At Sanctuary Functional Medicine, we have a steady stream of new patients who come to us with mold toxicity problems, some anticipating the diagnosis and others not. Either way, once we are confident in the diagnosis, the “why me and not them?” question arises. It boils down to an interplay of differences in genetics, differences in toxic exposures (exposome), and differences in the types of mold which live in one’s environment. Genetics Confirming a diagnosis of mold toxi

Innovation deserves recognition, especially when it involves a bright new idea applied to an old problem like Lyme disease.  While I am not a big fan of Duke University- I graduated from University of Kentucky-, I have to give these Duke scientists credit for their pharmaceutical engineering.  By connecting a transport molecule to a light activated “berserker” molecule, they created a stealth warhead capable of destroying Lyme bacteria from the inside out.  After sneaking the

The internet serves as a sort of battlefield of opinions for so many topics, from medicine to politics to religion. The debate over the safety of fluoride has been one of those channels you could tune into whenever you wanted to watch the two sides grapple, wielding not just opinions but studies to try and disprove the other’s position. Today, we share one of the recent studies indicating that at some point, a child can get too much fluoride and suffer some cognitive effects.

While a mom’s belly should be the safest place for a developing baby to start his life, his mom’s exposure to toxins will affect the children’s life even after birth.  The evidence is clear: prenatal toxins and stressors can matter to his future.  Besides adding to this evidence, this study also confirms biological individuality.  Not every child suffers the same ill effects as others because individual genetics determine how impactful a given toxin is on a person. Researche

Research is showing that toxic mold may be far more harmful to our health than doctors once believed. A recent study from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio supports what many patients and functional medicine providers have been seeing for years. The researchers looked at a condition called chemical intolerance, where people develop symptoms when exposed to things they once tolerated—like cleaning products, fragrances, foods, medications, or environm

New research explores how gut bacteria and their metabolites may influence brain inflammation in autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and why caution is still needed. Read More >

The health of our nation is declining—not only in adult cardiometabolic health, but in how early poor cardiometabolic health now begins. While rates of diabetes, stroke, and heart disease continue to rise in adults, we must recognize a sobering reality: the tsunami of cardiometabolic disease has not yet peaked . More children are now entering adolescence with obesity, elevated blood pressure, high blood sugar, and abnormal cholesterol levels—conditions that were once consider

While none of us enjoy hearing the newest, slightly-longer-than-four-letter curse word—COVID—research into the pathophysiology of both acute and chronic COVID illness has provided an unexpected benefit: it has helped us better understand Lyme disease. Clinical experience in both adult and pediatric functional medicine clinics confirms what the research is now revealing, COVID and Lyme disease activate many of the same inflammatory pathways. In some patients, COVID infection,