Molly Maloof, MD joins the Evolution of Medicine podcast to discuss a shared vision: connection as a critical pillar of healthcare. Dr. Maloof recently authored and released a book called The Spark Factor, which teaches readers how to personalize biohacking strategies for better energy and health. Dr. Maloof wrote portions of the book to fill the information gaps in biohacking for women, but 80% of its content is also applicable to men. If you listen to this short yet powerful episode,...

Dan Strause is the president and CEO of Hometown Pharmacy, which is a network of 70 independent functional pharmacies across Wisconsin and Upper Michigan that deliver patient-focused care. The Hometown Pharmacy group seeks to connect prescribing clinicians with pharmacists to collaborate and achieve the goal of moving patients from pharmaceuticals to nutraceuticals to food. They see a critical need for pharmacists to reconnect and work with prescribing clinicians, especially to mitigate or...

Our guest this week on the podcast is Robert Pearl, MD, a lifestyle medicine champion and leader. He is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group (1999-2017), the largest United States medical group, and the former president of The Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group (2009-2017). In those two roles, he led 10,000 physicians and 38,000 staff. Currently, he cohosts a podcast and is an author, clinical professor, contributor to Forbes, and speaker. In this podcast episode, we discussed...

Izabella Wentz, PharmD is an author and pharmacist who previously spoke on the Functional Forum and specializes in helping patients overcome thyroid dysfunction. In this episode, she joins James to talk about her personal journey with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis after years of debilitating symptoms. Her most recent book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol, was released on April 18, 2023. The book focuses on resetting the body’s stress response through targeted safety signals, and it features...

Dr. Carrie Jones rejoins the Evolution of Medicine podcast to discuss the functional medicine approach to depression, anxiety and attention issues. She is an avid educator who specializes in stress and endocrine health. A recent systematic review found that the serotonin theory of depression is scientifically unsupported,  which raises the question: What does this mean for patients who use either SSRIs or SNRIs? Dr. Jones explains how she answers this for concerned patients and discusses...

Kristen Brokaw hosts this episode which features Andy Sutton, CEO of Kare Health & Wellness.  Andy and his wife, Keri Sutton, cofounded and grew a successful integrative health center. Andy’s background is in architecture as a project manager, and his wife is a nurse practitioner who serves as the chief medical officer of Kare Health & Wellness. At the clinic, Andy also oversees marketing, new staff hires and training. Their clinic prioritizes developing and nurturing a strong...

Guest:  Amanda Wilson, MD, CEO, Founder In this episode, we learned about emerging, research-based treatments for alcohol use disorder (AUD) that pair well with functional medicine values.  Traditional 12-step programs have startlingly low success rates (8% for Alcoholics Anonymous) and teach some principles that are not supported by scientific literature—for example, that patients must abstain and avoid exposure indefinitely to stay in recovery.   James’ guest, Amanda Wilson, MD, is...

Adrian den Boer, DC, ND joins the podcast this week to share his clinical success with collagen. As a functional medicine practitioner with extensive experience in naturopathic and chiropractic care, Dr. den Boer is just the person we needed to speak with to learn about the benefits of collagen for the musculoskeletal system.   Tune into this episode to hear his astounding success stories, including one that did not even seem possible, according to his medical school training. He also...

Functional Forum Local Communities connect like-minded practitioners, enabling dialog, information sharing, interdisciplinary discussion, and community building for those who attend. In this episode we hear from a Functional Forum Community host and a loyal attendee. Kristen Brokaw, this week’s host, is the leader of Saint Louis’ local Forum Community, and founder of the St. Louis Institute for Integrative Medicine (SLIIM). Guest Grant Corsi is the Community Host of the Orange County...

“Everyone needs a good coach in life,” according to our podcast guest this week. For this Business of Functional Medicine episode, Kristen Brokaw interviewed Coach Micheal Burt to explore his perspective on becoming and staying motivated. He applies the term prey drive—the instinctual motivation of certain animals to find, pursue and capture prey—to human behavior and motivation. Coach Burt began his career as a basketball coach and is now an author, speaker and professional coach for...

On this episode of the podcast, James is joined by two doctors from the Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM) to learn about their upcoming annual conference from June 1-3 in Orlando, FL. Aly Cohen, MD is an integrative rheumatologist who speaks about the importance of environmental medicine and why autoimmunity needs to be understood by providers across medical specialties. Dan Lukaczer, ND is the Director of Medical Education at IFM. He was previously Director of Clinical Research at...

This episode explores Kalibra, a new healthcare AI tool. It aggregates patient data from multiple sources and helps clinicians and patients alike prioritize health information based on functional and lifestyle medicine principles.  Our guest on this episode of the podcast, Ivan Vatchkov, the CEO of Kalibra, shares with us how Kalibra.ai performs diverse functions, including bringing together all patient data into one dynamic place. It digitizes, organizes and analyzes the many PDFs from...

Approximately one quarter (25%) of the United States population has non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Patients with this reversible condition have accumulated fat in their liver cells. Over time, this creates inflammation and if left unaddressed, will eventually lead to permanent scarring or cirrhosis of the liver. The condition is highly associated with metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, and it is projected to become the leading cause of liver transplantation by 2030. Our...

Nathan S. Bryan, PhD is an academic and entrepreneur who has focused his career on the study of nitric oxide for nearly 25 years. He joins the podcast to contribute to the Evolution of Medicine’s current focus on cardiovascular and endothelial health.   Nitric oxide production is foundational to overall health. Unfortunately, many contemporary environmental and lifestyle factors reduce or prevent nitric oxide production in the body. Suboptimal nitric oxide production is a factor in insulin...

Dr. Patricia Restrepo is a Practice Accelerator alumna who joins the podcast to share her experience growing two businesses with the help of the Accelerator program. After being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at 14 years old, Dr. Restrepo pursued an education and career that allowed her to research natural solutions for weight management and diabetes. She was able to reverse her own diabetes, and now helps patients with similar diagnoses. Both of her businesses, one in Miami and the other...

Yaa Boakye, CPT, RDN from the Practice Accelerator team joins James on this special episode to announce an upcoming resource that will help practitioners develop their businesses: the 90-Minute Private Practice Sprint. During this free webinar on February 17 at 8 p.m. PST/11 p.m. EST, James and Yaa will share practical, actionable, no-fluff guidelines to help practitioners set goals to grow their practices. Register for the Sprint here: https://goevomed.com/sprint  With her experience in...

Dr. Tom Guilliams, a longtime friend of the podcast, returns to share his experience researching and foraging for mushrooms. Dr. Guilliams also speaks about the difficulties of accurately identifying mushrooms due to inconsistent documentation and characterization across scientific resources. These inconsistencies present significant challenges for manufacturers developing medicinal mushroom products since the extracts and powders may not be reliably labeled. Therefore, manufacturers must be...

This is the first podcast episode of the 2023 year of connection. How can we employ connection to advance the functional and lifestyle medicine movement? One answer is that we must continue to leverage group care and community networks to support reconnection in the post-COVID era, improve patient outcomes and increase the awareness and accessibility of our movement. Our guest on this episode is an innovator and thought leader on health creation and chronic disease reversal. Zach Bush, MD...

In this final episode of 2022, James reviews key topics from the year of growth and provides a sneak peek of what is to come in 2023, the year of connection. The Evolution of Medicine community has experienced impressive growth and witnessed significant shifts in 2022. We learned about deprescribing to help patients escape the polypharmacy public health disaster. We have applied functional medicine principles to help patients who experience long COVID and other post-viral syndromes. ...

In this episode of the Business of Functional Medicine series, our guest, Erwin Raphael McManus, is a pastor, author, filmmaker and thought leader at the intersection of entrepreneurship, spirituality and psychology. He joins this podcast to share his model of communication archetypes called The 7 Frequencies and how understanding them can help practitioners work and communicate more effectively with patients. Erwin also talks through the frequencies most often adopted by practitioners and...

Dysautonomia is a condition where the nervous system becomes dysregulated, causing disruption in the functions of various organ systems. Common symptoms include fluctuations in blood pressure, fatigue and anxiety. The condition seems to be increasingly common in the post-COVID era, and conventional medicine is unable to resolve the causes of this condition for patients. Shilpa P. Saxena, MD, an expert in cardiometabolic health and regular guest on the podcast, joins us to explore why...

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD is the founder and CEO of Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. As a leader in the field of integrative psychiatry, she joins James to speak about the advantages of leveraging a group coaching model for mental health services. For many reasons—from the current shortage of licensed clinical psychologists to improved patient compliance—mental health group coaching offers compelling advantages. Patients often feel more comfortable being honest and open with coaches they...

We are all familiar with functional medicine and perhaps even functional fitness, but have you heard of functional joy? Our guest for this podcast episode is Radha Agrawal, a successful entrepreneur and the author of the book Belong. Radha joins us to discuss her organization, Daybreaker, which spans 28 cities and five continents with a mission to foster joy and community. Daybreaker’s very first events in 2013 were community dance meetups held early in the morning that aimed to replicate...

Patrick Holford is the author of 46 books on nutrition and lifestyle factors for wellness. He is also the founder of a charity, Food for the Brain Foundation, and the voluntary director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Project. He joins James on this episode to showcase the foundation’s resources for reversing cognitive decline and preventing Alzheimer’s disease. They discussed targeted nutrition approaches and other tools available to patients and practitioners on the foundation’s website. ...

This episode features Leo Galland, MD, who outlines a systems biology approach to understanding and treating post-COVID syndrome. Dr. Galland created the graphic below to model factors and biological repercussions of long COVID. In the interview, Dr. Galland walks us through each element in the web of long COVID. During the pandemic, he also created and published two hour-long videos—one for patients and one for providers—containing research and recommendations on addressing long COVID. The...