Functional Medicine

The Five Drivers of Long COVID

By Erik Goldman

Since the Spring of 2020, roughly 200 million Americans have had Covid-19. That’s an estimated 60% of the country’s population. Worldwide, the number is around 700 million. For many, the acute infection was just the beginning of a long, bewildering odyssey of illness. With Covid-related admissions to US hospitals now under 1 case per 100,000 […]

The Post-Viral Recovery Program Supplement Protocols

By Erik Goldman

The Long Covid nutritional protocol developed by the 10-member practitioner working group under the aegis of OvationLab and ANDHealth, is divided into two parts—Foundational Supplements aimed at improving overall health, and Specialty Supplements focused on the five main drivers of Long Covid: ACE2-mediated tissue damage; viral persistence; chronic inflammation; mitochondrial dysfunction; and microbiome/dysbiosis. The working […]

Longevity in 8,000 Steps

By August West, Contributing Writer

If you want to help your patients extend their life expectancies, tell them to take a hike! People who walk at least 8,000 steps per day for two or more days each week have significantly lower all-cause cardiovascular mortality rates 10 years later. That’s the conclusion of an in-depth analysis of accelerometer data from 3,101 […]

NAVIGATING THE COMPLEXITIES OF AUTOIMMUNITY: A Functional Medicine Approach to Autoimmune Disorders

By Erik Goldman

Autoimmunity and gastrointestinal disorders are inter-related and increasingly common problems. Because the different autoimmune diseases affect specific organ systems, patients are often shunted to specialists who approach these conditions through their relatively narrow specialty lenses.  Though they may manifest differently, most autoimmune diseases have the same common triggers. If we know what causes the immune […]

Restore Immune Tolerance and Optimize Health with Nature’s pHarmacy

By Erik Goldman

A healthy immune system naturally regulates between defense and repair. But when confronted by unrelenting challenges, it becomes overburdened and the repair functions take a back seat to defense. The result is a “repair deficit” characterized by chronic inflammation—a well-recognized cause and amplifier of chronic disease. When defense takes precedence over repair, intestinal permeability usually […]

Air Pollution Exacerbates Symptoms of Depression

By Janet Gulland, Contributing Writer

Exposure to polluted air is associated with increased depression symptoms in people with bipolar disorder (BPD), according to a new study by psychiatrist Joseph Hayes, MD, PhD, and Aaron Kandola, at the University College London. In the first project of its kind, Hayes and Kandola tracked symptoms of depression and mania against real time changes […]

A Renewed Push to Include Supplements in Fed Programs

By Erik Goldman

Should people with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) be permitted to use their tax-deferred dollars to buy dietary supplements and herbal medicines? It’s a question that will once again confront members of Congress in the months to come. Under current federal tax rules, supplements are excluded from HSAs and also from Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), unless […]

Nutritional Support for Post-Menopausal Osteoarthritis

By Erik Goldman

According to the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, there are roughly 27 million American women in the peri- to post-menopausal years–that’s 20% of the US work force. And each year, roughly 2 million American women reach menopause. Women betwen the ages of 50-60 years have a 3.5-fold higher risk of osteoarthritis than men of […]

ARFID: When Food Trigger Avoidance Causes Trouble

By Erik Goldman

People living with chronic digestive disorders like inflammatory bowel disease often figure out the hard way—by trial and error—which food groups trigger their symptom flares. And since many go for years without competent medical and nutritional guidance, they rely on their own experience, the advice of friends, or online information to create their own elimination […]

Pain Brain: Chronic Pain Drives Cognitive Decline

By Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, Contributing Writer

A massive new study of data from over 19,000 individuals shows that chronic pain is associated with loss of hippocampal volume and increased risk of dementia. Compared with pain-free control subjects, those who had five or more areas of chronic pain showed neurological changes equivalent to eight years of excess brain aging (Zhao W, et […]