Space Coast Advanced Health - Treating The Root Cause

Do you suffer from acid reflux, indigestion, slow gut transit time, or feeling like there’s a brick in your stomach after eating? Or perhaps you’re on a restricted diet for a chronic health condition but still react to an ever shrinking list of foods. If so, you need to work on restoring digestion. Many factors affect digestion, including aging, poor brain function that affects gut function, poor diet, and more. Often the problem isn’t the food itself, but a hyper sensitive immune system reacting to food proteins that are not broken down properly. Thankfully, you can improve your symptoms greatly with proper supplementation. Breakdown of food proteins is key for good digestion: For good digestion, you need sufficient hydrochloric acid (HCl) and digestive enzyme activity in the gut. These both serve the important function of breaking down food proteins, which prevents the immune system from targeting them and causing symptoms. HCl is naturally present in the stomach and is vi

5 reasons for brain fog:  Spaced out all the time? Like you’re moving in slow motion through a fog and can’t snap out of it? Though it’s not considered a disorder worth a doctor’s visit, brain fog is nevertheless distressing, disorienting, and difficult to cope with. It’s also a red flag your brain is aging too quickly and that you should take action right away. When your neurons, or brain cells, don’t communicate well with another, this causes brain fog. This poor communication causes overall brain function to slow down and diminish, giving you symptoms of brain fog. The trick is to find out why those neurons aren’t communicating well with one another. A number of reasons, both metabolic (having to do with diet and lifestyle) and neurological contribute to brain fog. In a nutshell, neurons need sufficient fuel, oxygen, and stimulation to function and prevent brain fog. 5 Possible Factor Contributing to Brain Fog: 1. Blood sugar that is always too low or too high: Ch

Our immune system is a powerful force inside each one of us!  This protective system is charged with the job of responding to foreign invaders to keep us in optimal health.  Most of us don’t think too much about this system until it is not working correctly.  I treat many patients that suffer from overactive or under-active immune systems due to chronic infections, like tick-borne diseases;  toxic exposures, like mold and mycotoxins; or autoimmune diseases, like multiple sclerosis, lupus or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.  Although many patients understand the important role of the immune system in protection and defense, few people know that it also controls our behavior.    A recent study in Nature   discussed the role of cytokines activated when the immune system goes on red alert and the connection to social isolation and autistic behaviors.  It’s even plausible that changes in immune function may lead to personality changes! Interferon-Gamma:  a Key Immune Signal One of the key

To understand what causes thyroid disease and then  how it can be treated or prevented , let’s first take an in-depth look at what role the thyroid plays in your body.  (Note: This is a bit of a lengthy explanation but stick with me as each of these steps give us important clues as to what can cause your thyroid to stop working properly.) Understanding How the Thyroid Works Your thyroid powers every cell in your body through the hormones it produces. These hormones determine the energy level and reproduction of each cell, keeping your organs powered up and managing your overall metabolism. The process of creating, regulating, and delivering these hormones is complex, and it all begins in your brain. The hypothalamus, which is responsible for managing hunger, thirst, sleep, hormones, and body temperature, among other important functions, continuously monitors the level of thyroid hormones present in your bloodstream. If it determines that energy levels are low, it sends ou

It is estimated that fibromyalgia affects nearly 6 million or 1 in 50 people, causing chronic pain, particularly muscle pain, fatigue, sleep disturbances, brain fog, or cognitive impairment, depression and painful tender points throughout the body. Not surprisingly, conventional medicine focuses only on managing symptoms through pain medications and antidepressants. Functional medicine, on the other hand, looks to find the root cause of fibromyalgia and other chronic diseases, treating the problem at the root level in order to restore the patient to health.  As a functional medicine physician, I have helped many patients recover from fibromyalgia.  Below are the top ten root causes of fibromyalgia I see in my clinic. 10 Root Causes Of Fibromyalgia Gluten Intolerance: Gluten  has been liked to more than 55 diseases and is often called the ‘big masquerader’. The reason for this is that the majority symptoms of gluten intolerance are not digestive in nature but rather neu

It’s estimated that as many as 27 million Americans have a thyroid problem such as Hashimoto’s or Graves’, and half of them have no idea that they do. Hypothyroidism, or an under-active thyroid, accounts for 90% of all thyroid imbalances. The thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland in the center of your neck, is the master gland of metabolism. How well your thyroid is functioning is inter-related with every system in your body. If your thyroid is not running optimally, then neither are you. 10 Signs of an Underactive Thyroid: 1. Fatigue after sleeping 8 to 10 hours a night or needing to take a nap daily 2. Weight gain or the inability to lose weight 3. Mood issues such as mood swings, anxiety, or depression 4. Hormone imbalances such as PMS, irregular periods, infertility, and low sex drive 5. Muscle pain, joint pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, or tendonitis 6. Cold hands and feet, feeling cold when others are not, or having a body temperature consistently below 98.5 7. D