Evolution of Medicine Podcast

Fostering Community and Functional Joy

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 ...

Preventing Alzheimer's with Functional Medicine

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. ...

The Web of Long COVID

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. ...

Transforming Pharmacy into Functional Healthcare

Business of Functional Medicine: Declutter Your Mental Space

Julie Funt is the CEO of Juliet Funt Group and author of A Minute to Think, which describes the importance of metaphoric white space in everyone’s regular schedule. Her firm provides efficiency training to change the way we work, making it more sane, more human, and a more positive experience for all. In this Business of Functional Medicine episode, Kristen Brokaw speaks with Juliet about how this concept applies to the medical field, and we learn from the author some practical habit adjustm...

The Vaginal Microbiome with Greg Leyer, PhD

Our guest in this episode, Greg Leyer, PhD, has an academic background in deadly pathogenic bacteria, such as botulism and other foodborne illnesses. Now, he focuses on healthy bacteria and joins James to discuss benefits of probiotics for the vaginal microbiome. While gastrointestinal health is thought to depend on microbiome diversity, the vaginal cavity requires a more homogenous population of Lactobacillus species. By producing organic acids—mainly lactic acid—lactobacilli help maintai...

Success Leaves Clues: Building a Functional Medicine Practice from Scratch

Dr. Shane Holland joins this week’s podcast to share his experience with the Practice Accelerator. Shane’s story is one we hear over and over amongst our Practice Accelerator participants. In this series, Success Leaves Clues, we celebrate alumni stories in conjunction with our current open enrollment period, running September through October 2022. Shane began his career as a teacher and later became an emergency medicine physician, and he is currently transitioning into operating a functi...

Controversies in Nutrition Part II: Vitamin D, Methylation and More

Dr. Tom Guilliams, our go-to expert for anything related to nutrition research, returns to the Evolution of Medicine podcast for the second part of our Controversies in Nutrition series. Dr. Guilliams has written several books on the therapeutic uses of nutritional supplements. Our guest opens the discussion by rebutting attempts by major medical journals to discredit nutraceuticals. He breaks down the weaknesses of their research and arguments, along with how the studies are biased and un...

Building & Integrating Functional Medicine into a Hospital System

Sandi and Steve Amoils are Medical Doctors who built a multi-disciplinary functional medicine clinic in Cincinnati, which includes chiropractors, energy healers, therapists and doctors. They talk about what first steps they took to work towards this vision, how they made their business work in a cash-based model, and why they partnered with a larger hospital system. Their clinic also runs an accredited fellowship integrative medicine program. Download and listen to the full episode to lear...

Tackling PCOS with a Functional Medicine Approach

Dr. Shilpa P. Saxena adds to her series of Evolution of Medicine interviews with a discussion on polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). With both personal and professional experience reversing the condition, she walks us through the functional medicine approach to treatment. Dr. Saxena explains how insulin resistance often accompanies and must be addressed through the “matrix” of each patient’s overall health and lifestyle. Since PCOS is a clinical diagnosis, she also describes the signs practi...

Growing Your Functional Medicine Business with On-Point Messaging

Michael Fishman is a top advisor on marketing and business growth, aiding successful health and wellness companies. He leads the Consumer Health Summit (CHS) annually, which is now in its 24th year, and acts as an angel investor for over 20 health and wellness businesses. With his expertise, he advises his clients on how to effectively formulate their brand messaging and ensure it is communicated consistently, from training team members to sharpening taglines and from online messaging to in-...

Nutrition, Lifestyle and Supplementation Support for Osteoarthritis with Thomas G. Guilliams, PhD

Functional medicine providers have the best tools and scientific understanding of topics like immunology, the microbiome and mitochondria. This constellation of knowledge and tools makes functional and integrative doctors optimally equipped to address osteoarthritis. Dr. Thomas Guilliams is an expert in nutrition research and immunology, and he has written several books on the therapeutic uses of nutritional supplements. During this conversation, we hear about the gut-joint relationship an...

Getting to the Root of Chronic Pain with the Foundation Pain Index

Josh Gunn, PhD is the Chief Scientific Officer for Ethos Laboratories. Ethos began with the mission to incorporate more functional medicine principles into conventional care and to help patients gain access to the root causes of their pain.  With a background in forensic toxicology, Dr. Gunn and the team have developed a new tool at Ethos called the Foundation Pain Index. The Pain Index is a biometric test designed to identify potential biochemical origins of patients’ chronic pain. The te...

Improving Healthcare with The Institute for Natural Medicine

James interviews Michelle Simon, PhD, ND, president and CEO of the Institute for Natural Medicine (INM). Dr. Simon sees an increasing awareness that our current healthcare system is not delivering the results we need. She advocates for alternate solutions through her work with INM. Some have argued that iatrogenic disease is the third-largest cause of death in America. Applying the Therapeutic Order, which is a guiding principle for naturopathic medicine, can reverse that trend. Naturopath...

Bringing Functional Medicine into Health Systems

This week’s podcast is a series of interviews with a handful of physicians who are involved with the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM). Dr. Luby is the Director of Medical Education Initiatives at IFM, which works to scale functional medicine and make it more accessible and easier to adopt into larger healthcare systems. The pandemic brought to light weaknesses in our healthcare system for which functional medicine offers solutions! Dr. Penn is an infectious disease specialist and work...

Lipid Replacement Therapy for Any Fatigue-Related Illness

Our guest on this episode, Dr. Michael Ash, is a researcher who discusses lipid replacement therapy. The applications for this treatment include all fatigue related illnesses, including but not limited to environmental toxin exposure, Lyme disease and long COVID. Oxidative damage, which this therapy addresses, occurs in aging and all chronic and acute illness. When the immune system is activated (e.g., after an infection), mitochondria can be damaged. The defective mitochondria become swolle...

The Power of Personal Growth in Reversing Chronic Illness

Dr. Mary Pardee, who specializes in fecal macrobiotic transplantation (FMT), explores how personal history with trauma (emotional or physical) often contributes to chronic disease, the necessity of physicians acknowledging their patients’ journey into disease, and the paramount importance of community during the healing process. Highlights include: Empaths are more susceptible to chronic illness Connection, bonding and community are pillars of health Why group medical visits are necessa...

Growing Functional and Lifestyle Medicine Practices with LMRC Resources

On this episode, we speak with Josiah Bartz from the Lifestyle Matrix Resource Center. The LMRC is driven by the same purpose as Evolution of Medicine and supports growth of lifestyle and functional medicine by providing clinicians with practical resources and tools to get their practices off and running. The LMRC was born out of thousands of hours of speaking and working with functional medicine practitioners who want to start or build their practices but feel overwhelmed and in need of s...

Penney Stringer: Successful Communities for Improved Health Outcomes

Penney Stringer, a family medicine physician, shares her journey into functional medicine and her experiences moving in and out of conventional medicine. Dr. Stringer shares anecdotes from her exceptionally successful HealCommunity group. Listen in to hear Dr. Stringer and James explore:   The power of community in medicine How patients with chronic illness are underserved The importance of group support for behavior change And much, much more!

The Future of Functional Medicine: Shifting to a Better Payment Model

Cheng Ruan, MD is a Functional Medicine practitioner who trains other physicians to work through insurance systems. He discusses value-based care and it’s current limitations, physician services that are currently billable to Medicare or insurance which are underutilized, how to foster a sense of empowerment with patients, rather than trying to be the “hero” as a physician. Listen to the full conversation to hear about: How physician entrepreneurs should be thinking about scalable growth ...

Behavior Change Principles to Grow Your Practice and Bolster Patient Adherence

Chris McChesney is a behavior change expert who wrote The 4 Disciplines of Execution. His fascinating perspective offers practical tips about how to manage “The Whirlwind” of competing priorities and make meaningful strides towards focused goals. James dives into the business-oriented concepts exploring their applications in the Business of Functional Medicine series on the podcast.  Listen to the full episode for insights that will help you build your own practice, improve patient relations...

Two Evolutionary Biologists Lens on Healthcare

When we started Evolution of Medicine, we saw a theme emerging that conversations about evolution were going to be critical for understanding all the different ways in which medicine was evolving. With that in mind, who better to have on the podcast than two evolutionary biologists?

Success Leaves Clues: Accountability Groups

On this episode, we share an amazing story of four doctors from across the country brought together to form new friendships that transformed their businesses. Tune in as we hear from three chiropractors, Dr. Bill Hammer, Dr. Russell Sher and Dr. Todd Di Leo, and Tracy Jones, DO, as they share how they've moved toward their own practice vision in the last five years, how those visions differ dramatically, and how they've built strong connection and friendship, even though they've never met in...

Drop Acid with James and Dr Perlmutter

In this episode, we have Dr. David Perlmutter on to talk about his new book, Drop Acid. Dr. Perlmutter talks about how he chose this topic and the profound impact of restoring metabolic health and controlling uric acid with simple dietary and lifestyle tweaks.

Success Leaves Clues: Foundation and Integration

This episode is part of our Success Leaves Clues Series and features Helen Perks, a nutritionist from the UK. She joined the Practice Accelerator in 2017, and as you listen to her story, you’ll hear just how valuable a supportive community of practitioners can be when building your practice.

2022 Coding Change and What it Means for the "Year of Growth"

On this episode, we talk about the changes in the 2022 coding, with guest, Sonda Kunzi. She runs Coding Advantage, and is a leading biller and understands the world of not just medical billing, but medical billing as it applies to the functional medicine community.

2022: The Year of Growth

Every year, Evolution of Medicine picks a theme, and this year’s theme is Growth. And who better to kick off our year of growth than Dr. Mark Hyman? In this episode, we talk about the growth of the movement and the surprising places where functional medicine is really starting to take off.

New Models #9: Functional Medicine for First Responders

Today, we are talking with Dr. Sunjya Schweig, you may know him as a leader in the Lyme and biotoxin illness space. However, over the last few years he has been working on an interesting project to bring functional medicine principles, and clinical nutrition to a very special population; firefighters and policemen.

Mitochondria and Immunity: The Critical Connection

On this episode, we have Dr. Elroy Vojdani returning to the podcast. A few months ago, he came onto the podcast and did our most popular show of the year, talking about the role of food and autoimmunity and how it relates to COVID-19.

The Science of Enzymes

This week, we are talking about enzymes. Enzymes are used and recommended by practitioners across our ecosystem. There are many different supplement companies that are recommending enzymes, so we wanted to get to the guy behind the guy, like where are these enzymes coming from?

New Models #8: Solving Behavior Change At Scale

On this week’s episode, we’re going to go right to the heart of the Evolution of Medicine, looking to solve the biggest issues and the biggest gaps that exist not only in conventional care, but also in functional medicine.

New Models #7: Virtual Endometriosis Care

In this episode, we feature Dr. Jessica Drummond, as a part of our New Models series. You’ll learn what a big deal endometriosis is, and to what degree it acts like many other chronic illnesses that you're probably treating in your practices.

From Meetups to Communities: Our Worldwide Evolution

This week on the podcast we have an exciting episode announcing our launch of Functional Forum Communities! I'm joined by Toni Wolley and Kristen Brokaw, who are both leaders of their local communities in St. Louis and Indianapolis but are also sales reps.

Business of Functional Medicine: A Key to Overcoming Practice Overwhelm

This week we have guest host, Kristen Brokaw on to interview Dr. Miles Bodzin about the business of functional medicine. Dr. Bodzin discusses what to do for your practice overwhelm. He shares what he struggled with as well as tips and tricks he has learned to improve patient retention.

Food Associated Autoimmunity: COVID 19 Edition

This week on the podcast, we are going deep into immune health with Dr. Elroy Vojdani. The Vojdani family, Elroy and his father Aristo have been very helpful for James in sense-making over the last year and a half in the most important topic on the planet, immunology.

Accelerating the Reinvention of Addiction Medicine

This week on the podcast, we feature Dr. Aimie Apigian. This episode is an incredibly inspiring story about her journey from general surgery residency to addiction medicine, and now to teaching other practitioners and doctors about the nervous system and how it affects addiction.

New Models #6: Concierge Care for the Poor

This week on the podcast, we have another episode in our New Models Series focused on concierge care for the poor. Dr. Angela Bymaster and her husband Brett are on to talk to us about a really unique community-focused model of business that they created. They're able to take concierge medicine patients at full price and use that money to pay for other people in the community who don't have access to care.

Pharmacists on the Front Lines

This week, we are talking pharmacies, pharmacists, and the reinvention of medicine. Melody Hartzler, PharmD, BCACP, BC-ADM is a pharmacist on the frontlines, organizing a new model of functional medicine-trained pharmacists integrated with primary care and specialty care.

New Models #5: The Terrain Theory

This week on the podcast, we have another episode in our New Models Series focused on the terrain theory with Dr. Maya Shetreat. Maya was on the Functional Forum back in 2017 in Guernsey. She talked all about plant medicine. In this episode, she talks about her journey with terrain medicine and how that concept aligned all her clinical interests and passions. We also talk about how terrain and community connections go hand in hand, and how functional medicine practices can use her insight to...

Contrversies in Nutrition: NAC, Strontium and Fish Oil

This week, we are going clinical with Dr. Tom Guilliams. This is a new podcast segment that we're doing called Controversies in Nutrition, and in each session we are going to take some big controversies that have been brought to us by listeners and ask Dr. Tom Guilliams about them.

New Models #4: Making Lab Ordering Easier

In this year of reinvention, we are going to need partners that can deliver incredible value to clinicians and make it easier for them to run successful practices. This week on the podcast, we spoke to Josh Crolle from Evexia Diagnostics, who are going to be one of our new partners. We talked about the genesis of Evexia, what it means.

The Business of Functional Medicine: Proactive Business Solutions for a Healthy Practice

On this episode of the podcast, we have guest host Kristen Brokaw on to interview Seth Conger, COO of Freedom Practice Coaching. Seth shares his journey to functional medicine and how he went from wanting to be a practitioner to helping practitioners scale up their practices, so they have  better business models.

5 Keys to Treatment Adherence

This week on the podcast, we feature Dr. Alex Keller. He is the medical director of Fullscript, and he’s here to talk to us about adherence. This has been a topic that we've been hot on at the Evolution of Medicine throughout our existence, and we’re excited to have a guest from our long-time sponsor on to share his insights and new resources.

The Latest in Collagen Research

This week, we are talking all about collagen. Collagen has exploded in demand with it seemingly everywhere in supplements, teas and bone broths, so we wanted to speak to someone who's on the front lines of research. Dr. Steffen Oesser works at the Collagen Research Institute.

New Models #3: The Sprouting Revolution

This week, we are talking about sprouting as part of our New Models series. We have Doug Evans, one of the world experts on sprouting, joining us on this episode He wrote a book called The Sprout Book.

Best Clinical Practices for Applying Bergamot

This week on the podcast, we have a special episode with Dr. Noel Williams, a conventionally trained MD who specializes in using supplements like bergamot, berberine and fish oil to manage his patients’ heart health. He realized along his journey that if conventional medicine wasn’t helping, he needed to learn more about nutrition to see what can help his patients.

New Models #2: Virtual Group Visits on Insurance

In our second episode of the New Models of Care Series, we feature Dr. Katherine Bisharat. Dr. Bisharat is an internal medicine physician from the Sacramento area. We have partnered with her and her clinic to launch virtual group visits and bill them to insurance.

New Models #1: Solving the 10 Heartbreaks of Medicine

On this episode of the podcast, we kick off our New Models Series with guest Dr. David Tusek. Dr. Tusek built the first direct primary care clinic in Colorado and now operates a  world-class facility called Cloud Medical. In this episode, he shares his insight on creating and building a direct primary care practice.

The Business of Functional Medicine: The Campfire Effect

On this episode, guest host Kristen Brokaw interviews Chris Smith, founder of Campfire Effect™. Campfire Effect™ is a company that teaches entrepreneurs how to talk about their work in a way that is as powerful and impactful as the work itself.

Practice Marketing #10 - TikTok For Health Professionals

This week on the podcast, James sits down with Amanda D'Almeida and Daniel Villavecer, medical students with an interest in functional medicine who have more than 400 million followers on the social media platform TikTok.