Functional Medicine Articles
Essentials of Functional Medicine: What Every Practitioner Should Know First
Every clinical discipline has a foundation that determines how well everything built on top of it holds together. In functional medicine, that foundation is not a list of supplements or a set of lab panels. It is a way of thinking about the body as an integrated...
Urinary Bone Markers: Beyond DEXA Scan Assessment
A common practitioner mistake: treating osteoporosis based entirely on DEXA scan results, then waiting two to five years to find out whether the intervention worked. By then, significant additional bone loss may have already occurred. The Kharrazian Institute's...
Muscle Mass as Longevity Organ: Functional Medicine Approach
Most practitioners order a comprehensive metabolic panel, a lipid panel, thyroid labs, and maybe inflammatory markers. Few order a DEXA scan or grip strength assessment. Yet research in gerontology consistently shows that muscle mass, independent of body fat and...
How to Create an AI Tech Stack for Your Practice
When was the last time you used an AI tool in your practice? Did it go well? Or did it give lackluster results, leading you to quickly abandon it as a viable solution? According to Dr. Sunjya Schweig, many functional medicine practitioners have tried using general AI...
Beyond Pharmaceuticals: Integrative Migraine Management
Migraines are not a single disease. They are the final output of a brain under chronic metabolic, inflammatory, or neurological stress — and treating only the acute attack leaves every upstream driver intact. This is the clinical gap Dr. Datis Kharrazian addresses...
Metabolic Dysfunction as Hidden Driver of Chronic Migraines
Most practitioners treating chronic migraine patients are managing a neurological symptom while missing a metabolic disease. The trigeminal vascular system gets the attention. Brain glucose metabolism, mitochondrial output, and insulin signaling rarely do. Dr. Datis...
Mucosal Immune System Dysfunction in Chronic Sinusitis
Most practitioners treating chronic sinusitis focus on the infection. The more clinically useful target is the mucosal immune system dysfunction that made chronic infection possible in the first place. Dr. Datis Kharrazian's coursework at the Kharrazian...
Functional Hypoxia: Hidden Driver of Cognitive Decline
Brain ATP drops, and cognition follows. That single cause-and-effect chain sits at the center of a commonly missed clinical pattern — one that Dr. Datis Kharrazian addresses directly in the neurology coursework at the Kharrazian Institute. The pattern is functional...
Can AI Scribes Make Your Practice More Efficient?
Think about your last patient visit. How much time did you spend typing vs. focusing on your patient? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Thirty or more? And outside the visit itself, how much time do you need for standard documentation and charting? For many doctors, it can be...
Metabolic Health Connection to Chronic Inflammation
Most practitioners treating chronic inflammation are looking in the wrong direction. They're chasing cytokines while the metabolic dysfunction driving those cytokines goes unaddressed. The inflammation insulin resistance connection is one of the most clinically...
Why Anti-Inflammatory Supplements Fail in Chronic Inflammation
A practitioner adds curcumin. Then fish oil. Then boswellia. The patient still wakes up stiff, fatigued, and inflamed. The mistake isn't the supplement selection — it's the assumption that anti-inflammatory compounds can outrun an active trigger. Dr. Datis...
Insulin Resistance Impact on Female Hormone Balance
A common practitioner mistake: treating a female patient's irregular cycles, elevated androgens, or infertility as a purely gynecological problem without evaluating metabolic function. Insulin resistance is one of the most underappreciated drivers of hormonal...