Past Shows

•    Christopher M. Palmer, MD
•    Scott Shannon, MD
•    Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
•    Aseem Malhotra, MBChB, MRCP
•    James Maskell

Evolution of Medicine is excited to present the November Functional Forum, a recap of the recent Integrated Medicine for Mental Health (IMMH) conference held in Washington, DC. IMMH, which was a leading mental health event in the 2010s, has been revitalized, thanks to Kirkland Newman, the London Functional Forum host.

In this episode, we will explore insights from top voices in integrated mental health, highlighting how mental health care is evolving to embrace lifestyle-first and root-cause approaches. We will feature:

Christopher M. Palmer, MD, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and author of Brain Energy, who will share his expertise on metabolic psychiatry and his broad perspective on reversing cognitive and psychological disorders. We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Palmer to the forum for the first time.

Scott Shannon, MD, who presented an impactful talk on the role of psychedelics in mental health. As a thought leader in psychedelic medicine, Dr. Shannon provided a forward-looking view on how these therapies are shaping the future of mental health care.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH, who teaches clinicans about the biology of trauma, will be teaching us about the implications of trauma on health.

Aseem Malhotra, MBChB, MRCP, a cardiologist who will speak to the connections between the heart and mental health as well as the impact of COVID and lockdowns on mental health.

Lastly, we’ll share highlights from the VagusFest that had 140 attendees! This will be a great Forum, so please join us to hear from these experts and others as we delve into the latest developments in integrative mental health. This is a valuable opportunity to learn from those leading the charge in a truly transformative approach to mental healthcare.

•    Zach Bush, MD
•    Eldra Jackson III
•    James Maskell

Evolution of Medicine is excited to bring you a special October episode of the Functional Forum, filmed at the 2024 Independent National Convention (INC). Established in 2020, the INC brings together not only independent political parties but also voices advocating for independence in various sectors of society.

Independence has always been central to the evolution of functional and integrative medicine. With our founder, James Maskell, curating the health track at this year’s convention, we took the opportunity to capture key moments and insights from the event.

We're thrilled to present a full 30-minute interview with Dr. Zach Bush. While Dr. Bush has been a frequent guest on the Forum and EvoMed podcast, focusing on the intersection of human and planetary health, this marks our first in-person interview with him—one of the highlights of this episode.

We also feature a powerful interview with Eldra Jackson, Executive Director of Inside Circle, an organization with an incredible success rate facilitating men's work in prisons.

Dr. Bush and Eldra Jackson both participated in panels at the convention—Achieving Health Independence and Healing in Community—and this episode will feature highlights from those discussions, along with insights from the convention’s founders and participants.

The independent political movement holds great promise for bringing new ideas, like those from our community, to the mainstream.

•    Emily Gutierrez, DNP
•    Kat Toups, MD
•    Sharon Hausman-Cohen, MD, FAAFP, ABIHM
•    James Maskell

Evolution of Medicine is pleased to announce our September 2024 Functional Forum, which will feature speakers from the 2024 Integrative Medicine for Mental Health (IMMH) Conference.

The IMMH Conference aims to transorm the way we diagnose and treat mental health disorders, and will offer explorations of biochemical imbalances and psychological and lifestyle factors that influence mental health. This theme is in keeping with Evolution of Medicine’s goal to change the standard of care to a system that prioritizes chronic disease reversal and prevention.

IMMH conferences have been around for a decade, and were started by James Greenblatt. Recently, the event was resurrected by Kirkland Newman, who ran the conference virually last year. Now, it’s back in person and will be occuring outside of Washington, DC on October 10-13, 2024.

Please tune into our September 2024 Functional Forum episode to hear from the following presenters:

Sharon Hausman-Cohen, MD, FAAFP, ABIHM, co-founder of Resilient Health Austin and IntellxxDNA™, is an expert in genomics and integrative medicine. She’ll present on addressing the root causes of depression and anxiety, exploring genomic insights and solutions beyond pharmacogenomics.

And finally, James Maskell will host and field questions submitted through X/Twitter using #FunctionalForum during this live Functional Forum episode.

At the IMMH Conference, James will host a VagusFest event. To learn about how you can host your own VagusFest, visit VagusFest.com and submit the form to be emailed all the assets you’ll need.

•    Mark Holthouse, MD
•    Geovanni (Geo) Espinosa, ND
•    Dallas Hartwig, PT
•    James Maskell

Men's health and wellbeing have significantly suffered in recent years. Unfortunately, this issue is gravely underacknowledged across medical communities. The Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce that our next Functional Forum on August 5, 2024, will highlight this emerging, mission-critical issue.

While most historical clinical research is conducted on male subjects, male patients are gravely underrepresented in the functional and integrative medicine clinics across the country. Most patients seeking health-promoting care are women. Men are just as chronically unwell as women, so why aren’t men showing up in your clinics at the same rates?

One reason for male underrepresentation is likely due to the tendency of men to wait until their conditions are critical or unbearable before they seek support.

We will also consider the implications of the pervasive loneliness discussion and mental health issues in recent years. Because men are less likely to seek help, we will put men’s health under a microscope this month.

Joining us for this discussion are three champions of men’s health:

• Mark Holthouse, MD of Functional Medicine Idaho is on faculty at the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), educating thousands of practitioners on hormone health. He has also taught cardiometabolic prevention and reversal. We’ll hear from him about the men's health issues he most commonly sees in practice.
• Geovanni (Geo) Espinosa, ND is an integrative urologist who works with major urology centers at NYU, including their School of Medicine. Dr. Espinosa will be speaking about preventative and reversal strategies for urological issues.
• Dallas Hartwig, PT, who is the founder of Whole30. More recently, he has been working with men’s emotional wellbeing. He is a critical thinker working to integrate functional medicine and emotion healthcare specifically for men.

The event will be hosted as always by James Maskell, who will share more about his experience and growth through men's groups.

If you care about a man in your life, or the future of men’s health generally, please be sure to register and join the Functional Forum show livestreaming on August 5!

•    Kristine Burke, MD
•    Heather Sandison, ND

The Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to present our July 2024 Functional Forum about one of the hottest topics in medicine: reversing cognitive decline.

In the last month, Dr. Dean Ornish has announced his dementia reversal trial, which is the first randomized, controlled clinical trial to determine if intensive lifestyle changes may beneficially affect the progression of mild cognitive impairment or early dementia. On the Forum, we will learn more about this landmark study, as well as some other innovative work in the functional medicine community related to dementia.

Joining live will be Dr. Kristine Burke, who is one of the six principal investigators of the Evanthea Dementia Reversal Trial, in which top functional medicine doctors are using multimodal approaches to reverse cognitive decline.

We will also be hearing from Dr. Heather Sandison, who has been on the front lines of reversing cognitive decline. In addition to her residential memory care facility, Marama, she just launched a new book called Reversing Alzheimer’s: The New Toolkit to Improve Cognition and Protect Brain Health.

And lastly, we will be diving into new laboratory tests that are available to detect cognitive decline and other related innovations.

When you register and tune in to the livestream, you can expect a masterclass on the functional medicine approach to dementia. Please join us live!

•    Peter Staats, MD
•    Stacy T. Sims, MSC, PhD

The Evolution of Medicine is pleased to present this episode of the Functional Forum, which is a video compilation of content recorded at the Institute for Functional Medicine’s Annual International Conference and VagusFest, EvoMed’s IFM AIC pre-party event.

IFM AIC 2024 was a definite success. More than 1,200 people were onsite, and another 500 were watching online making this one of the largest IFM events ever.

James Maskell interviewed Peter Staats, MD, MBA, who gave a keynote address at the conference about the vagus nerve.

James also sits down with Stacy T. Sims, MSC, PhD, world renowned exercise physiologist for women and nutrition scientist. Dr. Sims offers interesting tips for motivated patients to begin improving their functional abilities.

If you watch this episode, you will also see almost a dozen conversations between James Maskell and conference and VagusFest attendees from around the world, including Sunjya K. Schweig, MD and James Carter, MD.

Check out this episode for a VagusFest sneak peek, exciting conversations and content from the conference!

•    Deanna Minich, PhD
•    Jade Teta, ND
•    Peter Kozlowski, MD
•    Carrie Jones, ND, MPH

The Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce the May Functional Forum, with highlights from the recent PLMI conference, Endocrine Typing: Connecting the dots Between Toxin Load, Weight Loss Resistance and Hormonal Dysfunction.

This topic is mission critical because we're in a metabolic crisis in this country, with a high percentage of adults and children showing metabolic dysfunction.

In functional medicine terms, this is not a one-system phenomenon, and that's why this conference delved into hormones and toxins as critical pieces for understanding what's happening with a particular focus on GLP-1 medication, the hottest topic in health care now.

We caught up with some of the thought leaders in space, as well as attendees.

First, we have Dr. Carrie Jones, who's been a leader in online education for more than a decade, and was previously the chief medical officer at Rupa Health and DUTCH Test. She shared her insights on this topic as it relates to perimenopause, menopause and metabolic syndrome.

Dr. Peter Kozlowski was a new educator on the scene and tied in the role of toxins in body composition.

We also have insights from Dr. Deanna Minich, Dr. Elisa Song and Dr. Jade Teta.

We hope you enjoy the show!

•    Tyna Moore, ND, DC
•    Mimi Guarneri, MD

Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce a special Functional Forum on one of the hottest topics in medicine today: GLP-1 agonists. Due to the growing metabolic health crisis worldwide, practitioners and patients alike are interested in the weight loss and metabolic health benefits of GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide, commonly known by the brand names Wegovy, Ozempic or Rybelsus.

Now that millions of Americans have been prescribed a GLP-1 agonist, functional medicine practitioners may be wondering the following: Do these drugs synergize with functional medicine principles? Is this a healthy trend? How can these tools be used safely and effectively?

We have invited an internationally recognized expert to speak on this topic, Mimi Guarneri, MD, an author, renowned cardiologist, and the founder and president of The Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine. Dr. Guarneri will also discuss semaglutide and obesity management at the upcoming PLMI conference.

Joining her are a few special guests who are deeply involved in research on GLP-1 agonists, including their benefits and side effects, and they will discuss how functional medicine practitioners can work effectively to deal with the epidemic of chronic illness and metabolic disease.

One of these special guests joining Dr. Guarneri is Tyna Moore, ND, DC. Dr. Moore builds on decades of experience in musculoskeletal and metabolic health, and she has delved deeply into GLP-1 agonists. Bring your questions and join us live as Dr. Guarneri and Dr. Moore cover these critical topics. You can also send us your questions on X/Twitter with #FunctionalForum.

•    Deanna Minich, PhD
•    Jade Teta, ND

Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to present its next Functional Forum, which will explore endocrine and metabolic health. We will share conversations with two speakers from the upcoming Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute (PLMI) conference, Endocrine Typing: Connecting the Dots Between Toxin Load, Weight Loss Resistance and Hormonal Dysfunction.

Weight loss is a hot topic in American health care right now due to the obesity epidemic. For the first time in history, we also have pharmaceuticals, namely GLP-1 agonists, that are proving to be effective weight loss tools.

From a lifestyle, functional or integrative medicine perspective, clinicians must help patients who take these medications prevent or mitigate side effects and succeed with long-term weight management when no longer taking GLP-1 agonists.

For the best long-term patient outcomes, it is important to understand the biochemical or biophysical mechanisms that drive obesity. In this Functional Forum, we will focus on hormonal and environmental factors, such as toxins, that influence weight loss resistance and weight gain.

Joining us are two thought leaders who will speak at the PLMI conference. Deanna Minich, PhD is a preeminent expert on nutrition, a much-loved international speaker and an author of six consumer wellness books and numerous scientific publications. She offers deep wisdom on toxins, obesogens and nutritional biochemistry.

Jade Teta, ND is a leading educator who is well known for speaking about metabolic health. He has joined the Functional Forum before to share relevant and important insights with us. Dr. Teta is also an expert in human motivation and performance, which will be covered in detail during the March Functional Forum.

Please join us as we explore the connection between toxins, metabolic disorders and the endocrine system. We will come to a deeper understanding of how cellular dysfunction leads to obesity and work toward a more structured approach to long-term management of a healthy weight.

•    Michael Mabry, DO
•    Rob Slattery, the CEO of SoFHA
•    Patrick Hanaway, MD

The Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce the upcoming Functional Forum marking its 10th anniversary.

Our first Functional Forum took place in February 2014 at the Helen Mills Theater in Midtown Manhattan. The functional and integrative health movement had yet to grow to what it is today. Since then, much has changed: We have hosted the Functional Forum from several continents and facilitated hundreds of meetups. We are beyond grateful for the community's engagement, advocacy and support.

The first ten years of the Functional Forum were focused on bringing together like-minded practitioners and making it easy for those practitioners to start their own practices to deliver integrative and functional medicine to their local communities.

Our next ten years will be all about working toward systemic change. To kick off this next chapter, we are sharing content captured in Johnson City, Tennessee at an inaugural dinner for the East Tennessee Health Forum, a chapter of the Functional Forum, hosted by Michael Mabry, DO.

Dr. Mabry was featured on an earlier podcast episode in 2023, where we learned how group medical visits combined with a capitation payment model enable his practice to provide integrative medicine services to a community that may otherwise be underserved.

Integrative and functional medicine have historically been held back by financial limitations, such as not qualifying for insurance. Dr. Mabry’s practice has figured out a solution that is working for a town of 70,000.

If you join us for this Functional Forum, you'll see interviews with Dr. Mabry and Rob Slattery, the CEO of SoFHA, the physician-owned and led health care group serving 150,000+ patients to which Dr. Mabry belongs.

We will also hear from Patrick Hanaway, MD, who was central to the success of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. Dr. Hanaway will share insights gained from implementing functional medicine in a large academic center. In particular, he will speak to the cost savings of reversing chronic illness.

We will showcase the data on how functional medicine practices that leverage group care can deliver significant value to the health system by addressing chronic disease reversal through patient education and support. You will see how collaboration and cooperation is allowing integrative medicine to flourish in rural Appalachia.

This episode will bring together the most important themes we’ve explored in the Functional Forum over the last ten years.

Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce the first Functional Forum of 2024 on the theme of unity. In this coming year, we will explore a broad range of how unity is expressed in medicine, including:

• Treating patients, rather than isolated symptoms
• Finding commonalities between vitalistic health care practices
• Interdisciplinary collaboration between clinicians, patients and various medical disciplines
• In-person communities and group care
• Technology integration, including aggregating and organizing data
• Collaboration and interconnectedness through education and training

Our guest speaker will be Dr. Andrew Weil, who is a long-time advocate for integrative medicine. In his first-ever appearance on the Functional Forum, we’ll learn about his range of experiences that will directly apply to our mission at the Evolution of Medicine.

He is the founder and leader of a fellowship program for integrative medicine through the University of Arizona. You'll hear his vision and predictions for the future of medicine and his opinions about psychedelic medicine.

Our host, James Maskell, will also share his reflections on where we will find opportunities for unity consciousness in medicine.

•    Andrew Heyman, MD
•    Jarrod Spencer, PsyD
•    Elroy Vojdani, MD

The Evolution of Medicine is excited to announce the December Functional Forum, which was filmed in Park City, Utah at the October 2023 A4M conference, Mitochondria: The Conductor, The Powerhouse, The Key to Cellular Healing.

Four years ago, we attended the same conference where it was made clear the degree to which mitochondria impact the cell danger response and chronic inflammatory conditions.

Now that the science has evolved, we are doing a deeper dive into understanding how mitochondria orchestrate immune activity and a host of other functions.

Starting us off is Dr. Andrew Heyman, who is the medical director of Integrative Medicine at The George Washington University and the director of Academic Affairs at A4M. At 17 years old, Dr. Heyman started his career in medicine with formal training in five-element shiatsu and traditional Chinese medicine. He has since trained in a long list of therapies.

During his opening keynote at the conference, Dr. Heyman spoke of vitalism, which involves the connections between several areas of medicine, such as Chinese, Ayurvedic, naturopathic and chiropractic, where mitochondrial function can be measured.

We will also feature Dr. Jarod Spencer, Dr. Elroy Vojdani and several other conference attendees who shared how they address the many manifestations of mitochondrial dysfunction.

We are extremely excited to bring you this talk, which will be a clinical expression of our mission at the Evolution of Medicine to bring together like-minded clinicians.

For the first time in history, we are seeing a convergence of cutting-edge medical science and vitalism, all pointing to a unified medical paradigm.

•    Erik Lundquist, MD
•    Kelly McCann, MD

The Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce our November Functional Forum, Co-Creating Immunity. Please join our second-to-last Forum of 2023, the year of connection.

We are intimately connected to our environment, and environmental toxins contribute to chronic illnesses. In particular, the link between environmental illness and immunity is an area where functional medicine is really coming into its own.

We are excited to showcase local practitioners who are at the cutting edge of this topic. We will also hear from presenting community members who are innovating their clinical practices, business models and technology.

• Our first guest speaker, Kelly McCann, MD, has been a leader in environmental medicine for over a decade. Dr. McCann was one of the first hosts of the Orange County Functional Forum in 2015-2016. Expect deep clinical insights from Dr. McCann as she shares her tips for building immune health.
• Our second guest speaker will be Erik Lundquist, MD, who has an innovative business model and clinical approach. He will present on stress and the immune system and share methods for improving immune function in your patients.

As always, this Functional Forum will be hosted by James Maskell. We will showcase how practitioners are helping patients build immunity through innovative in-person and virtual group care models. We will also highlight lessons from the field on how capitation and value-based care are creating the right incentives for functional medicine to flourish in many ways.

Bonus: Watch Dr. Lundquist’s clinical case presentation on post-COVID patient treatments.

COVID Long-Hauler Clinical Case Presentation

The Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce our October Functional Forum with content captured at the Functional Pharmacy Symposium on September 23 in Nashville, TN.

In recent months on the Evolution of Medicine podcast, we have been sharing conversations that show how pharmacies and pharmacists are at the forefront of functional medicine delivery. Attending this event is a fantastic opportunity to connect with the community and learn from presentations by leading educators and thought leaders in the functional pharmacy space.

The 8th Annual Functional Pharmacy Symposium is called Cardiometabolic Patient Care: Foundational Strategies and Emerging Concepts. Our Functional Forum speaker highlights from the symposium include the following:

Featuring:
Robin Berzin, MD

The Evolution of Medicine is thrilled to announce our September 2023 Function Forum featuring a returning guest, Robin Berzin, MD, who is the founder and CEO of Parsley Health. Dr. Berzin was a keynote speaker on the second-ever Functional Forum and a keynote speaker for us at the kickoff of the first Evolution of Medicine summit in 2014.

This show will follow an atypical format that only focuses on one practitioner, featuring a conversation between James and Dr. Berzin recounting their ten years of friendship and a chronicle of Dr. Berzin’s journey through developing Parsley Health. Here’s a preview of her journey:

1. Dr. Berzin started Parsley Health in 2015 using a micropractice model and working off of a laptop at a coworking space in New York. Parsley Health began as a tech-enabled, low-overhead, membership-based practice, which also made Dr. Berzin a key successful example in James Maskell’s first book, The Evolution of Medicine.
2. As you will hear, she was responsible for establishing Parsley Health’s first 300 patients as their physician, but as the practice grew, she hired more clinicians, opened three physical locations and even initiated further telehealth services.
3. Now, Parsley Health is the largest functional medicine clinic in the world. They have locations in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and they offer telemedicine services across all 50 states. They have over 40 doctors and have treated tens of thousands of patients.
4. You will hear how Parsley Health fared, both positively and negatively, during the pandemic, and how it has recently established relationships with both insurance companies and employers. Currently, they are in-network for 10 million insured Americans.

What an incredible journey she’s had. There are so many lessons Dr. Berzin shares for practitioners and leaders at any stage of their organization development. We hope you can join us to learn from her inspiring and enlightening journey.