Episodios

  • Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 8 – Systems Biology

    Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 8 – Systems Biology
    Apr 15 2026
    THE FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE STORY DR. JEFF BLAND  "Change occurs from the outside in" Dr. Bland Medicine has a habit of believing it has arrived. Every generation of physicians looks around the room, surveys the white coats and microscopes and MRI machines, and quietly assumes the puzzle is mostly solved. History laughs at that assumption. The truth is that medicine is always mid-sentence in a very long story. Dr. Jeff Bland has spent decades helping rewrite that sentence. In a recent conversation on The Root Cause Business of Medicine Podcast, Dr. Bland’s life work comes into focus. Not as a rebellion against medicine, but as an expansion of it. His influence on nutrition science, biochemical individuality, and what we now call functional medicine has helped move the field away from the narrow idea that disease is simply something to suppress or worse just name. Instead, he has pushed a more interesting question forward: why did the disease appear in the first place? That sounds obvious. It is so far from obvious that most physicians do not ask the question. Bland’s career sits at the intersection of nutrition, biochemistry, genetics, and what he calls systems biology. Over the decades he has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and written many books aimed at both clinicians and the public. But numbers don’t tell the story. What matters is the conceptual shift he helped introduce. For most of modern medical history, the dominant model has been reductionist. And reductionism is the scientific approach of breaking complex systems into their smallest parts. It has given us antibiotics, vaccines, and surgical techniques that save lives every day. But it has also left a blind spot. When we zoom too far in, we sometimes lose the map of the entire ecosystem. Human biology is not a machine made of replaceable parts. It is a network. It is supremely interconnected.... and a literature review Dr. M
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    15 m
  • Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 7 – Biological Fitness

    Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 7 – Biological Fitness
    Apr 5 2026
    Elk Antlers - What a Story  After returning from Jackson Hole, Wyoming this week, I was struck by the beauty of the Elk refuge, a place where thousands of elk relax in the winter lowlands. Staring at them, I pondered a question: why do the elk shed their antlers yearly? Seems like a lot of wasted energy in a resource scarce world. The answer, mating. Nature has a peculiar sense of theater. When reproduction is the goal, evolution doesn’t whisper, it builds costumes, props, and entire stage productions. Sometimes expensive ones. Across the mammalian world, attracting a mate often requires a spectacular display of biological investment. Energy is spent not just surviving, but advertising survival. The elk might be the most dramatic example. Every year, a male elk grows a massive set of antlers, sometimes weighing 30–40 pounds. These structures are not permanent. They are built from scratch annually, making them one of the fastest-growing tissues in the entire animal kingdom. At peak growth, antlers can elongate nearly an inch per day. To accomplish this feat, the animal diverts enormous metabolic resources into bone growth, calcium mobilization, and vascular supply. Then, after the breeding season, the antlers are shed and the process begins again. From an engineering standpoint, it seems wildly inefficient. Why build something so energetically expensive only to discard it months later? Because in evolutionary terms, reproduction is the ultimate metric of success. If an animal fails to reproduce, its genes disappear from the story entirely, Darwinian failure. Antlers function as a biological billboard: I am strong enough to waste energy....and more Dr. M
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    8 m
  • Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #108: Halie Hauser – Storytime

    Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #108: Halie Hauser – Storytime
    Mar 29 2026
    Screenshot On today’s episode of Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast, we welcome Halie Hauser, a pediatric clinician, storyteller, and quiet architect of early childhood connection. Halie is the creator of Storytime Explorers, a storytelling platform designed for toddlers and preschoolers that sits at the intersection of language, emotion, and human development. With a Doctor of Nursing Practice focused on pediatric primary care, she brings both clinical depth and creative intuition to the way she reaches children—and just as importantly, their parents. \ Her work lives in the small moments: friendship struggles, big feelings, daily routines, the courage to try again. The ordinary terrain of childhood—where, if we’re paying attention, the most important wiring is happening. Halie understands something we often forget in modern pediatrics: before a child can regulate, they must feel safe; before they can learn, they must feel connected; and before they can speak, they must be spoken to in a language that meets them where they are. Through storytelling, she’s building that bridge. This is a conversation about early brain development, emotional scaffolding, the power of narrative in shaping behavior—and how something as simple as a story can become a tool for resilience, attachment, and lifelong learning. Dr. M
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    48 m
  • Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 6 – Children

    Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 6 – Children
    Mar 12 2026
    Why Don't They Win  There are moments, usually late, usually quiet, when honest thinking can be had. When you zoom out and see the ecosystem around children not as a collection of caring institutions, but as a set of incentive machines. And incentive machines, unlike grandmothers, do exactly what they’re built to do. MAKE MONEY Tonight I sat with some difficult thoughts about the state of primary services for children in the United States. The deeper I look, the clearer it becomes that money, not well-being, drives most decisions shaping a child’s life. And the imbalance is not trending in a positive direction. Children Continue To Lose From My Viewpoint Approximately two-thirds of a child’s daily nourishment comes from school food programs, which too often rely on ultra-processed, calorie-dense, nutrient-poor products. Outside of school, the dominant food environment is similarly saturated with highly engineered foods that optimize profit, shelf life, and palatability rather than health. Kids are micronutrient starved, but calorically overfed. Biological systems begin to fray early. Biochemistry no longer meets cellular needs. Children develop disease and we are asked to medicate or worse rationalize away that this is NORMAL..... Enjoy Dr. M
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    9 m
  • Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 5 – Relationship Balance

    Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 5 – Relationship Balance
    Mar 7 2026
    Finding Relational Balance  Relational balance falters when one person needs the other to feel safe or whole. A parent in a strained marriage or carrying childhood wounds may lean on a child for comfort. The child, loyal and loving, tries to meet that need. Over time, this can harden into dysfunction. Years ago, I cared for a mother and son locked in a budding enmeshed relationship. She could not draw boundaries. She absorbed his pain, projected her own trauma onto him, and smothered him with anxious love and control. She tightly managed his world yet set no limits on how he treated her or others. By four, he was out of control. She was exhausted and indignant, insisting he was sweet while enabling every behavior. Her fear of becoming her own restrictive parents left him both fused to her and furious. Therapy was suggested. It was rejected.... Enjoy, Dr. M
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    9 m
  • Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #107: Sundeep Dugar, PhD – Drug Discovery

    Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #107: Sundeep Dugar, PhD – Drug Discovery
    Mar 2 2026
    On today’s episode of Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast, we welcome a scientist whose work has quietly shaped the cardiovascular health of millions around the world. Dr. Sundeep Dugar is a pharmaceutical innovator, inventor, and industry leader with more than three decades at the forefront of drug discovery. He is best known as a co-inventor of ezetimibe — marketed as Zetia® — a landmark cholesterol-lowering medication that transformed lipid management by targeting intestinal cholesterol absorption. He also co-inventor of the combination therapy Vytorin® (ezetimibe plus simvastatin), expanding treatment options for patients at high cardiovascular risk. For this groundbreaking work, Dr. Dugar and his colleagues received the prestigious 2005 National Inventor of the Year Award from the Intellectual Property Owners Association and the Heroes of Chemistry award from the American Chemical Society. Across his career, Dr. Dugar has contributed to more than 140 patents and has authored over 70 scientific publications, reflecting a lifetime devoted to translating chemistry into real-world therapies. He is currently the founder of Aayam Therapeutics, where he leads efforts to develop innovative, accessible medicines through collaborative global research. He also serves as Co-Chief Executive Officer of Blue Oak Nutraceuticals, advancing a novel mitochondrial-targeted compound known as Mitokatlyst™, designed to stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis and cellular energy — with potential implications for muscle strength, metabolic health, cardiovascular function, and inflammation. He is the first one to decipher the mechanism by which exercise induces mitochondria levels. Mitokatlyst mechanism of action mimics this process. Dr. Dugar’s scientific journey spans continents and some of the world’s premier institutions. He earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Organic Chemistry from the University of Delhi, completed his PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and pursued postdoctoral research at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and at Cornell University. Today, we’ll explore the story behind major pharmaceutical breakthroughs, the science of mitochondrial health, and what the future of therapeutics may look like when innovation meets global accessibility. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Sundeep Dugar.
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    1 h y 12 m
  • Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 4 – Relationships

    Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 4 – Relationships
    Feb 20 2026
    Screenshot Literature Review: A) "Establishment of the gut microbiome during early life is a complex process with lasting implications for an individual’s health. Several factors influence microbial assembly; however, breast-feeding is recognized as one of the most influential drivers of gut microbiome composition during infancy, with potential implications for function. Differences in gut microbial communities between breast-fed and formula-fed infants have been consistently observed and are hypothesized to partially mediate the relationships between breast-feeding and decreased risk for numerous communicable and noncommunicable diseases in early life. Despite decades of research on the gut microbiome of breast-fed infants, there are large scientific gaps in understanding how human milk has evolved to support microbial and immune development." (Davis et. al. 2022) Main Takeaways: First 1000 days matter a lot for microbial and immune development: Infancy is a critical window when the gut microbiome is assembled and the immune system is learning to respond to microbes and external exposures. Patterns set early can ripple into infection risk, inflammatory diseases, and atopy later in life. Enjoy, Dr. M
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    12 m
  • Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 3 – Beyond Behaviors Chapter 4

    Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 3 – Beyond Behaviors Chapter 4
    Feb 14 2026
    Chapter 4 of Beyond Behaviors is often read as a continuation of the neuroscience laid out in the first three chapters. That’s understandable, but it slightly misses the point. By the time Dr. Delahooke gets to Chapter 4, she’s largely done making the physiological argument. She now pivots to a far more practical and, frankly, more uncomfortable question: What does this mean we actually do as caregivers? This chapter is less about how the nervous system works and more about how we work, how we observe, interpret, and respond to children in real time. It’s a chapter about attunement, not theory. About shifting from reflexive reactions to intentional caregiving. About learning to read the child in front of you, not the rulebook in your head. The first major move of Chapter 4 is the insistence on personalized attunement, ditching the plural child. Or better yet, focused on the N of 1 child. There is no “average child” in her framework. There is only this child, with this nervous system, in this moment, in this space and time. How beautiful! Integrative Functional Medicine's credo, treat the whole person as you find them and as they are biologically. Attunement here is not sentimentality. It’s data gathering. Dr. Delahooke asks caregivers to become skilled observers of patterns rather than judges of behavior. What time of day does dysregulation tend to show up? After which transitions? After eating? After playing video games? In which environments? With which sensory demands? With which people? It is sleuthing the underwater potion of the iceberg of behavior. Importantly, she pushes caregivers to stop assuming intent. The question is not “Why is my child doing this to me?” but “What is my child’s nervous system experiencing right now?” That single frame shift collapses an enormous amount of unnecessary conflict. It moves the adult from adversary to ally. It walks away from shame and blame towards love and support..... Enjoy, Dr. M
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    15 m