Gas, belching, and bloating. All fairly typical problems that walk through the office door. They usually point to gallbladder dysfunction or impaired fat digestion.

My practice gets waves. If I see two thyroid patients in a week, four more thyroid patients show up the following month. I'd like to think it's God testing me and helping me find better ways to educate people. In reality it's probably that birds of a feather flock together, and when I help one patient they send their friends.

The most recent wave ha...

A few months back I got inundated with questions about a study claiming that gluten sensitivity wasn't real. Researchers could find no credence to non-celiac gluten sensitivity. The part that was perplexing to me: this same group had previously published research that wheat was a primary cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

Their most recent study attempted to refine the earlier experiment by isolating the gluten protein and giving that isolation to patients, creating an artificially high-gluten diet. The st...

Why Fasting Glucose and HbA1C Are Not The Best Tests

Your annual physical lasts seven minutes. Your doctor glances at your blood work, sees normal fasting glucose and HbA1c, and tells you you're fine.

Meanwhile, you're experiencing brain fog, energy crashes, anxiety, insomnia, and cravings. You answered "yes" to 20+ questions on the blood sugar dysfunction questionnaire. Your symptoms scream blood sugar dysregulation.

But your labs say you're normal.

Here's why standard blood sugar tests miss early dysfunction, and what tests actually catch problems before they become diabetes.

The Problem With Standard Testing

Most physicians rely on two tests to assess blood sugar health:

1. Fasting blood glucose
2. Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c)

These tests are quick, cheap, and minimally invasive. They're designed for high-volume medical practices where doctors see patients every 5-7 minutes.

This isn't your doctor's fault. Insurance reimbursement doesn't pay for extended visits. Overhead and liabi...

Yes, You Should Be Eating Butter

One of my mantras in the office is that most people should avoid wheat, corn, dairy, soy, and sugar. Inevitably people ask: what about butter? Isn't that dairy?

Yes, technically. But butter is much more fat than protein, and that distinction matters.

Butter is a water-in-oil emulsification. The water is suspended in the oil, making it solid at room temperature, whereas the cream used to make it is liquid. This emulsification creates stability and reduces spoilage. More importan...

Your doctor tells you your cholesterol is high. You're confused. What does that even mean?

Is cholesterol bad? Is it good? Should you avoid it in food? Do you need medication?

The answers might surprise you.

Cholesterol isn't the villain you've been told it is. It's actually essential for life.

Here's what you need to know.

What Is Cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance found in every cell of your body.

It's not a fat (lipid), but it travels through your bloodstream attached to prote...

There are numerous studies linking ADD/ADHD and gluten. There's even one study linking celiac disease directly to ADHD. So it may be that avoiding all grains containing gluten is essential for the natural management of ADHD.

In my experience, removing all grains matters because there are no truly "safe" grains in this country. Two reasons.

First, I don't trust the cross-contamination potential of non-gluten and gluten-free grains. They're normally transported, processed, and stored in the same plants and contai...

Are There Natural Treatments for ADD?

I hate labels. Whether ones we put on ourselves or ones other people define us by, they're ridiculous. The diagnosis of ADD/ADHD is just another label being put on our children at alarming rates. Conservatively, CDC estimates about 3.5 million, or 9% of school-aged children in the US, are being prescribed some form of medication for ADD/ADHD. That's a terrifying epidemic bordering on pandemic, especially when you consider the French only diagnose and medicate about 0.5% of t...

If you have had, or currently have, babies, one of the hardest most heart-wrenchingly painful things you can hear is your baby crying uncontrollably.

Especially when they wake up and you're stumbling blearily around the house trying to get them fed, hoping it's simply because they're hungry and not because they're constipated or colicky.

Colic is one of the biggest complaints I hear from new moms. Some patients say their pediatrician has recommended over-the-counter antacid medication for their colic-stricken b...

PCOS: What It Is and Why It Matters

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome affects 5-15% of women of reproductive age. Approximately 6 million diagnosed annually in the US. Despite how common it is, most women receive inadequate explanations about what's actually driving their symptoms.

Common manifestations include irregular or absent menstrual cycles, subfertility or infertility, male-pattern hair growth (hirsutism: not just facial hair, but thick growth on arms, chest, abdomen), difficulty losing weight despite caloric r...

Often when a patient comes in, I adjust and change their diet by instructing them to eliminate grains and gluten. The next visit, usually within a week or two, they bounce into the office listing all the surprising symptoms that brought them in initially have gone away.

These symptoms can range as broadly as a skin rash or eczema all the way to severe and life-threatening autoimmune disorders like Multiple Sclerosis. There's a fascinating case where a man had severe neurological symptoms that mimicked ALS (Lou G...