...

Improve Patients' Quality of Life with Lifestyle Interventions for IBS

Almost everyone experiences these symptoms at some point. But when they are a daily reality, these symptoms become a significant burden in patients' l...

4 Resilience Strategies for Busy, Stressed-Out Practitioners

Promoting health and vitality is something we all know how to do, yet life can sometimes conspire against us. We get caught in time crunches, food des...

4 Ways to Help Metabolic Syndrome Patients Avoid a Lifetime of Medications

Let's face the facts: If you see human patients, you're seeing patients with metabolic dysfunction. Even children, who should be resilient and thrivin...

The #1 Thing You Can Do to Help Your Patients Get Stress Under Control

As a health care provider, you regularly see patients managing varying levels of stress. This stress comes from external and internal sources, meaning...

Using Bergamot in Your Lipid-Lowering Strategy

In 2021, we are in no short supply of supplements that can support healthy cholesterol and improve lipid measurements. Many are backed by stacks of re...

New Ways to Implement Functional Medicine Programs in 2021

There has never been a better time for functional medicine.The population of the modern world has a weight around its ankle named chronic disease, and...

Benefits of Spore-Forming Probiotics

In the past two decades, there have been few areas of research that have expanded as greatly as that which explores the importance of the human microb...

The Emergence of Autoinflammatory Syndromes

Most clinicians are familiar with autoimmune disease mechanisms. Typically, these define situations where effectors within the adaptive immune system ...

The 4 Best Phytonutrients for Arthritis

Inflammation is the most common target for arthritis symptom management. However, to get to the root cause and ultimately improve outcomes, the target...

Cardiometabolic Lifestyle Medicine: Real People with Real Success

While I enjoy writing technical posts, my passion lives with sharing patient stories as clinical education. In our provider world, we call these "case...

The Future of Health is Virtual-Are You Ready?

The coronavirus has skyrocketed the demand for health care while simultaneously amputating its main arm of delivering the care itself. People desperat...

The 3 I's of Building a Strong Gut-Immune Axis

In practice, it can be a challenge to break down complex medical concepts and articulate them simply to our patients. This is especially true when we ...

Mitochondria: 3 Ways to Help YourPatients Improve Cellular Energy

We all know what it feels like to feel under the weather: drained energy, lethargy, full-body aches, drowsiness, brain fog-sound familiar? They're the...

4 Ways to Mitigate Heart DiseaseRisk During COVID-19

Heart disease is still the most significant mortality threat to Americans today. But now, cardiometabolic experts are asking this epigenetic question:...

How to Start a GroupExercise Program in Your Practice

"Exercise is medicine." This is probably one of the most to-the-point and impactful pieces of advice you can give your patients. The improvements exer...

How to Build Resilience inYour Patients and Your Practice

What does a typical day look like in your practice? Do you find yourself moving from one patient crisis to the next, all day long? You work with patie...

This Will Make You Rethink How You're Treating Chronic Stress

When our patients have symptoms of fatigue, weight gain, dry skin, hair loss and constipation, we evaluate the thyroid with lab testing. When our pati...

Glutathione: The Master of All Antioxidants

Antioxidants and detoxification are more than just marketing buzzwords. With health care professionals talking more and more about the importance of d...

Statins, Bergamot & Lifestyle Medicine

Statins have been the cornerstone of heart disease prevention in the conventional medical model for a long time. However, there is a growing resistanc...

The Term "Adrenal Fatigue" Should be Abandoned

Sometimes, when we endeavor to understand and describe complicated medical topics, there is a temptation to find a simple explanation to cut through t...

Case Study: Peripheral Neuropathy

In this case, a two-phase plan was developed that would first address the most immediate causes of the patient’s pain via neuropathic damage and secon...

The 4 Key Stressors and Nutritional Support Protocols for Rebuilding Stress Resiliency

In functional medicine, we focus on finding the root cause of health issues to help our patients achieve lasting recovery and relief from their sympto...

6 Strategies for Rebuilding Healthy Circadian Rhythms

If resilience is the body's ability to return to homeostasis following a stress of our physiology, what does it look like when we lose resiliency?

Rebuilding Stress Resiliency

Resilience is defined as the ability to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness, or the ability of an object to spring back into shape; elasticit...

Getting to YES: How to Enroll More Patients Into Care

In the previous two posts, I discussed the importance of niching down to make it easier for your ideal patients to recognize your expertise and releva...

Getting to YES: How to Nurture Your Prospects to Know, Love & Trust You

In my last post, I discussed the importance of niching down to make it easier for your ideal patients to recognize your expertise and relevance.In thi...

Getting to YES: How to Attract More of Your Ideal Patients

Imagine Thomas Edison only tinkering in his workshop, but never telling the world about inventing the lightbulb...crazy, right?Yet that's exactly what...

How to Know When It's Time to Start Group Visits in Your Practice

No matter your medical discipline, if you can facilitate behavior change in your patients, you will see incredible results. It is simply the most powe...

3 Patient Cases that Always Benefit from Nutritional Protocols

Your day begins as soon as you set foot in your office. Ten patient messages await your attention; an insurance denial on a patient's MRI beckons from...

Functional Medicine Approaches to Treating Urinary Tract Infections

If urinary tract infections are one of the most common infections physicians see, and we are attempting to avoid unnecessary antibiotic use, what func...

The Role of Stress and Nutrient Availability in Circadian Metabolism

In the last several years, I dove into the research exploring the intersection between circadian rhythm and the HPA axis. As most of you probably know...

The Breakfast of Functional Medicine Champions

When I first began my foray into functional medicine, I was pleasantly surprised to hear of this thing called functional foods. As someone who doesn't...

Resetting Circadian Rhythms of the HPA Axis

After nearly 20 years of clinical practice, I have found one concept makes all the difference between partial and significant clinical effectiveness: ...

Pain, Addiction and the Opioid Crisis: A Fresh Perspective for a Growing Epidemic

From the pages of medical journals to the worried minds of family members watching loved ones suffer, the opioid crisis continues to permeate our soci...

Strategies to Move Patients from Acute Injury to Long-Term Wellness

If patients are experiencing low back pain, they're not alone. About 80% of adults experience low back pain at some point in their lifetimes, and it i...

4 Ways to Make Your Functional Medicine Clinic More Profitable

Whether you are just starting a practice or have reached a point of burnout, "how" as well as "how much" you are compensated for your considerable eff...

Gastrointestinal Lab Markers That May Be Telling You to Use Immunoglobulins

In the world of functional medicine, testing has come a long way. Not only do we have more types of tests that can be performed, but the analysis has ...

Treat the Patient, Not the Disease: Advancing the Patient-Centered, Functional Medicine Approach to GI Dysfunction

When it comes to functional medicine, no other organ system exemplifies this patient-centered approach better than the gastrointestinal system.

Nailing and Scaling the 80/20 Rule in Cardiometabolic Disease Treatment

If you talk to non-clinicians in the health care industry, you may not be surprised to find they are not overly impressed with the average clinician's...

Endotoxins: The Missing Piece in the Autoimmunity Puzzle

Sometimes healing leaky gut can be a conundrum, and new evidence supports the idea of endotoxins playing a role in patients that seem to stall in thei...

Strategies for De-Stressing Your Practice

We usually discuss stress and its effects on our patients, but today I'd like to discuss the impact of stress on the physician.Physicians, and all hea...

Lifestyle Medicine's Approach to Tackling the Chronic Pain Problem

According the CDC, NIH, and Institute of Medicine, more than 30% of Americans are living with some form of chronic or severe pain. To put this in pers...

Neurotransmitters, Mood and the Perception of Stress, Part 3

The hypothalamus is directly innervated by neuronal systems that produce neurotransmitters, such as serotonin (5-HT), dopamine and norepinephrine (NE)...

Neurotransmitters, Mood and the Perception of Stress, Part 2

When we talk about "stress," or allostatic load, in terms of the perception of an event, we must realize that these "events" must first be translated ...

Neurotransmitters, Mood and the Perception of Stress, Part 1

When we talk about "stress," or allostatic load, in terms of the perception of an event, we must realize that these "events" must first be translated ...

Setting Successful Treatment Expectations for Your Patients in the New Year

You've created an amazing A-Z plan for your patient. You're excited to apply all your functional medicine knowledge. They walk out the door with pamph...

A Scientific Turn of Mind

"It's all in your head."This is the last thing a patient with stubborn symptoms wants to hear from their doctor. I recently said this to my 40-year-ol...

The Challenges and Pitfalls of PPI Withdrawal

Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are among the most widely prescribed drugs worldwide, accounting for a profit in the billions for the pharmaceutical ind...

Using Community to Motivate Patient Movement

Let's face it. Advising patients to exercise and engage in regular physical activity is a prescriptive no-brainer. The case for movement as medicine c...

Autoimmunity: Common Protocols to Consider for Every Case

Fifty million Americans suffer from at least one autoimmune condition. Comparatively, 12 million suffer from cancer and 25 million from heart disease....

The question in cardiometabolic disease is not what are you eating, but who are you feeding?

Cardiometabolic disease is rampant in the United States and our current approach to treating it is broken. For years, doctors and patients have been t...

Mapping the Cardiometabolic Patient Journey

Mapping the Cardiometabolic Patient JourneyAs of 2015, the combined prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes was 45.4% among adults in the United States...

Cardiovascular Disease: New Clinical Options for Expanding the Therapeutic Target, Part 3

A New Pleiotropic PathFrom early ideas about dietary fat, to a complex array of genetic risk factors and biomarkers, the arc of scientific discovery i...

Cardiovascular Disease: New Clinical Options for Expanding the Therapeutic Target, Part 2

Vector of Truth: Medical Research is an Arc of DiscoveryAnyone who devotes their career to scientific research is likely a seeker of truth. But this c...

Cardiovascular Disease: New Clinical Options for Expanding the Therapeutic Target, Part 1

Functional medicine can sometimes clash with the broader healthcare industry, which focuses on treating specific systems or diseases. In functional me...

The Gym Inside Your Door

The Gym Inside Your Door program was initially developed to increase daily physical activity in prediabetic and diabetic Alaska Natives in 2007, but h...

Exercise: The Ultimate Anti-Inflammatory

Do you talk about the importance of nutrition and prescribe a personalized diet to every patient, regardless of health status, who walks into your cli...

Beyond Bacteria: How Antibiotics Impact Mitochondria

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 30% of antibiotics prescribed in the outpatient setting are unnecessary-me...

Managing the Exposome

Two related fields of study, both owing to the emerging science of genetics and genomics, are beginning to help us discover the role toxins play in hu...

Be Worth It! Value Your Care and Improve the Financial Wellbeing of Your Patients

This post correlates to a presentation delivered by Dr. Gladd at The Evolution of Cardiology Functional Forum (March 2017). Click here to view the pre...

How to Make Your Practice Stand Out in a Crowded Field

No matter the terminology-Integrative, Functional, Holistic, Wellness or Anti-Aging-a growing cadre of clinicians are now competing for the cash dolla...

Group Visits? My Patients Love Them and So Do I!

It's my hope that this article inspires you to offer Group Visits to your patients. With the tools, support and coaching offered by the Lifestyle Matr...

3 Steps to Eradicating Cardiometabolic Disease

Cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease continue to devastate the lives of patients, families, communities and the US healthcare system at large. T...

Understanding the Pathology of Autoimmunity Through the Prism of the Gut

Dr. Alessio Fasano catapulted the understanding of GI involvement in immune diseases to center stage with his seminal research on zonulin and intestin...

What Can You Learn From a Salivary Hormone Test?

You know whether your patient has high cortisol, normal cortisol, or low cortisol-so what? Cortisol and DHEA can be high, low or within range and be p...

Re-assessing the Notion of "Pregnenolone Steal"

When clinicians measure salivary cortisol and DHEA (DHEA-S) to assess stress and HPA axis function, it is common to find DHEA levels below the referen...

Exercise Adherence Starts with an Exercise Prescription

The statement, "Exercise is an important part of lifestyle medicine," seems rather obvious. Studies indicate relative risks for cardiovascular disease...

Dysbiosis or Adaptation: How Stable is the Gut Microbiome?

One of the greatest paradigm shifts in medicine over the past few decades has been the unfolding discoveries revealing the metabolic influence of the ...

Assessing Immune Dysfunction: What You Need to Know

The Real Solution to the Health Care Crisis

As we all know, our health care system is in crisis. The media constantly bombard us with this message. However, while I agree with this assessment, I...

Care: The Secret Sauce to a Successful Clinic

I get this question a lot when speaking to practitioners about starting their own micropractice, "Why would patients pay me?"Do you wonder how someone...

Age-Associated Changes Impacting Immune Function

Newborns have an immature immune system and are vulnerable to infectious agents. The immune system begins to mature with appropriate interaction with ...

Clinical, Operational and Financial Benefits of Group Visits

Statistics continue to highlight the snowballing burden of complex, chronic disease as the 'Achilles heel' of our healthcare system's future. More and...

Exercise: So Simple and Yet So Hard to Do

Exercise is like eating: Patients think they are doing a lot better at it than they actually are. They may head to the gym after a long workday or com...

Canary in the Coal Mine: AMD and the Lifestyle Synergy Model

Since doing my initial research for The Original Prescription, in which I discuss the benefits of lifestyle synergy, I keep running into more and more...

What You Need to Know Before Running Another Adrenal Profile

One of my earliest clinical mentors used to tell me, "Who we are and how we practice once we are three years out of school/training is who we will be ...

Improving Metabolic Health, One Active Day at a Time

Do you prescribe regular exercise for your patients with metabolic diseases? Of course you do. You want the best health outcomes for your patients and...

Be Present to Have More Presence

Presence. The healthcare marketing and social media gurus will tell you that you can't have enough of it. They even tell us that increasing your prese...

Is it Adrenal Fatigue? Reassessing the Nomenclature of HPA Axis Dysfunction

Sometimes, when we endeavor to understand and describe complicated medical topics, there is a temptation to find a simple explanation to cut through t...

Mind-Altering Microbes: How your gut microbiome may influence your mood

While we have certainly heard that appetite and digestion are controlled by the enteric nervous system (also known as "the master control panel in you...

Managing a Stressed Practice

The term "stress," as it is currently used, was coined by Hans Selye in 1936 who defined it as "the non-specific response of the body to any demand fo...