A physician, author, and public figure, Dr. Mark Hyman has been transforming Western medicine for 30 years. As a young man, he taught yoga and wandered Tibet and Nepal in search of meaning. As a young doctor, he became disheartened by conventional medicine. “The way we were treating disease wasn’t working,” he says. “We can’t just cover up symptoms with medications. We have to understand the body as a biological system — an ecosystem.” This led him to research root causes of

When we think of infections or toxins or pollutants, we typically think of protecting ourselves. A rigid shield to protect us from the outside. While there's nothing wrong with this, a response of hypervigilance and alert can trigger the "fight or flight" stress mode which, if chronic, can suppress the immune system. Perhaps you get sick more often. Or your joints and muscles ache. Or your seasonal allergies are worse. Or you tire more quickly. These may be signs that the imm

If you’re reading this post, you likely feel sick, but your labs are normal. Or maybe this has happened to your partner or another family member. I had the experience myself, for years after the birth of my first child. I couldn’t sleep or think straight. I felt awful. All my energy went towards keeping a precarious inner stability. And yet, my screening tests were normal. As a doctor, I'd concluded that I didn’t have a disease, that I must be fine, and if I wasn't, it was al

Our modern lifestyle is disrupting a deeply ingrained, primordial, and universal code to being healthy.   This is how Dr. Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego and a researcher on circadian rhythms, begins his book,  The Circadian Code.  His statement is backed up by a compelling body of research. In 2012, Dr. Panda’s team divided genetically identical mice into two groups, one with unlimited access to a high fat-diet, and another with access to the

Got brain fog?  Mood imbalances?  Adult acne?  Chronic fatigue?  I did.  I also had chronic dizziness, insomnia, hypersensitivity to sounds, and other symptoms often dismissed by doctors. In the eleven years since my own diagnosis of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, I learned how central detoxification is to maintaining good health, as well as to healing.  From nutrition doctors like my colleague and mentor Mark Hyman, MD , prescribing detox diets and patients sharing their miraculou

"One cannot think well, love well, or sleep well if one has not dined well."  -Virginia Woolf Nutrient-dense foods are a cornerstone to restoring imbalances and maintaining vitality. They enhance the texture and flavor of any meal, as well as satisfy our deepest cravings. The following foods were parts of many traditional cultures, and our ancestors ate these with great regularity: naturally-fermented foods: pickles, kraut, kvass, yogurt/kefir homemade bone broth organ meats

I see this 30-day diet more as anti-inflammatory foods than an "elimination" (don'ts) "diet" (therapy), because these guidelines return you to whole, nutrient-dense foods. They offer you foods to replace the ones that might be driving inflammation in your body. So beyond a list of don'ts, see if you can give true nourishment to yourself. Why Do an Elimination Diet? A 30-day elimination diet can be hard to do, but it's free and effective. It's also finite -- just for a month!

To combat the COVID-19 outbreak, the media focused almost exclusively on the outer shield . That is, minimizing spread. This includes physical distancing. Washing hands with soap and water for 20 seconds. Alcohol sanitizers. Disinfecting tabletops and door knobs. Wearing disposable masks and gloves. This is the first line of defense. And it is vital. But there’s a second, equally important and often overlooked line of defense: the inner shield . That is, your immune system. T

The Middle Way in Medicine and Healing: Where East Meets West, Ancestral Meets Novel When Dr. Akil Palanisamy faced a debilitating illness during medical school, he was prescribed bone broth. The Ayurvedic practitioner working with him at the time knew he was a vegetarian who had renounced meat a few years earlier. But she saw bone broth as necessary to nourish his depleted body and rebalance his energy. Torn and in desperation, he turned to the story of the Buddha, who had e

In this conversation with bestselling author and health advocate Max Lugavere, Dr. Li explores some key parts of her journey, as well as the changes in food and lifestyle measures that supported her healing. Here are some highlights: 4:09 Near-death experience 12:49 Functional medicine explained 15:48 The different classes of causes of chronic disease 21:04 The role of qigong 26:43 The ancestral diet 31:54 Gluten and thyroid health 44:05 Diet changes made 54:50 Autoimmune thy